Question

I have two functions which return Futures. I’m trying to feed a modified result from first function into the other using a for-yield comprehension.

This approach works:

  val schoolFuture = for {
    ud <- userStore.getUserDetails(user.userId)
    sid = ud.right.toOption.flatMap(_.schoolId)
    s <- schoolStore.getSchool(sid.get) if sid.isDefined
  } yield s

However I’m not happy with having the “if” in there, it seems that I should be able to use a map instead.

But when I try with a map:

  val schoolFuture: Future[Option[School]] = for {
    ud <- userStore.getUserDetails(user.userId)
    sid = ud.right.toOption.flatMap(_.schoolId)
    s <- sid.map(schoolStore.getSchool(_))
  } yield s

I get a compile error:

[error]  found   : Option[scala.concurrent.Future[Option[School]]]
[error]  required: scala.concurrent.Future[Option[School]]
[error]         s <- sid.map(schoolStore.getSchool(_))

I’ve played around with a few variations, but haven’t found anything attractive that works. Can anyone suggest a nicer comprehension and/or explain what’s wrong with my 2nd example?

Here is a minimal but complete runnable example with Scala 2.10:

import concurrent.{Future, Promise}

case class User(userId: Int)
case class UserDetails(userId: Int, schoolId: Option[Int])
case class School(schoolId: Int, name: String)

trait Error

class UserStore {
  def getUserDetails(userId: Int): Future[Either[Error, UserDetails]] = Promise.successful(Right(UserDetails(1, Some(1)))).future
}

class SchoolStore {
  def getSchool(schoolId: Int): Future[Option[School]] = Promise.successful(Option(School(1, "Big School"))).future
}

object Demo {
  import concurrent.ExecutionContext.Implicits.global

  val userStore = new UserStore
  val schoolStore = new SchoolStore

  val user = User(1)

  val schoolFuture: Future[Option[School]] = for {
    ud <- userStore.getUserDetails(user.userId)
    sid = ud.right.toOption.flatMap(_.schoolId)
    s <- sid.map(schoolStore.getSchool(_))
  } yield s
}

Answer 1

This answer to a similar question about Promise[Option[A]] might help. Just substitute Future for Promise.

I’m inferring the following types for getUserDetails and getSchool from your question:

getUserDetails: UserID => Future[Either[??, UserDetails]]
getSchool: SchoolID => Future[Option[School]]

Since you ignore the failure value from the Either, transforming it to an Option instead, you effectively have two values of type A => Future[Option[B]].

Once you’ve got a Monad instance for Future (there may be one in scalaz, or you could write your own as in the answer I linked), applying the OptionT transformer to your problem would look something like this:

for {
  ud  <- optionT(getUserDetails(user.userID) map (_.right.toOption))
  sid <- optionT(Future.successful(ud.schoolID))
  s   <- optionT(getSchool(sid))
} yield s

Note that, to keep the types compatible, ud.schoolID is wrapped in an (already completed) Future.

The result of this for-comprehension would have type OptionT[Future, SchoolID]. You can extract a value of type Future[Option[SchoolID]] with the transformer’s run method.