Often, I find myself with JSON that I wish to parse with strings somewhere inside that I want to parse in a non-trivial way (not just to a String). In such a case I need to make a decoder or a codec for it so I might try to do something like the following:
CodecJson[URL](_.toString.asJson, h ⇒
h.as[String].flatMap(s ⇒ Try{new URL(s)}.toOption)
)
but this won't compile because I can't flatMap over an Option.
How should this (seemingly common) behavior be handled?
One option would be to decode to an Option[URL], but that seems like a bummer if you just want to fail the decode.
Is there an accepted way of dealing with these subsequent decoding operations?
To solve the flatmap issue, you can convert from Try to DecodeResult. And the following technique also generalizes the String to X Codec.
def stringToTCodec[T](toString: T => String, fromString: String => T) = CodecJson[T](toString(_).asJson, h ⇒
h.as[String].flatMap(s ⇒ Try(fromString(s)) match {
case Success(u) => DecodeResult.ok(u)
case Failure(t) => DecodeResult.fail(s, h.history)
}))
implicit val urlCodec = stringToTCodec[URL](u => u.toString, s => new URL(s))
Related
I want to compute something if exactly one of two options is non-empty. Obviously this could be done by a pattern match, but is there some better way?
(o1, o2) match {
case (Some(o), None) => Some(compute(o))
case (None, Some(o)) => Some(compute(o))
case _ => None
}
You could do something like this:
if (o1.isEmpty ^ o2.isEmpty)
List(o1,o2).flatMap(_.map(x=>Some(compute(x)))).head
else
None
But pattern matching is probably the better way to go.
Thanks to helpful comments from #Suma, I came up with another solutions in addition to the current ones:
Since the inputs are always in the form of Option(x):
Iterator(Seq(o1,o2).filter(_!=None))
.takeWhile(_.length==1)
.map( x => compute(x.head.get))
.toSeq.headOption
Using iterator also allows for a sequence of values to be passed to the input. The final mapping will be done if and only if one value in the sequence is defined.
Inspired by now deleted answer of pedrofurla, which was attempting to use o1 orElse o2 map { compute }, one possibility is to define xorElse, the rest is easy with it:
implicit class XorElse[T](o1: Option[T]) {
def xorElse[A >: T](o2: Option[A]): Option[A] = {
if (o1.isDefined != o2.isDefined) o1 orElse o2
else None
}
}
(o1 xorElse o2).map(compute)
Another possibility I have found is using a pattern match, but using Seq concatenation so that both cases are handled with the same code. The advantage of this approach is it can be extended to any number of options, it will always evaluate when there is exactly one:
o1.toSeq ++ o2 match {
case Seq(one) => Some(compute(one))
case _ => None
}
Just initialize a sequence and then flatten
Seq(o1, o2).flatten match {
case Seq(o) => Some(compute(o))
case _ => None
}
This code compiles fine, but fails at runtime:
val values = Set("a").toSeq.sorted
values match {
case Nil => println("empty")
case h::t => println(s"h = $h")
}
With the error message:
scala.MatchError: ArrayBuffer(a) (of class scala.collection.mutable.ArrayBuffer)
I understand that somewhere in the process an ArrayBuffer is created, on which I cannot pattern-match like this. However, why can't the compiler tell me that this is not going to work?
You are matching on an open (extensible) data type, Scala's Seq. It could be a List, so Scala doesn't complain with your List pattern. On the other hand, exhaustiveness cannot be checked because it could really be any class implementing Seq (that we may not even know statically), so Scala just trusts you on this one.
You can use generic Seq patterns instead:
values match {
case Seq() => println("empty")
case h +: t => println(s"h = $h")
}
Or just convert to a List and use the same patterns (but Lists are not very efficient data structures, so it's probably better with the first option).
val values = Set("a").toList.sorted
values match {
case Nil => println("empty")
case h::t => println(s"h = $h")
}
Getting errors from pattern matching can be tricky sometimes, but in this case:
scala> :type values
Seq[String]
scala> Seq(1,2,3) match { case h::t => "ok" }
res1: String = ok
There's not enough type info to say it can't work, and it errs on the side of not annoying you.
Is there a more concise and/or performant way to traverse the message than what I have here?
import akka.util.ByteString
#throws[GarbledMessageException]
def nextValue(message: ByteString) =
message.indexOf(delimiter) match {
case i if i >= 0 => message.splitAt(i)
case _ => throw new GarbledMessageException("Delimiter Not Found")
}
#tailrec
def processFields(message: ByteString): Unit = nextValue(message) match {
case (_, ByteString.empty) => // Complete Parsing
case (value, rest) =>
// Do work with value
// loop
processFields(rest)
}
A new ByteString is created for each split which hurts performance, but at least the underlying Buffer is not copied, only reference counted.
Maybe it can be even better than that?
It may depend on specifically what kind of work you are doing, but if you are looking for something more performant than splitting off ByteStrings, take a look at ByteIterator, which you can get by calling iterator on a ByteString.
A ByteIterator would allow you to go directly to primitive values (ints, floats, etc.) without having to split off new ByteStrings first.
Consider the following from the Scala interpreter:
scala> JSON.parseFull("""{"name":"jack","greeting":"hello world"}""")
res6: Option[Any] = Some(Map(name -> jack, greeting -> hello world))
Why is the Map returned in Some() thing? And how do I work with it?
I want to put the values in an xml template:
<test>
<name>name goes here</name>
<greeting>greeting goes here</greeting>
</test>
What is the Scala way of getting my map out of Some(thing) and getting those values in the xml?
You should probably use something like this:
res6 collect { case x: Map[String, String] => renderXml(x) }
Where:
def renderXml(m: Map[String, String]) =
<test><name>{m.get("name") getOrElse ""}</name></test>
The collect method on Option[A] takes a PartialFunction[A, B] and is a combination of filter (by a predicate) and map (by a function). That is:
opt collect pf
opt filter (a => pf isDefinedAt a) map (a => pf(a))
Are both equivalent. When you have an optional value, you should use map, flatMap, filter, collect etc to transform the option in your program, avoiding extracting the option's contents either via a pattern-match or via the get method. You should never, ever use Option.get - it is the canonical sign that you are doing it wrong. Pattern-matching should be avoided because it represents a fork in your program and hence adds to cyclomatic complexity - the only time you might wish to do this might be for performance
Actually you have the issue that the result of the parseJSON method is an Option[Any] (the reason is that it is an Option, presumably, is that the parsing may not succeed and Option is a more graceful way of handling null than, well, null).
But the issue with my code above is that the case x: Map[String, String] cannot be checked at runtime due to type erasure (i.e. scala can check that the option contains a Map but not that the Map's type parameters are both String. The code will get you an unchecked warning.
An Option is returned because parseFull has different possible return values depending on the input, or it may fail to parse the input at all (giving None). So, aside from an optional Map which associates keys with values, an optional List can be returned as well if the JSON string denoted an array.
Example:
scala> import scala.util.parsing.json.JSON._
import scala.util.parsing.json.JSON._
scala> parseFull("""{"name":"jack"}""")
res4: Option[Any] = Some(Map(name -> jack))
scala> parseFull("""[ 100, 200, 300 ]""")
res6: Option[Any] = Some(List(100.0, 200.0, 300.0))
You might need pattern matching in order to achieve what you want, like so:
scala> parseFull("""{"name":"jack","greeting":"hello world"}""") match {
| case Some(m) => Console println ("Got a map: " + m)
| case _ =>
| }
Got a map: Map(name -> jack, greeting -> hello world)
Now, if you want to generate XML output, you can use the above to iterate over the key/value pairs:
import scala.xml.XML
parseFull("""{"name":"jack","greeting":"hello world"}""") match {
case Some(m: Map[_,_]) =>
<test>
{
m map { case (k,v) =>
XML.loadString("<%s>%s</%s>".format(k,v,k))
}
}
</test>
case _ =>
}
parseFull returns an Option because the string may not be valid JSON (in which case it will return None instead of Some).
The usual way to get the value out of a Some is to pattern match against it like this:
result match {
case Some(map) =>
doSomethingWith(map)
case None =>
handleTheError()
}
If you're certain the input will always be valid and so you don't need to handle the case of invalid input, you can use the get method on the Option, which will throw an exception when called on None.
You have two separate problems.
It's typed as Any.
Your data is inside an Option and a Map.
Let's suppose we have the data:
val x: Option[Any] = Some(Map("name" -> "jack", "greeting" -> "hi"))
and suppose that we want to return the appropriate XML if there is something to return, but not otherwise. Then we can use collect to gather those parts that we know how to deal with:
val y = x collect {
case m: Map[_,_] => m collect {
case (key: String, value: String) => key -> value
}
}
(note how we've taken each entry in the map apart to make sure it maps a string to a string--we wouldn't know how to proceed otherwise. We get:
y: Option[scala.collection.immutable.Map[String,String]] =
Some(Map(name -> jack, greeting -> hi))
Okay, that's better! Now if you know which fields you want in your XML, you can ask for them:
val z = for (m <- y; name <- m.get("name"); greet <- m.get("greeting")) yield {
<test><name>{name}</name><greeting>{greet}</greeting></test>
}
which in this (successful) case produces
z: Option[scala.xml.Elem] =
Some(<test><name>jack</name><greeting>hi</greeting></test>)
and in an unsuccessful case would produce None.
If you instead want to wrap whatever you happen to find in your map in the form <key>value</key>, it's a bit more work because Scala doesn't have a good abstraction for tags:
val z = for (m <- y) yield <test>{ m.map { case (tag, text) => xml.Elem(null, tag, xml.Null, xml.TopScope, xml.Text(text)) }}</test>
which again produces
z: Option[scala.xml.Elem] =
Some(<test><name>jack</name><greeting>hi</greeting></test>)
(You can use get to get the contents of an Option, but it will throw an exception if the Option is empty (i.e. None).)
I have a Scala Option[T]. If the value is Some(x) I want to process it with a a process that does not return a value (Unit), but if it is None, I want to print an error.
I can use the following code to do this, but I understand that the more idiomatic way is to treat the Option[T] as a sequence and use map, foreach, etc. How do I do this?
opt match {
case Some(x) => // process x with no return value, e.g. write x to a file
case None => // print error message
}
I think explicit pattern matching suits your use case best.
Scala's Option is, sadly, missing a method to do exactly this. I add one:
class OptionWrapper[A](o: Option[A]) {
def fold[Z](default: => Z)(action: A => Z) = o.map(action).getOrElse(default)
}
implicit def option_has_utility[A](o: Option[A]) = new OptionWrapper(o)
which has the slightly nicer (in my view) usage
op.fold{ println("Empty!") }{ x => doStuffWith(x) }
You can see from how it's defined that map/getOrElse can be used instead of pattern matching.
Alternatively, Either already has a fold method. So you can
op.toRight(()).fold{ _ => println("Empty!") }{ x => doStuffWith(x) }
but this is a little clumsy given that you have to provide the left value (here (), i.e. Unit) and then define a function on that, rather than just stating what you want to happen on None.
The pattern match isn't bad either, especially for longer blocks of code. For short ones, the overhead of the match starts getting in the way of the point. For example:
op.fold{ printError }{ saveUserInput }
has a lot less syntactic overhead than
op match {
case Some(x) => saveUserInput(x)
case None => printError
}
and therefore, once you expect it, is a lot easier to comprehend.
I'd recommend to simply and safely use opt.get which itself throws a NoSuchElementException exception if opt is None. Or if you want to throw your own exception, you can do this:
val x = opt.getOrElse(throw new Exception("Your error message"))
// x is of type T
as #missingfaktor says, you are in the exact scenario where pattern matching is giving the most readable results.
If Option has a value you want to do something, if not you want to do something else.
While there are various ways to use map and other functional constructs on Option types, they are generally useful when:
you want to use the Some case and ignore the None case e.g. in your case
opt.map(writeToFile(_)) //(...if None just do nothing)
or you want to chain the operations on more than one option and give a result only when all of them are Some. For instance, one way of doing this is:
val concatThreeOptions =
for {
n1 <- opt1
n2 <- opt2
n3 <- opt3
} yield n1 + n2 + n3 // this will be None if any of the three is None
// we will either write them all to a file or none of them
but none of these seem to be your case
Pattern matching is the best choice here.
However, if you want to treat Option as a sequence and to map over it, you can do it, because Unit is a value:
opt map { v =>
println(v) // process v (result type is Unit)
} getOrElse {
println("error")
}
By the way, printing an error is some kind of "anti-pattern", so it's better to throw an exception anyway:
opt.getOrElse(throw new SomeException)