A wrapper type for safer, expressive code.
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We often work with types that are far too general or hold far too many values than what is necessary for our domain. Sometimes we just want to differentiate between two seemingly equivalent values at the type level.
An email address is nothing but a String
, but it should be restricted in the ways in which it can be used. And while a User
id may be represented with an Int
, it should be distinguishable from an Int
-based Subscription
id.
Tagged can help solve serious runtime bugs at compile time by wrapping basic types in more specific contexts with ease.
Swift has an incredibly powerful type system, yet it's still common to model most data like this:
struct User {
let id: Int
let email: String
let address: String
let subscriptionId: Int?
}
struct Subscription {
let id: Int
}
We're modeling user and subscription ids using the same type, but our app logic shouldn't treat these values interchangeably! We might write a function to fetch a subscription:
func fetchSubscription(byId id: Int) -> Subscription? {
return subscriptions.first(where: { $0.id == id })
}
Code like this is super common, but it allows for serious runtime bugs and security issues! The following compiles, runs, and even reads reasonably at a glance:
let subscription = fetchSubscription(byId: user.id)
This code will fail to find a user's subscription. Worse yet, if a user id and subscription id overlap, it will display the wrong subscription to the wrong user! It may even surface sensitive data like billing details!
We can use Tagged to succinctly differentiate types.
import Tagged
struct User {
let id: Id
let email: String
let address: String
let subscriptionId: Subscription.Id?
typealias Id = Tagged<User, Int>
}
struct Subscription {
let id: Id
typealias Id = Tagged<Subscription, Int>
}
Tagged depends on a generic "tag" parameter to make each type unique. Here we've used the container type to uniquely tag each id.
We can now update fetchSubscription
to take a Subscription.Id
where it previously took any Int
.
func fetchSubscription(byId id: Subscription.Id) -> Subscription? {
return subscriptions.first(where: { $0.id == id })
}
And there's no chance we'll accidentally pass a user id where we expect a subscription id.
let subscription = fetchSubscription(byId: user.id)
π Cannot convert value of type 'User.Id' (aka 'Tagged<User, Int>') to expected argument type 'Subscription.Id' (aka 'Tagged<Subscription, Int>')
We've prevented a couple serious bugs at compile time!
There's another bug lurking in these types. We've written a function with the following signature:
sendWelcomeEmail(toAddress address: String)
It contains logic that sends an email to an email address. Unfortunately, it takes any string as input.
sendWelcomeEmail(toAddress: user.address)
This compiles and runs, but user.address
refers to our user's billing address, not their email! None of our users are getting welcome emails! Worse yet, calling this function with invalid data may cause server churn and crashes.
Tagged again can save the day.
struct User {
let id: Id
let email: Email
let address: String
let subscriptionId: Subscription.Id?
typealias Id = Tagged<User, Int>
typealias Email = Tagged<User, String>
}
We can now update sendWelcomeEmail
and have another compile time guarantee.
sendWelcomeEmail(toAddress address: Email)
sendWelcomeEmail(toAddress: user.address)
π Cannot convert value of type 'String' to expected argument type 'Email' (aka 'Tagged<EmailTag, String>')
What if we want to tag two string values within the same type?
struct User {
let id: Id
let email: Email
let address: Address
let subscriptionId: Subscription.Id?
typealias Id = Tagged<User, Int>
typealias Email = Tagged<User, String>
typealias Address = Tagged</* What goes here? */, String>
}
We shouldn't reuse Tagged<User, String>
because the compiler would treat Email
and Address
as the same type! We need a new tag, which means we need a new type. We can use any type, but an uninhabited enum is nestable and uninstantiable, which is perfect here.
struct User {
let id: Id
let email: Email
let address: Address
let subscriptionId: Subscription.Id?
typealias Id = Tagged<User, Int>
enum EmailTag {}
typealias Email = Tagged<EmailTag, String>
enum AddressTag {}
typealias Address = Tagged<AddressTag, String>
}
We've now distinguished User.Email
and User.Address
at the cost of an extra line per type, but things are documented very explicitly.
If we want to save this extra line, we could instead take advantage of the fact that tuple labels are encoded in the type system and can be used to differentiate two seemingly equivalent tuple types.
struct User {
let id: Id
let email: Email
let address: Address
let subscriptionId: Subscription.Id?
typealias Id = Tagged<User, Int>
typealias Email = Tagged<(User, email: ()), String>
typealias Address = Tagged<(User, address: ()), String>
}
This may look a bit strange with the dangling ()
, but it's otherwise nice and succinct, and the type safety we get is more than worth it.
Tagged uses the same interface as RawRepresentable
to expose its raw values, via a rawValue
property:
user.id.rawValue // Int
You can also manually instantiate tagged types using init(rawValue:)
, though you can often avoid this using the Decodable
and ExpressibleBy
-Literal
family of protocols.
Tagged uses conditional conformance, so you don't have to sacrifice expressiveness for safety. If the raw values are encodable or decodable, equatable, hashable, comparable, or expressible by literals, the tagged values follow suit. This means we can often avoid unnecessary (and potentially dangerous) wrapping and unwrapping.
A tagged type is automatically equatable if its raw value is equatable. We took advantage of this in our example, above.
subscriptions.first(where: { $0.id == user.subscriptionId })
We can use underlying hashability to create a set or lookup dictionary.
var userIds: Set<User.Id> = []
var users: [User.Id: User] = [:]
We can sort directly on a comparable tagged type.
userIds.sorted(by: <)
users.values.sorted(by: { $0.email < $1.email })
Tagged types are as encodable and decodable as the types they wrap.
struct User: Decodable {
let id: Id
let email: Email
let address: Address
let subscriptionId: Subscription.Id?
typealias Id = Tagged<User, Int>
typealias Email = Tagged<(User, email: ()), String>
typealias Address = Tagged<(User, address: ()), String>
}
JSONDecoder().decode(User.self, from: Data("""
{
"id": 1,
"email": "[email protected]",
"address": "1 Blob Ln",
"subscriptionId": null
}
""".utf8))
Tagged types inherit literal expressibility. This is helpful for working with constants, like instantiating test data.
User(
id: 1,
email: "[email protected]",
address: "1 Blob Ln",
subscriptionId: 1
)
// vs.
User(
id: User.Id(rawValue: 1),
email: User.Email(rawValue: "[email protected]"),
address: User.Address(rawValue: "1 Blob Ln"),
subscriptionId: Subscription.Id(rawValue: 1)
)
Numeric tagged types get mathematical operations for free!
struct Product {
let amount: Cents
typealias Cents = Tagged<Product, Int>
}
let totalCents = products.reduce(0) { $0 + $1.amount }
The Tagged
library also comes with a few nanolibraries for handling common types in a type safe way.
The API's we interact with often return timestamps in seconds or milliseconds measured from an epoch time. Keeping track of the units can be messy, either being done via documentation or by naming fields in a particular way, e.g. publishedAtMs
. Mixing up the units on accident can lead to wildly inaccurate logic.
By importing TaggedTime
you will get access to two generic types, Milliseconds<A>
and Seconds<A>
, that allow the compiler to sort out the differences for you. You can use them in your models:
struct BlogPost: Decodable {
typealias Id = Tagged<BlogPost, Int>
let id: Id
let publishedAt: Seconds<Int>
let title: String
}
Now you have documentation of the unit in the type automatically, and you can never accidentally compare seconds to milliseconds:
let futureTime: Milliseconds<Int> = 1528378451000
breakingBlogPost.publishedAt < futureTime
// π Binary operator '<' cannot be applied to operands of type
// 'Tagged<SecondsTag, Double>' and 'Tagged<MillisecondsTag, Double>'
breakingBlogPost.publishedAt.milliseconds < futureTime
// β
true
Read more on our blog post: Tagged Seconds and Milliseconds.
API's can also send back money amounts in two standard units: whole dollar amounts or cents (1/100 of a dollar). Keeping track of this distinction can also be messy and error prone.
Importing the TaggedMoney
libary gives you access to two generic types, Dollars<A>
and Cents<A>
, that give you compile-time guarantees in keeping the two units separate.
struct Prize {
let amount: Dollars<Int>
let name: String
}
let moneyRaised: Cents<Int> = 50_000
theBigPrize.amount < moneyRaised
// π Binary operator '<' cannot be applied to operands of type
// 'Tagged<DollarsTag, Int>' and 'Tagged<CentsTag, Int>'
theBigPrize.amount.cents < moneyRaised
// β
true
It is important to note that these types do not encapsulate currency, but rather just the abstract notion of the whole and fractional unit of money. You will still need to track particular currencies, like USD, EUR, MXN, alongside these values.
-
Why not use a type alias?
Type aliases are just that: aliases. A type alias can be used interchangeably with the original type and offers no additional safety or guarantees.
-
Why not use
RawRepresentable
, or some other protocol?Protocols like
RawRepresentable
are useful, but they can't be extended conditionally, so you miss out on all of Tagged's free features. Using a protocol means you need to manually opt each type into synthesizingEquatable
,Hashable
,Decodable
andEncodable
, and to achieve the same level of expressiveness as Tagged, you need to manually conform to other protocols, likeComparable
, theExpressibleBy
-Literal
family of protocols, andNumeric
. That's a lot of boilerplate you need to write or generate, but Tagged gives it to you for free!
You can add Tagged to an Xcode project by adding it as a package dependency.
If you want to use Tagged in a SwiftPM project, it's as simple as adding it to a dependencies
clause in your Package.swift
:
dependencies: [
.package(url: "https://github.com/pointfreeco/swift-tagged", from: "0.6.0")
]
These concepts (and more) are explored thoroughly in Point-Free, a video series exploring functional programming and Swift hosted by Brandon Williams and Stephen Celis.
Tagged was first explored in Episode #12:
All modules are released under the MIT license. See LICENSE for details.