Using Maybe and Writer together

Question

Here is my egg packing factory:

type Eggs = Int
data Carton = Carton Eggs deriving Show

add :: Eggs -> Carton -> Maybe Carton
add e (Carton c)
    | c + e <= 12 = Just (Carton $ c + e)
    | otherwise = Nothing

main = do
    print $ pure(Carton 2) >>= add 4 >>= add 4 >>= add 3

Seems to work well, I can nicely chain add functions.

But I want to record a log of how many eggs were added at every step. So I do this:

import Control.Monad.Writer

type Eggs = Int
data Carton = Carton Eggs deriving Show

add :: Eggs -> Carton -> Writer [String] (Maybe Carton)
add e (Carton c)
    | c + e <= 12 = do
        tell ["adding " ++ show e]
        return (Just (Carton $ c + e))
    | otherwise = do
        tell ["cannot add " ++ show e]
        return Nothing

main = do
    let c = add 4 $ Carton 2
    print $ fst $ runWriter c
    mapM_ putStrLn $ snd $ runWriter c

This gives me what I want: I can see the resulting carton and the record for 4 eggs being added.

But I seem to have lost the ability to chain add functions like I did before:

let c = pure(Carton 2) >>= add 4 -- works
let c = pure(Carton 2) >>= add 4 >>= add 2 -- does not work

How can I chain my new writer-enabled add functions? Is there a better way of doing this?

Answer 1

Just compose add with MaybeT:

import Control.Trans.Monad.Maybe

test = pure (Carton 2) >>= MaybeT . add 3
                       >>= MaybeT . add 4
                       >>= MaybeT . add 5

runTest = do
  print $ fst $ runWriter (runMaybeT test)

Full example at: http://lpaste.net/169070