Haskell use cases for ChangeMetrics

This post was initially published on the Software Factory blog: https://www.softwarefactory-project.io/practical-haskell-use-cases.html

This post presents a few practical projects in which we used Haskell succesfully.

After using Python type annotations, and then the OCaml type system, a colleague and I started to use Haskell to better define our program. We are satisfied with the initial results, and it is my pleasure to share our use cases.

§ Lentille: a bugzilla task data crawler

Our goal was to perform Bugzilla API data processing. The challenge was to query a HTTP API and adapt the responses for our needs.

Fortunately, a client library for bugzilla-redhat already existed. It features a convenient Search module to define search expressions. This allowed us to define our query using type safe operators with this expression:

searchExpr :: UTCTime -> Text -> SearchExpression
searchExpr sinceTS product = since .&&. linkId .&&. productField
  where
    linkId = BZS.isNotEmpty (BZS.CustomField "ext_bz_bug_map.ext_bz_bug_id")
    productField = BZS.ProductField .==. product
    since = BZS.changedSince sinceTS

Then we used the streaming library to isolate the queries from the processing. This provided an abstraction to handle the results in bulk (independently from the pagination logic). Here is the fetching function, using retry to handle network interruptions:

getBZData :: MonadIO m => BugzillaSession -> Text -> UTCTime -> Stream (Of TaskData) m ()
getBZData bzSession product since = go 0
  where
    limit = 100

    doGet :: MonadIO m => Int -> m [Bug]
    doGet offset = liftIO (getBugs bzSession sinceTS product limit offset)

    go offset = do
      -- Retrieve rhbz
      bugs <- lift $ do
        log (LogGetBugs sinceTS offset limit)
        retry (doGet offset)

      -- Create a flat stream of task data
      S.each (concatMap toTaskData bugs)

      -- Keep on retrieving the rest
      unless (length bugs < limit) (go (offset + length bugs))

And here is the stream processing function:

-- Group by chunk of 500
process :: MonadIO m => ([TaskData] -> m AddResponse) -> Stream (Of TaskData) m () -> m ()
process postFunc =
  S.print
    . S.mapM (processBatch postFunc)
    . S.mapped S.toList  -- Convert to list (type is Stream (Of [TaskData]) m ())
    . S.chunksOf 500     -- Chop the stream (type is Stream (Stream (Of TaskData) m) m ())

The client library missed a few features that we were able to implement locally. It was easy to integrate the work in progress changes using a cabal.project file to override the location of a build dependency. For example, we added support for apikey.

§ Monocle HTTP API based on Protobuf

Satisfied with the result of Lentille, we wanted to leverage this strongly typed approach for the API. The goal was to ensure the backend, the workers, and the frontend would use a common and well defined API. Check out this Architecture Decision Record for more info.

For consistency with the existing code, we used the Protobuf JSON encoding over HTTP. This allowed us to write a simple code generator for javascript axios client and python flask endpoint using the language-protobuf library. However we had issues with inconsistent JSON encoding. For example, this protobuf message:

message AddResponse {
  oneof result {
    TaskDataCommitSuccess success = 1;
    TaskDataCommitError error = 2;
  }
}

… has two encodings: the python implementation produces {"result": {"success": "ok"}} while the ocaml implementation expects {"success": "ok"}. Fortunately, the Haskell implementation proto3-suite correctly handles both formats.

Another issue that came up was about the Timestamp message from the Google protobuf well known type library. The official protoc-compiler transparently encodes this message as a rfc3339 string. We had to create a custom timestamp decoder.

§ Monocle Search Query

Our goal was to improve the query interface by replacing a filters form with a query language. The challenge was to support text based query such as (repo:openstack/nova or repo:openstack/ironic) and score>200. Check out the language architecture decision record for more info.

Inspired by the work of Gabriel Gonzalez on interpreters, we used megaparsec to implement the language:

lexer :: Text           -> Either ParseError [LocatedToken]
parse :: [LocatedToken] -> Either ParseError Expr
compile :: Expr         -> Either ParseError Query

The query text was compiled to an Elastic search query with the bloodhound library and they are served through a servant API. Using Servant required enabling complex extensions. Fortunately, the tutorial explained everything we needed to know. Here is the new search API defined as a Haskell type:

type MonocleAPI =
       "search_fields" :> ReqBody '[PBJSON] FieldsRequest :> Post '[PBJSON] FieldsResponse
  :<|> "changes" :> ReqBody '[PBJSON] ChangesQueryRequest :> Post '[PBJSON] ChangesQueryResponse

§ Lentille GraphQL client for GitHub and GitLab

Our goal was to perform data processing of GraphQL APIs. The challenge was to integrate complex queries defined using an extra language.

We used the morpheus-graphql library to compile our GraphQL requests into Haskell functions.

We were able to re-use the streaming api we previously wrote. Here is the fetching function that handles pagination cursor:

streamFetch ::
  (MonadIO m, Fetch a, FromJSON a) =>
  GitHubGraphClient ->
  -- | query Args constructor, the function takes a cursor
  (Text -> Args a) ->
  -- | query result adapter
  (a -> (PageInfo, RateLimit, [Text], [b])) ->
  Stream (Of b) m ()
streamFetch client mkArgs transformResponse = go Nothing
  where
    go pageInfoM = do
      respE <-
        fetch
          (runGithubGraphRequest client)
          (mkArgs (fromMaybe (error "Missing endCursor") (maybe (Just "") endCursor pageInfoM)))
      let (pageInfo, rateLimit, decodingErrors, xs) = case respE of
            Left err -> error (toText err)
            Right resp -> transformResponse resp

      -- TODO: report decoding error
      unless (null decodingErrors) (error ("Decoding failed: " <> show decodingErrors))
      logStatus pageInfo rateLimit

      -- Create a stream of 'b'
      S.each xs

      -- Keep on retrieving the rest, TODO: implement throttle
      when (hasNextPage pageInfo) (go (Just pageInfo))

Similar to Servant, using Morpheus GraphQL adds strong guarantees to our code. This comes at the cost of tediously handling complex data types. Fortunately, Haskell features pattern synonyms, which make the pattern matching on deeply nested structure a bit more manageable. Here is an example pattern to match the labels of a GitHub issue:

pattern IssueLabels nodesLabel
  <- SearchNodesIssue _ _ _ _ (Just (SearchNodesLabelsLabelConnection (Just nodesLabel))) _

§ Conclusion

Haskell is designed to enable efficient programing. There is a wealth of libraries with which to compose, and thanks to the Haddock documentation system, we were able to integrate many of them.

The type system makes code refactoring and code review really easy. It lets us focus on the core logic without having to worry about entire classes of bugs. In particular, Haskell helps us break monolith programs into well defined and re-usable functions. Being able to move the code fearlessly is incredibly powerfull.

Moreover, the Haskell community is constantly producing interesting work. It is fascinating to see such progress in the development of a language.

However, the learning curve is rather steep. We spent a lot of time fighting with errors produced by the type checker. While the editor support really helped, getting the code to compile was a challenge.

Haskell compiler is currently very slow, and we had to do extra work to keep the continuous integration build time reasonable. A clean build of all our dependencies took 30 minutes, and we had to create a cumbersome layered container to keep the build time under 5 minutes.

The Haskell syntax creates undesirable frictions for new contributors because it initially looks strange. After getting over the bump, the language makes a lot of sense and it is not difficult to learn.

In the end, we are happy with the results, and the benefits of using Haskell quickly outweight the cost.

Thanks for your time!