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

jimschubert
In Chapter 3, the source for index introduces Config on page 31, followed by more code including tests; Config isn’t introduced until pag...
New
jeffmcompsci
Title: Design and Build Great Web APIs - typo “https://company-atk.herokuapp.com/2258ie4t68jv” (page 19, third bullet in URL list) Typo:...
New
yulkin
your book suggests to use Image.toByteData() to convert image to bytes, however I get the following error: "the getter ‘toByteData’ isn’t...
New
jamis
The following is cross-posted from the original Ray Tracer Challenge forum, from a post by garfieldnate. I’m cross-posting it so that the...
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
HarryDeveloper
Hi @venkats, It has been mentioned in the description of ‘Supervisory Job’ title that 2 things as mentioned below result in the same eff...
New
adamwoolhether
When trying to generate the protobuf .go file, I receive this error: Unknown flag: --go_opt libprotoc 3.12.3 MacOS 11.3.1 Googling ...
New
akraut
The markup used to display the uploaded image results in a Phoenix.LiveView.HTMLTokenizer.ParseError error. lib/pento_web/live/product_l...
New
taguniversalmachine
Hi, I am getting an error I cannot figure out on my test. I have what I think is the exact code from the book, other than I changed “us...
New
New

Other popular topics Top

PragmaticBookshelf
Learn from the award-winning programming series that inspired the Elixir language, and go on a step-by-step journey through the most impo...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Build highly interactive applications without ever leaving Elixir, the way the experts do. Let LiveView take care of performance, scalabi...
New
Maartz
Hi folks, I don’t know if I saw this here but, here’s a new programming language, called Roc Reminds me a bit of Elm and thus Haskell. ...
New
mafinar
This is going to be a long an frequently posted thread. While talking to a friend of mine who has taken data structure and algorithm cou...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Rails 7 completely redefines what it means to produce fantastic user experiences and provides a way to achieve all the benefits of single...
New
New
New
New
First poster: AstonJ
Jan | Rethink the Computer. Jan turns your computer into an AI machine by running LLMs locally on your computer. It’s a privacy-focus, l...
New
mindriot
Ok, well here are some thoughts and opinions on some of the ergonomic keyboards I have, I guess like mini review of each that I use enoug...
New

Sub Categories: