Fantasy Land compatibility?

[apaleslimghost]

Fantasy Land is a specification for algebraic Javascript structures. Highland streams almost implement Monoid and Monad. What we'd need to change to be fully compatible:

1. Alias flatMap to chain
2. Add _.of as a shortcut for λ x → _([x])
3. Add _.empty as a shortcut for λ → _([])
4. Add ap, to apply each of a stream of functions to each of a stream of values.
5. (Nice to have) add tests to ensure we satisfy the laws.

What are people's opinions on this?

[apaleslimghost]

On 4, the standard implementation of ap for a Monad is usually:

Thing.prototype.ap = function(xs) {
  return this.chain(function(f) {
    return xs.map(f);
  });
};

Of course, we can't do this directly, as xs would be consumed multiple times. Is it correct to fork xs in this case?

[apaleslimghost]

On 5, Fantasy-check can verify Fantasy Land laws, and is NodeUnit compatible.

[apaleslimghost]

I'm fairly keen to see this happen, would enable all kinds of cool interop with e.g. sweet.js macros for do-notation. Property-based testing would also give us a bit more confidence in our tests.

[LewisJEllis]

+1 on this; I had never heard of Fantasy Land before, but I've certainly picked up on (and appreciated) the similarities between HL streams and monoids/monads.

It would be really cool to formalize it, and having a nodeunit-compatible quickcheck seems too convenient.

[apaleslimghost]

Found the branch I was working on: https://github.com/quarterto/highland/compare/fantasy

[LewisJEllis]

Status on this? 3.0.0 seems like a good place to get this out.

[jeromew]

at this stage we should not add new features to the 3.0.0 branch. We first need to get caolan's approval on the engine rewrite.

The only features that can should be added to 3.0.0 right now are the ones that accepted and commited on 2.x.

otherwise I fear that 3.0.0 will never see the light of day ;-)

2.x and 3.x have already started forking. Maybe this issue can be tagged 3.0.0 and we will make sure it gets done once everybody is ok on the engine rewrite.

[apaleslimghost]

Current status: I got stuck trying to get Fantasy-check working, and I'm not sure if we can get Applicative to work. I'd be happy to wait for a 3.1 release.

[LewisJEllis]

Good call :)

I checked in on the 3.0.0 issue instead and made that label.

[vqvu]

@quarterto couldn't we just implement ap in a way similar to

ap = function (xs) {
    var self = this;
    return xs.collect().flatMap(function (array) {
        return self.chain(function (f) {
            return _(array).map(f);
        });
    });
}

but with smarter handling for the infinite xs case?

[apaleslimghost]

Quick update on this, for fantasy-check to work there needs to be a synchronous way of getting stream contents, any ideas @vqvu?

[apaleslimghost]

Also, since this is planned for post-3.0 should I rebase it on the 3.0.0 branch?

[jeromew]

@quarterto this gist may help you regarding a 'synchronous way of getting stream contents' - https://gist.github.com/vqvu/a7838e456783432a2e45

I suggest you wait a bit before rebasing. We don't know yet how 3.0.0 is going to be rebased/merged over the next 2.x

[vqvu]

@quarterto I'm not too familiar with fantasy-check, but can't you just use an ArrayStream when testing? That would make everything synchronous.

[apaleslimghost]

Here's the work in progress, I'll flesh out the tests, remove the non-fantasy-check ones I added and implement ap, then it should be ready to go. Think it makes sense to leave this unmerged until 3.0 lands.

[svozza]

Can this be closed now because of the recent PRs @amsross has done?

[amsross]

I would say so. All the mentioned bases are covered in #643, #657, and #658.

[svozza]

Cool, I'll close then.