Validation

One of the most common use of applicatives is validation. From our example at the start of this chapter, we have several data structures and we want to be able to parse them from strings:

Example.hs

data Email = Email { emailUsername :: String
                   , emailDomain   :: String }
  deriving (Eq, Show)

data Salary = SInt Int
            | SDouble Double
  deriving (Eq, Show)

data User = User { username   :: String
                 , userEmail  :: Email
                 , userSalary :: Salary }
  deriving (Eq, Show)

Parsing them from strings may not always succeed, therefore it is imperative that our parsing function does not guarantee that it returns the desired data structure. Therefore, what we can do instead is to have our parsing functions return results in the Maybe context to express this fact. This makes our parsing functions have the following type signatures:

Example.hs

parseEmail :: String -> Maybe Email
parseSalary :: String -> Maybe Salary

Given these functions, we should be able to define a function that parses a User from three strings: the user name (which requires no parsing), the email (which is parsed using parseEmail) and the salary (which is parsed using parseSalary). One way we can implement this parseUser function is by receiving the three strings, performing parsing on the email and salary (in parallel¹), then constructing our User term with the usual Functor and Applicative methods.

Example.hs

parseUser :: String -- name
             -> String -- email
             -> String -- salary
             -> Maybe User -- user
parseUser name email salary =
    let e = parseEmail email
        s = parseSalary salary
    in  User name <$> e <*> s

Now our parsing function works just fine!

GHCi session (parsing users)

ghci> parseUser "Foo" "yong@qi.com" "1000"
Just (User "Foo" (Email "yong" "qi.com") 1000)
ghci> parseUser "Foo" "yong" "1000"
Nothing

Validation with Error Messages

However, this is not always helpful since when parsing a user, several things could go wrong—either (1) the supplied email is invalid, (2) the supplied salary is invalid, or (3) both. Therefore, let’s have our parsing functions return an error message instead of Nothing. For this, what we want to rely on is the Either type, which consists of a Left of something sad (like an error message), or a Right of something happy (the desired result type). We show the definitions of Either and its supporting typeclass instances here.

Either.hs

data Either a b = Left a -- sad
                | Right b -- happy

instance Functor (Either a) where
    fmap :: (b -> c) -> Either a b -> Either a c
    fmap _ (Left x) = Left x
    fmap f (Right x) = Right $ f x

instance Applicative (Either a) where
    pure :: b -> Either a b
    pure = Right

    (<*>) :: Either a (b -> c) -> Either a b -> Either a c
    Left f <*> _ = Left f
    _ <*> Left x = Left x
    Right f <*> Right x = Right $ f x

Let us change the context that our parsing functions will return. Some of the implementation of parseEmail and parseSalary will need to be changed to add descriptive error messages, and so will their type signatures.

parseEmail :: String -> Maybe Email
parseEmail :: String -> Either String Email
parseEmail email =
    if   ...
    then Nothing
    else Just $ Email ...
    then Left $ "error: " ++ email ++ " is not an email"
    else Right $ Email ...

parseSalary :: String -> Maybe Salary
parseSalary :: String -> Either String Salary
parseSalary salary =
    if   ...
    then Nothing
    else Just $ SInt ...
    then Left $ "error: " ++ salary ++ " is not a number"
    else Right $ SInt ...

The great thing is that although we have changed the return types of our individual parsing functions, the implementation of parseUser does not, because our definition only relies on the typeclass methods of Functor and Applicative. Since Either a is also an Applicative, our definition can be unchanged, and only the type signature of parseUser needs to be updated.

parseUser :: String -- name
             -> String -- email
             -> String -- salary
             -> Maybe User -- user
             -> Either String User -- user
parseUser name email salary =
    let e = parseEmail email
        s = parseSalary salary
    in  User name <$> e <*> s

Now, users of our parseUser function will get more descriptive error message reports when parsing fails!

GHCi session (parsing users)

ghci> parseUser "Foo" "yong@qi.com" "1000"
Right (User "Foo" (Email "yong" "qi.com") 1000)
ghci> parseUser "Foo" "yong" "1000"
Left "error: yong is not an email"
ghci> parseUser "Foo" "yong@qi.com" "x"
Left "error: x is not a number"

Accumulating Error Messages

However, there is one case that is not handled in our validation function. Let’s see what that is:

GHCi session (parsing users)

ghci> parseUser "Foo" "abc" "x"
Left "error: abc is not an email"

Notice that although both the email and salaries are invalid, the error message shown only highlights the invalid email address. This is misleading because, in fact, the salary is invalid as well, and the user of this function does not know that!

The reason for this lies in the definition of the typeclass instance Applicative (Either a). Notice that in the case of Left f <*> Left x, the result is Left f, ignoring the other error message Left x! In other words, Either is a fail-fast Applicative, and this is not what we want for our parsing function!

As briefly stated earlier, although the Applicative laws describe how an Applicative behaves in the most obvious way, there is in fact, multiple most obvious ways an instance can behave. In fact, we can define a data structure that does not exhibit fail-fastness, and yet, is still a valid Applicative—the result of which is an Applicative that allows us to collect all error messages! Let us give this a try.

The first is to re-define Either as an ADT called Validation that is practically the same (isomorphic) to Either, since that structure is still useful for our purposes. The Functor instance of this ADT will remain the same.

Validation.hs

data Validation err a = Success a
                      | Failure err

instance Functor (Validation err) where
    fmap _ (Failure e) = Failure e
    fmap f (Success x) = Success $ f x

Notice that our err type variable remains as a type variable, instead of a pre-defined error message collection type like [String]. This is because, as always, we want to keep our types as general as possible so that it can be used liberally. However, it is now incumbent on us to restrict or constraint err in a way that makes it amenable to collecting error messages in an obvious way so that we can still use it for our purposes. In essence, we just need err to have some binary operation that is associative:

For this, we introduce the Semigroup typeclass which represents just that!

Semigroup.hs

class Semigroup a where
    -- must be associative
    (<>) :: a -> a -> a

Any type is a semigroup as long as it is closed under an associative binary operation. With this, as long as our error is a semigroup, we can use that as our errors in Validation! Let us define our Applicative instance for this:

Validation.hs

instance Semigroup err => Applicative (Validation err) where
    pure :: a -> Validation err a
    pure = Success

    (<*>) :: Validation err (a -> b) -> Validation err a -> Validation err b
    Failure l <*> Failure r = Failure (l <> r)
    Failure l <*> _ = Failure l
    _ <*> Failure r = Failure r
    Success f <*> Success x = Success (f x)

Notice the double-failure case—the errors are combined or aggregated using the semigroup binary operation (<>). This way, no information is lost if both operands are Failure cases since they are accumulated together.

Assuredly, using a list of strings as our error log is fine because concatenation is an associative binary operation over lists!

instance Semigroup [a] where
    (<>) :: [a] -> [a] -> [a]
    (<>) = (++)

Therefore, with these definitions we can now amend our parsing functions to use our new Validation Applicative. First, as per usual, we amend parseEmail and parseUser so that they correctly use Validation instead of Either

Example.hs

parseEmail :: String -> Either String Email
parseEmail :: String -> Validation [String] Email
parseEmail email =
    if   ...
    then Left $ "error: " ++ email ++ " is not an email"
    else Right $ Email ...
    then Failure ["error: " ++ email ++ " is not an email"]
    else Success $ Email ...

parseSalary :: String -> Either String Salary
parseSalary :: String -> Validation [String] Salary
parseSalary salary =
    if   ...
    then Left $ "error: " ++ salary ++ " is not a number"
    else Right $ SInt ...
    then Failure ["error: " ++ salary ++ " is not a number"]
    else Success $ SInt ...

Once again, our parseUser function does not need to change, except for the type signature.

Example.hs

parseUser :: String -- name
             -> String -- email
             -> String -- salary
             -> Either String User -- user
             -> Validation [String] User -- user
parseUser name email salary =
    let e = parseEmail email
        s = parseSalary salary
    in  User name <$> e <*> s

Now, our parsing function works exactly as we want!

GHCi session (parsing users)

ghci> parseUser "Foo" "yong@qi.com" "1000"
Success (User "Foo" (Email "yong" "qi.com") 1000)
ghci> parseUser "Foo" "yong" "1000"
Failure ["error: yong is not an email"]
ghci> parseUser "Foo" "yong@qi.com" "x"
Failure ["error: x is not a number"]
ghci> parseUser "Foo" "abc" "x"
Failure ["error: abc is not an email", "error: x is not a number"]

Hands-On

In this chapter, we went from parsing with Maybes to parsing with Eithers and finally to parsing with Validations. Give this a try for yourself!

Written below is the full program for parsing users with Maybe. Try replacing the Maybes with Eithers, then with Validations and see the outcome of running the program each time!

Example.hs

module Main where

import Control.Applicative
import Text.Read
import System.IO

-- edit these!
parseEmail :: String -> Maybe Email
parseEmail email =
    if '@' `elem` email && length e == 2 && '.' `elem` last e
    -- edit the following two lines when replacing Maybe with
    -- Either or Validation
    then Just $ Email (head e) (last e)
    else Nothing
  where e = split '@' email

parseSalary :: String -> Maybe Salary
parseSalary s =
  let si = SInt <$> readMaybe s
      sf = SDouble <$> readMaybe s
  in  case si <|> sf of
        Just x -> Just x -- change the RHS `Just x` when replacing
                         -- Maybe with Either or Validation
        Nothing -> Nothing -- change the RHS `Nothing` when replacing
                           -- Maybe with Either or Validation

-- you should only need to change the type of `parseUser` when
-- replacing Maybe with Either or Validation
parseUser :: String -- name
          -> String -- email
          -> String -- salary
          -> Maybe User
parseUser name email salary =
    let e = parseEmail email
        s = parseSalary salary
    in  User name <$> e <*> s

-- no need to edit the rest!

-- the data structures
data Email = Email { emailUsername :: String,
                     emailDomain :: String    }
  deriving (Eq, Show)

data Salary = SInt Int | SDouble Double
  deriving (Eq, Show)

data User = User { username :: String,
                   userEmail :: Email,
                   userSalary :: Salary }
  deriving (Eq, Show)

-- user input with a prompt
input :: String -> IO String
input prompt = do
  putStr prompt
  hFlush stdout
  getLine

-- splitting strings
split :: Char -> String -> [String]
split _ [] = [""]
split delim (x : xs)
    | x == delim = "" : xs'
    | otherwise  = (x : head xs') : tail xs'
  where xs' = split delim xs

-- validation
data Validation err a = Success a
                      | Failure err
    deriving (Eq, Show)

instance Functor (Validation err) where
    fmap :: (a -> b) -> Validation err a -> Validation err b
    fmap _ (Failure e) = Failure e
    fmap f (Success x) = Success $ f x

instance Semigroup err => Applicative (Validation err) where
    pure :: a -> Validation err a
    pure = Success

    (<*>) :: Validation err (a -> b) -> Validation err a -> Validation err b
    Failure l <*> Failure r = Failure (l <> r)
    Failure l <*> _ = Failure l
    _ <*> Failure r = Failure r
    Success f <*> Success x = Success (f x)

main :: IO ()
main = do
  n <- input "Enter name: "
  e <- input "Enter email: "
  s <- input "Enter salary: "
  print $ parseUser n e s

---

Footnotes

1. It is important to note that the use of the word “parallel” in this chapter has nothing to do with parallelism. The word “parallel” is only used to describe the notion of merging parallel railways into a single rail line via <*>. ↩