[swift-corelibs-dev] Adding type conversion capabilities to JSON encode/decode
Youming Lin
ylin at us.ibm.com
Wed Aug 30 16:35:33 CDT 2017
Brandon
I cooked up a simple example and it works as expected.
ylin at youming-mbpr:~/Swift/Configuration$ swift
Welcome to Apple Swift version 4.0-dev (LLVM 2dedb62a0b, Clang b9d76a314c,
Swift 0899bd328a). Type :help for assistance.
1> import Foundation
2> struct A: Codable {
3. var integer: Int
4.
5. public init(integer: Int) {
6. self.integer = integer
7. }
8.
9. public init(from decoder: Decoder) throws {
10. print("Custom decoder")
11. let container = try decoder.container(keyedBy:
CodingKeys.self)
12. integer = try container.decode(Int.self, forKey: .integer)
13. }
14. }
15.
16. try! JSONDecoder().decode(A.self, from: JSONEncoder().encode(A
(integer: 42)))
Custom decoder
$R0: A = {
integer = 42
}
You should be able to implement your custom init to convert the number into
a string and JSONDecoder should use that automatically.
Thanks,
Youming Lin
IBM Cloud, Swift at IBM, Kitura developer
Austin, TX
GitHub: @youming-lin
From: "Sneed, Brandon" <brsneed at ebay.com>
To: Youming Lin <ylin at us.ibm.com>
Cc: Tony Parker <anthony.parker at apple.com>,
"swift-corelibs-dev at swift.org" <swift-corelibs-dev at swift.org>,
"swift-corelibs-dev-bounces at swift.org"
<swift-corelibs-dev-bounces at swift.org>
Date: 08/30/2017 04:14 PM
Subject: Re: [swift-corelibs-dev] Adding type conversion capabilities to
JSON encode/decode
Thanks Youming,
Ok, thanks! I did try that, but I can’t seem to figure out how to make it
actually get used in the decoding process. That being my preferred way, I
tried it first. I chalked it not working up to Swift not knowing which of
the 2 init(from decoder:) functions to call, mine or theirs. But, maybe
there’s something I’m missing here.
Any insight is appreciated.
Thanks!
Brandon Sneed
From: Youming Lin <ylin at us.ibm.com>
Date: Wednesday, August 30, 2017 at 1:18 PM
To: "Sneed, Brandon" <brsneed at ebay.com>
Cc: Tony Parker <anthony.parker at apple.com>, "swift-corelibs-dev at swift.org"
<swift-corelibs-dev at swift.org>, "swift-corelibs-dev-bounces at swift.org"
<swift-corelibs-dev-bounces at swift.org>
Subject: Re: [swift-corelibs-dev] Adding type conversion capabilities to
JSON encode/decode
Brandon
>JSON’s types effectively end up matching specifically to primitives, of
which there is no mechanism to override the behavior of how a String gets
decoded for instance.
You can override the default behavior with your own custom init(from:)
implementation for your Codable struct:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swift/decodable/2894081-init
You can check Foundation source code (i.e., the URL struct) on how this can
be implemented.
Thanks,
Youming Lin
IBM Cloud, Swift at IBM, Kitura developer
Austin, TX
GitHub: @youming-lin
nactive hide details for "Sneed, Brandon via swift-corelibs-dev" ---08/30
"Sneed, Brandon via swift-corelibs-dev" ---08/30/2017 03:07:05 PM---Hi
Tony, I like the idea that the type itself is responsible for the
conversion. My own json encode
From: "Sneed, Brandon via swift-corelibs-dev"
<swift-corelibs-dev at swift.org>
To: Tony Parker <anthony.parker at apple.com>
Cc: "swift-corelibs-dev at swift.org" <swift-corelibs-dev at swift.org>
Date: 08/30/2017 03:07 PM
Subject: Re: [swift-corelibs-dev] Adding type conversion capabilities to
JSON encode/decode
Sent by: swift-corelibs-dev-bounces at swift.org
Hi Tony,
I like the idea that the type itself is responsible for the conversion. My
own json encode/decode library worked this way and it was really great,
however in trying to leverage Swift4 into it, or to replace it, I just
don’t see how that’s possible given how it’s currently structured.
JSON’s types effectively end up matching specifically to primitives, of
which there is no mechanism to override the behavior of how a String gets
decoded for instance. The only way I can think of to accomplish that is to
create *another* type, JSONString for example, but since String is a
struct, I can’t subclass it, and instead need to have the real value buried
inside of it … it seems to start getting messy very quickly. It also adds
the obfuscation of dealing with yet another type, which I’m not against,
but just feels less than ideal.
Brandon Sneed
From: <anthony.parker at apple.com> on behalf of Tony Parker
<anthony.parker at apple.com>
Date: Wednesday, August 30, 2017 at 11:30 AM
To: "Sneed, Brandon" <brsneed at ebay.com>
Cc: Itai Ferber <iferber at apple.com>, "swift-corelibs-dev at swift.org"
<swift-corelibs-dev at swift.org>
Subject: Re: [swift-corelibs-dev] Adding type conversion capabilities to
JSON encode/decode
I’m still not convinced that we should actually provide such a strategy.
Conversions like those below seem like the domain of each type that is
being decoded. If, in a particular type, the “number” can be either a true
number or a string, then that type can try decoding it as one or the other
and fall back as required. That puts the responsibility of doing that kind
of conversion in the type itself.
JSON has very few types already. I’m not sure we want to blur the line
between numbers and strings automatically…
- Tony
On Aug 30, 2017, at 11:24 AM, Sneed, Brandon via
swift-corelibs-dev <swift-corelibs-dev at swift.org> wrote:
Hi Itai,
No problem! Thanks for the heads up. Is there any way I could
be involved? Happy to do the work to whatever guidance your
team might have. I’m mostly just interested in it being there
soon, hence volunteering.
Thanks!
Brandon Sneed
From: <iferber at apple.com> on behalf of Itai Ferber <
iferber at apple.com>
Date: Wednesday, August 30, 2017 at 11:22 AM
To: "Sneed, Brandon" <brsneed at ebay.com>
Cc: "swift-corelibs-dev at swift.org" <
swift-corelibs-dev at swift.org>
Subject: Re: [swift-corelibs-dev] Adding type conversion
capabilities to JSON encode/decode
Hi Brandon,
Thanks for looking at this! We’ve got plans internally to
potentially add a strategy to JSONEncoder/JSONDecoder to allow
lenient conversions like this — i.e. implicitly stringify
numbers (or parse them from string input), among some others.
This would be opt-in for consumers of JSONDecoder while not
requiring any special annotations on Codable types.
— Itai
On 30 Aug 2017, at 10:59, Sneed, Brandon via swift-corelibs-dev
wrote:
Hi everyone,
Just throwing this out to see if anyone else is working on
this, or has opinions/suggestions on how it’s implemented. I’d
like to add this to the Codable/JSONDecoder/JSONEncoder system
if no one else is working on it.
Type type conversion, I mean given this JSON payload:
{
"name": "Endeavor”,
"abv": 8.9,
"brewery": "Saint Arnold”,
"style": "ipa"
}
and a struct defined as:
struct Beer: Codable {
let name: String
let abv: String
let brewery: String
let style: BeerStyle
}
Notice that “abv” is a number in the JSON, but a String in the
struct. I’d like to make it such that I can let the system know
it’s ok to convert it from a number to a string as opposed to
throwing an exception. The benefits are:
1. It’s defensive; service types can change without causing my
application to crash.
2. It allows a developer to work with the types they want to
work with as opposed to what the server provides, thus saving
them time of writing a custom encode/decode code for all
members.
The argument against it that I’ve heard is generally “it’s a
service bug, make them fix it”, which is valid but the reality
is we’re not all in control of the services we injest. The same
type of logic could be applied to a member name changing,
though I haven’t seen this happen often in practice. I do see
types in a json payload change with some frequency though. I
think much of the reason stems from the fact that type
conversion in javascript is effectively free, ie: you ask for a
String, you get a String if possible.
To implement this type conversion in practice, looking at it
from the point of view using Codable/JSON(en/de)coder, one way
would be to make it opt-in:
struct Beer: Codable, CodingConvertible {
let name: String
let abv: String
let brewery: String
let style: BeerStyle
}
I like this because looking at the struct, the members still
remain clear and relatively unambiguous. The downside is it’s
unknown which member is likely to get converted. And since it’s
opt-in, conversion doesn’t happen if the CodingConvertible
conformance isn’t adhered to.
Another option would be to box each type, like so:
struct Beer: Codable {
let name: String
let abv: Convertible<String>
let brewery: String
let style: BeerStyle
}
This seems tedious for developers, but would show which types
are being converted. It does however seriously weaken benefit
#1 above.
Those example usages above aside, I do think it’d be best if
this conversion behavior was the default and no end-developer
changes required. I think that could be done without impact to
code that’s been already been written against the JSON
en/decode bits.
I’m very open to alternatives, other ideas, or anything else
you might have to say on the subject. Thanks for reading!
Brandon Sneed
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