DbC for PHP?

Hello!

Design by Contract can be achieved with Aspect-Oriented technology, as it
provides set of hooks, such as before method execution, after method
execution, around method execution, etc. Logic of contract can be easily
defined as an aspect - class that will receive a control before or after
method execution to check the contract. For example, we can introduce an
annotation as a contract for method and just verify (eval) this contract
during method execution.

Here is my one-minute implementation with Go! AOP framework. First step is
to define an empty Contract annotation:

use Doctrine\Common\Annotations\Annotation;

/**

• @Annotation
• @Target("METHOD")
  */
  class Contract extends Annotation
  {
  }

Next step is to create an aspect, that will be called before each method
that has "Contract" annotation:

class ContractAspect implements Aspect
{
/**
* Verify a contract for a methods annotated with Contract annotation
*
* @param MethodInvocation $invocation
* @Before("@annotation(Annotation\Contract)")
*/
public function beforeContract(MethodInvocation $invocation)
{
$__parameters = $invocation->getMethod()->getParameters();
$__argumentNames = array_map(function (\ReflectionParameter
$parameter) {
return $parameter->name;
}, $__parameters);
$__parameters = array_combine($__argumentNames,
$invocation->getArguments());

    extract($__parameters, EXTR_SKIP);
    $contract =

$invocation->getMethod()->getAnnotation(Contract::class);
$result = eval("return {$contract->value}; ?>");
if (!$result) {
$obj = $invocation->getThis();
$objName = is_object($obj) ? get_class($obj) : $obj;
$methodName = $invocation->getMethod()->name;
throw new \LogicException("Contract {$contract->value} violated
for {$objName}->{$methodName}");
}
}
}

And now it's possible to use this annotation anywhere to define a contract
for method:

use Annotation\Contract;

class Test
{
/**
* @Contract("strlen($foo) > 6")
*/
public function bar($foo)
{
echo $foo;
}
}

// test.php
$foo = new Test;
$foo->bar('1234567'); // no error
$foo->bar('12'); // LogicException: Contract strlen($foo) > 6 violated for
Test->bar;

What do you think about such implementation of contracts? Feedback is
appreciated.

2014-01-28 Sebastian Krebs krebs.seb@gmail.com

2014-01-28 Yasuo Ohgaki yohgaki@ohgaki.net

Hi all,

I'm wandering if we could have DbC (Design by Contract) for PHP 6.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_contract

There is user land implementation already.

https://gitorious.org/higher-order-php/php-contracts/source/5b0a53b9732f0e4dbe79345212c84c74526def3b

:

It could be done with dbc mode INI switch as follows.

When dbc=on, automatically includes

include _dbc . SCRIPT_NAME;

when a script is loaded. No error if there is not the script.
When function/method is called

_dbc_pre. FUNCTION() is called before calling function().
_dbc_post._FUNCTION() is called after function() call.

No error if there is not the function.

Couldn't you achieve the same with assert()?

Class methods would be more complex, but basic idea is the same.
Issue would be what we should do with $this with class methods.

Automatic namespace might be nice to have for both function and class.

When dbc=off, these would be skipped at all.

It does not sacrifice performance at all for production while it could
catch
various errors during development. It could do more complex assertion
than assert() and it could check post condition that is difficult to
achieve
by assert(). User could have their own strong type safety as long as they
have strict input validation. It could be used as complement of
annotation.

Just an idea.
Any comments?

Regards,

--
Yasuo Ohgaki
yohgaki@ohgaki.net

--
github.com/KingCrunch

Hi Sebastian,

On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 5:36 PM, Sebastian Krebs krebs.seb@gmail.comwrote:

I'm wandering if we could have DbC (Design by Contract) for PHP 6.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_contract

There is user land implementation already.

https://gitorious.org/higher-order-php/php-contracts/source/5b0a53b9732f0e4dbe79345212c84c74526def3b
:

It could be done with dbc mode INI switch as follows.

When dbc=on, automatically includes

include _dbc . SCRIPT_NAME;

when a script is loaded. No error if there is not the script.
When function/method is called

_dbc_pre. FUNCTION() is called before calling function().
_dbc_post._FUNCTION() is called after function() call.

No error if there is not the function.

Couldn't you achieve the same with assert()?

Assert can be used for DbC and there are such implementations.

Precondition is easy with assert(), but post condition is rather difficult
since
we need assert() before every 'return'. This could damage production code
(code executed on production environment) and contract readability. It
increases
chances of omitting post condition check by mistake.

Similar mistake may happen with this.
We may better to have option to warn non existent pre/post check.

Like Alexander explained, pure OO code can use DbC. It may be enough
for people who are interested in DbC.

This is just an idea. It's simple, powerful and easy to adopt. Since there
is no DbC code in production code, it's fast while assert() need
compilation
overhead. It does not matter much with opcache, though.

With this approach, user has to look up contract in other file. This is
disadvantage over other methods.

I wander how many of us are interested in such feature.

Regards,

--
Yasuo Ohgaki
yohgaki@ohgaki.net

Hi Ivan,

On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 5:48 PM, Ivan Enderlin @ Hoa <
ivan.enderlin@hoa-project.net> wrote:

I think DbC must stay annotations, so in comments of the code. If
contracts would be part of the PHP grammar, it would be disappointed for
everyone because there is no unique way to express a contract: either with
the language syntax itself (such as JML [9]) or with a dedicated language,
such as Praspel. Both have pros and cons that I won't describe here (except
if you ask).
However, having the Aspect Oriented Programming paradigm would be very
appreciated. It would avoid a lot of instrumentations and static analyzes.

This idea is a too simple and leaving almost all to user land scripts.

I agree that DbC must stay annotations. It's easier to write/read/maintain.
Unfortunately, annotation RFC is not accepted.

I agree that comprehensive implementation should be chosen if it's possible.
Thank you for your inputs!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praspel
[2] http://hoa-project.net/En/Literature.html#Research
[3] http://keynote.hoa-project.net/Amost12/EDGB12.pdf
[4] https://github.com/hoaproject/Compiler (documentation is under
translation)
[5] http://keynote.hoa-project.net/Cstva13/EGB13.pdf
[6] https://github.com/hoaproject/Praspel/tree/master/AssertionChecker
[7] http://atoum.org/
[8] https://github.com/hoaproject/Hoathis-Atoum
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Modeling_Language

I'll read them later.

Regards,

--
Yasuo Ohgaki
yohgaki@ohgaki.net