FsCodec icon indicating copy to clipboard operation
FsCodec copied to clipboard

feat: Contract types validation

Open bartelink opened this issue 4 years ago • 2 comments

In a team environment, where the way event contracts are composed is often a matter of debate, it can be useful to have a way to validate that types that will be mapped to JSON adhere to conventions.

It should be pretty possible to, a la AutoFixture.Idioms use reflection to find all DUs that implement TypeShape.UnionEncoder.IUnionContract, and then walk the type with TypeShape counting anomalies such as

  • using FSharpList without a converter (use array or [] option)
  • using tuples anywhere in a union contract (a converter, e.g. based on a JsonIsomorphism should be permitted, but we definitely don't want random Newtonsoft/STJ representations and/or runtime exceptions)
  • Using DateTime (DateTimeOffset is hands down better)
  • Using Enums (use nullary unions / TypeSafeEnums in preference)
  • using SCDUs without a converter (should probably be using UMX in the data contracts and only using SCDUs where warranted in models)
  • using other unions without tagging the type and/or field with a converter (e.g. UnionConverter) (vs ending up e.g. triggering Newtonsofts built-in encoding)

This would enable a team for write a single unit test saying something like:

let [<Fact>] ``All contract types use simple tagged types`` () =
    let checker = FsCodec.NewtonsoftJson.TypeChecker(allowMaps=true) // or any other exceptions to the search
    let anoms =
        TypesImplementing<TypeShape.UnionEncoder.IUnionContract>(typeof<Domain.SampleType>.Assembly)
        |> Seq.collect checker.EnumViolations
        |> List.ofSeq
    test <@ [] = anoms @>

Reasons to have this in FsCodec vs anywhere else

  1. it's already using TypeShape
  2. we can port it to do the same thing for SystemTextJson

Yes, one could build a Roslyn Analyzer and/or Rider or Ionide checks too!

bartelink avatar May 11 '20 15:05 bartelink

cc @fnipo can you think of any other stuff that needs to be added that can be done generically without running the serializer

bartelink avatar May 11 '20 16:05 bartelink

related: (autoUnion = true) can be used (with some cons) to mitigate some of the concerns/risks this feature idea would cover (although this idea would remove the risk of a transition from one encoding to another without there being a clear change in the code)

bartelink avatar Jan 06 '22 14:01 bartelink