[Haskell-cafe] Lifting IO actions into Applicatives

[Yitzchak Gale]

Dan Burton wrote:
> From what you've said, it sounds like you can already write:
>
>     serverSide :: IO a -> Form a
>
> This seems elegant enough to me for your needs. Just encourage it as an
> idiom specific to Forms.
>
>     myBlogForm = Blog <$> titleForm <*> serverSide getCurrentTime <*>
> contentsForm
>
> Could you abstract `serverSide` out into a typeclass, such as ApplicativeIO?
> Sure. but why bother? The point is, you've got the specialization you need
> already.

In my opinion, this is the nicest answer to the original question
about yesod forms. But the more general question that it led to
is an interesting and important one.

-Yitz