Thursday, March 3, 2011

Flapjax - Functional Reactive Programming in Javascript

[This preview is posted here during the transition phase; once the transition is complete I will stop posting here] 


What if programming can be as simple as writing spreadsheet formulas?
Now - there are some complex spreadsheets out there for sure, but the power of spreadsheet comes from that the values are self-updating, i.e. changing value in one cell will automatically cause all its dependent cells to reflect the change.  If spreadsheets cannot do the auto-propagation, even the simplest spredsheet will be much more complex.
Most programming languages do not have the auto-propagating capability, but the ones that do are called reactive programming languages.  And if the language is also functional, then it's called a functional reactive programming language.
Since most of the mainstream languages did not have reactive features built-in, the feature need to be "bolted on", as a library or a transformer.  The one for Javascript is called Flapjax.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Administrivia: Moving of Weblambda to New Blog

I am consolidating my blogging over to my personal site, http://yinsochen.com, in the near future.

The main site will contain more than just scheme development - if that interests you, that's great.  You can grab the whole feed from http://yinsochen.com/feed/.

In case you just want to have scheme-related posts - use http://yinsochen.com/tag/scheme (RSS feed at http://yinsochen.com/tag/scheme/feed/).

There will be time to make the switch - I will be linking from here to the new site for the next few posts, before I fully make the move.

Cheers.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

BZLIB/SHP Web API & Converters

The previous post describes the basics on how to use the web API.  This post will focus on integrating your module with the web API.

As shown before, you can create a web API by creating an SHP script as follows:

;; /api/add2 
(:api-args (a number?) (b number?)) 
(+ a b) 
Where both a and b are validated as number?.  It would be nice if we can validate any type of scheme values, as long as the value can be created via the request input. 

For example - let's say that you have a struct with the following definition:
(define-struct foo (bar baz)) 
We want to do the following:
(:api-args (foo foo?)) ;; takes in the foo struct 
And let web API handle the rest.   This is achieved via converters.

Converters

The mappings between the request and the api args are done via converters, which maps the parameter key against the type's test function (such as number?).   And when you want to use the converter in the api-args expression, you specify the <test?> function in the parameter position in one of the following forms:

Thursday, July 8, 2010

BZLIB/SHP.plt 0.4 now available - Web API

A new version of SHP.plt is now available via planet.  This is a major rewrite of SHP and provides two main upgrades:
  • a "web API" interface - your web script can now be exposed as an "API" (think XMLRPC/JSON), and it automatically works with either XMLRPC or JSON (details below)
  • general performance enhancement - the scripts are now compiled and cached to reduce disk IO.  If the scripts are updated then they are automatically recompiled
As usual, the code is released under LGPL.

Installation 

(require (planet bzlib/shp:1:3)) 

SHP requires some newer dependencies (bzlib/base:1:6, bzlib/date:1:3, bzlib/parseq:1:3, bzlib/xml:1:3, bzlib/mime:1:0), and the current versions of PLT Scheme and Racket have issues with version dependencies (the link: module mismatch bug), so you might have to clear out the planet cache and recompile them again.

As usual, SHP comes with a small example site that you can play with under the example sub directory - cd to the example directory and run (require "web.ss") will start the example site.  The example site is still just trivial code right now - it will eventually be enhanced and separated into its own package.

Cached Compiled Script

All of the scripts are now compiled and cached.  This has some potential performance benefit, since we will only access the file content when the file timestamp changes (meaning the file has been touched and/or modified).  As this is a non-visible feature, we won't spend much time discussing it, except to note that the change is not just done for performance reasons - it is also done to enable and simplify the design of web api, which is discussed below.

Web API

Under the example site you can find the script shp/api/add2, which contains the following:


;; -*- scheme -*- -p 
(:api-args (a number?) (b number?)) 
(+ a b)

This is the new *web api* - it takes in 2 numbers, a and b, and return the added result. To write an api script, you must use the :api-args expression, and then supply the arguments inside. The arguments can be specified in the following forms:


(:api-args a b) ;; both a & b are non-validating and you get what's passed in

(:api-args (a number?) (b string?)) ;; a expects a number, and b expects a string 

(:api-args (a number? 3) (b number? 5)) ;; a & b both expect numbers, and both have default values if they are not passed in (a defaults to 3, and b defaults to 5). 

When you run the example site you can access the api via the following http call:

GET /api/add2 HTTP/1.0 

When running the above in browser you should get back an XMLRPC response:

Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8 

<methodResponse>
<fault>
<value>
<string>required: a</string>
</value>
</fault>
</methodResponse>

XMLRPC is the default response mode for web APIs.  What it returns by default as shown above is an error message, because neither a or b is passed in.

To pass in the values - you just need to specify them in the query string as following:

Monday, January 18, 2010

BZLIB/PLANET.plt - A Local PLANET Proxy/Repository Server

PLT's planet system is great - if you want to install a planet module, you just declare it in the code, and it will automatically manage the download and the install for you, without you having to separately run another module installation programs like Perl's CPAN, Ruby's GEM, PHP's PEAR, etc.

However, planet can still be improved. Specifically, as there is currently only a single central repository, you might experience some inconvenient server outage from time to time. And it is difficult to take advantage of the planet's automatic code distribution power unless you plan on releasing the code for public consumption.

That is - until today.

BZLIB/PLANET.plt is designed to solve exactly the issue of a single planet repository. Going forward, you can install bzlib/planet and run a local planet proxy and repository. bzlib/planet is, of course as usual, available via planet under LGPL ;)

Usage

bzlib/planet contains a proxy server that you can setup and run. The first thing to do is to install it via require:

(require (planet bzlib/planet/proxy)) 

Friday, January 8, 2010

BZLIB/PARSEQ.plt - (4) Token-Based Parsers API

Previously we have looked at fundamental parsers and the combinators API, as well as common parsers for character, number, and string, now it is time to look at token-based parsers provided by bzlib/parseq.

A huge class of parsing involves tokenizing the streams by skipping over whitespaces. For example, if we want to parse for a list of 3 integer, separated by comma, we currently have to write:

(define three-int-by-comma 
  (seq whitespaces 
       i1 <- integer 
       whitespaces 
       #\, 
       whitespaces 
       i2 <- integer 
       whitespaces 
       #\, 
       whitespaces 
       i3 <- integer 
       (return (list i1 i2 i3)))) 
The code above looks messy, and it would be nice if we do not have to explicitly specify the parsing of whitespaces. token allows us to abstract away the parsing of whitespaces:

(define (token parser (delim whitespaces)) 
  (seq delim 
       t <- parser 
       (return t))) 
The above code can now be rewritten as:

(define three-int-by-comma2 
  (seq i1 <- (token integer) 
       (token #\,) 
       i2 <- (token integer) 
       (token #\,) 
       i3 <- (token integer) 
       (return (list i1 i2 i3)))) 
Which looks a lot better. But given tokenizing is such a common parsing task, we have a shorthand for the above called tokens:

(define-macro (tokens . exps) 
  (define (body exps) 
    (match exps 
      ((list exp) (list exp)) 
      ((list-rest v '<- exp rest) 
       `(,v <- (token ,exp) . ,(body rest)))
      ((list-rest exp rest) 
       `((token ,exp) . ,(body rest)))))
  `(seq . ,(body exps)))
Which will reduce the above parsing to the following:

(define three-int-by-comma3
  (tokens i1 <- integer 
          #\,
          i2 <- integer 
          #\, 
          i3 <- integer 
          (return (list i1 i2 i3)))) 
There is a case insensitive version of tokens called tokens-ci that allows the character and string token to be parsed in case insensitive fashion.

Besides tokenizing, another common need in token-based parsing is to handle delimited sets. In the above example, the 3 integers are delimited by commas. delimited generalize the pattern:

(define (delimited parser delim) 
  (tokens v <- parser 
          v2 <- (zero-many (tokens v3 <- delim
                                   v4 <- parser
                                   (return v4)))
          (return (cons v v2))))
The following parses a list of comma-delimited integers:

(delimited integer #\,) 
Another common pattern is to parse for brackets that surrounds the value that you need. Just about all programming languages have such constructs. And bracket handles such parses:

(define (bracket open parser close) 
  (tokens open
          v <- parser 
          close 
          (return v))) 
And bracket/delimited combines the case where you need to parse a bracketed delimited values:

(define (bracket/delimited open parser delim close) 
  (tokens open ;; even the parser is optional...  
          v <- (zero-one (delimited parser delim) '()) 
          close 
          (return v)))

That's it for the bzlib/parseq API. If you find anything missing, please let me know.

Enjoy.

BZLIB/PARSEQ.plt - (3) Common Parsers API

Previously we have looked at fundamental parsers and the combinators API, now it is time to look at some common parsers provided by bzlib/parseq.

In this case, since we are constructing these parsers on top of the fundamental parsers and combinators, we will show the definitions accordingly.

Character Category Parsers

digit is a character between #\0 and #\9.

(define digit (char-between #\0 #\9)) 
not-digit is a character not between #\0 and #\9.

(define not-digit (char-not-between #\0 #\9))
lower-case is a character beween #\a and #\z.

(define lower-case (char-between #\a #\z)) 
upper-case is a character between #\A and #\Z.

(define upper-case (char-between #\A #\Z))
alpha is either an lower-case or upper-case character.

(define alpha (choice lower-case upper-case)) 
alphanumeric is either an alpha character or a digit character.

(define alphanumeric (choice alpha digit)) 
whitespace is either a space, return, newline, tab, or vertical tab.

(define whitespace (char-in '(#\space #\return #\newline #\tab #\vtab)))
not-whitespace is a character that is not a whitespace.

(define not-whitespace (char-not-in '(#\space #\return #\newline #\tab #\vtab)))
whitespaces parses for zero or more whitespace characters:

(define whitespaces (zero-many whitespace))
ascii is a charater bewteen 0 to 127:

(define ascii (char-between (integer->char 0) (integer->char 127)))
word is either an alphanumeric or an underscore:

(define word (choice alphanumeric (char= #\_)))
not-word is a character that is not a word:

(define not-word (char-when (lambda (c) 
                              (not (or (char<=? #\a c #\z)
                                       (char<=? #\A c #\Z)
                                       (char<=? #\0 c #\9) 
                                       (char=? c #\_))))))
Finally, newline parses for either CR, LF, or CRLF:


(define newline 
  (choice (seq r <- (char= #\return) 
               n <- (char= #\newline)
               (return (list r n)))
          (char= #\return)
          (char= #\newline)))

Number Parsers

sign parses for either + or -, and defaults to +.

(define sign (zero-one (char= #\-) #\+))
natural parses for 1+ digits:

(define natural (one-many digit)) 
decimal parses for a number with decimal points:

(define decimal (seq number <- (zero-many digit)
                     point <- (char= #\.)
                     decimals <- natural 
                     (return (append number (cons point decimals)))))
positive parses for either natural or decimal. Note decimal needs to be placed first since natural will succeed when parsing a decimal:

(define positive (choice decimal natural)) 
The above parsers returns the characters that represents the positive numbers. To get it to return numbers, as well as parsing for both positive and negative numbers, we have a couple of helpers:

;; make-signed will parse for the sign and the number.
(define (make-signed parser)
  (seq +/- <- sign
       number <- parser 
       (return (cons +/- number)))) 

;; make-number will convert the parsed digits into number. 
(define (make-number parser)
  (seq n <- parser 
       (return (string->number (list->string n)))))
Then natural-number parses and returns a natural number:

(define natural-number (make-number natural))
integer will parse and returns an integer (signed):

(define integer (make-number (make-signed natural))) 
positive-number will parse and return a positive number (integer or real):

(define positive-number (make-number positive)) 
real-number will parse and return a signed number, integer or real:

(define positive-number (make-number positive)) 

String Parsers

The following parsers parses for quoted string and returns the inner content as a string.

escaped-char parses for characters that were part of an escaped sequence. This exists for characters such as \n (which should return a #\newline), and character such as \" (which should return just "):

(define (escaped-char escape char (as #f)) 
  (seq (char= escape) 
       c <- (if (char? char) (char= char) char)
       (return (if as as c)))) 

;; e-newline 
(define e-newline (escaped-char #\\ #\n #\newline)) 

;; e-return 
(define e-return (escaped-char #\\ #\r #\return)) 

;; e-tab 
(define e-tab (escaped-char #\\ #\t #\tab)) 

;; e-backslash 
(define e-backslash (escaped-char #\\ #\\))
quoted parses for the quoted string pattern (including escapes):

;; quoted 
;; a specific string-based bracket parser 
(define (quoted open close escape)
  (seq (char= open) 
       atoms <- (zero-many (choice e-newline 
                                   e-return 
                                   e-tab 
                                   e-backslash 
                                   (escaped-char escape close) 
                                   (char-not-in  (list close #\\)))) 
       (char= close)
       (return atoms)))
make-quoted-string abstracts the use of quoted.

(define (make-quoted-string open (close #f) (escape #\\)) 
  (seq v <- (quoted open (if close close open) escape)
       (return (list->string v))))
Then single-quoted-string and double-quoted-string look like the following:

(define single-quoted-string (make-quoted-string #\'))

(define double-quoted-string (make-quoted-string #\"))
Finally, quoted-string will parse both single-quoted-string and double-quoted-string:

(define quoted-string 
  (choice single-quoted-string double-quoted-string))

That is it for now - we will talk about parsing tokens next. Enjoy.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

BZLIB/PARSEQ.PLT - (2) Parser Combinators API

[Continuing the previous post on the API of bzlib/parseq]

Previously we have looked at the basic parsers that peeked into inputs, now it's time to look at the combinators.

Basic Parser Combinators

bind is the "bind operator" for the parsers, with the following signature:

(-> Parser/c (-> any/c Parser/c) Parser/c) 
It takes in a parser, a "transform" function that will consume the returned value from the first parser and transform the value into another parser, and combine both into another parser.

As there are other more specialized combinators, you should not need to use bind directly unless you are trying to compose functions during run-time.

result simplifies the transform function you need to write so your transform function only need to return the value, not another parser. Below is the definition of result:

(define (result parser helper)
  (bind parser 
        (lambda (v) 
          (if v 
              (return (helper v))  
              fail))))
result* works like result, but it only works with a return value that is a list, and it applies the transform against the value. This comes in handy when you know the parser returns a list and you want to bind the list to individual arguments in your transform function. Below is an example (sequence* combinator is explained later):

(result* (sequence* (char= #\b) (char= #\a) (char= #\r)) 
         (lambda (b a r) ;; b maps to #\b, a maps to #\a, and r maps to #\r 
            (list->string (list b a r))))
Multi-Parser Combinators

seq is a macro-based combinator that bounds multiple parsers in succession, and returns the results only if all parsers succeed. The design of this parser is inspired by Shaurz's Haskell-style parser combinator.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

BZLIB/PARSEQ.plt - a Monadic Parser Combinator Library

BZLIB/PARSEQ.plt is now available via PLANET. Inspired by Haskell's Parsec and Shaurz's Haskell-style parser combinator, bzlib/parsec provides a monadic parser combinator library that can handle both character and binary data parsing.

If you need a refresher on parser combinators, you can read my previous posts for a quick tour.

Installation

(require (planet bzlib/parseq)) 

The package includes the following examples that you can inspect for the usage of the API:

(require (planet bzlib/parseq/example/csv) ;; a customizable csv parser 
         (planet bzlib/parseq/example/calc) ;; a simple calculator with parens 
         (planet bzlib/parseq/example/regex) ;; a simplified regular expression parser & evaluator 
         (planet bzlib/parseq/example/sql) ;; parsing SQL's create table statement 
         (planet bzlib/parseq/example/json) ;; parses JSON data format 
         ) 
Parser Type Signature & Input
A parser is a function that has the following signature:

(-> Input/c (values any/c Input/c)) ;; returns the value and the next input 
If the value is #f then the parse has failed. This might be changed in the future to another value so you can return #f as a parsed value.

The input is a struct with the following structure:

(define-struct input (source pos) #:prefab) 
It is an abstraction over an input-port so you can keep track of the current position on the port. The function make-input will take in an input-port, a string, or a byte and return an input struct with the position initiated to 0.

During the parsing, the values are peeked instead of read so we can backtrack to the beginning. That means when you finished parsing, all of the data are still in the port. make-reader wraps over a parser so you can just pass an input-port instead of needing to create an input struct, and it also consumed the bytes if the parse is successful:

(make-reader parser) ;; => (-> input-port? any/c) 
Fundamental Parsers (input not peeked)

The following parsers do not peek into the input.

(return <v>) returns <v> that you specify.

fail returns a failed struct that includes the position of the parse when the parser fails. The failed struct is currently defined as follows:

(define-struct failed (pos) #:prefab) 
succeeded? and failed? tests whether the returned value is a failed struct (succeeded? equals (compose not failed?)).

SOF (start of file) will return 'sof if it is the start of the input (i.e., position = 0).

Fundamental Parsers (input peeked)

item peeks the input, test the input to ensure it satisfies a criteria, and if so, returns the value and advance the port by the size of the peeked value:

(item <peek> <isa?> <satisfy?> <size>) 
peek => (-> Input/c any/c) 
isa? => (-> any/c boolean?) 
satisfy? => (-> any/c any) 
size => (-> any/c exact-integer?) 
isa? tests for the return value's type so you can simplify the writing of satisfy?, which can assume the value is of the right type.

You use item only when you need to create new parsers that the library do not already provide.

Non-Character Type Parsers

bzlib/parseq allows non-character parsers so you can use it to parse binary data instead of just text streams. You can mix them together of course.

(bytes= <bytes>) returns when the next set of bytes equals the passed in bytes. For example:

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

BZLIB/XML.plt - An XML Utility for Xexpr and SXML

BZLIB/XML.plt is now available via PLANET, it provides the following utilities to help with XML manipulation:
  • convert to/from xexpr to sxml
  • reading sxml/xexpr from html or xml sources
  • managing html and xml enities

Installation


(require (planet bzlib/xml)) 

Xexpr and SXML

Although Xexpr is the default xml representation in PLT Scheme (and the web-server), it lacks the toolkits that SXML enjoys. bzlib/xml helps by providing conversion functions to convert between sxml and xexpr:

;; convert from xexpr to sxml 
(xexpr->sxml `(p ((class "default")) "an xexpr instance"))
;; => `(p (@ (class "default")) "an xexpr instance") 

; convert from sxml to xexpr 
(sxml->xexpr `(p (@ (class "default")) "an xexpr instance"))
;; => `(p ((class "default")) "an xexpr instance") 
Converting from xexpr to sxml will allow you to use the facilities such as sxpath, ssax, and sxml-match with xexpr, and converting from sxml to xexpr will allow you to feed sxml into web-server for to generate output based on sxml.

Reading and Writing Xexpr/SXML

bzlib/xml provides read-xexpr and read-sxml to simplify the conversion from html sources to either xexpr or sxml:

Sunday, November 15, 2009

BZLIB/SESSION.plt - a Session Store via BZLIB/DBI.plt

I originally planned to write a series on the development of a session store, but it turned out that there aren't that many things to write about, so I am just going to release the code via planet. As usual, this is released under LGPL.

Installation

To download the planet package:

(require (planet bzlib/session)) 

The package comes with three separate database installation scripts (one each for sqlite, mysql, and postgresql). You can call them via the following:

;; installing to a sqlite database
(require (planet bzlib/session/setup/jsqlite)) 
(setup-session-store/jsqlite! <path-to-sqlite-db>) 

;; installing to a mysql database 
(require (planet bzlib/session/setup/jazmysql)) 
(setup-session-store/jazmysql! <host> <port> <user>  
                               <password> <schema>)

;; installing to a postgresql database 
(require (planet bzlib/session/setup/spgsql)) 
(setup-session-store/spgsql! <host> <port> <user>
                             <password> <database>) 
Known Issue: the script currently can only be run once and it assumes the table session_t does not exist in the target database. This will be rectified in the future.

Session ID

The session store uses uuid for session IDs. bzlib/base provides API for manipulation of uuids.

To create an uuid, just run (make-uuid). It can optionally takes in a parameter that are either an uuid in string, and then create the corresponding uuid structure (it can also takes in another uuid structure and make an equivalent uuid structure).

> (require (planet bzlib/base))
> (make-uuid)
#<uuid:4ba52eac-a0b4-415a-88f5-57d1fadd1aba>
> (make-uuid "4ba52eac-a0b4-415a-88f5-57d1fadd1aba")
#<uuid:4ba52eac-a0b4-415a-88f5-57d1fadd1aba>
> (make-uuid (make-uuid "4ba52eac-a0b4-415a-88f5-57d1fadd1aba"))
#<uuid:4ba52eac-a0b4-415a-88f5-57d1fadd1aba>

Monday, November 9, 2009

Building a Web Session Store (1)

Given that we have previously determined the need for a web session store even if we are using continuations, we'll go ahead and build it on top of our DBI stack, so the session data can be persisted as long as necessary.

Quick Word About Session Store Performance

One thing to note about session data is that its data usage is both read and write intensive, and such data can put strain on the database. It's write-intensive because with each request we'll extend the expiration time on the session itself, and it's read-intensive because the data is needed for every request, but it changes with every request.

For now we'll assume that our database is capable of handling such needs (and it will until you have a sufficiently large amount of traffic), but it's something to keep in mind. The nice thing of building the session logic on top of DBI is that when we need to deal with the performance issue, we can add logics into the DBI tier easily with developing a customer driver, for example, by integrating memcached as a intermediate store that'll flush out the changes to the database once a while instead of with every request.

Active Record

The active record pattern are not just for OOP fanatics - we schemers know that you can craft your own OOP with FP easily. In DBI today there is a base structure for active record definition:

(define active-record (handle id)) 
Such definition is a lot simpler than the usual OOP representations, which usually try to construct the data model in memory, along with dynamically constructed SQL statements. Although such OOP records provide simplicity for the simple cases, it has proven to be a leaky abstraction due to the object vs relational paradigm mismatch, as well as a significant performance overhead. Our simple definition will do us just fine right now.

What would our session API look like then?

;; expiration a julian-day 
;; store is a hash table 
(define-struct (session active-record) (expiration store) #:mutable) 

;; the session key/value manipulation calls... 
(define (session-ref session key (default #f)) ...) 
(define (session-set! session key val) ...) 
(define (session-del! session key) ...) 
;; the persistence calls 
(define (build-session handle ...) ...) 
(define (save-session! session) ...) 
(define (refresh-session! session) ...) 
(define (destroy-session! session) ...) 

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Web Sessions vs. Continuations

The "session info in web server applications" thread recently in plt-scheme list has an undertone that continuations are equivalent of web sessions as understood in other languages and frameworks. This undertone is highlighted by the lack of a session-like capability within the web-server collection that exists in other web frameworks.

This got me to think: are continuations equivalent of sessions?

The original intent (indicated in Shriram's research paper) of web-server's continuation is to correctly and succinctly model interactive web application's application flow. The paper sites examples of incorrectly implemented web apps that would do something like the following:
  1. user browse a list of goods
  2. user opens new window to get the details of goods A
  3. user goes back to original window
  4. user then opens another new window to get the details of goods B
  5. user then goes to goods A and click "Buy Now"
  6. incorrectly implemented app will cause the user to buy goods B instead of goods A
The traditional solution to the above interaction would be to use sessions, and since continuation models such interactions as well, there is no question that in this case continuations supplant the needs of sessions.

But for other scenarios involving sessions it might be more natural to model the computations by using the traditional session concepts.

For example - identifying the user across visits after significant time lapse (this is generally toggled by a "remember me" checkbox during login). Normally web sites accomplish this by persisting the user's authenticators via cookies or sessions.

This process is awkward to model with continuations, since the user likely come back to the site via a top level link that has no captured continuations, instead of digging up the last continuation url for the site, and the continuations might have expired between the visits if you use stateful servlets.

If you use web-server's stateless servlet language, an approach is probably to serialize the continuation into a cookie so it can model the above scenario, but you'll have to write your code in the stateless language or convert your code over, and it feels like a more complex solution compared to simply having a regular session capability. This is similar to using continuations to model non-interactive web links - it can work, but it does not follow Occam's razor.

Furthermore - if your site uses extensive ajax, your use of continuations will decrease, since Ajax models the interactions as well and supplants the needs for continuations. and in such case you might regain the needs for sessions that was reduced by continuations.

So, as far as I can tell, continuations is not equivalent to web sessions and do not eliminate the needs for session capabilities.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Using DBI to Run Scripts & Load Prepared Statement Scripts

There are a couple of utility functions that I have designed into DBI that was not previously discussed. They are both oriented to work with SQL scripts.

I don't know about you, but I like to write SQL statements in SQL scripts:

-- a sql query inside a sql script
select * 
  from table1;
instead of embedding them as strings in programming languages:

;; a sql query embedded in scheme code 
(exec handle "select * from table1")
- it just looks so much nicer.

If you have a ton of complex prepared statements, you'll find you'll have such statements littered everywhere, which makes them difficult to maintain.

Of course - a possible solution to this problem is to create a DSL so the SQL strings can be generated. We might eventually entertain such solution, but it's clear that any such DSL will be non-trivial.

A simpler but equally as powerful of an idea is to move all such queries into SQL scripts, and have the database handle load the scripts and convert them into prepared statements.

Loading Prepared Statement Scripts

You can supply a #:load parameter to the three RDBMS drivers' connect procedure:

;; example - connect to spgsql 
(define handle 
  (connect 'spgsql <regular-args> ... 
           '#:load <path-string? or (listof path-string?)>))

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Latest DBI.plt Available - Handling Last Inserted ID and Side Effects

The newest version of DBI (and the 3 RDBMS drivers) has now been made available on planet - it addresses the issue of side effects and last inserted id.

As usual - they are released under LGPL.

To download & install - use require:

(require (planet bzlib/dbi:1:3) 
         (planet bzlib/dbd-jazmysql:1:2) 
         (planet bzlib/dbd-jsqlite:1:3) 
         (planet bzlib/dbd-spgsql:1:2))
Unifying the side effects and the last inserted id turns out to be a non-trivial task - I have already voiced the options on the plt-scheme list, repeating here for the sake of completeness:
  • the underlying drivers returns different values for side effects
  • there might be legacy code that are utilizing the underlying side effect results - which can increase effort if porting to another database
  • not all drivers provide ways to retrieve all side effect values
  • last inserted id does not work consistently when dealing with the multi-records-insert-at-once scenario - luckily this is generally not how insertion is used
  • for postgresql - we'll need to derive the underlying table to sequence name mapping in order to determine the last inserted id, and this requires a separate query that you might not want to "pay for" unless you have needs for last inserted id
Based on the above design constraints, I have chosen the following:
  • make available multiple drivers for each database - one for different types of the side effect results
  • default the side effect results to an unified effect structure, which is inspired by jazmysql
  • provide last-inserted-id for the 3 RDBMS drivers (SPGSQL has a special requirement, described below)

The Different Side Effects

There are 3 separate side effect types:
  • past-thru-effect - this is the side effect available as a backward compatibility. Basically whatever the side effect objects are returned by the underlying driver are direct returned; and you can use the underlying driver's code to access the values
  • effect - this is the unified side effect object and the default going forward
  • effect-set - this converts the effect structure into a result set

For example, if you want to make a connection with the first side effect type with bzlib/dbd-spgsql, you can do the following:

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

BZLIB/DATE & BZLIB/DATE-TZ 0.2 Now Available

bzlib/date and bzlib/date-tz are now available via planet. They are released under LGPL. You can find the previous documentation for previous usage.

The changes included are:
  • re-exports for SRFI-19 functions
  • Wrapper functions for PLT date objects (you can use the functions with PLT date objects instead of with SRFI date objects)
  • day comparison functions
  • RFC822 date parsers and generators
  • additional date manipulation functions

SRFI19 Re-export
Previous you have to explicitly include srfi/19 to use the functions within SRFI19 as follows:

(require srfi/19 (planet bzlib/date)) 
Now you just have to do the following:

(require (planet bzlib/date/srfi)) 
And almost all srfi/19 functions will be re-exported along with the functions within bzlib/date.

The exceptions are date->string and string->date, neither of which are exported from srfi/19. This is because we may want to use those names for our own date parsers and generator functions. I'll examine the details before deciding whether to re-export those or create our own.

PLT Date Wrappers

You now can use PLT date objects instead of srfi/19 date objects (I do not really know why they are different date objects in the first place...). You can just do the following:

(require (planet bzlib/date/plt)) 

Monday, October 19, 2009

Building Parser Combinators in Scheme (2) - Higher Order Combinators

Previously we started building parser combinators for parsing a symbol that has the following signature (seq alpha (zero-more (one-of alpha numeric))), and we stopped at refactoring the numeric and alpha parsers, and ended up with return, fail, and char-test.

char-test Expanded

char-test gives us a good base for building a bunch of other character-based parser:

;; char= returns a parser to test whether the next char equals c
(define (char= c)
  (char-test (lambda (it)
               (char=? it c)))) 

;; in-chars returns a parser to match against the list of chars
(define (in-chars lst)
  (char-test (lambda (it) 
               (member it lst)))) 

;; not-in-chars is the reverse of in-chars 
(define (not-in-chars lst)
  (char-test (lambda (it) 
               (not (member it lst))))) 

;; in-char-range returns a parser to match char between from & to chars
(define (in-char-range from to)
  (char-test (lambda (it)
               (char<=? from it to))))

;; the oppposite of in-char-range
(define (not-in-char-range from to)
  (char-test (lambda (it)
               (not (char<=? from it to)))))
So we can build parsers such as the following:

;; a parser to test for the backslash
(define backslash (char= #\\)) 
;; writing numeric using in-chars
(define numeric (in-chars '(#\0 #\1 #\2 #\3 #\4 #\5 #\6 #\7 #\8 #\9)))
;; writing equivalent to regexp \S (non-whitespace) 
(define non-whitespace (not-in-chars '(#\tab #\return #\newline #\space #\vtab)))
;; lower-case alpha using in-char-range 
(define lower-case (in-char-range #\a #\z)))
;; upper-case alpha using in-char-range
(define upper-case (in-char-range #\A #\Z))) 
It would be nice to write alpha in terms of upper-case and lower-case as defined above:

(define alpha (one-of upper-case lower-case)) 
So let's see how we can write one-of.

Higher order Parsers

The idea of one-of is straight forward - take in a list of the parsers to test against the input, one parser at a time. The first one that succeeded would be returned:

Friday, October 16, 2009

Building Parser Combinators in Scheme

I do not write code for the sake of writing code, but sometimes the best way to understand a concept is to write it up. I can think of many situations where I have no clue what the heck is going on by reading the documentations or even the tutorials, but I start to understand what's going on once I start to hack up with a solution.

Parser combinator is one of those things for me. Based on what I can find, Haskell was where the term is coined and expanded, but unfortunately I cannot read Haskell well enough to fully follow the excellent monadic parser combinator paper, let along trying to understand Parsec, and think about how it would be translated into scheme.

PLT Scheme contains a parser combinator library, but its documentation is written for someone who is completely familiar with the parser combinator and how it would work within scheme, so I couldn't start with it (in contrast, I was able to figure out parser-tools in short order, even though my previous experience with lex & yacc isn't a lot either).

Searching online, there are a couple of parser combinator written in scheme:
It wasn't much, but it was something that I can build on. Let's get started...

Immediate Obstacle - Reading from Port Instead of String or List

Parser combinator promises top-down parser development in almost BNF-like fashion, including infinitely look ahead and unlimited backtracking, all of which are extremely fascinating powers.

But reading the monadic parser combinator leaves me scratching my head wondering how this would work with ports. The parser combinator appears to derive its backtracking power via reading the string into a list of characters. This is nice and all but it doesn't work with ports, since once a character is read from a port it is gone and you lose the ability to backtrack (yes - with some ports it is possible to backtrack but this does not work with all ports).

I wasn't able to find an answer to this problem via the above URLs either, so I'll have to come up with my own solution.

What I came up with was the following:

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Parsing "Encoded Word" in RFC Headers (3) - Parsing & Decoding

In the previous two posts we have built capabilities to generate encoded words, now it's time to decode them. We'll start with detecting whether a string is an encoded word.

Testing for Encoded Word

Remember that an encoded word has the following format:

=?<charset>?<Q or B>?<encoded data>?=
The above format can be succintly specified via regular expression:

(define encoded-word-regexp #px"=\\?([^\\?]+)\\?(?i:(b|q))\\?([^\\?]+)\\?=")

(define (encoded-word? str)
  (regexp-match encoded-word-regexp str))
Since the format is not recursive, regular expression is good enough, even though it can be considered as ugly. You can certainly try using other approaches, such as a hand written lexer, or using parser-tools to do the job. For now we keep things simple.

Decoding

Once we can test whether a string is an encoded word, we can then use it to handle the decoding:

(define (encoded-word->string str)
  (if-it (encoded-word? str)
         (apply decode-encoded-word (cdr it))
         str))
If the string is an encoded word, we decode it, otherwise we return it verbatim. This way it allows regular string to be passed into this function.

The decode-encoded-word function looks like the following:

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Parsing "Encoded Word" in RFC Headers (2) - Charset Handling & Multiple Encoded Words

In the previous post we discussed the Q and B encodings, and ended with a bug on mismatching charset if the charset is not utf-8, let's try to fix the bug here.

It would be nice if we can use local charsets such as iso-8559-1 or big5 if we know for sure that the charset contains all of the characters that appears in the string (of course, it is the developer's responsibility to choose the right charset; the code will error out if the charset does not match the data).

PLT Scheme provides a convert-stream to help handle converting bytes from one charset to another. We can build helpers that takes strings or bytes and return string or bytes on top of this function. What we want are something like:

(bytes/charset->string #"this is a string" "ascii") ;; => returns a string
(bytes/charset->bytes/utf-8 <bytes> <charset>) ;; => returns a bytes
The idea is that we'll convert the input data to input-port, and then retrieve the data from the output-port, which will be a bytes port.

So let's start with a helper function that'll take in an input-port, and the charsets and then return a bytes:

(define (port->bytes/charset in charset-in charset-out)
  (call-with-output-bytes 
   (lambda (out)
     (convert-stream charset-in in charset-out out))))
Then we can have the following:

(define (bytes->bytes/charset bytes charset-in charset-out)
  (port->bytes/charset (open-input-bytes bytes) charset-in charset-out))
And we can define converting bytes to and from utf-8:

(define (bytes/charset->bytes/utf-8 bytes charset)
  (bytes->bytes/charset bytes charset "utf-8")) 

(define (bytes/utf-8->bytes/charset bytes charset)
  (bytes->bytes/charset bytes "utf-8" charset))
And finally we can then return strings on top of these two functions:

;; there are more to handle (specifically charsets).
(define (bytes/charset->string bytes charset)
  (bytes->string/utf-8 (bytes/charset->bytes/utf-8 bytes charset)))

(define (string->bytes/charset string charset)
  (bytes/utf-8->bytes/charset (string->bytes/utf-8 string) charset))
With the above functions, we can now ensure to convert the encoded word into the correct charset: