15-Dec

Reducing boilerplate code in Elm with Maybe.andThen

Working with the Maybe type in Elm may result in excessive pattern matching because Elm forces us to handle all possible outcomes. In this article, we investigate how the Maybe.andThen function can be used to improve readability by reducing unnecessary pattern matching and boilerplate code.

2 min read

By Simen Fonnes

December 15, 2020

Consider that we want to implement a function that takes a String name which consists of several names and returns the last name if it exists. The signature can look something like this:

toLastName : Maybe String -> Maybe String

We implement the toLastName function by splitting the String on space, reversing the list, and finally collecting the first element in the reversed list. Using Maybe.map, we can do it like this:

toLastName : Maybe String -> Maybe String
toLastName name =
    name
        |> Maybe.map (String.split " ")
        |> Maybe.map List.reverse
        |> Maybe.map List.head
        |> Maybe.withDefault Nothing

As you can see, we end up with Maybe (Maybe String) after List.head operation, because head operation returns a Maybe String. Therefore, we have to use a Maybe.withDefault, in order to extract the inner Maybe. To remove this line of unnecessary code, we can use the andThen function:

andThen : (a -> Maybe b) -> Maybe a -> Maybe b
andThen callback maybe =
    case maybe of
        Just value ->
            callback value

        Nothing ->
            Nothing

andThen implementation

andThen is a function very similar to map, but the mapping function is of type a -> Maybe b rather than a -> b. Just like with map, the transformation function we supply as parameter one is only applied if parameter two is present (i.e., a Just). andThen returns the return type from the transformation function, but if Maybe a is Nothing, andThen returns Nothing and thus proceeds to the next chain in the pipeline. Essentially, this means that you don’t have to pattern match the Maybe you are working with, which reduces boilerplate code.

By using andThen function, we can remove the excessive line in the previous implementation:

toLastName : Maybe String -> Maybe String
toLastName name =
    name
        |> Maybe.map (String.split " ")
        |> Maybe.map List.reverse
        |> Maybe.andThen List.head

As we have seen so far in this article, andThen is suitable for transformations that may fail, in contrary to map. map is fit for transformations that cannot fail. As such, we can also use andThen as a filter. By forcing the transformation to fail, by returning Nothing, when the value does not satisfy some condition, we have created a filter.

Let’s say that we reimplement the same toLastName function, but this time we want to return Nothing if the last last name is less than seven characters. Using map, we can implement it like this:

toLastName : Maybe String -> Maybe String
toLastName name =
    name
        |> Maybe.map (String.split " ")
        |> Maybe.map List.reverse
        |> Maybe.andThen List.head
        |> Maybe.map
            (\lastName ->
                if String.length lastName >= 7 then
                    Just lastName

                else
                    Nothing
            )
        |> Maybe.withDefault Nothing

In this example, we also end up with a Maybe String and thus need an additional withDefault expression. If we, on the other hand, make use of andThen, we remove this line:

toLastName : Maybe String -> Maybe String
toLastName name =
    name
        |> Maybe.map (String.split " ")
        |> Maybe.map List.reverse
        |> Maybe.andThen List.head
        |> Maybe.andThen
            (\lastName ->
                if String.length lastName >= 7 then
                    Just lastName

                else
                    Nothing
            )

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