Shapeless

case class Foo(i: Int, s: String, b: Boolean)

val fooGen = Generic[Foo]

val foo = Foo(23, "foo", true)

We can convert back and forth case class to their HList Generic representation

val l = fooGen.to(foo)
l should be(res0)
val r = 13 :: l.tail
val newFoo = fooGen.from(r)
newFoo.i should be(res1)

Typically values of Generic for a given case class are materialized using an implicit macro, allowing a wide variety of structural programming problems to be solved with no or minimal boilerplate. In particular the existing lens, Scrap Your Boilerplate and generic zipper implementations are now available for any case class family (recursive families included, as illustrated below) without any additional boilerplate being required

import poly._

// Simple recursive case class family
sealed trait Tree[T]
case class Leaf[T](t: T) extends Tree[T]
case class Node[T](left: Tree[T], right: Tree[T]) extends Tree[T]

// Polymorphic function which adds 1 to any Int and is the identity
// on all other values
object inc extends ->((i: Int) => i + 1)

val tree: Tree[Int] =
  Node(
    Leaf(1),
    Node(
      Leaf(2),
      Leaf(3)))

// Transform tree by applying inc everywhere
everywhere(inc)(tree) should be(
  Node(
    Leaf(res0),
    Node(
      Leaf(res1),
      Leaf(res2))))

A natural extension of Generic's mapping of the content of data types onto a sum of products representation is to a mapping of the data type including its constructor and field names onto a labelled sum of products representation, ie. a representation in terms of the discriminated unions and records that we saw above. This is provided by LabelledGeneric. Currently it provides the underpinnings for the use of shapeless lenses with symbolic path selectors (see next section) and it is expected that it will support many scenarios which would otherwise require the support of hard to maintain special case macros.

case class Book(author: String, title: String, id: Int, price: Double)

import record._

val bookGen = LabelledGeneric[Book]
val tapl = Book("Benjamin Pierce", "Types and Programming Languages", 262162091, 44.11)
val rec = bookGen.to(tapl)

rec(Symbol("price")) should be(res0)

val updatedBook = bookGen.from(rec.updateWith(Symbol("price"))(_ + 2.0))

updatedBook.price should be(res1)

// case class ExtendedBook(author: String, title: String, id: Int, price: Double, inPrint: Boolean)

import syntax.singleton._

val bookExtGen = LabelledGeneric[ExtendedBook]

val extendedBook = bookExtGen.from(rec + (Symbol("inPrint") ->> true))

extendedBook.inPrint should be(res2)