Documentation

ASetter s t a b is something that turns a function modifying a value into a function modifying a structure. If you ignore Identity (as Identity a is the same thing as a), the type is:

type ASetter s t a b = (a -> b) -> s -> t

The reason Identity is used here is for ASetter to be composable with other types, such as Lens.

Technically, if you're writing a library, you shouldn't use this type for setters you are exporting from your library; the right type to use is Setter, but it is not provided by this package (because then it'd have to depend on distributive). It's completely alright, however, to export functions which take an ASetter as an argument.

This is a type alias for monomorphic setters which don't change the type of the container (or of the value inside). It's useful more often than the same type in lens, because we can't provide real setters and so it does the job of both ASetter' and Setter'.

A SimpleGetter s a extracts a from s; so, it's the same thing as (s -> a), but you can use it in lens chains because its type looks like this:

type SimpleGetter s a =
  forall r. (a -> Const r a) -> s -> Const r s

Since Const r is a functor, SimpleGetter has the same shape as other lens types and can be composed with them. To get (s -> a) out of a SimpleGetter, choose r ~ a and feed Const :: a -> Const a a to the getter:

-- the actual signature is more permissive:
-- view :: Getting a s a -> s -> a
view :: SimpleGetter s a -> s -> a
view getter = getConst . getter Const

The actual Getter from lens is more general:

type Getter s a =
  forall f. (Contravariant f, Functor f) => (a -> f a) -> s -> f s

I'm not currently aware of any functions that take lens's Getter but won't accept SimpleGetter, but you should try to avoid exporting SimpleGetters anyway to minimise confusion. Alternatively, look at microlens-contra, which provides a fully lens-compatible Getter.

Lens users: you can convert a SimpleGetter to Getter by applying to . view to it.

Functions that operate on getters and folds – such as (^.), (^..), (^?) – use Getter r s a (with different values of r) to describe what kind of result they need. For instance, (^.) needs the getter to be able to return a single value, and so it accepts a getter of type Getting a s a. (^..) wants the getter to gather values together, so it uses Getting (Endo [a]) s a (it could've used Getting [a] s a instead, but it's faster with Endo). The choice of r depends on what you want to do with elements you're extracting from s.

A SimpleFold s a extracts several as from s; so, it's pretty much the same thing as (s -> [a]), but you can use it with lens operators.

The actual Fold from lens is more general:

type Fold s a =
  forall f. (Contravariant f, Applicative f) => (a -> f a) -> s -> f s

There are several functions in lens that accept lens's Fold but won't accept SimpleFold; I'm aware of takingWhile, droppingWhile, backwards, foldByOf, foldMapByOf. For this reason, try not to export SimpleFolds if at all possible. microlens-contra provides a fully lens-compatible Fold.

Lens users: you can convert a SimpleFold to Fold by applying folded . toListOf to it.

Lens s t a b is the lowest common denominator of a setter and a getter, something that has the power of both; it has a Functor constraint, and since both Const and Identity are functors, it can be used whenever a getter or a setter is needed.

• a is the type of the value inside of structure
• b is the type of the replaced value
• s is the type of the whole structure
• t is the type of the structure after replacing a in it with b

This is a type alias for monomorphic lenses which don't change the type of the container (or of the value inside).

Traversal s t a b is a generalisation of Lens which allows many targets (possibly 0). It's achieved by changing the constraint to Applicative instead of Functor – indeed, the point of Applicative is that you can combine effects, which is just what we need to have many targets.

Ultimately, traversals should follow 2 laws:

t pure ≡ pure
fmap (t f) . t g ≡ getCompose . t (Compose . fmap f . g)

The 1st law states that you can't change the shape of the structure or do anything funny with elements (traverse elements which aren't in the structure, create new elements out of thin air, etc.). The 2nd law states that you should be able to fuse 2 identical traversals into one. For a more detailed explanation of the laws, see this blog post (if you prefer rambling blog posts), or The Essence Of The Iterator Pattern (if you prefer papers).

Traversing any value twice is a violation of traversal laws. You can, however, traverse values in any order.

This is a type alias for monomorphic traversals which don't change the type of the container (or of the values inside).

LensLike is a type that is often used to make combinators as general as possible. For instance, take (<<%~), which only requires the passed lens to be able to work with the (,) a functor (lenses and traversals can do that). The fully expanded type is as follows:

(<<%~) :: ((a -> (a, b)) -> s -> (a, t)) -> (a -> b) -> s -> (a, t)

With LensLike, the intent to use the (,) a functor can be made a bit clearer:

(<<%~) :: LensLike ((,) a) s t a b -> (a -> b) -> s -> (a, t)

A type alias for monomorphic LensLikes.