Speculation Build Status

A Ruby port of Clojure's clojure.spec. See clojure.spec - Rationale and Overview. All advantages/disadvantages for clojure.spec should apply to Speculation too. This library is largely a copy-and-paste from clojure.spec so all credit goes to the clojure.spec authors.

Project Goals

The goal of this project is to match clojure.spec as closely as possible, from design to features to API. This decision comes with the trade-off that the library may not necessarily be idiomatic Ruby, however there's nothing stopping other libraries from being built on top of Speculation to bring a more Ruby-like feel. This library won't introduce features that do not exist in clojure.spec.

Examples

Usage

Documentation is available at RubyDoc. The API is more-or-less the same as clojure.spec. If you're already familiar clojure.spec with then you should feel at home with Speculation. Most guides, talks and discussion around clojure.spec should apply equally well to Speculation. Clojure and Ruby and quite different languages, so naturally there are some differences:

Differences with clojure.spec

Built in predicates

clojure.spec leans on its macro system and rich standard library of predicate functions when writing specs. Ruby has neither of those, so we must be creative with what we define as a 'predicate' in Speculation. Each of the following are valid Speculation predicates:

S.valid?(->(x) { x > 0 }, 2)
S.valid?(:even?.to_proc, 2)
S.valid?(String, "foo")
S.valid?(Enumerable, [1, 2, 3])
S.valid?(/^\d+$/, "123")
S.valid?(Set[:foo, :bar, :baz], :foo)

Namespaced keywords/symbols

Namespaced keywords are at the core of clojure.spec. Since clojure.spec utilises a global spec registry, namespaced keywords allow libraries to register specs with the same names but under different namespaces, thus removing accidental collisions. Ruby's equivalent to Clojure's keywords are Symbols. Ruby Symbol's don't have namespaces.

In order keep the global spec registry architecture in Speculation, we utilise a helper method ns to achieve similar behaviour:

module MyModule
  extend Speculation::NamespacedSymbols

  p ns(:foo)
  # => :"MyModule/foo"

  p ns(AnotherModule, :foo)
  # => :"AnotherModule/foo"
end

FSpecs

Symbols/Methods

Clojure uses Symbols to refer to functions. To refer to a method in Ruby, we must use the method method.

def self.hello(name)
  "Hello #{name}"
end

S.fdef(method(:hello), :args => S.cat(:name => String), :ret => String)

Block args

In addition to regular arguments which can easily be described as a list, Ruby methods can take blocks. In Speculation, we spec a method's block separately to its args:

def self.hello(name, &block)
  "Hello #{block.call(name)}"
end

S.fdef(method(:hello), :args => S.cat(:name => String),
                       :block => S.fspec(:args => S.cat(:s => String), :ret => String),
                       :ret => String)

Generators and quick check

Speculation uses Rantly for random data generation. Generator functions in Speculation are Procs that take one argument (Rantly instance) and return a random value. While clojure's test.check generators generate values that start small and continue to grow and get more complex as a property holds true, Rantly always generates random values.

Rantly gives Speculation the ability to shrink a failing test case down to its smallest failing case, however in Speculation we limit this to Integers and Strings. This is an area where Speculation may currently be significantly weaker than clojure.spec.

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake to run rubocop and the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/english/speculation.

TODO

  • tidy up tests

clojure.spec features

Improvements

  • Explore alternative generator library
    • Build up a library of generators around Rantly in the meantime?
  • Generate documentation from specs
  • Profile and optimise

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.