Extending the Persistent QuasiQuoter

Haskell’s persistent database library is convenient and flexible. The recommended way to define your database entities is the QuasiQuoter syntax, and a complete module that defines some typical entities looks like this:

-- src/Models.hs {-# LANGUAGE DeriveGeneric #-} {-# LANGUAGE EmptyDataDecls #-} {-# LANGUAGE FlexibleContexts #-} {-# LANGUAGE FlexibleInstances #-} {-# LANGUAGE GADTs #-} {-# LANGUAGE GeneralizedNewtypeDeriving #-} {-# LANGUAGE MultiParamTypeClasses #-} {-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-} {-# LANGUAGE QuasiQuotes #-} {-# LANGUAGE RecordWildCards #-} {-# LANGUAGE TemplateHaskell #-} {-# LANGUAGE TypeFamilies #-} module Models where import Database.Persist.TH import Data.Text ( Text ) share [ mkPersist sqlSettings , mkMigrate "migrateAll" ] [ persistLowerCase | User json name Text email Text age Int deriving Show Eq |]

The QuasiQuoter does a ton of stuff for you. In this post, we’re going to learn how to make it work for you!

Sharing is Caring

Let’s look at the share function:

share :: [[ EntityDef ] -> Q [ Dec ]] -> [ EntityDef ] -> Q [ Dec ] share fs x = fmap mconcat $ mapM ( $ x ) fs

It takes a list of functions [EntityDef] -> Q [Dec] and then runs all of them over the [EntityDef] that is provided, and finally joins all the [Dec] together. So, if we want to make the QQ work for us, we need to write a function with that type and add it to our list.

Let’s start with a problem: one of the instances that are generated for the User table is PersistEntity . PersistEntity has an associated data type, called EntityField . It’s a sum type which contains all of the fields for the User type, and it’s a GADT that tells you what the type of the field is.

If we were to write that part of the PersistEntity instance by hand, it would look like this:

instance PersistEntity User where data EntityField User fieldType where UserName :: EntityField User Text UserEmail :: EntityField User Text UserAge :: EntityField User Int

There are a lot of functions that use the EntityField type when doing querying.

This type has no instances defined for it! And you may want to do something interesting with these field types that hasn’t been considered. Let’s say we need to have Show instances for our record fields. We can derive them using the StandaloneDeriving language extension, so this works:

{-# LANGUAGE DeriveGeneric #-} {-# LANGUAGE EmptyDataDecls #-} {-# LANGUAGE FlexibleContexts #-} {-# LANGUAGE FlexibleInstances #-} {-# LANGUAGE GADTs #-} {-# LANGUAGE GeneralizedNewtypeDeriving #-} {-# LANGUAGE MultiParamTypeClasses #-} {-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-} {-# LANGUAGE QuasiQuotes #-} {-# LANGUAGE RecordWildCards #-} {-# LANGUAGE TemplateHaskell #-} {-# LANGUAGE TypeFamilies #-} {-# LANGUAGE StandaloneDeriving #-} module Models where import Database.Persist.TH import Data.Text ( Text ) share [ mkPersist sqlSettings , mkMigrate "migrateAll" ] [ persistLowerCase | User json name Text email Text age Int deriving Show Eq |] deriving instance Show ( EntityField User field )

The last line is our StandaloneDeriving instance. This works! However, it’s a bit annoying to write out for every single record in a larger schema. Let’s write a function that will do this for us automatically.

Template Rascal

Let’s first review the type of the function we pass to share :

[ EntityDef ] -> Q [ Dec ]

The input type is a list of the entity definitions. This type ( EntityDef ) comes from the persistent package, and has a ton of information about the entities.

The type Q comes from the template-haskell package, as do Dec .

This blog post isn’t going to elaborate too much on TemplateHaskell - if you’d like a beginner-friendly tutorial, see Template Haskell Is Not Scary.

We will begin by creating the skeleton for the function:

deriveShowFields :: [ EntityDef ] -> Q [ Dec ] deriveShowFields entities = undefined

We know we’re going to iterate over all of them, so let’s use forM - Q has a Monad instance.

deriveShowFields :: [ EntityDef ] -> Q [ Dec ] deriveShowFields entities = forM entites $ \ entity -> undefined

We need to replace undefined with an expression of type Q Dec . We could attempt to construct the Dec value directly using data constructors. However, it will be a bit more straightforward to use a QuasiQuoter.

deriveShowFields :: [ EntityDef ] -> Q [ Dec ] deriveShowFields entities = forM entites $ \ entity -> let name = undefined [ d | deriving instance Show (EntityField $(name) field) |]

This fails with a type error. The [d| ... |] quasiquoter returns a value of type Q [Dec] . That means that forM entities ... will return Q [[Dec]] . So we just need to flatten it:

deriveShowFields :: [ EntityDef ] -> Q [ Dec ] deriveShowFields entities = fmap join . forM entites $ \ entity -> let name = undefined [ d | deriving instance Show (EntityField $(name) field) |]

Alright, now we need to get a name that fits in that splice. What’s the type of that splice? I’m going to throw a () in there and see what GHC complains about.

deriveShowFields :: [ EntityDef ] -> Q [ Dec ] deriveShowFields entities = fmap join . forM entites $ \ entity -> let name = () [ d | deriving instance Show (EntityField $(name) field) |]

This gives us an error:

• Couldn't match type ‘()’ with ‘Q Type’ Expected type: TypeQ Actual type: () • In the expression: name In a stmt of a 'do' block: [d| deriving instance Show (EntityField $(name) x) |] pending(rn) [<splice, name>] In the expression: do let name = () [d| deriving instance Show (EntityField $(name) x) |] pending(rn) [<splice, name>] | ... | [d|deriving instance Show (EntityField $(name) x)|] | ^^^^

Cool! We need something of type Q Type . Type , like Dec , comes from the template-haskell package.

So, we have an entity :: EntityDef , and we need a name :: Q Type . The name is the name of the entity. If we look at the fields of EntityDef again, we’ll see that the first field is entityHaskell :: HaskellName . That is promising. We can use another PersistEntity class function, entityDef :: (Monad m) => m rec -> EntityDef , to summon an EntityDef in GHCi and see what we get.

>>> entityHaskell $ entityDef ( Nothing :: Maybe User ) HaskellName { unHaskellName = "User" }

What’s inside a HaskellName ? Let’s find out!

>>> : info HaskellName newtype HaskellName = HaskellName { unHaskellName :: Data . Text . Internal . Text } -- Defined in ‘persistent-2.8.2:Database.Persist.Types.Base’

So, we have a Text representation of the Haskell record name. And we know we need a Type that refers to this name. If we look at the data constructors for Type , we’ll notice that ConT appears to be what we want.

So now we need a Name to give to ConT . What is a Name ? The linked docs say that it’s an abstract type for the Haskell value names. They also give us a way of creating one: mkName :: String -> Name .

The last building block is Data.Text.unpack :: Text -> String . Now, let’s plug our legos together:

deriveShowFields :: [ EntityDef ] -> Q [ Dec ] deriveShowFields entities = fmap join . forM entites $ \ entity -> let name = pure . ConT . mkName . Text . unpack . unHaskellName . entityHaskell $ entity [ d | deriving instance Show (EntityField $(name) field) |]

Bingo! Let’s pass this to share in our model file. Note that we need to import it from somewhere else due to Template Haskell staging restrictions.

share [ deriveShowFields , mkPersist sqlSettings , mkMigrate "migrateAll" ] [ persistLowerCase | User json name Text email Text age Int deriving Show Eq |]

And let’s try it in GHCi:

>>> show UserEmail "UserEmail" >>> show UserName "UserName"