Lets say I have a function
f :: State [Int] Int
and a function:
g :: StateT [Int] IO Int
I want to use f in g and pass the state between them. Is there a library function for
StateT (return . runState f)? Or in general, given a monad transformer with a corresponding monad, is there a library function for it?
What you are asking for is a mapping (known as a monad morphism) from a monad StateT m to StateT n. I'll be using the the mmorph library, which provides a very nice set of tools for working with monad morphisms.
To perform the State -> StateT m transform you are looking for, we'll start by defining a morphism to generalize the Identity monad embedded in State,
generalize :: Monad m => Identity a -> m a
generalize = return . runIdentity
Next we'll want to lift this morphism to act on the inner monad of your StateT. That is, we want a function which given a mapping from one monad to another (e.g. our generalize morphism), will give us a function acting on the base monad of a monad transformer, e.g. t Identity a -> t m a. You'll find this resembles the hoist function of mmorph's MFunctor class,
hoist :: Monad m => (forall a. m a -> n a) -> t m b -> t n b
Putting the pieces together,
myAction :: State s Int
myAction = return 2
myAction' :: Monad m => StateT s m Int
myAction' = hoist generalize myAction
In even more general, what you're trying to do is apply a transformation to an inner layer of a transformer stack. For two arbitrary monads, the type signature might look something like this:
fmapMT :: (MonadTrans t, Monad m1, Monad m2) => (m1 a -> m2 a) -> t m1 a -> t m2 a
Basically a higher-level fmap. In fact, it would probably make even more sense to combine it with a map over the final parameter as well:
fmapMT :: (MonadTrans t, Monad m1, Monad m2) => (m1 a -> m2 b) -> t m1 a -> t m2 b
Clearly this isn't going to be possible in all cases, though when the "source" monad is Identity it's likely to be easier, but I can imagine defining another type class for the places it does work. I don't think there's anything like this in the typical monad transformer libraries; however, some browsing on hackage turns up something very similar in the Monatron package:
class MonadT t => FMonadT t where
tmap' :: FunctorD m -> FunctorD n -> (a -> b)
-> (forall x. m x -> n x) -> t m a -> t n b
tmap :: (FMonadT t, Functor m, Functor n) => (forall b. m b -> n b)
-> t m a -> t n a
tmap = tmap' functor functor id
In the signature for tmap', the FunctorD types are basically ad-hoc implementations of fmap instead of using Functor instances directly.
Also, for two Functor-like type constructors F and G, a function with a type like (forall a. F a -> G a) describes a natural transformation from F to G. There's quite possibly another implementation of the transformer map that you want somewhere in the category-extras package but I'm not sure what the category-theoretic version of a monad transformer would be so I don't know what it might be called.
Since tmap requires only a Functor instance (which any Monad must have) and a natural transformation, and any Monad has a natural transformation from the Identity monad provided by return, the function you want can be written generically for any instance of FMonadT as tmap (return . runIdentity)--assuming the "basic" monad is defined as a synonym for the transformer applied to Identity, at any rate, which is generally the case with transformer libraries.
Getting back to your specific example, note that Monatron does indeed have an instance of FMonadT for StateT.
Such a function is not definable for all monad transformers. The Cont r monad, for example, can't be lifted into ContT r IO because that would require turning a continuation in the IO monad (a -> IO r) into a pure continuation (a -> r).
