DDevelopment & Design

Easy Hoogle usage from bash

What is hoogle?

Hoogle is Google for searching of Haskell functions. You could ask it for function name or its signature. There is available command hoogle, which could be installed using stack:
$ stack install hoogle

Using hoogle from command line {#using-hoogle-from-command-line} To

hoogle a function you could just pass it as parameter:
$ hoogle fmap
Prelude fmap :: Functor f => (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
Data.Functor fmap :: Functor f => (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
Control.Monad fmap :: Functor f => (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
Control.Monad.Instances fmap :: Functor f => (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
Data.Traversable fmapDefault :: Traversable t => (a -> b) -> t a -> t b
Network.Stream fmapE :: (a -> Result b) -> IO (Result a) -> IO (Result b) or pass its signature:

$ hoogle "(a -> b -> c) -> [a] -> [b] -> [c]"
Prelude zipWith :: (a -> b -> c) -> [a] -> [b] -> [c]
Data.List zipWith :: (a -> b -> c) -> [a] -> [b] -> [c]
Control.Applicative liftA2 :: Applicative f => (a -> b -> c) -> f a -> f b -> f c
Control.Monad liftM2 :: Monad m => (a1 -> a2 -> r) -> m a1 -> m a2 -> m r
Prelude scanl :: (a -> b -> a) -> a -> [b] -> [a]
Data.List scanl :: (a -> b -> a) -> a -> [b] -> [a]
Prelude scanr :: (a -> b -> b) -> b -> [a] -> [b]
Data.List scanr :: (a -> b -> b) -> b -> [a] -> [b]
Data.List deleteFirstsBy :: (a -> a -> Bool) -> [a] -> [a] -> [a]
Data.List intersectBy :: (a -> a -> Bool) -> [a] -> [a] -> [a]
... But it shows only list of the signatures of the functions. Sometimes we want to see more information about function. If you use option

-i, then additional information will be shown:
$ hoogle -i “(a -> b -> c) -> [a] -> [b] -> [c]”
Prelude zipWith :: (a -> b -> c) -> [a] -> [b] -> [c] 

zipWith generalises zip by zipping with the function given as the first argument, instead of a tupling function. For example, zipWith (+) is applied to two lists to produce the list of corresponding sums.

From package base
zipWith :: (a -> b -> c) -> [a] -> [b] -> [c] And again it is not enough, because it shows only documentation of first function from the list. We have to move a counter to see documentation of further functions, e. g. to show information about third item from the list: 

$ hoogle -i -s 3 "(a -> b -> c) -> [a] -> [b] -> [c]"
Control.Applicative liftA2 :: Applicative f => (a -> b -> c) -> f a -> f b -> f c

Lift a binary function to actions.

From package base
liftA2 :: Applicative f => (a -> b -> c) -> f a -> f b -> f c

Easier hoogle usage in bash {#easier-hoogle-usage-in-bash} It is cumbersome to count each time you want to read info about further functions, so I have prepared bash function which makes it easier. To search for function type:

$ hoog "(a->b) -> f a -> f b"
1) Data.Traversable fmapDefault :: Traversable t => (a -> b) -> t a -> t b
2) Prelude fmap :: Functor f => (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
3) Data.Functor fmap :: Functor f => (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
4) Control.Monad fmap :: Functor f => (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
5) Control.Monad.Instances fmap :: Functor f => (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
6) Data.Functor (<$>) :: Functor f => (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
7) Control.Applicative (<$>) :: Functor f => (a -> b) -> f a -> f b Each function will have its counter at the beginning and just add its number at the end of command to show more information about specific function: 

$ hoog "(a->b) -> f a -> f b" 6
Searching for: (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
Data.Functor (<$>) :: Functor f => (a -> b) -> f a -> f b

An infix synonym for fmap.

From package base
(<$>) :: Functor f => (a -> b) -> f a -> f b

How to install hoog command? {#how-to-install-hoog-command} Command is available

here. To use this command just add it to your ~/bashrc file.

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DDevelopment & Design

Log4j and MDC in Grails

Log4j provides very useful feature: MDC - mapped diagnostic context. It can be used to store data in context of current thread. It may sound scary a bit but idea is simple.

My post is based on post http://burtbeckwith.com/blog/?p=521 from Burt Beckwith's excellent blog, it's definitely worth checking if you are interested in Grails.

Short background story...


Suppose we want to do logging our brand new shopping system and we want to have in each log customer's shopping basket number. And our system can be used at once by many users who can perform many transactions, actions like adding items and so on. How can we achieve that? Of course we can add basket number in every place where we do some logging but this task would be boring and error-prone. 

Instead of this we can use MDC to store variable with basket number in map. 

In fact MDC can be treated as map of custom values for current thread that can be used by logger. 


How to do that with Grails?


Using MDC with Grails is quite simple. All we need to do is to create our own custom filter which works for given urls and puts our data in MDC.

Filters in Grails are classes in directory grails-app/conf/* which names end with *Filters.groovy postfix. We can create this class manually or use Grails command: 
grails create-filters info.rnowak.App.Basket

In result class named BasketFilters will be created in grails-app/conf/info/rnowak/UberApp.

Initially filter class looks a little bit empty:
class BasketFilters {
    def filters = {
        all(controller:'*', action:'*') {
            before = {

            }
            after = { Map model ->

            }
            afterView = { Exception e ->

            }
        }
    }
}
All we need to do is fill empty closures, modify filter properties and put some data into MDC.

all is the general name of our filter, as class BasketFilters (plural!) can contain many various filters. You can name it whatever you want, for this post let assume it will be named basketFilter. 

Another thing is change of filter parameters. According to official documentation (link) we can customize our filter in many ways. You can specify controller to be filtered, its actions, filtered urls and so on. In our example you can stay with default option where filter is applied to every action of every controller. If you are interested in filtering only some urls, use uri parameter with expression describing desired urls to be filtered.

Three closures that are already defined in template have their function and they are started in these conditions:

  • before - as name says, it is executed before filtered action takes place
  • after - similarly, it is called after the action
  • afterView - called after rendering of the actions view
Ok, so now we know what are these mysterious methods and when they are called. But what can be done within them? In official Grails docs (link again) under section 7.6.3 there is a list of properties that are available to use in filter.

With that knowledge, we can proceed to implementing filter.

Putting something into MDC in filter


What we want to do is quite easy: we want to retrieve basket number from parameters and put it into MDC in our filter:
class BasketFilters {
    def filters = {
        basketFilter(controller:'*', action:'*') {
            before = {
                MDC.put("basketNumber", params.basketNumber ?: "")
            }
            after = { Map model ->
                MDC.remove("basketNumber")
            }
        }
    }
}

We retrieve basket number from Grails params map and then we put in map under specified key ("basketNumber" in this case), which will be later used in logger conversion pattern. It is important to remove custom value after processing of action to avoid leaks.

So we are putting something into MDC. But how make use of it in logs?


We can refer to custom data in MDC in conversion patter using syntax: %X{key}, where key is our key we used in filter to put data, like:
def conversionPattern = "%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss} %-5p %t [%c{1}] %X{basketNumber} - %m%n"


And that's it :) We've put custom data in log4j MDC and successfully used it in logs to display interesting values.