Alternative functional interface

[vorpalvorpal]

The very wonderful package openxlsx2 has the same sort of object oriented design as ellmer, but it also provides a functional interface that feels much more natural for R.

So in xlsx2 you can use the object oriented approach:

wb_workbook( # create a workbook object 
  )$add_worksheet("Motor Trend Car Road Tests" # add a worksheet
  )$add_data_table(x = mtcars # add some data
  )$open() # open it in excel

Or equivalently:

wb_workbook() |>
  wb_add_worksheet("Motor Trend Car Road Tests") |>
  wb_add_data_table(x = mtcars) |>
  wb_open()

Although the two approaches do the same thing, the second feels much more natural. It also allows much more easy discovery of available functions and accessing of the help files for those functions.

Would you consider creating a similar alternative functional interface for ellmer? It could be a simple wrapper around the object oriented approach.

chat <- function(chat_obj, ...){
  chat_obj$chat(...)
  return(chat_obj)
}

new_chat <- chat_anthropic()
new_chat <- chat(new_chat, "what's 2 + 2")

[hadley]

I don't think that match for ellmer because the chat object is mutable. Your code would suggest that this would make sense:

chat1 <- chat_anthropic()
chat2 <- chat(chat1, "what's 2 + 2")

But $chat() modifies the object in place so chat1 and chat2 would be identical.