To simplify the handling of type information, Haystack includes the haystack.object.StrawType class. This class includes a variety of static utility functions that make conversion between types and traversal of Straw hierarchies a trivial operation.
The main functions provided by StrawType are described in
Appendix 
. StrawType also provides a list
of some of the predefined Straws available in Haystack in a
compact representation. For example, Haystack provides a service for
creating objects dynamically, and to invoke the create()
operation the programmer must pass in the full classname for the
object he wishes to create. As the class names for Straws
tend to be long, StrawType eases the programmers job by
creating obvious naming shortcuts. For example, Instead of
passing in ``haystack.object.needle.filetype.Postscript'',
the static value StrawType.PostscriptTypeNeedle is passed.
The shortcuts currently defined within StrawType are listed
in Table (more will very likely be added in the
future).
| AdditionalLocationTie | Bale | BodyNeedle | BodyTie |
| CausalTie | CcFieldNeedle | ChecksumNeedle | ChecksumTie |
| DateFieldNeedle | Directory | DirectoryNeedle | DirectoryTypeNeedle |
| DviTypeNeedle | EmailTypeNeedle | FiletypeNeedle | FiletypeTie |
| FromFieldNeedle | FrommailTypeNeedle | GifTypeNeedle | GzipTypeNeedle |
| HaystackDocument | HTMLTypeNeedle | LastArchiveNeedle | LastArchiveTie |
| LastIndexNeedle | LastIndexTie | LatexTypeNeedle | LocationNeedle |
| LocationTie | MailfieldNeedle | MailfieldTie | MessageIDFieldNeedle |
| MessageIDNeedle | Needle | PostscriptTypeNeedle | RMAILNeedle |
| RmailTypeNeedle | SubjectFieldNeedle | SummaryNeedle | SummaryTie |
| TextNeedle | TextTie | TextTypeNeedle | Tie |
| ToFieldNeedle | UnknownTypeNeedle | URLNeedle | UUETypeNeedle |