Scala with Cats: Answers to revision questions

I'm studying the 'Scala with Cats' book. I want the information to stick so I am applying a technique from 'Ultralearning' where I make revision notes in the questions which I regularly review. This post contains the questions and their answers.

Chapter 1: Introduction: Answers

1. What is a type class? 
• It’s a way of defining some behaviour that many types can adhere to. In scala it's a trait with a parameter
2. What is an interface syntax in cats?
3. What do Show and Eq do in cats? 
• Members of show can be presented as strings. 
4. Explain covariance, contravariance and invariance. 
• Covariance
• Contravariance
• Invariance
F[A] and F[B] are never subtypes of each other, regardless of the relationship between A and B.

Chapter 2: Monoids and Semigroups: Answers

1. Define monoid and semigroup and give examples of each. 

Chapter 3: Functors: Answers

1. What is a type constructor? 
• A type constructor is like a type but it has a 'hole to fill'. Eg List is a type constructor because it has one 'hole' to fill. Note the difference between List (a type constructor) and List[A] (a type, using a type parameter) and List[Int] (a concrete type).
2. What  is a  covariant functor? 
3. Write a method 'power' which can operate on either List(1,2,3) or Option(2) and returns List(1,4,9) and Option(4) respectively. 
4. What is a contravariant functor? 

Chapter 4: Monads

1. What is a monad? 
2. What is the 'Id' monad for? 
• Imagine you have a method which operates on a Monad of Ints, eg power method so for Option(2) it returns Option(4) and for List(1,2) it returns List(1,4). To use this method on regular ints we need to wrap our plain Ints in a monad, hence Id. 
3. What is the 'Eval' monad for? 
• This is for abstracting over different modes of computation, eager or lazy. Memoized computations run once then are cached, and can run lazily or eagerly. vals are eager and memoized. Defs are lazy and non memoized. Lazy vals are lazy and memoized. Eval has three subtypes, Now, Later and Always. 
• It also has 'defer' which can be used to avoid stack overflow in recursive methods.
4. What does each line print? 
• 'Now' is eager and memoized (val). 'Later' is lazy and memoized (lazy val). 'Always' is lazy and not memoized (def). 
5. What is the output of the following code snippet and why? 
• "Now" is calculated eagerly so is printed first. However mapping functions are always called like defs so the output is 'a, ---, b, c, Adding!, b, c, Adding!' There is a memoize function that can be used when chaining. 
6. What is the writer monad for?
• This is for carrying a log along with some computation. It's particularly useful in multithreaded computation where normal log messages might get interleaved. Writer[W,A] has a log of type W and a result of type A.
7. What is the reader monad for? 
• Reader[A,B] represents a function A => B. It allows sequencing of operations that depend on some input. 
8. What is the state monad for? 
• The state monad allows us to pass additional state around as part of a computation. We can use it to model mutable state in a purely functional way, without the mutation. State[S, A] represents functions of type S => (S, A). S is the type of the state and A is the result type. 

Chapter 5: Monad Transformers

1. What are monad transformers used for? 
• These are for composing monads, eg for giving us nice ways of handling Future[Option[T]]

Scala with Cats: Revision Questions

Earlier this year I read a fantastic book about Ultralearning. One tip from the book was to make notes in the form of questions without the answers rather than making notes to browse. Therefore, to review my work I can answer the questions and test my recall rather than just reading information and hope it goes in. 

The answers are in another post. 

Chapter 1: Introduction

1. What is a type class? 
2. What is an interface syntax in cats?
3. What do Show and Eq do in cats? 
4. Explain covariance, contravariance and invariance. 

Chapter 2: Monoids and Semigroups

1. Define monoid and semigroup and give examples of each. 

Chapter 3: Functors

1. What is a type constructor? 
2. What is a covariant functor?
3. Write a method 'power' which can operate on either List(1,2,3) or Option(2) and returns List(1,4,9) and Option(4) respectively. 
4. What is a contravariant functor? 

Chapter 4: Monads

1. What is a monad? 
2. What is the 'Id' monad for? 
3. What is the 'Eval' monad for? 
4. What does each line print? 
5. What is the output of the following code snippet? 
6. What is the writer monad for?
7. What is the reader monad for? 
8. What is the state monad for? 

Cake pattern

(don't read this post if you are eating because it might make you throw up)

Partial Unification

Writer Monad from Scala Cats

Once upon a time there was some stinky side affecting code with println all over the place.


How horrible! No, Cinderella, you definitely can't meet the prince of MonadLand looking like that!
Fortunately her Functional Fairy Godmother is on hand.



 'Ah ha' she cries! From each function you need to return both the int (which is the existing return type) and some Strings to represent the logs!

'Easy peasy' she says and with a swish of her magic wand she transforms Cinderella.

Well I guess this is ok, but look how much more effort Cinderella has to go to to compose f and g! That's not very elegant at all!

'Please, Fairy Godmother', Cinderella begs, 'Isn't there anything more you can do?'

Now it's a little-known Disney secret that Cinderella's Functional Fairy Godmother is actually an enormous fan of Cats and has a clever Writer monad trick up her sleeve.

Output:

WriterT((Vector(Generating random int, Applying complex mathematical formula),84))
WriterT((Vector(Generating random int, Applying complex mathematical formula),84))

'Oh thank you Functional Fairy Godmother', cries Cinderella, delighted.

FFG winks and whispers, 'I just love a good for comprehension! There are actually a lot of different ways of creating a writer!', and she slips some example code into Cinderella's pocket for later bedtime reading, in case things with the prince don't go to plan:

Cinderella was so intrigued by these examples that she stayed up all night reading Dave Gurnell and Noel Walsh's book Scala with Cats and skipped the ball entirely.


And she lived happily ever after. 

Varience in scala

Seriously I never remember which is which.

Covariance

Contravarience

Invariance

Akka Persistence: From Untyped to typed

Vanilla Akka Persistence

Akka persistence involves three main concepts:

- Commands
- Events
- State

Consider the following two command objects:

case class WriteCommand(data: String)
case object PrintCommand

We are going to build an actor which responds to two sorts of commands 'Write!' and 'Print!'. When it receives a WriteCommand, the data in the command will be persisted and when it receives a PrintCommand it will print all the saved data to the console.

On receipt of a WriteCommand our actor will generate and persist a WriteEvent.

case class DataWriteEvent(data: String)

The actor will maintain an internal representation of the data it has persisted  ('state') . This is the data that will be printed to console on receipt of a PrintCommand.

The state has an update method which is called with a DataWriteEvent. The updated state is returned.

case class ExampleState(events: List[String] = Nil) {
  def updated(evt: DataWriteEvent): ExampleState = copy(evt.data :: events)
  def size: Int = events.length
  override def toString: String = events.reverse.toString
}

Wiring up the actor:

class ExamplePersistentActor extends PersistentActor {
  override def persistenceId = "example-id"
  var state = ExampleState()

  def updateState(event: DataWriteEvent): Unit = state = state.updated(event)

  def numberOfEvents: Int = state.size

  val receiveCommand: Receive = {
    case WriteCommand(data) ⇒
      persist(DataWriteEvent(s"$data-$numberOfEvents")) { event ⇒
        updateState(event)
        context.system.eventStream.publish(event)
      }
    case PrintCommand ⇒ println(state)
  }

  val receiveRecover: Receive = {
    case evt: DataWriteEvent ⇒ updateState(evt)
    case SnapshotOffer(_, snapshot: ExampleState) ⇒ state = snapshot
  }

}

And finally to run:

object Example extends App {
  val system = ActorSystem()
  val actor = system.actorOf(Props(new ExamplePersistentActor))
  actor ! WriteCommand("Ruby")
  actor ! PrintCommand
}

If I run it once I get the following:

List(Ruby-0)

And running it one more time:

List(Ruby-0, Ruby-1)

Moving on...

Receive is a function with a signature from Any => Unit which is pretty damn generic! Akka typed, the motivation for which is beyond the scope of this post, basically gives compile-time feedback on the correctness of your actor interactions. 

Sexy Types

This time we define a 'behaviour' in terms of Command, Event and State. This means that we need our 'Write!' and 'Print!' commands to share a type hierarchy: 

sealed trait TypedExampleCommand extends Serializable
case class TypedExampleWriteCommand(data: String) extends TypedExampleCommand
case object TypedExamplePrint extends TypedExampleCommand

Our event and state look pretty much the same as they did before:

case class TypedEvent(data: String)

case class TypedExampleState(events: List[String] = Nil) {
  def updated(evt: TypedEvent): TypedExampleState = copy(evt.data :: events)
  def size: Int = events.length
  override def toString: String = events.reverse.toString
}

 Our behaviour is defined with four parameters:

1. An id for the actor

2. An initial state

3. A function for converting commands to events (wrapped in 'Effects') and handling side effects

4. A function for updating the state given an event

object TypedExample {

  def behavior: Behavior[TypedExampleCommand] =
    PersistentActor
      .immutable[TypedExampleCommand, TypedEvent, TypedExampleState](
      persistenceId = "example-id", 
      initialState = new TypedExampleState,      
      commandHandler = PersistentActor.CommandHandler {
        (_, state, cmd) ⇒
          cmd match {
            case TypedExampleWriteCommand(data) =>
              Effect.persist(TypedEvent(s"$data ${state.size}"))
            case TypedExamplePrint =>
              println(state); Effect.none          
        }
      },     
      eventHandler = (state, event) ⇒ event match {
        case TypedEvent(_) => state.updated(event)
      }
    )
}

Now to run it:

object TypedExampleMain extends App {

  import akka.actor.typed.scaladsl.adapter._

  val system = akka.actor.ActorSystem("system")
  val actor = system.spawn(TypedExample.behavior, "example")
  actor ! TypedExampleWriteCommand("Hi Bella")
  actor ! TypedExamplePrint
}

Again running once gives:

List(Hi Bella 0)

And twice:

List(Hi Bella 0, Hi Bella 1)

Typed vs Untyped

Let's define a case object: 

case object FluffyKittenFace 

If we send a FluffyKittenFace message to our persistent actor then the message gets swallowed. The original code continues to work but nothing appears to happen. 

However if we try sending a FluffyKittenFace to our typed actor: 

Red squiggle of doom! 

We helpfully get a compile time error saying that our actor doesn't know what to do with all that fluff! 

FluffyKittenFace is going to have to find another actor to process her message, or become a TypedExampleCommand. 

Zee Cod:

https://github.com/polyglotpiglet/akka-typed-examples

Note that these examples are working against master rather than the release build. It should work from 2.5.9.