Maybe (aka Option) Monad in JavaScript(video)

The problem of null or undefined is one of the biggest problems in computation theory. If we want to write meaningful programs, we must accept the fact that some computations might yield no result. The usual way object-oriented languages deal with this is by checking the types for not being undefined in order to use them. Any developer knows the number of bugs that have as source the problem of undefined.

Dealing with null — Null object Design pattern

The classical solution is using conditionals everywhere to check for null.

if (result) {   
 result.operation();  
}  else  {    //do  nothing   }

Run This: Js Fiddle

This reduces the cohesion of the codebase, because we must tightly couple to code relating to the cross-cutting concern of null checking.

The Null Object Design pattern

A more elegant solution to the problem of Null is the “Null Object” design pattern. The null object pattern is a special case of the strategy design pattern. Here instead of setting something as null we can set it as NullObject, were NullObject methods are empty or they don’t do nothing.

The fact that NullObject is designed in a way that if it is feed to the any method that waits for a RealObject type should not create any effect or throw any exceptions.

The Functional equivalent — Maybe as Functor

Now the Maybe functor idea takes this line of reasoning one step further, by abstracting the null Object mechanism inside a functor. Thus, instead of applying the objects on functions, we reverse the flow by applying the functions onto objects. Now, we can isolate the effect inside a single point; the “map.”

After all this discussion, hopefully, the implementation of maybe functor would be apparent

var some = (v) => ({
    map: (f) => some(f(v)), 
    matchWith: pattern => pattern.some(v),
});
var none = () => ({
    map: (f) => none(),
    matchWith: pattern => pattern.none(v),
});

we can use the class notation to write the same thing

class Maybe {
    map(f) {
      throw new Error('You have to implement the method map!');
    }
    matchWith(pattern) {
      throw new Error('You have to implement the method matchWith!');
    }
  }
  class Some extends Maybe {
    constructor(value) {
      super();
      this.value = value;
    }   
    map(f) {
      return new Some(f(this.value))
    }
    matchWith(pattern) {
      return pattern.some(this.value)
    }
  }
  class None extends Maybe {
    map(f) {
      return new None();
    }
    matchWith(pattern) {
      return pattern.none()
    }
  }

the Maybe.matchWith implementation for Maybe is used in order to get out the value out of the Maybe and it is called pattern matching. Essentially pattern matching is the functional equivalent to Polymorphism. We can use the maybe Functor like this :

Maybe Functor Example

Here we will have a Repository that searches in an array and returns the first matching client with a given Id or a null if there is no client with such id. Normally without using the Maybe we should write something like the following :

but using maybe as functor we can refactor this into the following :

var clientRepository = ({
    getById: (id) => 
    fetchClientsMock()
    .firstOrNone(c => c.id == id)
  });

  clientRepository.getById(1)
    .map(client => client.name)
    .matchWith({
      some: value => console.log(`the client name is ${value}`),
      none: () => console.log(`there is no client with that id `)
    })

in this case we extended the Array and added the firstOrNone method that hides the null checking and replacing it with a maybe

Array.prototype.firstOrNone = function (predicate) {
    var result = this.find(predicate);
    if (result)
      return some(result)
    else
      return none()
  }

Maybe as Monad

In order to make this maybe implementation into a Monad we have to provide a bind method that combines two Maybe monads into one.

const some = (v) => ({
  v: v,
  map: (f) => some(f(v)),
  bind: (f) => f(v),
});
const none = () => ({
  v: null,
  map: (f) => none(),
  bind: (f) => none(),
});

There are 4 different ways to combine the 2 possible states of maybe — (some,none)one can see that a valid implementation would be the following :

there are four possible combinations of 2 maybe’s

some(x).bind(none)  A
none( ).bind(some)  B
some(x).bind(some)  C
none( ).bind(none)  D

run this fiddle

to display in a realistic example how to use Maybe.bind we are going to extend the previous Functor example by adding an Employee repository and we are going to relate the Clients with some Employee by adding an EmployeeId to the client objects :

clientRepository
  .getById(2) 
  .bind(client=>employeesRepository.getById(client.employeeId))
  .map(client => client.name)
  .matchWith({
      some: value => console.log(`the client name is ${value}`),
      none: () => console.log(`no employee found`)
    })

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Maybe (aka Option) Monad in JavaScript