Question

Suppose I have an algebraic data type with multiple constructors, like

data Animal a = Mouse a | Beaver a | Rabbit a

How would I create a Lift instance effectively? The easiest way of doing so would be

instance (Lift a) => Lift (Animal a) where
      lift (Mouse  x) = [| Mouse  x |]
      lift (Beaver x) = [| Beaver x |]
      lift (Rabbit x) = [| Rabbit x |]

This is very redundant though. Of course I can't directly abstract the different animals away like lift x = [| x |], although conceptually that's similar to what I want to achieve. Is there a way of doing this in TH so that I don't have to write the same line again for each data constructor?

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Solution

This is the purpose of the th-lift package, which provides exactly this functionality: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/th-lift

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