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Can Map be performed on a Scala HList

Asked 2011-03-18T08:13:13.417
30

I have done a few implementations of HList now. One based on Daniel Spiewak's High Wizardry in the Land of Scala talk and another based on a post in Apocalisp blog. The goal was to have a heterogenous list of which is not heterogenous in the primary type but rather the higher kind. For example:

val requests = Request[String] :: Request[Int] :: HNil

I would be able to do a map across the list to perform the request and result in a heterogenous list of the higher kind. So:

requests.map(execute)

should equal

String :: Int :: HNil

Sadly all my attempts have resulted in an HList of Any. Here is the code from a recent attempt:

class Request[+Out](o:Out) {
  type O = Out

  def v:O = o
}

object HList {
  trait Func[-Elem,Out] {
    type Apply[E <: Elem] <: Out
    def apply[N <: Elem](e:N):Apply[N]
  }
  sealed trait HList[Base] {
    type Head <: Base
    type Tail <: HList[Base]
    type Map[Out,F <: Func[Base,Out]] <: HList[Out]
    def head:Head
    def tail:Tail

    def ::[A <: Base](a:A):HList[Base]
    def map[Out,F <: Func[Base,Out]](f:F):Map[Out,F]
  }

  case class HNil[Base]() extends HList[Base] {
    type Head = Nothing
    type Tail = Nothing
    type Map[Out,F <: Func[Base,Out]] = HNil[Out]

    def head = error("Head of an empty HList")
    def tail = error("Head of an empty HList")

    def ::[A <: Base](a:A) = HCons(a,this)
    def map[Out,F <: Func[Base,Out]](f:F) = new HNil[Out]
  }

  case class HCons[Base,A <: Base,B <: HList[Base]](head: A, tail: B) extends HList[Base] {
    type Head = A
    type Tail = B    
    type Map[Out,F <: Func[Base,Out]] = HCons[Out,F#Apply[Head],Tail#Map[Out,F]]

    def ::[C <: Base](c:C) = HCons(c,this)
    def map[Out,F <: Func[Base,Out]](f:F) =
      HCons(f(head),tail.map(f))
  }

  val :: = HCons 
}

object Test extends Application {
  impor
scala shapeless hlist
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1 Answer

23

The HList implementation in shapeless is rich enough to subsume both HList and KList functionality. It provides a map operation which applies a higher-ranked function, possibly with type-specific cases, across it's elements yielding an appropriately typed HList result,

import shapeless.Poly._
import shapeless.HList._

// Define a higher-ranked function from Sets to Options
object choose extends (Set ~> Option) {
  def default[T](s : Set[T]) = s.headOption 
}

// An HList of Sets
val sets = Set(1) :: Set("foo") :: HNil

// Map our choose function across it ...
val opts = sets map choose

// The resulting value
opts == Option(1) :: Option("foo") :: HNil

Note that although it's the case in the above example there's no requirement that the HList elements share a common outer type constructor, it just has to be the case that the higher-ranked function mapped with has cases for all of the types involved,

// size is a higher-ranked function from values of arbitrary type to a 'size'
// which is defined as 1 by default but which has type specific cases for
// Strings and tuples
object size extends (Id ~> Const[Int]#λ) {
  def default[T](t : T) = 1
}
implicit def sizeString = size.λ[String](s => s.length)
implicit def sizeTuple[T, U](implicit st : size.λ[T], su : size.λ[U]) =
  size.λ[(T, U)](t => 1+size(t._1)+size(t._2))

size(23) == 1          // Default
size("foo") == 3       // Type specific case for Strings
size((23, "foo")) == 5 // Type specific case for tuples

Now let's map this across an HList,

val l = 23 :: true :: "foo" :: ("bar", "wibble") :: HNil
val ls = l map size

ls == 1 :: 1 :: 3 :: 10 :: HNil

In this case the result type of the function being mapped is constant: it's an Int no matter what the arg

answered 2012-01-02T18:19:08.337

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