Generic programming is a style of computer programming in which algorithms are written in terms of types to-be-specified-later that are then instantiated when needed for specific types provided as parameters .

Generic programming was part of .NET since .NET Version 2.0 and has a fascinating history as well!

For most of the use cases which involves generics, implementing them in F# is a cake-walk. However, when the generic programming requires reflection, it becomes a bumpy ride. Let’s have a look at the source code below to get a feel of what I mean here!

let rec print (value : obj) = match value with | null -> "<null>" | :? int as i -> string i | :? string as s -> s | _ -> let t = value.GetType() let isGenTypeOf (gt : Type) = t.IsGenericType && gt = t.GetGenericTypeDefinition() if isGenTypeOf typedefof<_ option> then let value = t.GetProperty("Value").GetValue(value) sprintf "Some %s" (print value) elif isGenTypeOf typedefof<_ * _> then let v1 = t.GetProperty("Item1").GetValue(value) let v2 = t.GetProperty("Item2").GetValue(value) sprintf "(%s, %s)" (print v1) (print v2) else value.ToString()

This code snippet returns the string representation of the parameter value . The if-else-if expression unwraps the value from the Option type and Tuple type and return its underlying values by recursively calling the print function respectively.

> print (Some "John");; val it : string = "Some John" > print (1,(Some "data"));; val it : string = "(1, Some data)"

The hardcoded strings, lack of type safety are some of the concerns in the above snippet.

let rec print (value : obj) = // ... if isGenTypeOf typedefof<_ option> then let value = t.GetProperty("Value").GetValue(value) // ... elif isGenTypeOf typedefof<_ * _> then let v1 = t.GetProperty("Item1").GetValue(value) let v2 = t.GetProperty("Item2").GetValue(value) // ... // ...

Like this piece of code, we may need to write some more ugly and hard to maintain code, if we do some advanced reflection. F# is not known for this kind of problems. There should be a better way!

Yes, That’s where TypeShape comes into the picture.

TypeShape is a small, extensible F# library for practical generic programming. It uses a combination of reflection, active patterns, visitor pattern and F# object expressions to minimize the amount of reflection that we need to write - Eirik Tsarpalis

In this blog post, we are going to learn the basics of the TypeShape library by implementing an use case from scratch. In this process, We are also going to learn how to build a reusable library in F# in an incremental fashion.

This blog post is a part of the F# Advent Calendar 2017.

The Use Cases

Reading a value from an environment variable and converting the read value to a different target type (from string type) to consume it is a boilerplate code.

open System // unit -> Result<int, string> let getPortFromEnvVar () = let value = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable "PORT" match Int32.TryParse value with | true, port -> Ok port | _ -> Error "unable to get"

How about making this logic generic and achieving the same using only one function call?

> parsePrimitive<int> "PORT";; [<Struct>] val it : EnvVarParseResult<int> = Ok 5432

Sounds good, isn’t it?

Often the applications that we develop typically read multiple environment variables. So, How about putting them together in a record type and read all of them in a single shot?

type Config = { ConnectionString : string Port : int EnableDebug : bool Environment : string } > parseRecord<Config> ();; [<Struct>] val it : Result<Config,EnvVarParseError list> = Ok {ConnectionString = "Database=foobar;Password=foobaz"; Port = 5432; EnableDebug = true; Environment = "staging";}

It’s even more impressive!!

Let’s dive in and implement these two use cases.

Use Case #1 - Parsing Primitives

Setting Up

As we will be implementing the use cases by exploring the TypeShape library, F# scripting would be a good fit to get it done. So, let’s start with an empty directory and initialise paket using Forge.

> mkdir FsEnvConfig > cd FsEnvConfig > forge paket init

The next step is adding the TypeLibrary and referencing it in the script file.

The entire TypeShape library is available as a single file in GitHub, and we can get it for our development using Paket’s GitHub File Reference feature. To do it, first, we first need to add the reference in the paket.dependencies which was auto-generated during the initialisation of paket.

github eiriktsarpalis/TypeShape:2.20 src/TypeShape/TypeShape.fs

Then download this dependency by running the paket’s install command.

> forge paket install

After successful execution of this command, we can find the TypeShape.fs file in the ./paket-files/eiriktsarpalis/TypeShape/src/TypeShape directory.

The last step is creating a F# script file script.fsx and refer this TypeShape.fs file

// script.fsx #load "./paket-files/eiriktsarpalis/TypeShape/src/TypeShape/TypeShape.fs" open TypeShape

With this, the stage is now set for the action!

The Domain Types

The first step is defining the types that we are going to work with

type EnvVarParseError = | BadValue of (string * string) | NotFound of string | NotSupported of string type EnvVarParseResult<'T> = Result<'T, EnvVarParseError>

The EnvVarParseError type models the possible errors that we may encounter while parsing environment variables. The cases are

BadValue (name, value) - Environment variable is available but casting to the target type fails



(name, value) - Environment variable is available but casting to the target type fails NotFound name - Environment variable with the given name is not found

name - Environment variable with the given name is not found NotSupported message - We are not supporting the target datatype

The EnvVarParseResult<'T> represents the final output of our parsing. It’s either success or failure with any one of the above use cases. We are making use of F# Result Type to model this representation.

Getting Started

Let’s get started with the scaffolding of our parsePrimitive function.

// string -> EnvVarParseResult<'T> let parsePrimitive<'T> (envVarName : string) : EnvVarParseResult<'T> = NotSupported "unknown target type" |> Error

As we are not supporting any type, to begin with, we are just returning the NotSupported error.

The critical thing to notice here is the generic type <'T> in the declaration. It is the target type to which we are going to convert the value stored in the provided environment name.

Alright, Let’s take the next step towards recognising the target data type <'T> .

Programs parameterized by shapes of datatypes - Eirik Tsarpalis

TypeShape library comes with a set of active patterns to match shapes of the data type. Let’s assume that we are going to consider only int, string and bool for simplicity. We can do pattern matching with the shape of these types alone in our existing parsePrimitive function and handle these cases as below

let parsePrimitive<'T> (envVarName : string) : EnvVarParseResult<'T> = match shapeof<'T> with | Shape.Int32 -> NotSupported "integer" |> Error | Shape.String -> NotSupported "string" |> Error | Shape.Bool -> NotSupported "bool" |> Error | _ -> NotSupported "unknown target type" |> Error

The shapeof<'T> returns the TypeShape of the provide generic type 'T .

If we execute this function in F# interactive, we will be getting the following outputs

> parsePrimitive<int> "TEST";; [<Struct>] val it : EnvVarParseResult<int> = Error (NotSupported "integer") > parsePrimitive<string> "TEST";; [<Struct>] val it : EnvVarParseResult<string> = Error (NotSupported "string") > parsePrimitive<bool> "TEST";; [<Struct>] val it : EnvVarParseResult<bool> = Error (NotSupported "bool") > parsePrimitive<double> "TEST";; [<Struct>] val it : EnvVarParseResult<double> = Error (NotSupported "unknown target type")

Parsing Environment Variable

The extended parsePrimitive function now able to recognise the shape of the data type. The next step adding logic to parse the environment variable

The Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable from .NET library returns null if the environment variable with the given name not exists. Let’s write a wrapper function getEnvVar to return it is as None instead of null .

// ... open System // ... // string -> string option let getEnvVar name = let v = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable name if v = null then None else Some v let parsePrimitive<'T> ... = ...

Then write the functions which use this getEnvVar function and parse the value (if it exists) to its specific type.

// (string -> bool * 'a) -> name -> EnvVarParseResult<'a> let tryParseWith tryParseFunc name = match getEnvVar name with | None -> NotFound name |> Error | Some value -> match tryParseFunc value with | true, v -> Ok v | _ -> BadValue (name, value) |> Error // string -> EnvVarParseResult<int> let parseInt = tryParseWith Int32.TryParse // string -> EnvVarParseResult<bool> let parseBool = tryParseWith Boolean.TryParse // string -> EnvVarParseResult<string> let parseString = tryParseWith (fun s -> (true,s))

The tryParseWith function takes the tryParseFunc function of type string -> bool * 'a as its first parameter and the environment variable name as its second parameter. If the environment variable exists, it does the parsing using the provided tryParseFunc function and returns either Ok with the parsed value or Error with the corresponding EnvVarParseError value.

The parseInt , parseBool and parseString functions make use of this tryParseWith function by providing it’s corresponding parsing functions.

Implementing parsePrimitive function

Now we have functions to parse the specific types, and all we need to do now is to leverage them in the parsePrimitive function.

// string -> EnvVarParseResult<'T> let parsePrimitive<'T> (envVarName : string) : EnvVarParseResult<'T> = match shapeof<'T> with | Shape.Int32 -> parseInt envVarName | Shape.String -> parseString envVarName | Shape.Bool -> parseBool envVarName | _ -> NotSupported "unknown target type" |> Error

Here come the compiler errors!

error FS0001: Type mismatch. Expecting a 'EnvVarParseResult<'T>' but given a 'EnvVarParseResult<int>' The type ''T' does not match the type 'int'

All branches of a pattern match expression must have the same type. This expression was expected to have type ''T', but here has type 'string'.

All branches of a pattern match expression must have the same type. This expression was expected to have type ''T', but here has type 'bool'.

As the compiler rightly says, we are supposed to return EnvVarParseResult of the provided generic target type 'T . But we are returning EnvVarParseResult with specific types int or bool or string .

We know that these return types are right based on the pattern matching that we do on the shape of 'T but the compiler doesn’t know! It just doing its job based on the type signature that we provided

// string -> EnvVarParseResult<'T> let parsePrimitive<'T> (envVarName : string) : EnvVarParseResult<'T> = ...

What to do now?

Well, We can solve this by introducing another layer of abstraction

let parsePrimitive<'T> (envVarName : string) : EnvVarParseResult<'T> = // (string -> 'a) -> EnvVarParseResult<'T> let wrap(p : string -> 'a) = envVarName |> unbox<string -> EnvVarParseResult<'T>> p ...

The wrap function introduces a new generic type 'a and accepts a function that takes a string and returns this new generic type 'a . Then in its function body, it uses the unbox function from F# standard library to unwrap the passed parameter function and call this with the given envVarName .

We can make of this wrap function to get rid of the compiler errors.

Here is how the completed parsePrimitive function would look like

let parsePrimitive<'T> (envVarName : string) : EnvVarParseResult<'T> = let wrap(p : string -> 'a) = envVarName |> unbox<string -> EnvVarParseResult<'T>> p match shapeof<'T> with | Shape.Int32 -> wrap parseInt | Shape.String -> wrap parseString | Shape.Bool -> wrap parseBool | _ -> NotSupported "unknown target type" |> Error

We have solved the problem here by wrapping up the specific return types ( EnvVarParseResult<int> , EnvVarParseResult<string> , EnvVarParseResult<bool> ) to new generic type 'a and then unboxing it using the already defined generic type 'T .

Now the compiler is happy!

Let’s try this in F# interactive

> parsePrimitive<int> "PORT";; [<Struct>] val it : EnvVarParseResult<int> = Error(NotFound "PORT")

As there is no environment variable with the name PORT , we are getting the NotFound error as expected.

If we set an environment variable with the given name PORT , and try it again, we can see the favourable parsed result!

> Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("PORT", "5432");; val it : unit = () > parsePrimitive<int> "PORT";; [<Struct>] val it : EnvVarParseResult<int> = Ok 5432

Awesome! We achieved the milestone number one!!

Use Case #2 - Parsing Record Types

Like what we did for the parsePrimitive function, let’s start with the scaffolding for parsing record types

// unit -> EnvVarParseResult<'T> let parseRecord<'T> () = NotSupported "non record type found" |> Error

The first step towards our outcome is matching the data type with the Shape.FSharpRecord

let parseRecord<'T> () = match shapeof<'T> with | Shape.FSharpRecord (:? ShapeFSharpRecord<'T> as shape) -> NotSupported "record type support is just started" |> Error | _ -> NotSupported "non record type found" |> Error

We are doing two things here to pattern match the record type. First, we are matching whether the shape of the provided type 'T is of shape Shape.FSharpRecord and then, whether it can be cast to TypeShape’s F# Record representation ShapeFSharpRecord<'T> . If both these checks are through, we returning the NotSupported error with a message.

To verify this, Let’s create a new record type Config .

type Config = { ConnectionString : string Port : int EnableDebug : bool Environment : string }

The four fields of this Config is going to be populated from their corresponding environment variables in the upcoming steps;

If we try the parseRecord with the Config type, we will get the error message as expected.

> parseRecord<Config> ();; [<Struct>] val it : EnvVarParseResult<Config> = Error (NotSupported "record type support is just started")

Environment Variable Names of Record fields

Great, now we are able to recognise the record types. The next step is getting all the field names of the provided record type.

We can get that using the Fields field of the ShapeFSharpRecord<'T> type.

let parseRecord<'T> () = match shapeof<'T> with | Shape.FSharpRecord (:? ShapeFSharpRecord<'T> as shape) -> shape.Fields |> Seq.iter (fun field -> printfn "%s" field.Label) NotSupported "record type support is just started" |> Error | _ -> NotSupported "non record type found" |> Error

> parseRecord<Config> ();; ConnectionString Port EnableDebug Environment val it : EnvVarParseError = ...

The next step is transforming these field names to its corresponding environment variable names. A typical environment variable name convention is an upper case string with multiple words separated by the underscore character. For example, CONNECTION_STRING would be environment variable name from which we need to retrieve the value of the ConnectionString field of Config type.

// ... open System.Text.RegularExpressions // ... let envVarNameRegEx = Regex("([^A-Z]+|[A-Z][^A-Z]+|[A-Z]+)", RegexOptions.Compiled) let canonicalizeEnvVarName name = let subStrings = envVarNameRegEx.Matches name |> Seq.cast |> Seq.map (fun (m : Match) -> m.Value.ToUpperInvariant()) |> Seq.toArray String.Join("_", subStrings) let parseRecord<'T> () = match shapeof<'T> with | Shape.FSharpRecord (:? ShapeFSharpRecord<'T> as shape) -> shape.Fields |> Seq.iter (fun field -> canonicalizeEnvVarName field.Label |> printfn "%s") ...

The envVarNameRegEx uses three alternatives and returns substrings which satisfy any of these alternatives. You can learn more about the regular expression being used here by inputting the ([^A-Z]+|[A-Z][^A-Z]+|[A-Z]+) value in the Regex101 website.

The canonicalizeEnvVarName function gets all the matched substring of envVarNameRegEx , then transforms each substring to its uppercase format, and then joins all of them with _ to return it as a string .

Now if we try the parseRecord again, we can see environment variable names for all fields.

> parseRecord<Config> ();; CONNECTION_STRING PORT ENABLE_DEBUG ENVIRONMENT val it : EnvVarParseError = ...

To use the parsePrimitive function that we created in the previous section, we need two things, the primitive type and the environment variable name. Here we have environment variable name. The next step is figuring out the primitive type of each field in the record type!

Parsing Record Fields

Let’s start with an initial function parseRecordField which is going to be called for populating the individual fields of the record type.

// parseRecordField -> string let private parseRecordField (shape : IShapeWriteMember<'RecordType>) = "TODO"

The private access modifier is required as the IShapeWriteMember<'T> is declared as internal . We can use internal instead of private as well.

Then call this from the parseRecord function for each field.

let parseRecord<'T> () = match shapeof<'T> with | Shape.FSharpRecord (:? ShapeFSharpRecord<'T> as shape) -> shape.Fields - |> Seq.iter (fun f -> parseRecordField f |> printfn "%s") + |> Seq.iter (fun field -> canonicalizeEnvVarName field.Label |> printfn "%s") NotSupported "record type support just started" | _ -> NotSupported "non record type found"

The next step is getting the type of the field from the shape and call the parsePrimitive function with the field type and the environment variable name that we obtained above.

// IShapeWriteMember<'RecordType> -> string let private parseRecordField (shape : IShapeWriteMember<'RecordType>) = let envVarName = canonicalizeEnvVarName shape.Label shape.Accept { new IWriteMemberVisitor<'RecordType, string> with member __.Visit (shape : ShapeWriteMember<'RecordType, 'FieldType>) = match parsePrimitive<'FieldType> envVarName with | Ok fieldValue -> sprintf "%A" fieldValue | Error e -> sprintf "%A" e }

There is a lot of things going on the parseRecordField function. So, let me explain one by one.

The interface IShapeWriteMember has a method Accept with the following signature

IWriteMemberVisitor<'RecordType,'T> -> 'T

Here in the parseRecordField function, we are partially applying the first argument (an implementation of IWriteMemberVisitor<'RecordType,'T> type) and return 'T . The Object expression which implements the IWriteMemberVisitor interface defines the 'T type as string and hence the parseRecordField returns string in this case.

The Visit method of the IWriteMemberVisitor takes care of figuring out the FieldType of the given shape for us. So, inside the Visit method, we can call the parsePrimitive function with the provided FieldType and return the result as a string .

Now if we try parseRecord in fsharp interactive, we will get the following output.

> parseRecord<Config> ();; NotFound "CONNECTION_STRING" NotFound "PORT" NotFound "ENABLE_DEBUG" NotFound "ENVIRONMENT" val it : EnvVarParseError = NotSupported "record type support just started"

If we set an environment variable, and try it again, we the see the success case as well!

> Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("PORT", "5432");; val it : unit = () > parseRecord<Config> ();; NotFound "CONNECTION_STRING" 5432 NotFound "ENABLE_DEBUG" NotFound "ENVIRONMENT" val it : EnvVarParseError = NotSupported "record type support just started"

Alright! Our next focus is populating the record field if all the corresponding environment variables are available otherwise return the list of errors.

Populating Record Fields

The Inject method of the ShapeWriteMember class takes a value of record type and a value of field type and changes the record’s field value with the provided one via reflection.

To make use of this method, we need to have a value of the record type. As we didn’t have it inside the parseRecordField function, instead of returning it as a string , we can return a function a that takes a record value and call the shape.Inject inside it.

For the error case, we are just passing the error.

// IShapeWriteMember<'RecordType> -> 'RecordType -> EnvVarParseResult<'RecordType> let private parseRecordField (shape : IShapeWriteMember<'RecordType>) = let envVarName = canonicalizeEnvVarName shape.Label shape.Accept { new IWriteMemberVisitor<'RecordType, 'RecordType -> EnvVarParseResult<'RecordType>> with member __.Visit (shape : ShapeWriteMember<'RecordType, 'FieldType>) = match parsePrimitive<'FieldType> envVarName with | Ok fieldValue -> fun record -> shape.Inject record fieldValue |> Ok | Error e -> fun _ -> Error e }

Now we have the parsing logic in place for the populating individual record fields, and the one last thing that we need is to prepare an initial value of the record type and call the function returned with parseRecordField function with the prepared record.

In this last step, we also need to collect all the errors!

// 'RecordType -> EnvVarParseError list -> IShapeWriteMember<'RecordType> -> // EnvVarParseError list let private foldParseRecordFieldResponse record parseRecordErrors field = match parseRecordField field record with | Ok _ -> parseRecordErrors | Error e -> e :: parseRecordErrors // unit -> EnvVarParseResult<'T, EnvVarParseError list> let parseRecord<'T> () = match shapeof<'T> with | Shape.FSharpRecord (:? ShapeFSharpRecord<'T> as shape) -> let record = shape.CreateUninitialized() let parseRecordErrors = shape.Fields |> Seq.fold (foldParseRecordFieldResponse record) [] match List.isEmpty parseRecordErrors with | true -> Ok record |_ -> Error parseRecordErrors | _ -> NotSupported "non record type found" |> Error

Using the CreateUninitialized method of the ShapeFSharpRecord class, we are creating an initial value of the provided record type. Then using the fold function, we are populating its fields using the parseRecordField function.

That’s it!

If we run the parseRecord<'T> without setting any environment variable, we will get the following output

> parseRecord<Config> ();; [<Struct>] val it : Result<Config,EnvVarParseError list> = Error [NotFound "ENVIRONMENT"; NotFound "ENABLE_DEBUG"; NotFound "PORT"; NotFound "CONNECTION_STRING"]

And if we have all the environment variables in place, we will be getting the following output

> parseRecord<Config> ();; [<Struct>] val it : Result<Config,EnvVarParseError list> = Ok {ConnectionString = "Database=foobar;Password=foobaz"; Port = 5432; EnableDebug = true; Environment = "staging";}

Awesome! We made it!!

Summary

In this blog post, we have learned how to do generic programming involving reflection in F# using the TypeShape library. We have also learned how to build reusable abstraction in F# in an incremental fashion.

I am planning to release this as a NuGet library supporting both environment variables and application config file variables in sometime soon. Looking forward to listening to your comments to make it better.

The source code is available in my GitHub repository.

Wish you an advanced Merry Christmas 🎄 and happy new 2018 🎉