Passing a block to .try() - ruby-on-rails-3

This question is about using the .try() method in rails 3 (& a bit about best practice in testing for nil also)
If I have a db object that may or may not be nil, and it has a field which is eg a delimited string, separated by commas and an optional semi-colon, and I want to see if this string contains a particular sub-string, then I might do this:
user_page = UserPage.find(id)
if user_page != nil
result = user_page.pagelist.gsub('\;', ',').split(",").include?(sub)
end
So, eg user_page.pagelist == "item_a,item_b;item_c"
I want to re-write this using .try, but cannot find a way of applying the stuff after pagelist
So I have tried passing a block (from this link http://apidock.com/rails/Object/try)
user_page.try(:pagelist) {|t| t.gsub('\;', ',').split(",").include?(sub)}
However, the block is simply ignored and the returned result is simply pagelist
I have tried other combinations of trying to apply the gsub etc part, but to no avail
How can I apply other methods to the method being 'tried'?
(I dont even know how to phrase the question in an intelligible way!)

I think you're probably coming at this wrong - the quick solution should be to add a method to your model:
def formatted_pagelist
(pagelist || "").split(/[;,]/)
end
Then you can use it where ever:
user_page.formatted_pagelist.include? sub
Strictly speaking, I'd say this goes into a decorator. If you're not using a decorator pattern in your app (look into draper!), then a model method should work fine.

Related

undefined method `and' for #<Arel::Attributes::Attribute

I'm having an issue getting a query to work.
I'm essentially trying to write something like the following SQL, with the literal 5 replaced with a variable:
SELECT *
FROM "my_table"
WHERE 5 BETWEEN "my_table"."minimum" AND "my_table"."maximum"
This is what I have at the moment:
MyModel.where(
Arel::Nodes::Between.new(
my_variable, (MyModel.arel_table[:minimum]).and(MyModel.arel_table[:maximum])
)
)
Please ignore the way I am using arel_table, the actual query has multiple joins and is more complex, but this is the most minimum reproducible example I have to demonstrate the problem.
The error, as in the subject of the question is as follows:
undefined method `and' for #<Arel::Attributes::Attribute:0x00007f55e15514f8>
and method is for Arel::Nodes::Node i.e. MyModel.arel_attribute[:name].eq(Arel::Nodes::Quoted.new('engineersmnky')) This is an Arel::Nodes::Equality and you can chain with and.
That being said you can construct an Arel::Nodes::And for yourself via
Arel::Nodes::And.new([left,right])
Then we can pass this to the Between class like so
Arel::Nodes::Between.new(
Arel::Nodes::Quoted.new(my_variable),
Arel::Nodes::And.new([
MyModel.arel_table[:minimum],
MyModel.arel_table[:maximum]])
)
The Arel::Nodes::Quoted (also: Arel::Nodes.build_quoted(arg)) is not needed in your case since your my_variable is an Integer which can be visited and will be treated as an Arel::Nodes::SqlLiteral but I find it best to let arel decide how to handle the quoting in case your my_variable ends up being some other un-visitable Object
There are other ways to create a Between and other ways to create an And depending on what objects you are dealing with.
between is a Arel::Predication and these predications are available to Arel::Nodes::Attribute objects e.g.
MyModel.arel_table[:minimum].between([1,6])
and as mentioned is available to Arel::Nodes::Node and instances of this class provides a convenience method (create_and) for creating an And so we could do the following:
Arel::Nodes::Node.new.create_and([
MyModel.arel_table[:minimum],
MyModel.arel_table[:maximum]])
There are a number of other ways to hack this functionality together by using other Arel classes but this should get you headed in the right direction.

Evaluating Variables in Load Script

Is there any reason that this syntax shouldn't work in Qlikview load script??
Let v_myNumber = year(today());
Let v_myString = '2017-08';
If left($(v_myString),4) = text($(v_myNumber)) Then
'do something
Else
'do something else
End If;
I've tried both ways where I convert variable string to number and evaluate against the number variable directly and this way. They won't evaluate to equivalence when they should..
Left function is expecting a string as is getting something else as a parameter. As you are currently doing, the function will be called as Left(2017-08, 4) which is unhandle by QlikView.
If you use Left('$(v_myString)',4), it will evaluate as Left('2017-08', 4) as work as expected. Just adding quotes around the variable it should work.
Although QlikView calls them variables, they should really be seen as "stuff to replaced (at sometimes evaluated) at runtime", which is slightly different from a standard "variable" behaviour.
Dollar sign expansion is a big subject, but in short:
if you are setting a variable - no need for $().
if you are using a variable - you can use $(). depends on its context.
if you are using a variable that needs to be evaluated - you have to use $().
for example in a load script: let var1 = 'if(a=1,1,2)' - here later on the script you will probably want to use this variable as $(var1) so it will be evaluated on the fly...
I hope its a little more clear now. variable can be used in many ways at even can take parameters!
for example:
var2 = $1*$2
and then you can use like this: $(var2(2,3)) which will yield 6
For further exploration of this, I would suggest reading this

Generating Random String of Numbers and Letters Using Go's "testing/quick" Package

I've been breaking my head over this for a few days now and can't seem to be able to figure it out. Perhaps it's glaringly obvious, but I don't seem to be able to spot it. I've read up on all the basics of unicode, UTF-8, UTF-16, normalisation, etc, but to no avail. Hopefully somebody's able to help me out here...
I'm using Go's Value function from the testing/quick package to generate random values for the fields in my data structs, in order to implement the Generator interface for the structs in question. Specifically, given a Metadata struct, I've defined the implementation as follows:
func (m *Metadata) Generate(r *rand.Rand, size int) (value reflect.Value) {
value = reflect.ValueOf(m).Elem()
for i := 0; i < value.NumField(); i++ {
if t, ok := quick.Value(value.Field(i).Type(), r); ok {
value.Field(i).Set(t)
}
}
return
}
Now, in doing so, I'll end up with both the receiver and the return value being set with random generated values of the appropriate type (strings, ints, etc. in the receiver and reflect.Value in the returned reflect.Value).
Now, the implementation for the Value function states that it will return something of type []rune converted to type string. As far as I know, this should allow me to then use the functions in the runes, unicode and norm packages to define a filter which filters out everything which is not part of 'Latin', 'Letter' or 'Number'. I defined the following filter which uses a transform to filter out letters which are not in those character rangetables (as defined in the unicode package):
func runefilter(in reflect.Value) (out reflect.Value) {
out = in // Make sure you return something
if in.Kind() == reflect.String {
instr := in.String()
t := transform.Chain(norm.NFD, runes.Remove(runes.NotIn(rangetable.Merge(unicode.Letter, unicode.Latin, unicode.Number))), norm.NFC)
outstr, _, _ := transform.String(t, instr)
out = reflect.ValueOf(outstr)
}
return
}
Now, I think I've tried just about anything, but I keep ending up with a series of strings which are far from the Latin range, e.g.:
𥗉똿穊
𢷽嚶
秓䝏小𪖹䮋
𪿝ท솲
𡉪䂾
ʋ𥅮ᦸ
堮𡹯憨𥗼𧵕ꥆ
𢝌𐑮𧍛併怃𥊇
鯮
𣏲𝐒
⓿ꐠ槹𬠂黟
𢼭踁퓺𪇖
俇𣄃𔘧
𢝶
𝖸쩈𤫐𢬿詢𬄙
𫱘𨆟𑊙
欓
So, can anybody explain what I'm overlooking here and how I could instead define a transformer which removes/replaces non-letter/number/latin characters so that I can use the Value function as intended (but with a smaller subset of 'random' characters)?
Thanks!
Confusingly the Generate interface needs a function using the type not a the pointer to the type. You want your type signature to look like
func (m Metadata) Generate(r *rand.Rand, size int) (value reflect.Value)
You can play with this here. Note: the most important thing to do in that playground is to switch the type of the generate function from m Metadata to m *Metadata and see that Hi Mom! never prints.
In addition, I think you would be better served using your own type and writing a generate method for that type using a list of all of the characters you want to use. For example:
type LatinString string
const latin = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz01233456789"
and then use the generator
func (l LatinString) Generate(rand *rand.Rand, size int) reflect.Value {
var buffer bytes.Buffer
for i := 0; i < size; i++ {
buffer.WriteString(string(latin[rand.Intn(len(latin))]))
}
s := LatinString(buffer.String())
return reflect.ValueOf(s)
}
playground
Edit: also this library is pretty cool, thanks for showing it to me
The answer to my own question is, it seems, a combination of the answers provided in the comments by #nj_ and #jimb and the answer provided by #benjaminkadish.
In short, the answer boils down to:
"Not such a great idea as you thought it was", or "Bit of an ill-posed question"
"You were using the union of 'Letter', 'Latin' and 'Number' (Letter || Number || Latin), instead of the intersection of 'Latin' with the union of 'Letter' and 'Number' ((Letter || Number) && Latin))
Now for the longer version...
The idea behind me using the testing/quick package is that I wanted random data for (fuzzy) testing of my code. In the past, I've always written the code for doing things like that myself, again and again. This meant a lot of the same code across different projects. Now, I could of course written my own package for it, but it turns out that, even better than that, there's actually a standard package which does just about exactly what I want.
Now, it turns out the package does exactly what I want very well. The codepoints in the strings which it generates are actually random and not just restricted to what we're accustomed to using in everyday life. Now, this is of course exactly the thing which you want in doing fuzzy testing in order to test the code with values outside the usual assumptions.
In practice, that means I'm running into two problems:
There's some limits on what I would consider reasonable input for a string. Meaning that, in testing the processing of a Name field or a URL field, I can reasonably assume there's not going to be a value like 'James Mc⌢' (let alone 'James Mc🙁') or 'www.🕸site.com', but just 'James McFrown' and 'www.website.com'. Hence, I can't expect a reasonable system to be able to support it. Of course, things shouldn't completely break down, but it also can't be expected to handle the former examples without any problems.
When I filter the generated string on values which one might consider reasonable, the chance of ending up with a valid string is very small. The set of possible characters in the set used by the testing/quick is just so large (0x10FFFF) and the set of reasonable characters so small, you end up with empty strings most of the time.
So, what do we need to take away from this?
So, whilst I hoped to use the standard testing/quick package to replace my often repeated code to generate random data for fuzzy testing, it does this so well that it provides data outside the range of what I would consider reasonable for the code to be able to handle. It seems that the choice, in the end, is to:
Either be able to actually handle all fuzzy options, meaning that if somebody's name is 'Arnold 💰💰' ('Arnold Moneybags'), it shouldn't go arse over end. Or...
Use custom/derived types with their own Generator. This means you're going to have to use the derived type instead of the basic type throughout the code. (Comparable to defining a string as wchar_t instead of char in C++ and working with those by default.). Or...
Don't use testing/quick for fuzzy testing, because as soon as you run into a generated string value, you can (and should) get a very random string.
As always, further comments are of course welcome, as it's quite possible I overlooked something.

Use String for IF statement conditions

I'm hoping someone can help answer my question, perhaps with an idea of where to go or whether what I'm trying to do is not possible with the way I want to do it.
I've been asked to write a set of rules based on the data held by our ERP form components or variables.
Unfortunately, these components and variables cannot be accessed or used outside of the ERP, so I can't use SQL to query the values and then build some kind of SQL query.
They'd like the ability to put statements like these:
C(MyComponentName) = C(MyOtherComponentName)
V(MyVariableName) > 16
(C(MyComponentName) = "") AND V(MyVariableName) <> "")
((C(MyComponentName) = "") OR C(MyOtherComponentName) = "") AND V(MyVariableName) <> "")
This should be turned into some kind of query which gets the value of MyComponentName and MyOtherComponentName and (in this case) compares them for equality.
They don't necessarily want to just compare for equality, but to be able to determine whether a component / variable value is greaterthan or lessthan etc.
Basically it's a free-form statement that gets converted into something similar to an IF statement.
I've tried this:
Sub TestCondition()
Dim Condition as string = String.Format("{0} = {1}", _
Component("MyComponent").Value, Component("MyOtherComponent").Value)
If (Condition) Then
' Do Something
Else
' Do Something Else
End If
End Sub
Obviously, this does not work and I honestly didn't think it would be so simple.
Ignoring the fact that I'd have to parse the line, extract the required operators, the values from components or variables (denoted by a C or V) - how can I do this?
I've looked at Expression Trees but these were confusing, especially as I'd never heard of them, let alone used them. (Is it possible to create an expression tree for dynamic if statements? - This link provided some detail on expression trees in C#)
I know an easier way to solve this might be to simply populate the form with a multitude of drop-down lists, so users pick what they want from lists or fill in a text box for a specific search criteria.
This wouldn't be a simple matter as the ERP doesn't allow you to dynamically create controls on its forms. You have to drag each component manually and would be next to useless as we'd potentially want at least 1 rule for every form we have (100+).
I'm either looking for someone to say you cannot do this the way you want to do it (with a suitable reason or suggestion as to how I could do it) that I can take to my manager or some hints, perhaps a link or 2 pointing me in the right direction.
If (Condition) Then
This is not possible. There is no way to treat data stored in a string as code. While the above statement is valid, it won't and can't function the way you want it to. Instead, Condition will be evaluated as what it is: a string. (Anything that doesn't boil down to 0 is treated as True; see this question.)
What you are attempting borders on allowing the user to type code dynamically to get a result. I won't say this is impossible per se in VB.Net, but it is incredibly ambitious.
Instead, I would suggest clearly defining what your application can and can't do. Enumerate the operators your code will allow and build code to support each directly. For example:
Public Function TestCondition(value1 As Object, value2 As Object, op as string) As Boolean
Select Case op
Case "="
Return value1 = value2
Case "<"
Return value1 < value2
Case ">"
Return value1 > value2
Case Else
'Error handling
End Select
End Function
Obviously you would need to tailor the above to the types of variables you will be handling and your other specific needs, but this approach should give you a workable solution.
For my particular requirements, using the NCalc library has enabled me to do most of what I was looking to do. Easy to work with and the documentation is quite extensive - lots of examples too.

How to comment on MATLAB variables

When I´m using MATLAB, sometimes I feel the need to make comments on some variables. I would like to save these comments inside these variables. So when I have to work with many variables in the workspace, and I forget the context of some of these variables I could read the comments I put in every one of them. So I would like to comment variables and keep the comments inside of them.
While I'm of the opinion that the best (and easiest) approach would be to make your variables self-documenting by giving them descriptive names, there is actually a way for you to do what you want using the object-oriented aspects of MATLAB. Specifically, you can create a new class which subclasses a built-in class so that it has an additional property describing the variable.
In fact, there is an example in the documentation that does exactly what you want. It creates a new class ExtendDouble that behaves just like a double except that it has a DataString property attached to it which describes the data in the variable. Using this subclass, you can do things like the following:
N = ExtendDouble(10,'The number of data points')
N =
The number of data points
10
and N could be used in expressions just as any double value would. Using this example subclass as a template, you could create "commented" versions of other built-in numeric classes, with the exception of those you are not allowed to subclass (char, cell, struct, and function_handle).
Of course, it should be noted that instead of using the ExtendDouble class like I did in the above example, I could instead define my variable like so:
nDataPoints = 10;
which makes the variable self-documenting, albeit with a little more typing needed. ;)
How about declaring another variable for your comments?
example:
\>> num = 5;
\>> numc = 'This is a number that contains 5';
\>> whos
...
This is my first post in StackOverflow. Thanks.
A convenient way to solve this is to have a function that does the storing and displaying of comments for you, i.e. something like the function below that will pop open a dialog box if you call it with comments('myVar') to allow you to enter new (or read/update previous) comments to variable (or function, or co-worker) labeled myVar.
Note that the comments will not be available in your next Matlab session. To make this happen, you have to add save/load functionality to comments (i.e. every time you change anything, you write to a file, and any time you start the function and database is empty, you load the file if possible).
function comments(name)
%COMMENTS stores comments for a matlab session
%
% comments(name) adds or updates a comment stored with the label "name"
%
% comments prints all the current comments
%# database is a n-by-2 cell array with {label, comment}
persistent database
%# check input and decide what to do
if nargin < 1 || isempty(name)
printDatabase;
else
updateDatabase;
end
function printDatabase
%# prints the database
if isempty(database)
fprintf('no comments stored yet\n')
else
for i=1:size(database,1)
fprintf('%20s : %s\n',database{i,1},database{i,2});
end
end
end
function updateDatabase
%# updates the database
%# check whether there is already a comment
if size(database,1) > 0 && any(strcmp(name,database(:,1)))
idx = strcmp(name,database(:,1));
comment = database(idx,2);
else
idx = size(database,1)+1;
comment = {''};
end
%# ask for new/updated comment
comment = inputdlg(sprintf('please enter comment for %s',name),'add comment',...
5,comment);
if ~isempty(comment)
database{idx,1} = name;
database(idx,2) = comment;
end
end
end
Always always always keep the Matlab editor open with a script documenting what you do. That is, variable assignments and calculations.
Only exceptions are very short sessions where you want to experiment. Once you have something -- add it to the file (It's also easier to cut and paste when you can see your entire history).
This way you can always start over. Just clear all and rerun the script. You never have random temporaries floating around in your workspace.
Eventually, when you are finished, you will also have something that is close to 'deliverable'.
Have you thought of using structures (or cells, although structures would require extra memory use)?
'>> dataset1.numerical=5;
'>> dataset1.comment='This is the dataset that contains 5';
dataset1 =
numerical: 5
comment: 'This is the dataset that contains 5'