rustkas

rustkas

Property-Based Testing with PropEr, Erlang, and Elixir: implementation without map module restriction is better choise for CSV parser (page 148)

CSV parsing

Dear author, @ferd, I am solely out of positive motives and a desire to improve the books, I would like to suggest that you think about update the section without the help of the maps module functionality in future editions of your very informative and useful book. As shown by the working tests and the implementation that I did without using this module, but using an older ones (lists, proplists) (and as the last test convincingly showed) - the maps module is not the best and not very visual solution for this task, moreover, it has limitations in which there is no need.

%% @doc this counterexample is taken literally from the RFC and cannot
%% work with the current implementation because maps have no dupe keys
dupe_keys_unsupported_test() ->
    CSV = "field_name,field_name,field_name\r\n"
          "aaa,bbb,ccc\r\n"
          "zzz,yyy,xxx\r\n",
    [Map1, Map2] = bday_csv:decode(CSV),
    %?debugFmt("Map1 = ~p~nMap2 = ~p~n", [Map1, Map2]),
    %?debugFmt("Map2 = ~p~n",[Map2]),
    ?assertEqual(1, length(maps:keys(Map1))),
    ?assertEqual(1, length(maps:keys(Map2))),
    ?assertMatch(#{"field_name" := _}, Map1),
    ?assertMatch(#{"field_name" := _}, Map2).

See what we can get by simplifying our CSV parser implementation:

%% @doc this counterexample is taken literally from the RFC
dupe_keys_unsupported_test() ->
    CSV = "field_name,field_name,field_name\r\n"
          "aaa,bbb,ccc\r\n"
          "zzz,yyy,xxx\r\n",
    Result = bday_csv_tuple:decode(CSV),
    List = lists:flatten(Result),
    ?assertEqual(6, length(List)),
    lists:foreach(fun(Elem) -> ?assertMatch({"field_name", _}, Elem) end, List).

Link to source code

Marked As Solved

ferd

ferd

Author of Property-Based Testing with PropEr, LYSE, & Erlang in Anger

That would make the implementation and testing shorter, but do note that the chapter has chosen to use maps as a datastructure for its ease of use to the callers.

That there is a mismatch between the chosen disk format and the useful code format is one of the interesting things that come up and we have to adjust to: either change the spec, or tweak the tests. You are suggesting the former, the book went for the latter.

There is a last gotcha implicit to the implementation of our CSV parser: since it uses maps, duplicate column names are not tolerated. Since our CSV files have to be used to represent a database, it is probably a fine assumption to make about the data set that column names are all unique. All in all, we’re probably good ignoring duplicate columns and single-columns CSV files since it’s unlikely database tables would be that way either, but it’s not fully CSV compliant.

If your CSV parser now supports multiple duplicate columns, there is now a concern that the code that uses the returned lists is able to deal with the edge case of multiple keys being returned, or that a conversion step that removes (or errors on) duplicates is added and also tested. I tend to like narrowing all of this at the edge of the system (when converting from CSV to what is now safe internally).

Your approach is fine and simplifies the CSV testing (your snippets are cleaner), but you should still expect to add specific testing elsewhere in the application that tackles that mismatch between what CSV supports and what the records represented by a database would support somewhere.

Where Next?

Popular Pragmatic Bookshelf topics Top

New
iPaul
page 37 ANTLRInputStream input = new ANTLRInputStream(is); as of ANTLR 4 .8 should be: CharStream stream = CharStreams.fromStream(i...
New
raul
Page 28: It implements io.ReaderAt on the store type. Sorry if it’s a dumb question but was the io.ReaderAt supposed to be io.ReadAt? ...
New
herminiotorres
Hi! I know not the intentions behind this narrative when called, on page XI: mount() |> handle_event() |> render() but the correc...
New
joepstender
The generated iex result below should list products instead of product for the metadata. (page 67) iex> product = %Product{} %Pento....
New
rmurray10127
Title: Intuitive Python: docker run… denied error (page 2) Attempted to run the docker command in both CLI and Powershell PS C:\Users\r...
New
hgkjshegfskef
The test is as follows: Scenario: Intersecting a scaled sphere with a ray Given r ← ray(point(0, 0, -5), vector(0, 0, 1)) And s ← sphere...
New
dsmith42
Hey there, I’m enjoying this book and have learned a few things alredayd. However, in Chapter 4 I believe we are meant to see the “>...
New
mert
AWDWR 7, page 152, page 153: Hello everyone, I’m a little bit lost on the hotwire part. I didn’t fully understand it. On page 152 @rub...
New
dachristenson
@mfazio23 Android Studio will not accept anything I do when trying to use the Transformations class, as described on pp. 140-141. Googl...
New

Other popular topics Top

PragmaticBookshelf
Brace yourself for a fun challenge: build a photorealistic 3D renderer from scratch! In just a couple of weeks, build a ray tracer that r...
New
Rainer
My first contact with Erlang was about 2 years ago when I used RabbitMQ, which is written in Erlang, for my job. This made me curious and...
New
AstonJ
Just done a fresh install of macOS Big Sur and on installing Erlang I am getting: asdf install erlang 23.1.2 Configure failed. checking ...
New
AstonJ
I have seen the keycaps I want - they are due for a group-buy this week but won’t be delivered until October next year!!! :rofl: The Ser...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Create efficient, elegant software tests in pytest, Python's most powerful testing framework. Brian Okken @brianokken Edited by Kat...
New
rustkas
Intensively researching Erlang books and additional resources on it, I have found that the topic of using Regular Expressions is either c...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight Rebecca Skinner @RebeccaSkinner Welcome to our latest author spotlight, where we sit down with Rebecca Skinner, auth...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Programming Ruby is the most complete book on Ruby, covering both the language itself and the standard library as well as commonly used t...
New
First poster: bot
zig/http.zig at 7cf2cbb33ef34c1d211135f56d30fe23b6cacd42 · ziglang/zig. General-purpose programming language and toolchain for maintaini...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Use advanced functional programming principles, practical Domain-Driven Design techniques, and production-ready Elixir code to build scal...
New

Sub Categories: