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gcanti / monocle-ts

Functional optics: a (partial) porting of Scala monocle
https://gcanti.github.io/monocle-ts/
MIT License
1.04k stars 52 forks source link

API Design: With Class or without Class #153

Closed m-bock closed 3 years ago

m-bock commented 3 years ago

🚀 Feature request

Current Behavior

Currently the API of monocle-ts provides modules containing functions for the core datatypes (e.g. Lens in Lens.ts, Prism in Prism.ts, etc) as well as class wrappers around each defined in index.ts.

As a newcomer to this library I found this a bit confusing. Certainly both approaches have their pros and cons. I'd like to know a bit what's the roadmap with those different types of API's. Having used fp-ts and having worked with other functional languages, I expected all I need to work with say a Prism would be inside the Prism module. However, I was not able to find the main constructor for this type in there. After a while I realized that it's only defined in the class wrapper in index.ts. And it turned out that also some other functions are only defined in there as methods (e.g. "fromProp").

Desired Behavior

I think it could make sense to make the modules work standalone. The classes would then work as a wrapper for convenience for optional use.

Suggested Solution

Move all "essential" definitions from index.ts to the specialized modules for the datatypes.

Who does this impact? Who is this for?

This would especially help to onboard people coming from languages where classes are not present. Also encourage users that prefer just functions to use the library.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Alternative would be to only provide one API. if this one should be the class based one, then I think the sub modules should be regarded as internal and therefore not exposed.

Additional context

Example for a function only lens library: https://pursuit.purescript.org/packages/purescript-profunctor-lenses

gcanti commented 3 years ago

In index.ts there's the (class-based) stable API while the experimental modules are pipe-based, see https://github.com/gcanti/monocle-ts/tree/5eeb6f2f634a7b4aa91e3b6746026bb5306b15ba#experimental-modules.

I'd like to know a bit what's the roadmap with those different types of API's

monocle-ts@3.0.0 will only contain pipe-based APIs

m-bock commented 3 years ago

Ok, good to know! Now I see that's in the Readme.