[Haskell-cafe] Scraping boilerplate deriving?

[Serguey Zefirov]

2010/9/14 Kevin Jardine <kevinjardine at gmail.com>:
> I would like to use some macro system (perhaps Template Haskell?) to
> reduce this to something like
>
> defObj MyType
>
> I've read through some Template Haskell documentation and examples,
> but I find it intimidatingly hard to follow. Does anyone has some code
> suggestions or pointers to something similar?

The solutions first:
-------------------------------------------------
{-# LANGUAGE TemplateHaskell #-}

module T(mkNewType) where

import Language.Haskell.TH

decls = [d|newtype TempDecl = TempDecl Int deriving (Eq,Ord,Show)|]
decl = do
	[d] <- decls
	runIO $ print d -- just to show inetrnals
	return d

mkNewType :: String -> Q [Dec]
mkNewType n = do
	d <- decl
	let name = mkName n
	return $ (\x -> [x]) $ case d of
		(NewtypeD cxt _ argvars (NormalC _ args) derivings) ->
			NewtypeD cxt name argvars (NormalC name args) derivings
--------------------------------------
I took perfectly valid declaration, dissected it using case analysis
and changed relevant parts.

And an example client:
-------------------------------------
{-# LANGUAGE TemplateHaskell #-}

import T

$(mkNewType "A")
-------------------------------------
It all work together.

I studied how to use Template Haskell that way: I obtained
declarations of what I need, printed them and looked through
documentation for relevant data types and constructors. It's not
harder that any other library in Haskell, actually.