In the post about decoration we declared log levels as follows:

module logging_base
   ! ...
   integer, parameter, public :: LOG_DEBUG = 0
   integer, parameter, public :: LOG_INFO = 1
   integer, parameter, public :: LOG_WARN = 2
   integer, parameter, public :: LOG_ERROR = 3
   integer, parameter, public :: LOG_FATAL = 4
   ! ...
end module logging_base

This is somewhat useful, but requires a dedicated only mention when importing each of these constants, which isn’t very nice:

program main
   use logging_base, only: log, LOG_DEBUG, LOG_WARN
    
   ! ...
   call log('A debug message', LOG_DEBUG)
    
   ! ...
   call log('A warning', LOG_WARN)
end program main

Although we could live with that, the bigger issue remains: this is not a type-safe solution. Any integer may be passed as an argument for level, and the compiler wouldn’t warn us. For example:

Fortran projects are famous for their large modules. Actually, we may also find very large files in legacy projects written in other languages, like Java, PHP, etc. These projects sometimes have files with thousands of lines of code. Fortran projects suffer more from large files I’d say, because:

• IDE support is not great. It’s often still hard to navigate to definitions or usages. There isn’t any support for automated refactorings, like extract function, move function, add parameter, etc. You often can’t get a clear overview of the structure/outline of a file.
• There are no strict indentation rules, making it easy to create a complete mess. Not everyone uses code formatting tools. Code formatting tools that exist and are used, aren’t always very good or easily configurable.
• Fortran code can be hard to read, partially because a lack of curly braces. It’s hard to visually recognize blocks of code. Another reason is that commonly there’s no distinction in letter casing between type names, function names, variable names, etc. Other languages may use CamelCase for types, CAPS for constants, pascalCase for methods, snake_case for functions, etc. In Fortran code, it’s all snake_case.

If there’s anything we can do to make Fortran code easier to deal with, it’s to split the code into smaller parts. We need to have many more modules, each with distinct topics and concerns, so we can get a quick overview of the application’s domain and capabilities. Additionally, this will help us find the right place when we want to make changes to the code.

In the previous post we saw how to use an abstraction to compose an aggregation of services of that same abstraction. There we simply delegated a call, adding no specific behavior. But we might as well add some new behavior before or after delegating the call.

As an example, let’s try to implement a new feature in the logging module: we want to add a timestamp in front of each message, so the output becomes something like this:

With our new service abstraction logger_t we are able to easily implement more features for our logger. We can do this without affecting current user code, because their code relies only on the abstraction, never on concrete implementations.

A terminal output logger

One thing we can do is define a second logger type, one that prints each message to the terminal output (stdout). Being a logger, it should also extend the abstract logger_t type, and provide an implementation for log():

With the new file_logger_t type we were able to model a logger service as a derived type. Now it’s time to make the service abstract. That is, to leave out the implementation detail that it’s a file logger (not a terminal output logger, etc.). Users should be able to use this abstract service to log any message, to whatever the application has been configured to log to.

An abstract derived type

Allowing a user to depend on an abstract service requires the use of an abstract type. The user can import this abstract type in their module or program. Meanwhile, the factory function for the abstract logger will actually return the concrete file logger, which extends the abstract logger. For object-oriented programmers this may be a familiar approach, but it’s not a very common Fortran practice. In code it looks as follows:

We’ve seen how to define a derived type to represent a point in 2D space. We were able to add a type-bound procedure to it, and finally to make its components private and define a custom constructor for it.

In essence there are two categories of derived types:

1. Derived types that hold some data. Their type-bound procedures are solely dealing with this data, and may produce valuable information with it. The point is an example of such a derived type: we can use its data to make geometrical calculations, or we can combine it together with other points into lines, polygons, etc. This all happens in memory. In typical business applications you would consider entities, value objects and data transfer objects (DTOs) to be in this first category.
2. Derived types that can perform some task that deals with things external to the application, like a file, the terminal, a network connection, etc. Such a type doesn’t hold data inside. It is able to fetch data, or send/store data. In business applications such a type is often called a service.

In object-oriented programming, service types usually offer an abstraction. This allows the client to decouple from its specific implementation details. For example, take a logger service; it’s often beneficial for the user that they don’t have to be concerned about where the logs are written to (file, screen, log aggregation server, etc.). The user only wants to call a simple log() function to log something to whatever has been configured at some higher level. Introducing a logger abstraction will take a few posts from here, but it’s good to know that service abstraction is the goal.

In the previous post we have worked on the point_t derived type, turning the module procedure distance into a type-bound procedure:

module geometry
   ! ...

   type :: point_t
      real :: x
      real :: y
   contains
      procedure :: distance => point_distance
   end type point_t

contains

   pure function point_distance(point_1, point_2) result(the_distance)
      class(point_t), intent(in) :: point_1
      
      ! ...
   end function point_distance

end module geometry

Private data components

Type-bound procedures can help us tie relevant behaviors (procedures) to derived types. It also allows us to let the derived type keep its data to itself. This is often called data hiding, or encapsulation of state. Nothing outside the module where the derived type is defined will have (read or write) access to its data components. This can be accomplished by adding the attribute private to each data component:

In the previous post we defined a derived type point_t with real data components x and y, to represent a point in 2D space. We also wrote a function to calculate the distance between two such points:

module geometry
   implicit none(type, external)

   private
   public :: point_t
   public :: distance

   type :: point_t
      real :: x
      real :: y
   end type point_t

contains

   pure function distance(point_1, point_2) result(the_distance)
      type(point_t), intent(in) :: point_1
      type(point_t), intent(in) :: point_2
      real :: the_distance

      the_distance = sqrt((point_2%x - point_1%x)**2 + &
                          (point_2%y - point_1%y)**2)
   end function distance

end module geometry

This allowed us to pass point_t instances as function arguments to distance, in another module or in the program:

We’ve seen types and variables and functions and subroutines. Now we can get to the next level and combine both variables and procedures in a so-called derived type.

Declaring a derived type and its data components

Object-oriented programming languages have classes. It took me some time to understand that classes can be seen as “extensions of the type system”. There are often primitive types like strings, integers, etc. and we can group them as properties of a class. Thereby, the class becomes some kind of advanced, composite type.