[jira] [Commented] (AVRO-1521) Inconsistent behavior of Perl API with 'boolean' type

["Martin Spevak (Jira)" <ji...@apache.org>]

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AVRO-1521?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=17035340#comment-17035340 ] 

Martin Spevak commented on AVRO-1521:
-------------------------------------

Main issue is with default boolean, because when you have in schema:
{code:java}
{
  "type" : "record",
  "name" : "Some",
  "namespace" : "some.namespace",
  "fields" : [ {
    "name" : "fieldname",
    "type" : "boolean",
    "default" : false
  }, {
  ....
}

{code}
Schema is parsed from string (Avro::Schema) as json, so all booleans are transformed into JSON::PP::Boolean objects:
{code:java}
 28 sub parse {
 29     my $schema      = shift;
 30     my $json_string = shift;
 31     my $names       = shift || {};
 32     my $namespace   = shift || "";
 33 
 34     my $struct = try {
 35         $json->decode($json_string);
 36     }
 37     catch {
 38         throw Avro::Schema::Error::Parse(
 39             "Cannot parse json string: $_"
 40         );
 41     };
 42     return $schema->parse_struct($struct, $names, $namespace);
 43 }

 {code}
finally validation in method is_data_valid for all booleans failings, because ref of $data is JSON::PP::Boolean 
{code:java}
313     if ($type eq 'boolean') {
314         return 0 if ref $data; # sometimes risky
315         return 1 if $data =~ m{yes|no|y|n|t|f|true|false}i;
316         return 0;
317     } {code}
quick fix is to prepend test before line 314:
{code:java}
return 1 if ref $data eq 'JSON::PP::Boolean';{code}

> Inconsistent behavior of Perl API with 'boolean' type
> -----------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: AVRO-1521
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AVRO-1521
>             Project: Apache Avro
>          Issue Type: Bug
>          Components: perl
>            Reporter: John Karp
>            Assignee: John Karp
>            Priority: Major
>             Fix For: 1.10.0
>
>
> The perl boolean serialization code in BinaryEncoder.pm encodes anything false to perl, such as 0, '0', '', () and undef, as false, and anything true to perl, which is literally everything else, as true.
> Inconsistent with the above serialization, the code used in Schema.pm to determine which union branch to use, is checking for boolean-ness with:
> {noformat}
> m{yes|no|y|n|t|f|true|false}i
> {noformat}
> meaning only those particular strings are considered booleans.
> So all those values, including 'no' 'n' 'f' and 'false', still get serialized to true.
> We could just standardize on one of the two and use it consistently. But neither works that well in unions, because unless you put the boolean type last in the union definition, a wide variety of data will be downcast to boolean type.
> Perl has no built-in or standardized boolean type, so there's no solution like we have in the other language Avro APIs. But we could do as the perl JSON module does, and define objects for true and false.



--
This message was sent by Atlassian Jira
(v8.3.4#803005)