PIsData.md

PIsData

The PIsData typeclass facilitates easy and type safe conversion between Plutarch types and their corresponding BuiltinData/Data representation. It keeps track of the type information through PAsData.

class PIsData a where
  pfromData :: Term s (PAsData a) -> Term s a
  pdata :: Term s a -> Term s (PAsData a)

PInteger has a PIsData instance. The PData representation of PInteger is, of course, an I data. And you can get the PInteger back from an I data using UnIData (i.e. pasInt).

instance PIsData PInteger where
  pfromData x = pasInt # pforgetData x
  pdata x = punsafeBuiltin PLC.IData # x

In essence, pdata wraps a PInteger into an I data value. Whereas pfromData simply unwraps the I data value to get a PInteger.

Aside: You might be asking, what's an "I data value"? This is referring to the different constructors of Data/BuiltinData. You can find a full explanation of this at Plutonomicon.

For the simple constructors that merely wrap a builtin type into Data, e.g. Integers, Bytestrings, lists, and AssocMap, PIsData works in much the same way as above. However, what about Constr data values? When you have an ADT that doesn't correspond to those simple builtin types directly - but you still need to encode it as Data (e.g. PScriptContext). In this case, you should implement PIsDataRepr and you'll get the PIsData instance for free!