Bidirectional Data Transformations with Functional Optics - Marcus Crestani | Lambda Days 2024

CodeSync · December 28, 2024, 2:00pm

This talk was recorded at Lambda Days in May 2024. If you’re curious about our upcoming event, check https://lambdadays.org

Data structures build the basis of software. Different components have different demands on how to structure data and use different data structures. Transmitting data over a network requires a format that is more suitable to be serialized. Persisting data requires a format that is more suitable to be stored. Thus, programmers need to transform data and convert between several data structures and formats all the time. Converting data is a lot of work and programmers need to implement the logic twice, once for each direction. This is redundant, annoying, tedious, and error-prone. We show how using bidirectional data transformations that use functional optics like lenses and projections as abstractions simplify the conversions. These ideas and techniques make converting data easy and clear and foster understanding of your data by explicitly describing how the data is connected in a composable manner.

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