Name: Sequencing Data With Lists in Elm
Uploaded: 2016-11-02T09:29:24-05:00
Description: Lists are used in Elm to represent sequences of data. The List library comes with a toolbox of useful functions. Here we cover list transformation (map), and getting single values from lists (fold).

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Sequencing Data With Lists in Elm

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Lists are used in Elm to represent sequences of data. The List library comes with a toolbox of useful functions. Here we cover list transformation (map), and getting single values from lists (fold).


https://app.egghead.io/api/v1/lessons/elm-sequencing-data-with-lists-in-elm/subtitles

[00:00] let's make a list of strings by typing "fu," and then a square bracket to open a list, and then one, two, and three. Now, let's print out this list to string fu. We've printed out a list of strings in the browser.

[00:17] Now, let's try changing one of these strings to an integer and see what happens. Looks like we got a compiler error. That's because in Elm, you can't have a list of mixed types. They all have to be the same type. You could a list of integers or a list of strings, but you can't have a list of integers and strings.

[00:34] Let's scrap this whole thing and, for exemplary purposes, let's define a new type, type alias person equal, and then, I'm going to use a curly brace to open, because that's the way we open a type alias.

[00:45] Then, I'll type name to define a field with a colon and then string as the type of the field and then a comma to separate the fields and age with the type of the field being int.

[00:55] Now, let's make a list of persons or a list of people which we can do by typing people equal, and then once again, open square brace for the beginning of the list, and then, open bracket to define a new record. Here, we'll type name, and then, the equals sign instead of the colon, because we're not defining a type here.

[01:13] We're actually defining a piece of data. Name equal Legalos, and then a comma to separate the fields and age equals 2,931. Now a comma, and then curly braces for another new record, name equal Gimly and age is 139.

[01:29] Now, we've got a list of people. Let's try printing it out and see what happens. Great, looks like it worked fantastically. What is we want to print a list of the people's names instead of all of the people's information?

[01:40] Let's make a function called names. We'll give it a type list person to list string. We're going to need a function that can go through the list and pick out one of the fields that's a string and return a list of that instead, names peeps, and then, I'm going to put an equals sign there.

[01:57] Now, I'm going to need something that's going to let me iterate over each item in the list and do something to it. The list library fortunately has some functions included that'll help me with that. I'm going to import list up at the top here, and then, back down at the bottom, I'll type list.map.

[02:11] Map is a function that takes each item in the list, let me apply some transformation to it, and then, it'll spit out a list again at the end when I'm all done.

[02:19] What it does is it first takes and anonymous function, which we're going to define by using parans, a back slash, and then the function argument, which is going to be peep and then an arrow to define the body of the function. Then we type out here peep.name. This should be a function that takes a person and gives us back the person's name.

[02:37] Now last thing we've got to do is pass in the list to list.map, which we can do that way. Let's see if it worked by replacing people with a call to names and then passing people into that. Yep, looks like it worked just fine.

[02:50] What if I come upon a situation where instead of giving back a list of names I want to take a list of people and return just one person from that list? Let's make a function that does that.

[03:00] Let's call it find person. It's going to take in a string for a name, and then, it's going to take in a list of person. It'll return a maybe person, because we don't know if the person's going to be in the list or not. Maybe is another library that's included in the core of Elm. This represents values that can either exist or not. You'd use this instead of using null like you would in JavaScript.

[03:20] Now, let's define the body of the function, find person, name peeps equal. We need a function that's going to take a list and return a single value from that list. There happens to be a function already called "list.fold L."

[03:34] There's also fold R. Each of these functions just take a list, and they iterate from either the left side or the right side. They let you build up a single value, ultimately returning just that value in the end.

[03:45] We're going to add our anonymous function here by putting in our paran and our back tick. The arguments to this function this time are going to be peep, the person we're iterating over, and memo. Memo is going to be a value that we start with when we begin iterating through the list.

[03:58] We can transform it and change it until we reach the end. At the end, whatever the value of memo is is going to be the return value of the entire call to the function. In this case, our memo is going to a maybe person.

[04:09] Inside of this anonymous function, let's check to see if the memo is already occupied by a value or not. We'll do this using a case statement and a feature of Elm called "pattern matching." Case memo of, and then right now, we can enter just, and then a low dash and an arrow, and then nothing, and then an arrow.

[04:28] What we've done here is we've said to Elm in this function we're going to branch here. We're going to say if the memo is occupied by a value that is just anything, we're going to use that low dash to represent any value.

[04:40] This, just low dash, is of the type maybe person. We're saying if the memo is adjust, go ahead and return the memo, because if we've already found the person, we don't want to try to find them again.

[04:51] But if we haven't found the person yet, if we get a nothing in, then, let's look for the person. Here, let's use an if expression, if peep.name is equal to name, then, we're going to return just peep.

[05:04] Otherwise, we're going to return nothing. Down here at the end of the parans, we're going to pass in the initial value of our memo, which is nothing, and then, we'll pass in the things we want to iterate over, which are peeps. Save the file, get some formatting in there.

[05:18] Now, let's try calling it. This time instead of calling names people, let's call find person and pass in the name, Legalos, and the we got to pass in the list of people. Reload it in the browser. It looks like we found Legalos. We got back this value, just Legalos with his age.

[05:34] What happens if we try to find someone who isn't in the list, Veramere? We get back nothing.

[05:39] What we've done here is we've defined a list of people, we made a function that can transform each item in the list into something else, in this case, extracting the name from a person, and we've also made a function that can go through a list of things and return one thing. In this case, we're trying to find a person in the list of people by name...

Sequencing Data With Lists in Elm

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