Hi everyone!

First of all, i don't know if this idea is already being discussed so if there's a discussion on this i'd like to follow.

To illustrate, first i want to create a class like:

class Has a t where
    get :: t -> a

then i define instance for simple product type such as tuple:

instance Has a (a, b) where
  get (a, _) = a

instance Has b (a, b) where
  get (_, b) = b

...

You can image i will use th to make lots of instance for difference tuple size. Now if i want an extensible reader, i use Has class like this:

someReader :: Has Int t => Reader t Int
someReader = do
    x <- ask
    return $ get x + 1

Then i can run it with any tuple with an Int field like:

runReader someReader (0 :: Int, "adad”) -- 1

This typeclass almost solved all problem of my network application: sometime’s i want ensure a logger, a sql backend and a http client pool in my monad’s environment, but i don’t want to fix my environment into a record.

We can add a set :: a -> t -> t, or use lens to define Has, so that we can have extensible states.
We can also use Tagged to achieve something like:

(Has (Tagged “SqlBackEndOne” SqlBackEnd) t, Has (Tagged “SqlBackEndTwo" SqlBackEnd) t) => Reader t ()

It there a library doing this, maybe in lens? or there’re some drawbacks i didn’t notice? All ideas are welcomed!


Cheers~
Winter