I have written several helper functions in F# that enable me to deal with the dynamic nature of Excel over the COM/PIA interface. However when I go to use these functions in an Excel-DNA UDF they do not work as expected as Excel-DNA is pre-processing the values in the array from excel.
e.g. null is turned into ExcelDna.Integration.ExcelEmpty
This interferes with my own validation code that was anticipating a null. I am able to work around this by adding an additional case to my pattern matching:
let (|XlEmpty|_|) (x: obj) =
match x with
| null -> Some XlEmpty
| :? ExcelDna.Integration.ExcelEmpty -> Some XlEmpty
| _ -> None
However it feels like a waste to convert and then convert again. Is there a way to tell Excel-DNA not to do additional processing of the range values in a UDF and supply them equivalent to the COM/PIA interface? i.e. Range.Value XlRangeValueDataType.xlRangeValueDefault
EDIT:
I declare my arguments as obj like this:
[<ExcelFunction(Description = "Validates a Test Table Row")>]
let isTestRow (headings: obj) (row: obj) =
let validator = TestTable.validator
let headingsList = TestTable.testHeadings
validateRow validator headingsList headings row
I have done some more digging and #Jim Foye's suggested question also confirms this. For UDF's, Excel-DNA works over the C API rather than COM and therefore has to do its own marshaling. The possible values are shown in this file:
https://github.com/Excel-DNA/ExcelDna/blob/2aa1bd9afaf76084c1d59e2330584edddb888eb1/Distribution/Reference.txt
The reason to use ExcelEmpty (the user supplied an empty cell) is that for a UDF, the argument can also be ExcelMissing (the user supplied no argument) which might both be reasonably null and there is a need to disambiguate.
I will adjust my pattern matching to be compatible with both the COM marshaling and the ExcelDNA marshaling.
Related
I seem to often run into cases where I want to generate some complex structure, but a special variation with a member type generated differently.
For example, consider this tree
type Tree<'LeafData,'INodeData> =
| LeafNode of 'LeafData
| InternalNode of 'INodeData * Tree<'LeafData,'INodeData> list
I want to generate cases like
No internal node is childless
There are no leaf-type nodes
Only a limited subset of leaf types are used
These are simple to do if I override all generation of a corresponding child type.
The problem is that it seems register is inherently a thread-level action, and there is no gen-local alternative.
For example, what I want could look like
let limitedLeafs =
gen {
let leafGen = Arb.generate<LeafType> |> Gen.filter isAllowedLeaf
do! registerContextualArb (leafGen |> Arb.fromGen)
return! Arb.generate<Tree<NodeType, LeafType>>
}
This Tree example specifically can work around with some creative type shuffling, but that's not always possible.
It's also possible to use some sort of recursive map that enforces assumptions, but that seems relatively complex if the above is possible. I might be misunderstanding the nature of FsCheck generators though.
Does anyone know how to accomplish this kind of gen-local override?
There's a few options here - I'm assuming you're on FsCheck 2.x but keep scrolling for an option in FsCheck 3.
The first is the most natural one but is more work, which is to break down the generator explicitly to the level you need, and then put humpty dumpty together again. I.e don't rely on the type-based generator derivation so much - if I understand your example correctly that would mean implementing a recursive generator - relying on Arb.generate<LeafType> for the generic types.
Second option - Config has an Arbitrary field which you can use to override Arbitrary instances. These overrides will take effect even if the overridden types are part of the automatically generated ones. So as a sketch you could try:
Check.One ({Config.Quick with Arbitrary = [| typeof<MyLeafArbitrary>) |]) (fun safeTree -> ...)
More extensive example which uses FsCheck.Xunit's PropertyAttribute but the principle is the same, set on the Config instead.
Final option! :) In FsCheck 3 (prerelease) you can configure this via a new (as of yet undocumented) concept ArbMap which makes the map from type to Arbitrary instance explicit, instead of this static global nonsense in 2.x (my bad of course. seemed like a good idea at the time.) The implementation is here which may not tell you all that much - the idea is that you put an ArbMap instance together which contains your "safe" generators for the subparts, then you ArbMap.mergeWith that safe map with ArbMap.defaults (thus overriding the default generators with your safe ones, in the resulting ArbMap) and then you use ArbMap.arbitrary or ArbMap.generate with the resulting map.
Sorry for the long winded explanation - but all in all that should give you the best of both worlds - you can reuse the generic union type generator in FsCheck, while surgically overriding certain types in that context.
FsCheck guidance on this is:
To define a generator that generates a subset of the normal range of values for an existing type, say all the even ints, it makes properties more readable if you define a single-case union case, and register a generator for the new type:
As an example, they suggest you could define arbitrary even integers like this:
type EvenInt = EvenInt of int with
static member op_Explicit(EvenInt i) = i
type ArbitraryModifiers =
static member EvenInt() =
Arb.from<int>
|> Arb.filter (fun i -> i % 2 = 0)
|> Arb.convert EvenInt int
Arb.register<ArbitraryModifiers>() |> ignore
You could then generate and test trees whose leaves are even integers like this:
let ``leaves are even`` (tree : Tree<EvenInt, string>) =
let rec leaves = function
| LeafNode leaf -> [leaf]
| InternalNode (_, children) ->
children |> List.collect leaves
leaves tree
|> Seq.forall (fun (EvenInt leaf) ->
leaf % 2 = 0)
Check.Quick ``leaves are even`` // output: Ok, passed 100 tests.
To be honest, I like your idea of a "gen-local override" better, but I don't think FsCheck supports it.
I'd like to tidy my Eralng code, I found there're lots of issue following:
A = {Tid, _Tv0, _Tv1, Tv2, Tv3}
Is there any way to clean the code like to be: A = {Tid, SomewayReplace(4)} ???
Update1:
like #Pascal example, Is there any way to simple the code A = {T, _, _, _, _, _} like to be A = {T, SomewayReplace(4)} to replace that 4 symbol _ ???
update2
in real project, if some record include many element, I found it force me to repeat writing the symbol _, so I wonder if there is any way to simple it???
Writting A = Something means that you try to match A with Something or if A is unbound, assign Something to A. In anycase, Something must be defined.
You can find some shortcut in writting. For example, if you want to assign the result of a funtion to A, verify that the result is a tuple of 5 elements and assign the first element to T, the you can write:
A = {T,_,_,_,_} = f(Param).
The meaning of _T is exactly the same as any variable. It just says to th compiler to not issue a warning if this variable is not used in the code. It is frequent in pattern matching when you want to ignore the value of a variable but still keep trace of its meaning.
[edit]
It is not possible to write {T, SomewayReplace(4)}, but you may use records. A record is a tagged tuple (first element is the atom that identify this record. It is not shorter than placeholder for small tuples, but it is clearer, you don't need to remember the location of the information in your tuple, and it is easier to modify your code when you need to add a new element in a tuple. The syntax will be
-record(mytuple,{field1,...,fieldx,...}.
...
A = #mytuple{fieldx = T} = f(Param).
waerning: Records are managed by the compiler, so everything must be known at build time (#mytuple{Fieldx = T} is illegal, Fieldx cannot be a variable).
Why not use a record? Then you only match the fields you want to extract. As a by-effect, you make the code easier to debug, since you are forced to name the tuple by having a atom first.
let o1 = box SomeType()
let t = typeof<SomeType>
Is it possible to downcast (to SomeType) a boxed object (o1) using the Type information stored in other object (o1)?
The ultimate objective is to have a sort of dynamic invocation of functions.
I'm storing functions with signature FSharpFunc<'Pre,'Post> in a Map:
// Lack of Covariance/Contravariance force me to define it as obj:
let functions = Map<string,obj>
let invoke f (pre : 'Pre when 'Pre : comparison) (post : 'Post when 'Post : comparison) =
(unbox<FSharpFunc<'Pre,'Post>> f).Invoke(pre)
This dynamic invocation works whenever I pass the proper types objects in pre and post.
And know comes the issue. I also has the arguments of the invocation in a map of the form:
let data = Map<string,obj>
let conf = Map<string, Type>
where conf stores the type of each possible string key in data.
So given a function key and a proper configuration, I can retrieve the arguments from data in order to feed the function. But for these to work I should be able to downcast data values using conf Types.
I suspect that it is not possible and I'm aware that I am bypassing static type safety (I'm ok with that). In that case, Any workaround or alternative approach?
I'm not sure I understand what you are after here, so this is not a specific answer to your question, but rather a couple of suggestions that might help you.
Generally speaking it sounds like you want some sort of existential types. It sounds like
you have data of various types and
you have operations on that data and
you want to dynamically invoke those operations on the data.
To make such things safely, you should encapsulate the data (or ideally the type of the data) and the operations together rather than separately. At the point when you know the type of the data and the possible operations on the data, wrap them together so that other parts of your program cannot just take the data and try to unsafely perform arbitrary operations on the data. (To make such encapsulation general and safe, allowing type safe manipulation of data whose type is not know statically, you need something like first-class modules.)
As another suggestion, rather than boxing whole functions, you might rather want to box and unbox
the domains and ranges of functions. Consider the following wrap and unwrap functions:
let wrap (a2b: 'a -> 'b) : obj -> obj =
unbox<'a> >> a2b >> box<'b>
let unwrap (o2o: obj -> obj) : 'a -> 'b =
box<'a> >> o2o >> unbox<'b>
The function map would have the signature
val functions: Map<string, obj -> obj>
and would store wrapped functions. To invoke a function from the map, you would unwrap the previously wrapped o2o function with the desired type:
(unwrap o2o : 'a when 'a: comparison -> 'b when 'b: comparison)
This is not type safe as such, but allows for flexible invocations.
I thought that I might be able to do this with quotations - but I can't see how.
Should I just use a table of the functions with their names - or is their a way of doing this?
Thanks.
For more info......
I'm calling a lot of f# functions from excel and I wondered if I could write a f# function
let fs_wrapper (f_name:string) (f_params:list double) =
this bit calls fname with f_params
and then use
=fs_wrapper("my_func", 3.14, 2.71)
in the sheet rather than wrap all the functions separately.
You'll need to use standard .NET Reflection to do this. Quotations aren't going to help, because they represent function calls using standard .NET MethodInfo, so you'll need to use reflection anyway. The only benefit of quotations (compared to naive reflection) is that you can compile them, which could give you better performance (but the compilation isn't perfect).
Depending on your specific scenario (e.g. where are the functions located), you'd have to do something like:
module Functions =
let sin x = sin(x)
let sqrt y = sqrt(y)
open System.Reflection
let moduleInfo =
Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetTypes()
|> Seq.find (fun t -> t.Name = "Functions")
let name = "sin"
moduleInfo.GetMethod(name).Invoke(null, [| box 3.1415 |])
Unless you need some extensibility or have a large number of functions, using a dictionary containing string as a key and function value as the value may be an easier option:
let funcs =
dict [ "sin", Functions.sin;
"sqrt", Functions.sqrt ]
funcs.[name](3.1415)
There are many methods but one way is to use Reflection, for instance:
typeof<int>.GetMethod("ToString", System.Type.EmptyTypes).Invoke(1, null)
typeof<int>.GetMethod("Parse", [|typeof<string>|]).Invoke(null, [|"112"|])
GetMethod optionally takes an array of types that define the signature, but you can skip that if your method is unambiguous.
Following up on what Thomas alluded to, have a look at Using and Abusing the F# Dynamic Lookup Operator by Matthew Podwysocki. It offers a syntactically clean way for doing dynamic lookup in F#.
So, by a hilarious series of events, I downloaded the FParsec source and tried to build it. Unfortunately, it's not compatible with the new 1.9.9.9. I fixed the easy problems, but there are a couple of discriminated unions that still don't work.
Specifically, Don Syme's post explains that discriminated unions containing items of type obj or -> don't automatically get equality or comparison constraints, since objects don't support comparison and functions don't support equality either. (It's not clear whether the automatically generated equality/comparison was buggy before, but the code won't even compile now that they're no longer generated.)
Here are some examples of the problematic DUs:
type PrecedenceParserOp<'a,'u'> =
| PrefixOp of string * Parser<unit,'u> * int * bool * ('a -> 'a)
| others ...
type ErrorMessage =
| ...
| OtherError of obj
| ...
Here are the offending uses:
member t.RemoveOperator (op: PrecedenceParserOp<'a, 'u>) =
// some code ...
if top.OriginalOp <> op then false // requires equality constraint
// etc etc ...
or, for the comparison constraint
let rec printMessages (pos: Pos) (msgs: ErrorMessage list) ind =
// other code ...
for msg in Set.ofList msgs do // iterate over ordered unique messages
// etc etc ...
As far I can tell, Don's solution of tagging each instance with a unique int is the Right Way to implement a custom equality/comparison constraint (or a maybe a unique int tuple so that individual branches of the DU can be ordered). But this is inconvenient for the user of the DU. Now, construction of the DU requires calling a function to get the next stamp.
Is there some way to hide the tag-getting and present the same constructors to users of the library? That is, to change the implementation without changing the interface? This is especially important because it appears (from what I understand of the code) that PrecedenceParserOp is a public type.
What source did you download for FParsec? I grabbed the latest from the FParsec BitBucket repository, and I didn't have to make any changes at all to the FParsec source to get it to compile in VS 2010 RC.
Edit: I take that back. I did get build errors from the InterpLexYacc and InterpFParsec sample projects, but the core FParsec and FParsecCS projects build just fine.
One thing you could do is add [<CustomEquality>] and [<CustomComparison>] attributes and define your own .Equals override and IComparable implementation. Of course, this would require you to handle the obj and _ -> _ components yourself in an appropriate way, which may or may not be possible. If you can control what's being passed into the OtherError constructor, you ought to be able to make this work for the ErrorMessage type by downcasting the obj to a type which is itself structurally comparable. However, the PrecendenceParserOp case is a bit trickier - you might be able to get by with using reference equality on the function components as long as you don't need comparison as well.