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

ianwillie
Hello Brian, I have some problems with running the code in your book. I like the style of the book very much and I have learnt a lot as...
New
mikecargal
Title: Hands-On Rust (Chap 8 (Adding a Heads Up Display) It looks like ​.with_simple_console_no_bg​(SCREEN_WIDTH*2, SCREEN_HEIGHT*2...
New
edruder
I thought that there might be interest in using the book with Rails 6.1 and Ruby 2.7.2. I’ll note what I needed to do differently here. ...
New
mikecargal
Title: Hands-on Rust: question about get_component (page 295) (feel free to respond. “You dug you’re own hole… good luck”) I have somet...
New
cro
I am working on the “Your Turn” for chapter one and building out the restart button talked about on page 27. It recommends looking into ...
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
rainforest
Hi, I’ve got a question about the implementation of PubSub when using a Phoenix.Socket.Transport behaviour rather than channels. Before ...
New
tkhobbes
After some hassle, I was able to finally run bin/setup, now I have started the rails server but I get this error message right when I vis...
New
mcpierce
@mfazio23 I’ve applied the changes from Chapter 5 of the book and everything builds correctly and runs. But, when I try to start a game,...
New
dachristenson
I just bought this book to learn about Android development, and I’m already running into a major issue in Ch. 1, p. 20: “Update activity...
New

Other popular topics Top

PragmaticBookshelf
Instantly view the changes you make to an app with stateful hot reload, and define a declarative UI in the same language as the app logic...
New
Exadra37
I am thinking in building or buy a desktop computer for programing, both professionally and on my free time, and my choice of OS is Linux...
New
brentjanderson
Bought the Moonlander mechanical keyboard. Cherry Brown MX switches. Arms and wrists have been hurting enough that it’s time I did someth...
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
We’ve talked about his book briefly here but it is quickly becoming obsolete - so he’s decided to create a series of 7 podcasts, the firs...
New
AstonJ
If you get Can't find emacs in your PATH when trying to install Doom Emacs on your Mac you… just… need to install Emacs first! :lol: bre...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight Rebecca Skinner @RebeccaSkinner Welcome to our latest author spotlight, where we sit down with Rebecca Skinner, auth...
New
New
PragmaticBookshelf
25 puzzles that will make you a better C programmer by challenging your knowledge of the language, and explaining the technical details o...
New
xiji2646-netizen
There’s a GitHub repo at forrestchang/andrej-karpathy-skills that’s sitting at 97.8k stars. It’s a single CLAUDE.md file with four behavi...
New

Sub Categories: