smart-constructors.md

Smart Constructors

example SmartConstructors.re

The idea behing Smart Constructors is that we use a function to create values only if they pass a certain criteria.

Why? Because sometimes that criteria can not be enforced by the type-system, and then we are forced to repeatedly check these values to see if they pass it!

Some examples that come to mind are testing numbers to see if they are even or odd, or checking if a string is a valid email address.

To be useful, Smart Constructors normally require a type to be abstract. That is, other modules can't construct it or deconstruct it directly. This forces you to use the smart constructor to create values.

For example, let's say we need to represent email addresses in our program. One option would be to simply make an alias for a string:

module Email : {
  type t = string;
};

Then any string could be an Email.t. And we'd probably want to have a way of checking if it's a valid email address or not:

module Email : {
  type t = string
  let is_valid : t => bool;
};

A problem with this is that the ability to create an Email.t is unrestricted — anyone can create one even if it's not valid, and having a function like Email.is_valid does little to help us use the values correctly. This is a symptom of Boolean Blindness.

let me : Email.t = "reasonsthlm" /** not a valid email address! */
me |> Email.is_valid == false;   /** must check manually before usage */

Now, something interesting happens when we make the type Email.t abstract: you can no longer create a value of that type arbitrarily. You can only create them within the implementation of the Email module.

module Email : {
  type t;
  let is_valid : t => bool;
};

let me : Email.t = "reasonsthlm" /** compile-time error! */

Which means we need to provide another way of creating these values; normally, that way is a function. Because we have a function, we can decide through arbitrary logic whether the value meets our desired criteria: is a valid email address.

module Email : {
  type t;
  let make: string => option(t);
};

let me : option(Email.t) = Email.make("reasonsthlm") /** this should be None */

Which also gets rid of the Email.is_valid function! Now we know that if there is a value of type Email.t, it's a valid email address.

Getting the data out of this email address is normally done as well through a separate function, called a viewer. In this case, an Email.to_string function makes sense to get the email as a plain string value. For more complex abstract types, the constructor+view pattern is helpful.

module Email : {
  type t;
  let make: string => option(t);
  let to_string : t => string;
};

let me : option(Email.t) = Email.make("[email protected]")

switch(me) {
| Some(email) => Email.to_string(email) == "[email protected]"
}