Creating Effects

Effect provides different ways to create effects, which are units of computation that encapsulate side effects. In this guide, we will cover some of the common methods that you can use to create effects.

Why Not Throw Errors?

In traditional programming, when an error occurs, it is often handled by throwing an exception:

const divide = (a: number, b: number): number => {
  if (b === 0) {
    throw new Error("Cannot divide by zero")
  }
  return a / b
}

However, throwing errors can be problematic. The type signatures of functions do not indicate that they can throw exceptions, making it difficult to reason about potential errors.

To address this issue, Effect introduces dedicated constructors for creating effects that represent both success and failure: Effect.succeed and Effect.fail. These constructors allow you to explicitly handle success and failure cases while leveraging the type system to track errors.

succeed

The Effect.succeed constructor in the Effect library is used to explicitly create an effect that is guaranteed to succeed. Here’s how you can use it:

import { Effect } from "effect"

// Creating an effect that represents a successful scenario
const success = Effect.succeed(42)

In this example, success is an instance of Effect<number, never, never>. This means it’s an effect that:

• Always succeeds, yielding a value of type number.
• Does not generate any errors (never indicates that no errors are expected).
• Requires no additional data or dependencies from the environment (never indicates no requirements).

fail

When a computation might fail, it’s essential to manage the failure explicitly. The Effect.fail constructor allows you to encapsulate an error within your program flow explicitly. This method is useful for representing known error states in a predictable and type-safe way. Here’s a practical example to illustrate:

import { Effect } from "effect"

// Creating an effect that represents a failure scenario
const failure = Effect.fail(
  new Error("Operation failed due to network error")
)

The type of failure is Effect<never, Error, never>, which means

• It never produces a successful value (never).
• It fails with an error, specifically an Error.
• It does not depend on any external context to execute (never).

While you can use Error objects with Effect.fail, it also supports strings, numbers, or more complex objects, depending on your error management strategy.

However, using “tagged” errors, which are objects with a _tag field, helps identify error types and integrates well with standard Effect functions like Effect.catchTag.

import { Effect } from "effect"

class NetworkError {
  readonly _tag = "NetworkError"
}

const failure = Effect.fail(new NetworkError())

With Effect.succeed and Effect.fail, you can explicitly handle success and failure cases and the type system will ensure that errors are tracked and accounted for.

Example (Rewriting a Division Function)

Let’s see an example of rewriting the divide function using Effect to make the error handling explicit:

import { Effect } from "effect"

const divide = (a: number, b: number): Effect.Effect<number, Error> =>
  b === 0
    ? Effect.fail(new Error("Cannot divide by zero"))
    : Effect.succeed(a / b)

In this example, the divide function explicitly indicates that it can produce an effect that either fails with an Error or succeeds with a number value.

The type signature makes it clear how errors are handled and ensures that callers are aware of the possible outcomes.

Example (Simulating a User Retrieval Operation)

Let’s imagine another scenario where we use Effect.succeed and Effect.fail to model a simple user retrieval operation where the user data is hardcoded, which could be useful in testing scenarios or when mocking data:

import { Effect } from "effect"

// Define a User type
interface User {
  readonly id: number
  readonly name: string
}

// A mocked function to simulate fetching a user from a database
const getUser = (userId: number): Effect.Effect<User, Error> => {
  // Normally, you would access a database or API here, but we'll mock it
  const userDatabase: Record<number, User> = {
    1: { id: 1, name: "John Doe" },
    2: { id: 2, name: "Jane Smith" }
  }

  // Check if the user exists in our "database" and return appropriately
  const user = userDatabase[userId]
  if (user) {
    return Effect.succeed(user)
  } else {
    return Effect.fail(new Error("User not found"))
  }
}

// When executed, this will successfully return the user with id 1
const exampleUserEffect = getUser(1)

In this example exampleUserEffect can result in either a User object or an Error, depending on whether the user exists in the simulated database

To dive deeper into handling and managing errors effectively in your applications using Effect, you might want to explore the guide on Error Management. This guide provides detailed insights and strategies for robust error handling in TypeScript applications using Effect.

Modeling Synchronous Effects

In JavaScript, you can delay the execution of synchronous computations using “thunks”.

Thunks

A “thunk” is a function that takes no arguments and may return some value.

Thunks are useful for delaying the computation of a value until it is needed.

To model synchronous side effects, Effect provides the Effect.sync and Effect.try constructors, which accept a thunk.

sync

When working with side effects that are synchronous — meaning they don’t involve asynchronous operations like fetching data from the internet — you can use the Effect.sync function. This function is ideal when you are certain these operations won’t produce any errors.

Example (Logging a Message)

import { Effect } from "effect"

const log = (message: string) =>
  Effect.sync(() => {
    console.log(message) // side effect
  })

const program = log("Hello, World!")

In the above example, Effect.sync is used to defer the side-effect of writing to the console.

The program has the type Effect<void, never, never>, indicating that:

• It doesn’t produce a return value (void).
• It’s not expected to fail (never indicates no expected errors).
• It doesn’t require any external dependencies or context (never).

Important Notes:

• Execution: The side effect (logging to the console) encapsulated within program won’t occur until the effect is explicitly run. This allows you to define side effects at one point in your code and control when they are activated, improving manageability and predictability of side effects in larger applications.
• Error Handling: It’s crucial that the function you pass to Effect.sync does not throw any errors. If you anticipate potential errors, consider using try instead, which handles errors gracefully.

Do Not Throw

The thunk passed to Effect.sync should never throw errors.

Handling Unexpected Errors. Despite your best efforts to avoid errors in the function passed to Effect.sync, if an error does occur, it results in a “defect”. This defect is not a standard error but indicates a flaw in the logic that was expected to be error-free. You can think of it similar to an unexpected crash in the program, which can be further managed or logged using tools like Effect.catchAllDefect. This feature ensures that even unexpected failures in your application are not lost and can be handled appropriately.

try

In situations where you need to perform synchronous operations that might fail, such as parsing JSON, you can use the Effect.try constructor from the Effect library. This constructor is designed to handle operations that could throw exceptions by capturing those exceptions and transforming them into manageable errors within the Effect framework.

Example (Safe JSON Parsing)

Suppose you have a function that attempts to parse a JSON string. This operation can fail and throw an error if the input string is not properly formatted as JSON:

import { Effect } from "effect"

const parse = (input: string) =>
  // This might throw an error if input is not valid JSON
  Effect.try(() => JSON.parse(input))

const program = parse("")

In this example:

• parse is a function that creates an effect encapsulating the JSON parsing operation.
• If JSON.parse(input) throws an error due to invalid input, Effect.try catches this error and the effect represented by program will fail with an UnknownException. This ensures that errors are not silently ignored but are instead handled within the structured flow of effects.

Customizing Error Handling. You might want to transform the caught exception into a more specific error or perform additional operations when catching an error. Effect.try supports an overload that allows you to specify how caught exceptions should be transformed:

Example (Custom Error Handling)

import { Effect } from "effect"

const parse = (input: string) =>
  Effect.try({
    // JSON.parse may throw for bad input
    try: () => JSON.parse(input),
    // remap the error
    catch: (unknown) => new Error(`something went wrong ${unknown}`)
  })

const program = parse("")

You can think of this as a similar pattern to the traditional try-catch block in JavaScript:

try {
  return JSON.parse(input)
} catch (unknown) {
  throw new Error(`something went wrong ${unknown}`)
}

Modeling Asynchronous Effects

In traditional programming, we often use Promises to handle asynchronous computations. However, dealing with errors in promises can be problematic. By default, Promise<Value> only provides the type Value for the resolved value, which means errors are not reflected in the type system. This limits the expressiveness and makes it challenging to handle and track errors effectively.

To overcome these limitations, Effect introduces dedicated constructors for creating effects that represent both success and failure in an asynchronous context: Effect.promise and Effect.tryPromise. These constructors allow you to explicitly handle success and failure cases while leveraging the type system to track errors.

promise

This constructor is similar to a regular Promise, where you’re confident that the asynchronous operation will always succeed. It allows you to create an Effect that represents successful completion without considering potential errors. However, it’s essential to ensure that the underlying Promise never rejects.

Example (Delayed Message)

import { Effect } from "effect"

const delay = (message: string) =>
  Effect.promise<string>(
    () =>
      new Promise((resolve) => {
        setTimeout(() => {
          resolve(message)
        }, 2000)
      })
  )

const program = delay("Async operation completed successfully!")

The program value has the type Effect<string, never, never> and can be interpreted as an effect that:

• succeeds with a value of type string
• does not produce any expected error (never)
• does not require any context (never)

Avoid Rejections

The Promise within the thunk passed to Effect.promise should never reject.

Handling Unexpected Errors. If, despite precautions, the thunk passed to Effect.promise does reject, an Effect containing a “defect” is created, similar to what happens when using the Effect.die function.

tryPromise

Unlike Effect.promise, this constructor is suitable when the underlying Promise might reject. It provides a way to catch errors and handle them appropriately. By default if an error occurs, it will be caught and propagated to the error channel as as an UnknownException.

Example (Fetching a TODO Item)

import { Effect } from "effect"

const getTodo = (id: number) =>
  Effect.tryPromise(() =>
    fetch(`https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos/${id}`)
  )

const program = getTodo(1)

The program value has the type Effect<Response, UnknownException, never> and can be interpreted as an effect that:

• succeeds with a value of type Response
• might produce an error (UnknownException)
• does not require any context (never)

Customizing Error Handling. If you want more control over what gets propagated to the error channel, you can use an overload of Effect.tryPromise that takes a remapping function:

import { Effect } from "effect"

const getTodo = (id: number) =>
  Effect.tryPromise({
    try: () => fetch(`https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos/${id}`),
    // remap the error
    catch: (unknown) => new Error(`something went wrong ${unknown}`)
  })

const program = getTodo(1)

From a Callback

Sometimes you have to work with APIs that don’t support async/await or Promise and instead use the callback style. To handle callback-based APIs, Effect provides the Effect.async constructor.

Example (Reading a File)

For example, let’s wrap the readFile async API from the Node.js fs module with Effect (ensure you have @types/node installed):

import { Effect } from "effect"
import * as NodeFS from "node:fs"

const readFile = (filename: string) =>
  Effect.async<Buffer, Error>((resume) => {
    NodeFS.readFile(filename, (error, data) => {
      if (error) {
        resume(Effect.fail(error))
      } else {
        resume(Effect.succeed(data))
      }
    })
  })

const program = readFile("todos.txt")

In the above example, we manually annotate the types when calling Effect.async because TypeScript cannot infer the type parameters for a callback based on the return value inside the callback body. Annotating the types ensures that the values provided to resume match the expected types.

Sync & Async Code

You can seamlessly mix synchronous and asynchronous code within the Effect framework. Everything becomes an Effect, enabling you to handle different types of side effects in a unified way.

Suspended Effects

Effect.suspend is used to delay the creation of an effect. It allows you to defer the evaluation of an effect until it is actually needed. The Effect.suspend function takes a thunk that represents the effect, and it wraps it in a suspended effect.

const suspendedEffect = Effect.suspend(() => effect)

Let’s explore some common scenarios where Effect.suspend proves useful.

Lazy Evaluation

When you want to defer the evaluation of an effect until it is required. This can be useful for optimizing the execution of effects, especially when they are not always needed or when their computation is expensive.

Also, when effects with side effects or scoped captures are created, use Effect.suspend to re-execute on each invocation.

import { Effect } from "effect"

let i = 0

const bad = Effect.succeed(i++)

const good = Effect.suspend(() => Effect.succeed(i++))

console.log(Effect.runSync(bad)) // Output: 0
console.log(Effect.runSync(bad)) // Output: 0

console.log(Effect.runSync(good)) // Output: 1
console.log(Effect.runSync(good)) // Output: 2

Running Effects

This example utilizes Effect.runSync to execute effects and display their results (refer to Running Effects for more details).

In this example, bad is the result of calling Effect.succeed(i++) a single time, which increments the scoped variable but returns its original value. Effect.runSync(bad) does not result in any new computation, because Effect.succeed(i++) has already been called. On the other hand, each time Effect.runSync(good) is called, the thunk passed to Effect.suspend() will be executed, outputting the scoped variable’s most recent value.

Handling Circular Dependencies

Effect.suspend is helpful in managing circular dependencies between effects, where one effect depends on another, and vice versa. For example it’s fairly common for Effect.suspend to be used in recursive functions to escape an eager call. For instance:

import { Effect } from "effect"

const blowsUp = (n: number): Effect.Effect<number> =>
  n < 2
    ? Effect.succeed(1)
    : Effect.zipWith(blowsUp(n - 1), blowsUp(n - 2), (a, b) => a + b)

// console.log(Effect.runSync(blowsUp(32)))
// crash: JavaScript heap out of memory

const allGood = (n: number): Effect.Effect<number> =>
  n < 2
    ? Effect.succeed(1)
    : Effect.zipWith(
        Effect.suspend(() => allGood(n - 1)),
        Effect.suspend(() => allGood(n - 2)),
        (a, b) => a + b
      )

console.log(Effect.runSync(allGood(32))) // Output: 3524578

Running Effects

This example utilizes Effect.zipWith to combine the results of two effects (refer to the documentation on zipping for more details).

The blowsUp function creates a recursive Fibonacci sequence without deferring execution. Each call to blowsUp triggers further immediate recursive calls, rapidly increasing the JavaScript call stack size.

Conversely, allGood avoids stack overflow by using Effect.suspend to defer the recursive calls. This mechanism doesn’t immediately execute the recursive effects but schedules them to be run later, thus keeping the call stack shallow and preventing a crash.

Unifying Return Type

In situations where TypeScript struggles to unify the returned effect type, Effect.suspend can be employed to resolve this issue. For example:

import { Effect } from "effect"

const ugly = (a: number, b: number) =>
  b === 0
    ? Effect.fail(new Error("Cannot divide by zero"))
    : Effect.succeed(a / b)

const nice = (a: number, b: number) =>
  Effect.suspend(() =>
    b === 0
      ? Effect.fail(new Error("Cannot divide by zero"))
      : Effect.succeed(a / b)
  )

Cheatsheet

The table provides a summary of the available constructors, along with their input and output types, allowing you to choose the appropriate function based on your needs.

API	Given	To
succeed	A	Effect<A>
fail	E	Effect<never, E>
sync	() => A	Effect<A>
try	() => A	Effect<A, UnknownException>
try (overload)	() => A, unknown => E	Effect<A, E>
promise	() => Promise<A>	Effect<A>
tryPromise	() => Promise<A>	Effect<A, UnknownException>
tryPromise (overload)	() => Promise<A>, unknown => E	Effect<A, E>
async	(Effect<A, E> => void) => void	Effect<A, E>
suspend	() => Effect<A, E, R>	Effect<A, E, R>

You can find the complete list of constructors here.

Now that we know how to create effects, it’s time to learn how to run them. Check out the next guide on Running Effects to find out more.