A while back, Edward Kmett wrote a library called reflection, based on a 2004 paper by Oleg Kiselyov and Chung-chieh Shan that describes a neat trick for reifying data into types (here the word “reify” can be understood as turning a value into something that can be referenced at the type level). There was also an article written by Austin Seipp on how to use the library, and some great answers on reddit and stackoverflow that go into detail about how it works.

And yet, in all these years, though I’ve been on the lookout for a way to make use of this library, I wasn’t able to fit it into my workflow – until today! So let’s look at my real world use for reflection, which solves a problem that maybe others have encountered as well.

As you may know, the QuickCheck library provides a facility for generating arbitrary data sets. The property testing features of QuickCheck make use of this generation to search for test data that might violate a set of properties.

However, the generation facility can also be used on its own, separate from the testing components, to randomly generate data for any purpose. The library for producing this random data offers lots of combinators, and is based around instances for a type class called Arbitrary. Here’s a basic example:

module Main where

import Test.QuickCheck.Arbitrary
import Test.QuickCheck.Gen

data Foo = Foo [Int] [String]
deriving Show

instance Arbitrary Foo where
arbitrary = do
xs  <- listOf chooseAny
len <- choose (1, 100)
ys  <- vectorOf len (shuffle "Hello, world")
return $ Foo xs ys

main :: IO ()
main = print =<< generate (arbitrary :: Gen Foo)

This creates a specifically shaped set of random data, where the list of integers may be of any length, and any value, but the list of strings will always be from 1 to 100 elements long, and the strings will only consist of random arrangements of the characters found in "Hello, world".

Now, what if you wanted to guide the generation process for Foo using external information? Such as picking the length of the list of strings from a value provided by the user? Since Arbitrary does not allow the use of Reader, how do we get that user-supplied value into the arbitrary function above? And without using global IORef=s or =unsafePerformIO?

The reflection library allows us to reify a runtime value into a type (whose name we’ll never know, requiring us to reference it through a type variable), and then communicate that type via a constraint, such that we can reflect the value back out as needed. If this sounds a bit confusing, maybe an example can make it clearer:

{-# LANGUAGE ScopedTypeVariables #-}
{-# LANGUAGE UndecidableInstances #-}

module Main where

import Data.Proxy
import Data.Reflection
import Test.QuickCheck.Arbitrary
import Test.QuickCheck.Gen
import System.Environment

data Foo s = Foo [Int] [String]
deriving Show

instance Reifies s Int => Arbitrary (Foo s) where
arbitrary = do
xs  <- listOf chooseAny
len <- choose (1, reflect (Proxy :: Proxy s))
ys  <- vectorOf len (shuffle "Hello, world")
return $ Foo xs ys

main :: IO ()
main = do
[len] <- getArgs
reify (read len :: Int) $ \(Proxy :: Proxy s) ->
print =<< generate (arbitrary :: Gen (Foo s))

There are a few additional things to note here:

A phantom type variable has been added to Foo. This type variable associates the reified data to our type, so it can be reflected back out in the instance for this type. 1. The Arbitrary instance for Foo s has incurred a new contraint, stating that the type represented by s somehow reifies an Int. How this happens is the magic of the reflection library, and uses a clever GHC trick representing Edward’s unique twist on Oleg and Chung-chieh’s work. This instance requires the UndecidableInstances extension. 1. We now call reify with the data we want to pass along. This function takes a lambda whose first argument is a Proxy s, giving us a way to know which type variable to use in the type of the call to arbitrary. This requires the ScopedTypeVariables extension. That’s it: reflection gives us a way to plumb extra data into instances at runtime, at the cost of adding a single phantom type.

If the phantom type seems excessive for one use case, or if adding the phantom would effect a large family of types, then an alternative is to enable the FlexibleInstances extension, and use Edward’s tagged library to carry the phantom instead:

{-# LANGUAGE FlexibleInstances #-}
{-# LANGUAGE ScopedTypeVariables #-}
{-# LANGUAGE UndecidableInstances #-}

module Main where

import Data.Proxy
import Data.Tagged
import Data.Reflection
import Test.QuickCheck.Arbitrary
import Test.QuickCheck.Gen
import System.Environment

data Foo = Foo [Int] [String]
deriving Show

instance Reifies s Int => Arbitrary (Tagged s Foo) where
arbitrary = fmap Tagged $ do
xs  <- listOf chooseAny
len <- choose (1, reflect (Proxy :: Proxy s))
ys  <- vectorOf len (shuffle "Hello, world")
return $ Foo xs ys

main :: IO ()
main = do
[len] <- getArgs
reify (read len :: Int) $ \(Proxy :: Proxy s) ->
print . unTagged =<< generate (arbitrary :: Gen (Tagged s Foo))

This way we leave the original type alone – which may be the only option if you’re generating arbitrary data for types from libraries. You’ll just have to wrap and unwrap the Tagged newtype wrapper as necessary.

Another benefit of using Tagged is that, because it can be wrapped and unwrapped as necessary, it becomes possible to change the refied information in cases where nested types are involved. In this last example, the user is allowed to specify the value that should be supplied to the Bar constructor during data generation.

{-# LANGUAGE FlexibleInstances #-}
{-# LANGUAGE ScopedTypeVariables #-}
{-# LANGUAGE UndecidableInstances #-}

module Main where

import Data.Proxy
import Data.Tagged
import Data.Reflection
import Test.QuickCheck.Arbitrary
import Test.QuickCheck.Gen
import System.Environment

newtype Bar = Bar Int
deriving Show

data Foo = Foo [Bar] [String]
deriving Show

instance Reifies s Int => Arbitrary (Tagged s Bar) where
arbitrary = return $ Tagged $ Bar $ reflect (Proxy :: Proxy s)

instance Reifies s (Int, Int) => Arbitrary (Tagged s Foo) where
arbitrary = fmap Tagged $ do
let (len, bar) = reflect (Proxy :: Proxy s)
xs <- listOf (reify bar $ \(Proxy :: Proxy r) ->
unTagged <$> (arbitrary :: Gen (Tagged r Bar)))
l  <- choose (1, len)
ys <- vectorOf l (shuffle "Hello, world")
return $ Foo xs ys

main :: IO ()
main = do
[len, barValue] <- getArgs
reify (read len :: Int, read barValue :: Int) $ \(Proxy :: Proxy s) ->
print . unTagged =<< generate (arbitrary :: Gen (Tagged s Foo))