Introduction to Monads in Javascript (Video)

The idea : When we use map on a function f: a→ b we transform the value A inside the functor T(A) (using the container metaphor ) to a new type T(b) — Sometimes we may happen that type b is itself a T(a) so the function that we want to map is something like that f: a→T(a) In those situations we end up with something like T(T(a)) a Box in a Box situation (a Functor in a Functor) if T is a Monad it has a method Join that allows us to go back to the initial state T(a) or “unwrap” one layer.

For example, for the Identity Functor

const Id = (v) => ({
  value: v,
  map: (f) => Id(f(v))
});

if we use a function inside the map that returns an Id

Id(5).map(x=>Id(x+1))

Then we end up with this Id(Id(6)) how would you get out of this ? well if we drop the Id on the map map: (f) => Id (f(v)) would be fine. As you can see at the next figure, now after applying the function f at step 2 we just return the result immediately

So just for those times when we want to map to a functor we use another method instead of map called bind bind:(f) =>f(v),

Id(5).bind(x=>Id(x+1))  == Id(6)

The same reasoning goes for all functors, for example for the Array functor we can get the array-in-array situation easily:

[5,6].map(x=>[x+1]) === [[5], [6]]

The native array has a bind operation that is called flatMap [which actually is another usual name the Object-oriented Programming community likes to call the monadic bind]. So we should have used flatMap in the above example in order to get the correct array

[5, 6].flatMap(x => [x + 1]) === [5, 6]

This might seem confusing, but the bind is a combination of two functors in one.

We are going to see some of the Monads. The most important are the Maybe,Either,and Promise :

1. Maybe (aka Option) Monad in JavaScript
2. Either Monad — A functional approach to Error handling in JS

….

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Introduction to Monads in Javascript (Video)