paulyoung / purescript-pattern-matching-in-js

PureScript Pattern Matching in JS

PureScript Pattern Matching in JS

Tim Humphries recently asked on Twitter:

Javascript users: what's the best way to encode a sum type / tagged union? Either for library ergonomics or for pattern-matching performance

I have a language with sum types that I currently compile to Purescript, and would also like to compile directly to JS

The following describes something I've used in the past in order to make PureScript sum types easier to deal with from JavaScript.

All credit for this goes to Phil Freeman (@paf31). He and I used this approach when we worked together at Awake Security.

An Example

First off, we need a sum type. For the purposes of this example I'm going to use Maybe.

Pattern Matching

In PureScript, we can pattern match on its constructors using a case expression, like so:

case _ of
  Just x -> ...
  Nothing -> ...

This compiles to the following JavaScript:

if (v instanceof Data_Maybe.Just) {
    ...
};
if (v instanceof Data_Maybe.Nothing) {
    ...
};

While it's technically possible to do the same thing by hand, it's definitely cumbersome.

An Alternative Approach

In addition to pattern matching using case expressions, in PureScript we could also use the maybe' function.

maybe' takes two functions and a Maybe value. If the Maybe value is Nothing, the first function is called with unit and its return value is used. If the Maybe value is Just x, the second function is called with x and its return value is used.

maybe' :: forall a b. (Unit -> b) -> (a -> b) -> Maybe a -> b

We can use this as inspiration to provide a more idiomatic API for pattern matching against constructors of PureScript sum types in JavaScript.

A More Idiomatic API

In PureScript, we can write the following function and expose it to JavaScript:

module Data.Maybe.Interop where

maybe
  :: forall a b
   . { "Nothing" :: Unit -> b, "Just" :: a -> b }
  -> Maybe a
  -> b
maybe cases = maybe' cases."Nothing" cases."Just"

For our custom sum types, we may not have defined a function equivalent to maybe', so here it is again using a case expression:

module Data.Maybe.Interop where

maybe
  :: forall a b
   . { "Nothing" :: Unit -> b, "Just" :: a -> b }
  -> Maybe a
  -> b
maybe cases = case _ of
  Nothing -> cases."Nothing" unit
  Just x -> cases."Just" x

Now, we can use the function in JavaScript:

import { maybe } from 'Data/Maybe/Interop.purs';

// Takes a `Maybe` value and returns `null` if the `Maybe` value is `Nothing`, or
// returns the value inside of `Just`.
const getMaybeValue = maybe({
  Nothing: () => null,
  Just: (x) => x,
});

We can choose to ignore the values passed to our functions if we like. Here's how we might reimplement isJust:

import { maybe } from 'Data/Maybe/Interop.purs';

// Takes a `Maybe` value and returns `true` when it was constructed with `Just`.
const isJust = maybe({
  Nothing: () => false,
  Just: (_) => true,
});

We can even perform effects:

import { maybe } from 'Data/Maybe/Interop.purs';

// Takes a `Maybe` value and logs a message to the console.
const logMaybe = maybe({
  Nothing: () => console.log("Nothing to see here."),
  Just: (x) => console.log(`Just: ${x}`),
});