Automatic derivation of optics

beginner

Writing optics for each data type may involve a lot of boilerplate. In some cases, Bow can help you generate the optics for your data types. This page will go through each optic that can be automatically generated for your data types. Nonetheless, you should read the section on Writing your own optics to get familiar with each optic and how they are implemented.

As a running example, consider the following data types:

enum PublicationState {
    case draft
    case published(Date)
}

struct Article {
    var title: String
    var subtitle: String?
    var state: PublicationState
    var tags: [String]
}

Note: If you take a close look, you will notice that each field in Article is declared as var instead of let. This is necessary for the automatic generation of optics. If you don’t declare your fields as var, you will start getting compilation errors when you try to generate your optics and, unfortunately, the error messages will not be descriptive about this being the reason.

Getter

In order to get a Getter, we need to make our type conform to the AutoGetter protocol:

extension Article: AutoGetter {}

From there, we can use a key path to a field to obtain its associated Getter:

let titleGetter = Article.getter(for: \.title)

Setter

Similarly, to get a Setter, we need to make our type conform to the AutoSetter protocol:

extension Article: AutoSetter {}

Using a key path to a field, we can get its associated Setter:

let titleSetter = Article.setter(for: \.title)

Lens

If we can get a Getter and a Setter, we can as well get a Lens. We need to make our type conform to the AutoLens protocol:

extension Article: AutoLens {}

And similarly, using a key path to a field, we can get its associated Lens:

let titleLens = Article.lens(for: \.title)

AffineTraversal

For those fields which may or may not be present, we can create an AffineTraversal in an automatic way by conforming to AutoAffineTraversal:

extension Article: AutoAffineTraversal {}

And using a key path to an optional field, we can obtain its associated AffineTraversal optic:

let subtitleAffineTraversal = Article.affineTraversal(for: \.subtitle)

Fold

For fields that are Array or ArrayK of values, or any structure that is Foldable, we can obtain their associated Fold automatically by conforming to the AutoFold protocol:

extension Article: AutoFold {}

Using a key path to an Array or ArrayK field, or a field whose type is Foldable, we can get its associated Fold:

let tagsFold = Article.fold(for: \.tags)

Traversal

Similar to Fold, for those fields that are Array or ArrayK of values, or any structure that is Traverse, we can obtain their associated Traversal automatically by conforming to the AutoTraversal protocol:

extension Article: AutoTraversal {}

Using a key path to an Array or ArrayK field, or a field whose type is Traverse, we can get its associated Traversal:

let tagsTraversal = Article.traversal(for: \.tags)

Prism

The optics above work mainly in product types. For sum types, we can try to derive Prism in an automatic manner by conforming to the AutoPrism protocol:

extension PublicationState: AutoPrism {}

At this point, there are two possible situations: the case of the enum we want to focus with our prism does not have associated values, or does have them.

If the focus of the Prism does not have any associated value, like PublicationState.draft, we can obtain it seamlessly:

let draftPrism = PublicationState.prism(for: .draft)

In case the focus has associated values, it works the same. Bow will auto extract for you the associated values:

let publishedPrism = PublicationState.prism(for: PublicationState.published)

Summary

Using the Auto- protocols let us reduce the boilerplate associated to generating many of the optics, thus making it much easier and more seamless to work with optics.