Overview

Monad Reader

MonadAsk is used to expose a read-only value to a monadic context. It's default implmentation is ReaderT:

             -- r        m     a
newtype ReaderT readOnly monad finalOutput =
  ReaderT (\readOnly -> monad finalOutput)

-- Pseudo-syntax for combining the type class and ReaderT's instance together
class (Monad m) <= MonadAsk r (ReaderT r m) where
  ask   :: forall a. ReaderT r m a
  ask a = ReaderT (\_ -> pure a)

Do Notation

When writing StateT's do notation, we have a function called get that does not take any argument but still returns a value:

stateManipulation :: State Int Int
stateManipulation =
  get
-- which reduces to
  state (\s -> Tuple s s)
-- which reduces to
  StateT (\s -> Identity (Tuple s s))

-- When we run `stateManipulation` with `runState`...
  runState (StateT (\s -> Identity (Tuple s s))) 0
-- it reduces to...
  unboxIdentity $ (\s -> Identity (Tuple s s)) 0
-- which reduces to
  unboxIdentity (Identity (Tuple 0 0))
-- and finally outputs
  Tuple 0 0

MonadAsk's function works similarly:

type Settings = { editable :: Boolean, fontSize :: Int }
useSettings :: Reader Settings Settings
useSettings = ask
-- which reduces to...
  ReaderT (\r -> Identity r)

-- When we run `useSettings` with `runReader`
  runReader useSettings { editable: true, fontSize: 12 }
-- it reduces to
  unwrapIdentity $ (\r -> Identity r) { editable: true, fontSize: 12 }
-- which reduces to
  unwrapIdentity (Identity { editable: true, fontSize: 12 })
-- which reduces to
  { editable: true, fontSize: 12 }

MonadReader

MonadReader extends MonadAsk by allowing the read-only value to be modified first before being used in one computation.

class MonadAsk r m <= MonadReader r m | m -> r where
  local :: forall a. (r -> r) -> m a -> m a

Derived Functions

MonadReader does not have any derived functions.

MonadAsk has one derived function:

  • asks: apply a function to the read-only value (useful for extracting something out of it, like a field in a settings object)

Laws, Instances, and Miscellaneous Functions

For the laws, see

To see how ReaderT implements its instances

To handle/modify the output of a reader computation: