I've got a type Average with a field count that's a positive int64 and a double field called sum.
I made an arbitrary that generates valid instances with
let AverageGen = Gen.map2 (fun s c -> Average(float(s),int64(int(c))) (Arb.Default.NormalFloat().Generator) (Arb.Default.PositiveInt().Generator) |> Arb.fromGen
How do I get this to be generate arguments with type Average in Property style tests in xUnit?
[<Property>]
static member average_test(av:Average) = ...
type Generators =
static member TestCase() =
{ new Arbitrary<TestCase>() with
override x.Generator =
gen { ...
return TestCase(...) }}
[<Property(Arbitrary=[|typeof<Generators>|])>]
I think Vasily Kirichenko's solution is the correct one, but just for completeness sake, I've also been able to make it work with this imperative function invocation style:
do Arb.register<Generators>() |> ignore
...if you assume a Generators class as in Vasily Kirichenko's answer.
Edit, much later...
While the above, imperative approach may work, I never use it because of its impure nature. Instead, I sometimes use the Arbitrary directly from within the test. With the AverageGen value above (which I'll rename to averageGen, because values should be camelCased), it could look like this:
[<Property>]
let member average_test () =
Prop.forAll averageGen (fun avg ->
// The rest of the test goes here... )
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've been reading F# articles and they use single case variants to create distinct incompatible types. However in Ocaml I can use private module types or abstract types to create distinct types. Is it common in Ocaml to use single case variants like in F# or Haskell?
Another specialized use case fo a single constructor variant is to erase some type information with a GADT (and an existential quantification).
For instance, in
type showable = Show: 'a * ('a -> string) -> showable
let show (Show (x,f)) = f x
let showables = [ Show (0,string_of_int); Show("string", Fun.id) ]
The constructor Show pairs an element of a given type with a printing function, then forget the concrete type of the element. This makes it possible to have a list of showable elements, even if each elements had a different concrete types.
For what it's worth it seems to me this wasn't particularly common in OCaml in the past.
I've been reluctant to do this myself because it has always cost something: the representation of type t = T of int was always bigger than just the representation of an int.
However recently (probably a few years) it's possible to declare types as unboxed, which removes this obstacle:
type [#unboxed] t = T of int
As a result I've personally been using single-constructor types much more frequently recently. There are many advantages. For me the main one is that I can have a distinct type that's independent of whether it's representation happens to be the same as another type.
You can of course use modules to get this effect, as you say. But that is a fairly heavy solution.
(All of this is just my opinion naturally.)
Yet another case for single-constructor types (although it does not quite match your initial question of creating distinct types): fancy records. (By contrast with other answers, this is more a syntactic convenience than a fundamental feature.)
Indeed, using a relatively recent feature (introduced with OCaml 4.03, in 2016) which allows writing constructor arguments with a record syntax (including mutable fields!), you can prefix regular records with a constructor name, Coq-style.
type t = MakeT of {
mutable x : int ;
mutable y : string ;
}
let some_t = MakeT { x = 4 ; y = "tea" }
(* val some_t : t = MakeT {x = 4; y = "tea"} *)
It does not change anything at runtime (just like Constr (a,b) has the same representation as (a,b), provided Constr is the only constructor of its type). The constructor makes the code a bit more explicit to the human eye, and it also provides the type information required to disambiguate field names, thus avoiding the need for type annotations. It is similar in function to the usual module trick, but more systematic.
Patterns work just the same:
let (MakeT { x ; y }) = some_t
(* val x : int = 4 *)
(* val y : string = "tea" *)
You can also access the “contained” record (at no runtime cost), read and modify its fields. This contained record however is not a first-class value: you cannot store it, pass it to a function nor return it.
let (MakeT fields) = some_t in fields.x (* returns 4 *)
let (MakeT fields) = some_t in fields.x <- 42
(* some_t is now MakeT {x = 42; y = "tea"} *)
let (MakeT fields) = some_t in fields
(* ^^^^^^
Error: This form is not allowed as the type of the inlined record could escape. *)
Another use case of single-constructor (polymorphic) variants is documenting something to the caller of a function. For instance, perhaps there's a caveat with the value that your function returns:
val create : unit -> [ `Must_call_close of t ]
Using a variant forces the caller of your function to pattern-match on this variant in their code:
let (`Must_call_close t) = create () in (* ... *)
This makes it more likely that they'll pay attention to the message in the variant, as opposed to documentation in an .mli file that could get missed.
For this use case, polymorphic variants are a bit easier to work with as you don't need to define an intermediate type for the variant.
After some practice with F#, I have still some points where I need to clear confusion:
The question is specifically about fields in a type.
This is what I understand and, some must be wrong because the naming wouldn't make sense if I was right:
let x -> private read-only field, evaluated once
let mutable x -> private mutable field
val x -> public read-only field.. difference with let?
val mutable x -> public mutable field
member this.x -> private read-only field, evaluated every time
member val -> public mutable field.. difference with val? why no mutable keyword?
Can someone tell me what is right / wrong, or some concepts I may have gotten wrong.
First of all, you can pretty much ignore val and val mutable. Those two are used with an older syntax for defining classes that is not exactly formally deprecated, but I would almost never use it when writing new normal F# code (there are some rare use cases, but I don't think it's worth worrying about those).
This leaves let and let mutable vs. member and member val.
let defines a private field that can only be accessed within the class. The value you assign to it is evaluated once. You can also define functions like let foo x = x + 1 or let bar () = printfn "hi" which have body that's evaluated when the function is called.
let mutable defines a private mutable field. This is initialized by evaluating the right-hand side, but you can later mutate it using fld <- <new value>.
member this.Foo = (...) defines a get-only property. The expression (...) is evaluated repeatedly whenever the property is accessed. This is a side-effect of how .NET properties work - they have a hidden get() method that's called whenever they are accessed, so the body is the body of this method.
member val Foo = (...) is a way of writing a property that is evaluated only once. In earlier versions of F#, this was not available, so you had to implement this functionality quite tediously yourself by definining a local field (to run the code once) and then returning that from a regular property:
let foo = (...)
member x.Foo = foo
I'd like to create an FsCheck Generator to generate instances of a "complex" object. By complex, I mean an existing class in C# that has a number of child properties and collections. These properties and collections in turn need to have data generated for them.
Imagine this class was named Menu with child collections Dishes and Drinks (I'm making this up so ignore the crappy design). I want to do the following:
Generate a variable number of Dishes and a variable number of Drinks.
Generate the Dish and Drink instances using the FsCheck API to populate their properties.
Set some other primitive properties on the Menu instance using the FsCheck API.
How does one go about writing a generator for this type of instance? Is this a bad idea? (I'm new to property based testing). I have read the docs, but have clearly failed to internalise it all so far.
There is a nice example for generating a record, but this is really only generating 3 values of the same type float.
This is not a bad idea - in fact it's the whole point that you are able to do this. FsCheck's generators are fully compositional.
Note first that if you have immutable objects whose constructors take primitive types, like your Drink and Dish looks like, FsCheck can generate these out of the box (using reflection)
let drinkArb = Arb.from<Drink>
let dishArb = Arb.from<Dish>
should give you an Arbitrary instance, which is a generator (generates a random Drink instance) and a shrinker (takes a Drink instance and makes it 'smaller' - this helps with debugging, esp. for composite structures, where you get a small counter-example if your test fails).
This breaks down fairly quickly though - in your example you probably don't want negative integers for the number of drinks or the number of dishes. The above code will generate negative numbers though. Sometimes this is easy to fix if your type is really just a wrapper of some sort around another type, using Arb.convert, e.g.
let drinksArb = Arb.Default.PositiveInt() |> Arb.convert (fun positive -> new Drinks(positive) (fun drinks -> drinks.Amount)
You need to provide to and from conversions to Arb.convert and presto, new arbitrary instance for Drinks that maintains your invariant. Other invariants may not be so easy to maintain of course.
After that it becomes a bit harder to generate a generator and a shrinker at the same time from those two pieces. Always start with the generator, then shrinker comes later if (when) you need it. #simonhdickson's example looks reasonable. If you have the arbitrary instances above, you can get at their generator by calling .Generator.
let drinksGen = drinksArb.Generator
Once you have the parts generators (Drink and Dish), you can indeed compose them together as #simonhdickson proposes:
let menuGenerator =
Gen.map3 (fun a b c -> Menu(a,b,c)) (Gen.listOf dishGenerator) (Gen.listOf drinkGenerator) (Arb.generate<int>)
Divide and conquer! Overall have a look at what intellisense on Gen gives you to get some ideas of how to compose generators.
There might be a better way of describing this, but I think this might do what you're thinking of. Each of the Drink/Dish types could take further parameters using the same kind of style as the menuGenerator does
type Drink() =
member m.X = 1
type Dish() =
member m.Y = 2
type Menu(dishes:Dish list, drinks:Drink list, total:int) =
member m.Dishes = dishes
member m.Drinks = drinks
member m.Total = total
let drinkGenerator = Arb.generate<unit> |> Gen.map (fun () -> Drink())
let dishGenerator = Arb.generate<unit> |> Gen.map (fun () -> Dish())
let menuGenerator =
Gen.map3 (fun a b c -> Menu(a,b,c)) <| Gen.listOf dishGenerator <| Gen.listOf drinkGenerator <| Arb.generate<int>
This is a pretty simple question, and I just wanted to check that what I'm doing and how I'm interpreting the F# makes sense. If I have the statement
let printRandom =
x = MyApplication.getRandom()
printfn "%d" x
x
Instead of creating printRandom as a function, F# runs it once and then assigns it a value. So, now, when I call printRandom, instead of getting a new random value and printing it, I simply get whatever was returned the first time. I can get around this my defining it as such:
let printRandom() =
x = MyApplication.getRandom()
printfn "%d" x
x
Is this the proper way to draw this distinction between parameter-less functions and values? This seems less than ideal to me. Does it have consequences in currying, composition, etc?
The right way to look at this is that F# has no such thing as parameter-less functions. All functions have to take a parameter, but sometimes you don't care what it is, so you use () (the singleton value of type unit). You could also make a function like this:
let printRandom unused =
x = MyApplication.getRandom()
printfn "%d" x
x
or this:
let printRandom _ =
x = MyApplication.getRandom()
printfn "%d" x
x
But () is the default way to express that you don't use the parameter. It expresses that fact to the caller, because the type is unit -> int not 'a -> int; as well as to the reader, because the call site is printRandom () not printRandom "unused".
Currying and composition do in fact rely on the fact that all functions take one parameter and return one value.
The most common way to write calls with unit, by the way, is with a space, especially in the non .NET relatives of F# like Caml, SML and Haskell. That's because () is a singleton value, not a syntactic thing like it is in C#.
Your analysis is correct.
The first instance defines a value and not a function. I admit this caught me a few times when I started with F# as well. Coming from C# it seems very natural that an assignment expression which contains multiple statements must be a lambda and hence delay evaluated.
This is just not the case in F#. Statements can be almost arbitrarily nested (and it rocks for having locally scoped functions and values). Once you get comfortable with this you start to see it as an advantage as you can create functions and continuations which are inaccessible to the rest of the function.
The second approach is the standard way for creating a function which logically takes no arguments. I don't know the precise terminology the F# team would use for this declaration though (perhaps a function taking a single argument of type unit). So I can't really comment on how it would affect currying.
Is this the proper way to draw this
distinction between parameter-less
functions and values? This seems less
than ideal to me. Does it have
consequences in currying, composition,
etc?
Yes, what you describe is correct.
For what its worth, it has a very interesting consequence able to partially evaluate functions on declaration. Compare these two functions:
// val contains : string -> bool
let contains =
let people = set ["Juliet"; "Joe"; "Bob"; "Jack"]
fun person -> people.Contains(person)
// val contains2 : string -> bool
let contains2 person =
let people = set ["Juliet"; "Joe"; "Bob"; "Jack"]
people.Contains(person)
Both functions produce identical results, contains creates its people set on declaration and reuses it, whereas contains2 creates its people set everytime you call the function. End result: contains is slightly faster. So knowing the distinction here can help you write faster code.
Assignment bodies looking like function bodies have cought a few programmers unaware. You can make things even more interesting by having the assignment return a function:
let foo =
printfn "This runs at startup"
(fun () -> printfn "This runs every time you call foo ()")
I just wrote a blog post about it at http://blog.wezeku.com/2010/08/23/values-functions-and-a-bit-of-both/.