Add record embedding

[fonghou]

Hello, nice library!

What do you think adding record embedding like Go's struct embedding? I think it'll work nicely with optics field labels and RecordWildCards. That'll solve 99% of extensible record use cases. Handling field name conflicts may become tricky, but minimally can just generate invalid types let compiler catch them.

Thanks!

[nikita-volkov]

I'm not sure what you mean. Could you provide an example?

[fonghou]

I haven't tried it. Something like this (maybe a better syntax without yaml's implicit override)

Person:
   product: &person
        name: String
        age: Int

Employee:
    product:
        << : *person
        eid: String

data Person = { name :: String, age :: Int }

data Employee = { name :: String, age :: Int, eid :: String }
 

[fonghou]

Domain doesn't seem parse this (valid) yaml syntax.

declare (Just (False, True)) stdDeriver [schema|

  Person:
    product: &person
      name: String
      age: Int

  Employee:
    product:
      <<: *person
      eid: String

 |]

[1 of 1] Compiling Main

app/Main.hs:12:49: error:
    • Error at path /Employee/product/<<. Unexpected mapping value
    • In the quasi-quotation:
        [schema|

  Person:
    product: &person
      name: String
      age: Int

  Employee:
    product:
      <<: *person
      eid: String

 |]
   |
12 | declare (Just (False, True)) stdDeriver [schema|
   |                                                 ^...

[nikita-volkov]

Seems like you're looking for inheritance.

While the idea does seem interesting, implementing it will introduce a major complication to the design. I believe such changes should only be done when it is proven that they solve a real pain that majority of users experience. So I suggest to let the idea age and see what other users will have to say.

[fonghou]

These records behave more like structural subtyping (instead of inherence) using https://www.stackage.org/haddock/nightly-2021-03-05/generic-optics-2.0.0.0/Data-Generics-Product-Subtype.html.

Think about it be more. I agree with you it's not worth it to add such complication in template-haskell code gen phase. Some kind of yaml preprocessing just expand those anchors and references before feeding it to template-haskell would work.

Turns out yaml package Data.Yaml.decode/encode roundtrip already does that. See PR. It works beautifully for the pattern I described above.

Thanks!

[nikita-volkov]

My concern is not about implementing the thing, it is whether implementing it won't hurt the product.

The more concepts a technology introduces, the more things it requires of the newcomer to learn, thus reducing the chances of adoption. OTOH, solving a real pain of users increases those chances. So to decide whether the thing needs to be implemented we first need to prove that the feature removes a pain big enough to make the cost of complicating the techonology worthwhile.

From my experience of using "domain" it does not seem to be a pain at all. And so far you're the only one requesting to address the issue. That's why I suggest to let it age and aggregate other perspectives.

---

Regardless of the mentioned. If we were to implement the feature I would go for readability. E.g., something like the following:

Person:
  product:
    name: String
    age: Int

Employee:
  extends: Person
  adds:
    eid: String