Definition of Transformer.Fallible and Mode

object Transformer {
  trait Fallible[F[+x], Source, Dest] {
    def transform(value: Source): F[Dest]
  }
}

So a Fallible transformer takes a Source and gives back a Dest wrapped in an F where F is the wrapper type for our transformations eg. if F[+x] = Either[List[String], x] then the transform method will return an Either[List[String], Dest].

sealed trait Mode[F[+x]] {
  def pure[A](value: A): F[A]

  def map[A, B](fa: F[A], f: A => B): F[B]

  def traverseCollection[A, B, AColl <: Iterable[A], BColl <: Iterable[B]](
    collection: AColl,
    transformation: A => F[B]
  )(using factory: Factory[B, BColl]): F[BColl]
}

Moving on to Mode, what exactly is it and why do we need it? So a Mode[F] is typeclass that gives us two bits of information:

• a hint for the derivation mechanism which transformation mode to use (hence the name!)
• some operations on the abstract F wrapper type, namely:

• pure is for wrapping arbitrary values into F, eg. if F[+x] = Either[List[String], x] then calling pure would involve just wrapping the value in a Right.apply call.

• map is for operating on the wrapped values, eg. if we find ourselves with a F[Int] in hand and we want to transform the value 'inside' to a String we can call .map(_.toString) to yield a F[String]

• traverseCollection is for the cases where we end up with a collection of wrapped values (eg. a List[F[String]]) and we want to transform that into a F[List[String]] according to the rules of the F type wrapper and not blow up the stack in the process

As mentioned earlier, Modes come in two flavors - one for error accumulating transformations (Mode.Accumulating[F]) and one for fail fast transformations (Mode.FailFast[F]):

object Mode {
  trait Accumulating[F[+x]] extends Mode[F] {
    def product[A, B](fa: F[A], fb: F[B]): F[(A, B)]
  }

  trait FailFast[F[+x]] extends Mode[F] {
    def flatMap[A, B](fa: F[A], f: A => F[B]): F[B]
  }
}

Each one of these exposes one operation that dictates its approach to errors, flatMap entails a dependency between fallible transformations so if we chain multiple flatMaps together our transformation will stop at the very first error - contrary to this, Mode.Accumulating exposes a product operation that given two independent transformations wrapped in an F gives us back a tuple wrapped in an F. What that really means is that each transformation is independent from one another so we're able to accumulate all of the errors produced by these.

For accumulating transformations ducktape provides instances for Either with any subtype of Iterable on the left side, so that eg. Mode.Accumulating[[A] =>> Either[List[String], A]] is available out of the box (under the subclass of Mode.Accumulating.Either[String, List]).

For fail fast transformations, instances for Option (Mode.FailFast.Option) and Either (Mode.FailFast.Either) are avaiable out of the box.