zio-py 0.0.16
Python port of Scala ZIO for pure functional programming
License: MIT License

ZIO-py
======
ZIO for Python (see https://github.com/zio/zio).

[![Stable Version](https://img.shields.io/pypi/v/zio-py?color=blue)](https://pypi.org/project/zio-py/)
[![Checked with mypy](http://www.mypy-lang.org/static/mypy_badge.svg)](http://mypy-lang.org/)

This is a fairly straightforward (unofficial and plucky) port of a subset of the
ingenious [Scala ZIO](https://github.com/zio/zio) library along with some other
tools for type-safe functional programming in Python.

About the ZIO monad
-------------------
This particular implementation of the ZIO data structure is based on the
[functional
effects](https://github.com/jdegoes/functional-effects/blob/master/src/main/scala/net/degoes/zio/00-intro.scala)
training provided by [John De Goes](https://degoes.net/). It is a vastly
simplified version of the amazing official Scala library, but is still quite
useful: For state of the art "errors as values" computations, this library is
for you!

The `ZIO[R, E, A]` monad is basically three monads rolled into one:
- An "IO monad" for writing pure functional programs. A value of type `ZIO[R, E, A]` is a program, which when evaluated given input of type `R`, either fails with a value of type `E` or succeeds with a value of type `A`.

- An [either monad](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/a-survival-guide-to-the-either-monad-in-scala-7293a680006/) that allows you to "code to the happy path." If an error is encountered anywhere in a sequence of `ZIO` operations, it is returned early.

- A [reader monad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_(functional_programming)#Environment_monad) for providing inputs to your program.

Unlike Scala's ZIO, this implementation does not include functionality for
parallel/concurrent programming. Since we are stuck in Python with the Global
Interpreter Lock, we can't have nice things...so this functionality won't be
missed anyways. However, future work will certainly explore supporting this part
of the Scala ZIO API.

Perhaps the most important feature of ZIO-py that sets it apart from all other
functional programming libraries is its support for type-safe, ergonomic, and
quite natural "monadic do notation."

Notable Features
----------------
* State of the art "[zivariant](https://zio.github.io/zio-prelude/api/zio/prelude/Zivariant.html)" ZIO monad data structure.
* `Either` monad for those times when you don't need _all_ of the power of ZIO.
* `ZIOArrow` and `EitherArrow` combinator data structures for ergonomic and
  type-safe "pipeline-oriented programming" (function composition). These
  features are awesome for wrapping existing APIs.
* [Monadic do
notation](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57192516/is-do-notation-used-necessarily-in-the-context-of-monad),
what appears to be a significant advancement in bringing ergonomic functional
programming to mainstream languages.  It looks like this general idea was
explored in 2018 in [Exceptionally Monadic Error
Handling](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.13430.pdf), albeit from the Haskell side.
Interesting, I have not seen the idea applied anywhere in the wild.
* HList and Validation implementations for type safe data validation and transformation.

Benefits
--------
* Faster and safer test writing: No more mocking and other monkeypatching
  tomfoolery. Ok, maybe there is some hyperbole here. But it should
  significantly reduce the amount of mocking needed. Instead of mocking things,
  you simply `my_program.provide(x)` your program a test environment, `x`,
  before calling `unsafe_run(my_program)`. When running code in production, you
  will `.provide` an instance of a live (real) environment.

* Clear distinction of
  [side-effecting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side_effect_(computer_science))
  code based on function type signatures. If a function returns a value of type
  `ZIO[R, E, A`], you know exactly what that function takes as input, how it can
  fail, and what it will return if it succeeds. You also know that the function
  may cause side effects. Any other function can, with some reasonable
  discipline, be considered free of side effects.

* Code to the happy path while safely handling errors. Since `ZIO` behaves like
  a (right-biased) Either monad, it is super easy to do [railway-oriented
  programming](https://swlaschin.gitbooks.io/fsharpforfunandprofit/content/posts/recipe-part2.html).

* Type safety. Everything is statically-checked by mypy. If you get the types
  wrong, then there is probably a bug in your program. The mypy type checker
  will find the bugs before they make it to production.

* Implementations of "Kleisli arrow"-like combinator interfaces for creating
  function pipelines (`EitherArrow` and `ZIOArrow`). These interfaces use [PEP
  612](https://peps.python.org/pep-0612/) features to preserve function
  parameters, making it possible to easily work with pre-existing Python
  functions/methods. For example, it is super handy for wrapping existing APIs
  to make them type-safe and composable.

* It's pure, it's functional. It's pure functional programming. It's Pythonic.
It shouldn't be possible. (And someone somewhere is upset that these meddling
kids have made it possible.)

Installation
------------
At the command line:
```bash
$ pip install zio-py
```

Alternatively, you can install `zio-py` from source by cloning this repo and
running the provided `setup.sh` script.

How to Use It
-------------
Check out the [Scala ZIO documentation](https://zio.dev/) for the definitive
guide on basic usage of ZIO.  In Scala. :)

Here, we will introduce you to the style of programming that uses the generalized
monadic do notation that is unique to ZIO-py.

Using the "Monadic Do Notation"
-------------------------------
ZIO-py features a kind of type-safe monadic do notation that obviates the need
to festoon your pure functional programs with unruly nested `.flat_map` calls.
Unlike other "monadic do notation as a library" implementations, this one is
100% type-safe.

To use it within the body of a function:

1. Decorate your function using the `@ziopy.zio.monadic` decorator. (Or,
   correspondingly, decorate your method with `@ziopy.zio.monadic_method`. Two
   different decorators are needed because methods take an implicit `self`
   argument.)
2. The first parameter to your function must be of type `ziopy.zio.ZIOMonad[R, E]`,
where `R` represents the environment type and `E` represents the error type. A good
name for this parameter is typically `do`.
3. Add any other parameters to your function _after_ the `ZIOMonad` parameter.
4. Return a value of type `ziopy.zio.ZIO[R, E, A]` from your function, where `A`
represents the type returned when your function returns successfully.

The types `R` and `E` have to coincide for type safety. The PEP 612 features of
the `mypy` type checker will check this for you.

Then, instead of writing
```python
a.flat_map(lambda b: ...)
```
you can write
```python
b = do << a
...
```

That's pretty much it! The type safety guarantees that, if any statement in your
monadic code that passed through a `do <<` produces an error, the `@monadic`
function has to be capable of returning that error. The same safety idea is used
for accessing stuff out of the environment (the `R` in `ZIO[R, E, A]`).

It turns out to be a lot easier to use than Scala's "for comprehension" and
Haskell's "do notation" because it's just a regular statement. So you can mix it
with loops, conditional logic, etc., which is not possible in those other
languages.

How the Monadic Do Notation Works
---------------------------------
Each `do << program` invocation calls the private (and potentially impure)
`program._run` function, which returns a value of type `Either[E, A]`. More
specifically, it returns either an instance of `Left[E]` or an instance of
`Right[A]`. If `left: Left[E]` is returned, we wrap `left.value` in a special
exception called `RaiseLeft`.

Meanwhile, the `@monadic` function decorator adds an exception handler to the
decorated function. It catches `raise_left: RaiseLeft` exceptions, and returns
the wrapped value as a ZIO program `ZIO.fail(lambda: raise_left.value)`.

The end result is a control flow mechanism for early return of `Left[E]` values
from your decorated functions.

Example Programs
----------------
```python
from typing import NoReturn, Union

import ziopy.services.console as console
import ziopy.services.system as system
from ziopy.either import EitherArrow
from ziopy.environments import ConsoleSystemEnvironment
from ziopy.services.console import Console, LiveConsole
from ziopy.zio import ZIO, Environment, ZIOMonad, monadic, unsafe_run


@monadic
def program(
    do: ZIOMonad[Console, Union[EOFError, KeyboardInterrupt]]
) -> ZIO[
    Console,
    Union[EOFError, KeyboardInterrupt],
    str
]:
    con = do << Environment()

    do << con.print("Hello, what is your name?")
    name = do << con.input()
    do << con.print(f"Your name is: {name}")
    x = do << ZIO.succeed(1)

    while x < 20:
        x = do << (
            ZIO.succeed(x)
            .map(lambda p: p + 1)
            .flat_map(lambda q: ZIO.succeed(q - 1))
            .flat_map(lambda r: ZIO.succeed(r + 1))
        )

    do << con.print(f"The value of x is: {x}")
    return ZIO.succeed(f"Hello, {name}!")


p = program().provide(LiveConsole())
final_result = unsafe_run(p)
print(f"Final result (1) is: {final_result}")

# You can run the same program (value) over and over again.
final_result_2 = unsafe_run(p)
print(f"Final result (2) is: {final_result_2}")


@monadic
def prog(
    do: ZIOMonad[ConsoleSystemEnvironment, NoReturn]
) -> ZIO[ConsoleSystemEnvironment, NoReturn, int]:
    age = do << console.get_input_from_console(
        prompt="How old are you?\n",
        parse_value=(
            EitherArrow.from_callable(str)
            .map(int)
            .catch(ValueError)
        ),
        default_value=21
    )
    do << console.print(f"You are {age} years old.")
    return ZIO.succeed(age)


unsafe_run(
    prog().provide(
        ConsoleSystemEnvironment(console=LiveConsole(), system=system.LiveSystem())
    )
)
```

History
-------
ZIO-py grew out of a 2019 [Root Insurance Company](https://www.joinroot.com/) Hack Days project which experimented with porting ZIO to Python. The barrier to adoption was the fact that Python did not have a good mechanism for handling monadic programming, such as Scala's [for comprehension](https://docs.scala-lang.org/tour/for-comprehensions.html) or Haskell's [do notation](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/do_notation). I implemented the beginnings of an AST transformer that made it possible to use a kind of primitive do notation [here](https://github.com/harveywi/ziopy#monad-comprehension-syntactic-sugar), but generalizing it to work with general Python AST transformations was extremely difficult. Without a better syntax for monadic programming, nobody would ever want to use it in Python. Nested `.flat_map` everywhere is a mess.

After letting the problem simmer in my head for more than a year, I suddenly had an epiphany one morning:

> "Solve the inversion of control flow problem, and you'll have a better monadic "do" notation than any programming language currently offers."

So that's what I did. I tried out a few different designs, trying to emulate something analogous to [call/cc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call-with-current-continuation) in a typesafe way in Python. Next, I used a [fork/exec](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork%E2%80%93exec) strategy to simulate call/cc. Ultimately I was able to construct a design that eschewed call/cc, using only `try`/`catch` and an additional thunk in the `@monadic` decorator to achieve the desired control flow.

One of the limiting reagents was that mypy still [has some problems](https://github.com/python/mypy/issues/3157) with type inference with code that uses decorators. So, for the short term, I whipped together a simple `mypy` plugin that properly checks/modifies the type signature of functions that are decorated as `@monadic`.

Figuring out a way to use the library in a type safe way was tricky. I had to subconsciously think for a few days about how to maintain the type safety. The `@monadic` decorator, `do: ZIOMonad[R, E]` argument, and mypy plugin solved that problem pretty well methinks...but YMMV.

What's Next?
------------
Async/concurrent functionality is currently on the radar. The end goal is to
make ZIO-py into one of the best solutions for async/concurrent programming, and
to help developers take full advantage of the future of Python when the [global
interpreter lock has been removed](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3637073/python-stands-to-lose-its-gil-and-gain-a-lot-of-speed.html).

Statement of Public Good
------------------------
This project is made possible by:
* The Mathematics and Informatics Institute of Ohio, a nonprofit whose mission is to enrich the citzenry of the State of Ohio via education and public domain contributions to advanced mathematics, computer science, informatics, information theory, data science, and other analytical disciplines.
* [Root Insurance Company](https://www.joinroot.com/). This library is an open source version of one of our widely-used internal Python libraries.
* [John De Goes](https://degoes.net/) and the many [Scala ZIO](https://github.com/zio/zio) contributors.