README.md

Flexidisc

Typesafe extensible records (and more) for Idris.

About

This library proposed an implementation of extensible records in Idris. Extensible records provide a way to consider labels as first class objects in a record. It allows the developper to add, remove and change types of a field in a record.

Aside these core capabilities, Flexidisc also provides more advanced extensible manipulation function to modify, validate extensible records and to handle heterogeneous list of records.

Getting started

Prerequisites

As flexidisc is an Idris library, your supposed to have a working version of idris on your computer. flexidisc was teste on idris 1.3.2, but should work on prior version of idris.

flexidisc has no other external dependencies.

Installation

$ git clone https://git.list.lu/nbiri/flexidisc.git
$ cd flexidisc
$ idris --install flexidisc.ipkg
> :module Flexidisc

To include the library in idris, you can either specify it when you run the REPL:

$ idris -p flexidisc

Or add the dependency to your project ipkg file.

If you want, you can also load the Tutorial file to use it as a start (you can also take a look now at the tutorial file to see example of record manipulations):

$ idris -p flexidisc examples/Tutorial.idr

There's no nix install at this stage, I should work on it.

Features

• Record extension
• Projection
• Typesafe accesses/updates
• Concatenation of disjoint records
• Pach a record with another one
• Order independent equality of records
• Row polymorphic functions
• List of heterogeneous records + operations on them

Usage

The core of Flexidisc is the Record type:

Record : (key : Type) -> (header : Header key) -> Type

Record takes two parameter:

• key, the type used to identify the different rows of a Record. A key must implement DecEq interface (to avoid duplicate fields), and Ord (to allow field declaration in any order).
• header can be seen as a list of (key, Type) pairs, that identify the type of each row in the Record.

Record creation

johnDoe : Record String ["Firstname" ::: String, "Age" ::: Nat])
johnDoe = ["Firstname" := "John", "Age" := 42]

Record extension

agedJohn : Record String ["Age" ::: Nat, "Lastname" ::: String, "Firstname" ::: String]
agedJohn = ("Lastname" := "Doe") :: johnDoe

We can also append disjoints records with ++:

idJohn : Record String ["ID" ::: Nat, "Firstname" ::: String, "Lastname" ::: String, "Age" ::: Nat]
idJohn = ["ID" := the Nat 1, "Firstname" := "John"] ++ ["Lastname" := "Doe", "Age" := the Nat 42]

Record projection

johnsName : Record ["Lastname" ::: String, "Firstname" ::: String]
johnsName = project agedJohn

keepJohn : Record ["Firstname" ::: String]
keepJohn = keep "Firstname" ageLast

backToJohnDoe : Record ["Firstname" ::= String, "LastName" ::= String]
backToJohnDoe = drop "Age" agedJohn

john : Record ["Firstname" ::= String]
john = discard ["Lastname", "Age"] agedJohn

Going further

The examples contains several usage examples of more advanced use of the library.

Type-Safety

Manipulation functions provided in the library are type safe.

Type safety is mostly handled by idris automatic proof generation.

Here are a few examples of type checking failure (more precisely, failure by not succeeding to generate a proof):

get "Age" johnDoe
-- Can't prove that "Age" is a row of johnDoe

("Firstname" := "Nicolas") :: johnDoe
-- Can't create a duplicate label

the (Record ["Firstname" ::: String, "Age" ::: Nat]) (project johnDoe)
-- Can't create labels during a projecttion

john ++ johnDoe
-- Can't merge two records with a common field

Limitations

Type inference

The result type of some functions such as keep or patch cant be inferred from the function parameters. The reason is that the result type is not given by a function but by a proof construction, and not computed.

Of course, the same goes with functions like project or reorder, for which there are many possibilities ofr the result type.