Maybe is a container, union type, type constructor. So, um, what does that mean? In Elm, null and undefined are not valid types, so what do we do when we might not have something? Let’s figure it out, and when it’s useful.

## Maybe Type

type Maybe a = Just a | Nothing

### Historical

• It’s just a union type, nothing scary, right? It’s gonna be Just with a value, or Nothing. Notice that I have typed these with capital letters. They are types, not values.
• The Maybe type encapsulates an optional value. A value of type Maybe a either contains a value of type a (represented as Just a), or it is empty (represented as Nothing). Using Maybe is a good way to deal with errors or exceptional cases without resorting to drastic measures such as error.
• The Maybe type is also a monad. It is a simple kind of error monad, where all errors are represented by Nothing. A richer error monad can be built using the Either type.
• What did you say? Mona-wanta-who-now?

### Practical

• How do I get something out of this thing to work with ?
• The maybe module to the rescue! Let’s look at a simple example
> fruit = ["apple", "banana", "mango"]
["apple","banana","mango"] : List String

# we know that the head of a a list will return Maybe String

Just "apple" : Maybe.Maybe String

# ok so listHead gives us back 'Just "apple"'
# Which is of type Maybe.Maybe String
# So what if we want the actual tangable value.
# We can't very well put Just Apple to the DOM!

"apple" : String

# Here we're able leverage the Maybe module with
# Maybe.withDefault which will 'unwrap' the
# maybe and if it's a type Nothing, then give us the default,
# otherwise it will give use the
# value from the Just.
# Now we have the actual string "apple" to render to the DOM.
# This is a bit better than a
# case expression everytime we want to unwrap a maybe

• That works if we know we’re gonna get a maybe and have a default value. What if we have a situation like our Json decoding where we need to map3 or map4 and transform value a -> b? Good question. The answer map.maybe
• map.maybe will transform any maybe value if it’s a Just type, otherwise it will return nothing. In this way, it will take the maybe a and transform it and return a Just b or Nothing. From the source code.

Apply a function if all the arguments are Just a value.

> fruit
["apple","banana","mango"] : List String

# Even though these are maybe types, we are able to transform them, as long as all of them are Just values and not Nothing!
> Maybe.map2 (\a b -> (a ++ ", " ++ b)) first second
Just "apple, banana" : Maybe.Maybe String

#And if we have a Nothing instead of a Just value
> Maybe.map2 (\a b -> a ++ ", " ++ b) (List.head nope) (Just "Ted")
Nothing : Maybe.Maybe String


### Then we have Maybe.andThen

• > Maybe.andThen <function> : (a -> Maybe.Maybe b) -> Maybe.Maybe a -> Maybe.Maybe b
• So what does this thing do? Let’s break it down, reading the Type annotation.
1. The first argument is a function, that takes ‘a’, and returns ‘Maybe b’
2. The second argument is value of type Maybe 3.
• So if we want the head of a (Maybe (List String)), we can’t just call List.head tail…..nope.
> List.head tail
-- TYPE MISMATCH ------------------------------ repl-temp-000.elm

The argument to function head is causing a mismatch.

^^^^
Function head is expecting the argument to be:

List a

But it is:

Maybe (List String)

• So what do we do ?
> Maybe.andThen List.head  tail
Just "banana" : Maybe.Maybe String

# Snuck a pipe operator in there on you
| |> Maybe.andThen (\s -> Just (String.toUpper s))
Just "BANANA" : Maybe.Maybe String


### Pipe Operator

• Used to use infix, falled out of favor for readablility
• See the backticks. ewwwwwwwww
Just[]Maybe.andThenList.headMaybe.andThen(\s -> Just (String.toUpper s)) -- ->
Nothing
Maybe.andThen (\s -> Just (String.toUpper s)) (Maybe.andThen List.head  (Just[]))

• Think of the pipe as feeding or passing a value into the next function.
• This is prefered to nesting. We do this in JS all the time. Sort of evaluate from the inside out, tracking the value manaully in our heads. Gross

### So why is Maybe important?

• We can’t avoid possiblly not getting a value, like we can in JS. cough cough undefined. Elm forces us to deal with any edge cases where maybe, might not actually be there. I for one, have become very good at lying to myself about the ‘possible’ values in JS. Phrased like, “oh, I didn’t know that could happen”, or “what in the world, how did you get that” *