Bank kata in Haskell - using and testing date

    Liam Griffin-Jowett

    Liam Griffin-Jowett

    See author's bio and posts

    Bank kata in haskell - using and testing date

    Recap

    Last post we looked at printing whilst holding state. Here's the code we ended up with:

    -- our Transaction type
    data Transaction = Deposit Int | Withdrawal Int
    
    -- our bank functions
    deposit :: Monad m => Int -> StateT [Transaction] m ()
    deposit amount = modify $ \transactions -> transactions ++ [Deposit amount]
    
    withdraw :: Monad m => Int -> StateT [Transaction] m ()
    withdraw amount = modify $ \transactions -> transactions ++ [Withdrawal amount]
    
    printStatement :: (Monad m, MonadStatementPrinter m) => StateT [Transaction] m ()
    printStatement = do
      transactions <- get
      let statement = toStatement transactions
      lift $ printSt statement
    
    -- in our test file
    it "deposits money" $ do
      runIdentity (execStateT (deposit 100) newBank) `shouldBe` [Deposit 100]
    
    it "withdraws money" $ do
      runIdentity (execStateT (withdraw 100) newBank) `shouldBe` [Withdrawal 100]
    
    it "prints a statement" $ do
      execWriter (evalStateT printStatement [Deposit 100]) `shouldBe` "Desposited 100 | Balance 100\n"
    

    Our final task to complete the kata is to add a date to the transactions. We will implement this in small logical steps, using the compiler and the tests to drive our design. Let's begin!

    Change Transaction to contain a date

    import Data.Time
    
    data Transaction = Deposit Int UTCTime | Withdrawal Int UTCTime
    

    This will cause a compile time error - deposit and withdraw are not creating a valid Transaction type anymore, as well as our test functions. We will add a fixed date to these so we can compile.

    firstOfJan2019 = UTCTime (fromGregorian 2019 01 01) (secondsToDiffTime 0)
    
    -- ...
    deposit amount = modify $ \transactions -> transactions ++ [Deposit amount firstOfJan2019]
    
    -- same for `withdraw`, and in test functions
    

    Now we have modified our type to be the shape we want, we can think about how to get the current date into the transaction, again without sacrificing testability. We will continue to follow the monad transformers style by adding a type constraint to our m.

    Introduce the MonadCurrentDateTime type constraint

    class MonadCurrentDateTime m where
      currentDateTime :: m UTCTime
    

    Now we want to use this type as a constraint in our deposit and withdraw methods to ensure we can use it.

    deposit :: (Monad m, MonadCurrentDateTime m) => Int -> StateT [Transaction] m ()
    
    withdraw :: (Monad m, MonadCurrentDateTime m) => Int -> StateT [Transaction] m ()
    

    The compiler tells us what to do next.

    Main.hs:15:3: error:
      • No instance for (MonadCurrentDateTime IO)
          arising from a use of ‘deposit’
    
    ...
    
    BankSpec.hs:31:32: error:
      • No instance for (MonadCurrentDateTime Identity)
          arising from a use of ‘deposit’
    

    As the compiler says, our usage of deposit is invalid because IO is not an instance of MonadCurrentDateTime, and so can't give us a currentDateTime function to use. A similar scenario is happening in our test file. Let's fix both.

    instance MonadCurrentDateTime IO where
      currentDateTime = getCurrentTime -- this comes from Data.Time
    
    -- in our test file
    instance MonadCurrentDateTime Identity where
      currentDateTime = pure firstOfJan2019
    

    Now we're compiling, and our tests our passing because we hardcoded the date in our Bank code. Now let's use the 'real' date (as far as our functions are concerned).

    Use the MonadCurrentDateTime typeclass

    deposit amount = do
      now <- lift currentDateTime
      modify $ \transactions -> transactions ++ [Deposit amount now]
    

    It's as simple as that :). We are now using the date returned in our Identity instance of MonadCurrentDateTime. You can now do the work to add the date into the statement output, which I'll leave out of the scope of this post.

    Let's write one last test as an acceptance test that proves everything is working together.

    Testing it all together

    -- we'll need an instance of `Writer String` for `MonadCurrentDateTime` for our test
    instance MonadCurrentDateTime (Writer String) where
      currentDateTime = pure firstOfJan2019
    
    testMyBank :: StateT [Transaction] (Writer String) ()
    testMyBank = do
      deposit 200
      withdraw 100
      deposit 3000
      printStatement
    
    -- output changed to match what the statement should look like
    it "can deposit, withdraw and print a statement" $ do
      execWriter (evalStateT testMyBank []) `shouldBe` "\ \date || credit || debit || balance\n\ \01/01/2019 || 200.00 || || 200.00\n\ \01/01/2019 || || 100.00 || 100.00\n\ \01/01/2019 || 3000.00 || || 3100.00\n"
    

    And we are done!

    Notice how we didn't need to change the usage of our functions in Main.hs, the API stayed the same, we merely added some more functionality.


    This post was cross-posted to my personal blog.