Hi Roman,    Template Haskell should be the preferred way to cope with these "boilerplate" code problems. Template Haskell: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Template_Haskell Note: I'm a beginner myself so please wait for a more informed response. Paolo 2009/9/28 Roman Naumann <roman_naumann@fastmail.fm>:

The following function converts the data read from an sql database to a player data structure.

toPlayer    :: [SqlValue] -> Player toPlayer sx = Player {                 plID       = fromSql (sx!!0),                 plAccount  = fromSql (sx!!1),                 plForename = fromSql (sx!!2),                 plSurename = fromSql (sx!!3),                 plPos_x    = fromSql (sx!!4),                 plPos_y    = fromSql (sx!!5)              }

It appears to me, that I have to write this boilerplate code every time I introduce a new data structure that has to be read from the sql database. Can you think of a way to automate this?

Thanks for your replies, Roman Naumann