Data.Proxy

Short note on Data.Proxy based on this Stackoverflow answer.

First, a few imports:

{-# LANGUAGE RankNTypes          #-}
{-# LANGUAGE ScopedTypeVariables #-}

module Proxy where

import Data.Proxy
import Text.Read

Suppose we want to check if some fuzzy real world data can be read as certain concrete types. We could write a few helper functions using readMaybe:

readableAsInt :: String -> Bool
readableAsInt s
  = case readMaybe s of
      Just (_ :: Int) -> True
      _               -> False

readableAsDouble :: String -> Bool
readableAsDouble s
  = case readMaybe s of
      Just (_ :: Double) -> True
      _                  -> False

readableAsBool :: String -> Bool
readableAsBool s
  = case readMaybe s of
      Just (_ :: Bool) -> True
      _                -> False

These are all basically the same. How to generalise? Let’s try a typeclass.

class ReadableAs t where
   readableAs :: String -> Bool

This doesn’t work since readableAs doesn’t depend on the type t:

    The class method ‘readableAs’
    mentions none of the type or kind variables of the class ‘ReadableAs t’
    When checking the class method: readableAs :: String -> Bool
    In the class declaration for ‘ReadableAs’
Failed, modules loaded: none.

So put the type in:

class ReadableAs' t where
   readableAs' :: t -> String -> Bool

This compiles, so let’s write some instances:

instance ReadableAs' Int where
  readableAs' _ s
     = case readMaybe s of
         Just (_ :: Int) -> True
         _               -> False

instance ReadableAs' Double where
  readableAs' _ s
     = case readMaybe s of
         Just (_ :: Double) -> True
         _                  -> False

instance ReadableAs' Bool where
  readableAs' _ s
     = case readMaybe s of
         Just (_ :: Bool) -> True
         _                -> False

Using it is clunky since we have to come up with a concrete value for the first argument:

> readableAs' (0::Int) "0"
True
> readableAs' (0::Double) "0"
True

For some types we could use [Data.Default](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/data-default for this placeholder value. But for other types nothing will make sense. How do we choose a default value for Foo?

data Foo = Cat | Dog

Haskell has non-strict evaluation so we can use undefined, but, ugh. Bad idea.

 > readableAs' (undefined::Int) "0"
 True

So let’s try out Proxy. It has a single constructor and a free type variable that we can set:

> :t Proxy
Proxy :: Proxy t

> Proxy :: Proxy Bool
Proxy
> Proxy :: Proxy Int
Proxy
> Proxy :: Proxy Double
Proxy

Let’s use Proxy t instead of t:

class ReadableAsP t where
   readableAsP :: Proxy t -> String -> Bool

instance ReadableAsP Int where
  readableAsP _ s
     = case readMaybe s of
         Just (_ :: Int) -> True
         _               -> False

instance ReadableAsP Double where
  readableAsP _ s
     = case readMaybe s of
         Just (_ :: Double) -> True
         _                  -> False

instance ReadableAsP Bool where
  readableAsP _ s
     = case readMaybe s of
         Just (_ :: Bool) -> True
         _                -> False

This works, and we don’t have to come up with the unused concrete value:

> readableAsP (Proxy :: Proxy Bool) "0"
False
> readableAsP (Proxy :: Proxy Bool) "True"
True
> readableAsP (Proxy :: Proxy Int) "0"
True
> readableAsP (Proxy :: Proxy Double) "0"
True
> readableAsP (Proxy :: Proxy Double) "0.0"
True

Still, there’s a lot of duplication in the class and instances. We can do away with the class entirely. With the ScopedTypeVariables language extension and the forall, the t in the type signature can be referred to in the body:

readableAs :: forall t. Read t => Proxy t -> String -> Bool
readableAs _ s
     = case readMaybe s of
         Just (_ :: t) -> True
         _             -> False

> readableAs (Proxy :: Proxy Int) "0"
True
> readableAs (Proxy :: Proxy Int) "foo"
False