Friday, January 18, 2008

Scraping my boilerplate: Generics instead of Records

I was talking last week about my trouble writing simple code to access and update record field in Haskell. While talking with justin about it, he suggested using parameter type for record object, so that the compiler would check that an update method would actually take as parameters the proper rating and the corresponding update function. That was cool enough, and that got me into the "Scrap your boilerplate" papers and Data.Generics modules. What I have now, using generics programming, is fairly simple and I think I'm getting closer to what Haskell code should be like.
First, Ratings: a Rating has three int values: the current level, normal level, and the experience points. What I do now is that each value is actually typed, and the Rating only holds a list of them:

data RatingScoreType=Normal |
Current |
Experience
deriving (Show,Read,Enum,Eq,Typeable,Data)

data RatingScore=RatingScore RatingScoreType Int
deriving (Show,Read,Typeable,Data)
data Rating=Rating [RatingScore]
deriving (Typeable,Data)

With that I can add an update method that only changes a RatingScore if the type match with the type provided:

addRS :: RatingScoreType -> Int -> RatingScore -> RatingScore
addRS t2 b rs@(RatingScore t1 a)
| t1==t2=RatingScore t1 (a+b)
| otherwise=rs


And a method that tells me if a score match the given type

getRS :: RatingScoreType -> RatingScore -> Bool
getRS t2 rs@(RatingScore t1 a)
| t1==t2=True
| otherwise=False


(note that addRS can be rewritten using getRS but we don't gain anything in code size)

I can then use Data.Generics functions to provide generic update and get functions:

addR :: Data a => RatingScoreType -> Int -> a -> a
addR rst i=everywhere (mkT (addRS rst i))

getR :: Data a => RatingScoreType -> a -> Int
getR rst a=
let (RatingScore t1 b)= head $ listify (getRS rst) a
in b


(There are probably other and maybe better way of writing these, but hey, the documentation is not very rich in examples...)

The level above Ratings are Characteristics: a character holds an array of CharacteristicRating:

data CharacteristicRating = CharacteristicRating Characteristic Rating
deriving (Show,Read,Typeable,Data)


Where Characteristic is again an Enum of all possible characteristics.

I define the similar 4 functions as above, except they filter on Characteristic first and RatingScoreType second:

addC :: Characteristic -> RatingScoreType -> Int -> CharacteristicRating -> CharacteristicRating
addC c2 rst i cr@(CharacteristicRating c1 r)
| c1==c2=everywhere (mkT (addRS rst i)) cr
| otherwise=cr

getC :: Characteristic -> RatingScoreType -> CharacteristicRating -> Bool
getC c2 rst cr@(CharacteristicRating c1 r)
| c1==c2=True
| otherwise=False

addCharacteristic :: Data a => Characteristic -> RatingScoreType -> Int -> a -> a
addCharacteristic c rst i a = everywhere (mkT (addC c rst i)) a

getCharacteristic :: Data a => Characteristic -> RatingScoreType -> a -> Int
getCharacteristic c rst a =
let cr=head $ listify (getC c rst) a
in getR rst cr


This is pretty cool: if I have a Character c:
getCharacteristic Strength Current c


Gives me the current strength! And a function can take a Data instance (a Character or anything else) and a Characteristic and do both testing and changing value in perfect safety!

Now I'm only just starting playing the Data.Generics, and more generally with Haskell program design, but this is cool. My RPG is not progressing fast, but the main game here is actually building it, not playing it!!

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