gmock save argument string - c++

I hope there is an easier way to do this... I need to capture the string which is passed as an argument to a mock.
The mock
class web_api_mock : public iweb_api
{
public:
MOCK_METHOD(
(bool),
http_post,
(const etl_normal_string &, const char*),
(override));
};
I want to capture the char * passed to the mock as second argument. I need to construct some json structure from it, and I want to check if a certain element has a certain value.
I had to spend a lot of time to get it to work, eventually copying the trick from here. This brilliant mind figured out you can rely on the gmock's Invoke.
The EXPECT_CALL
http_post_args args;
EXPECT_CALL(_web_api_mock, http_post(etl_string_equals(url), _))
.WillOnce(
DoAll(
Invoke(&args, &http_post_args::capture),
Return(true)));
Here I am invoking all arguments of the mock to a struct which I defined as follows
struct http_post_args
{
void capture(etl_normal_string url, const char * p)
{
payload = std::string(p);
}
std::string payload;
};
And finally, I get my hands on the char * and do whatever I want afterwards.
It seems awfully complicated to save an argument when it's of the type char *.
My first attempt was the obvious mistake I guess many before (and after) me made: using the SaveArgPointee which will copy only the first element of the string and gives me with a string where the first character is correct, but the remaining string is filled with random mem.
My second attempt was to define an ACTION_P. This "almost" worked. In the callstack I could see the string I am interested in until the very last stackframe, where the args simply seem not to be passed to the actual implementation of my custom ACTION_P.
ACTION_P2(capture_string, url, payload)
{
/* if I break in the debugger, and go 1 stackframe up,
I can see that gmock holds my string in varargs as second element
But I couldn't find a way to access it here*/
}
I also tried the ACTION_TEMPLATE but I am not c++ enough to understand what they are trying to explain me on gmock cookbook.
So my final question: is the above working trick with http_post_args struct really "the only way" to capture a const char * being passed as an argument to a mock?
If it SHOULD be possible using ACTION_P or ACTION_TEMPLATE would somebody be so kind to provide an actual working example with a const char *?

You could simply use a lambda, like so (live example):
TEST(SomeTest, Foo)
{
std::string payload;
web_api_mock m;
EXPECT_CALL(m, http_post(Eq("url"), _))
.WillOnce([&](const std::string &, const char* p){
payload = p;
return true;
});
m.http_post("url", "foo string");
EXPECT_THAT(payload, Eq("foo string"));
}
No additional http_post_args or actions etc required.
Of course, you could also change the payload to a const char* if you want to "capture" the raw char pointer. But be careful with the lifetime of the pointed to characters, in this case.
You hinted that your real code will need to parse the payload string as json and check for a certain element. It might lead to more readable tests when you create a dedicated matcher that does this. To show a rough draft (live example):
MATCHER_P(ContainsJsonElement, expectedElement, "")
{
const char * payload = arg;
// Parse payload as json, check for element, etc.
const bool foundElement = std::string(payload) == expectedElement;
return foundElement;
}
TEST(SomeTest, Foo)
{
web_api_mock m;
EXPECT_CALL(m, http_post(Eq("url"), ContainsJsonElement("foo string")));
m.http_post("url", "foo string");
}

Related

prevent string literals from being converted to bool versus std::string

Similar questions have been asked before, such as String literal matches bool overload instead of std::string.
But what I want to know is what should C++ developers do to prevent this from happening? As someone who writes C++ libraries for others to consume, what should I do to ensure this doesn't happen? Here is the example I ran into today, where a library had 2 initialize() methods:
void initialize(bool someflag) { /* ... */ }
void initialize(const std::string & name) { /* ... */ }
Now the problematic code was in the application that wanted to utilize this functionality and which called it in a manner similar to this:
initialize("robert");
At first glance you'd think that this would call initialize(string) but it actually calls the first initialize(bool) with a boolean flag set to true!
Yes, I know it can be fixed with this:
initialize( std::string("robert") );
But this puts the onus on the caller.
Edit for #zdan: I didn't consider the "solutions" in the other linked question to be great solutions since 1) I was hoping not to have to add a const char * version of every method that takes a bool or string, and 2) the template solution increases the maintainability of the code significantly for affected methods, renders them almost unreadable.
what should I do to ensure this doesn't happen?
One possibility is to create an overload that accepts a char const* and make it a pass through to the overload that accepts a std::string.
void initialize(char const* name) { initialize(std::string(name)); }

Processing ASCII commands in a more robust and type safe way

I have a module which receives ASCII commands and then reacts to them accordingly. I am wondering if it is possible, to have a more robust and typesafe way of calling handler functions.
In the past, I had code like the following, which is also very similar to this answer: Processing ASCII commands via RS232 in embedded c
struct Command commands[] = {
{"command1", command1Handler}
{"command2", command2Handler}
...
};
//gets called when a new string has been received
void parseCmd(const char *input) {
//find the fitting command entry and call function pointer
}
bool command1Handler(const char *input) { }
bool command2Handler(const char *input) { }
I don't like that all handler functions have to do their own parsing. This seems needlessly repetitive and error prone.
It would be cool, if instead we could have it the following way, where all parsing is done in the the parseCmd function:
struct Command commands[] = {
{"command1", command1HandlerSafe}
{"command2", command2HandlerSafe}
...
};
void parseCmd(const char *input) {
//1. find fitting command entry
//2. check that parameter number fits the expected number for the target function
//3. parse parameters and validate the types
//4. call function with parameters in their correct types
}
bool command1HandlerSafe(bool param1, const char *param2) { }
bool command2HandlerSafe(int param1) {}
I think with old C-style varargs it would be possible to do the parsing in a central function, but that would not bring type safety.
Edit:
Meanwhile I came up with the following solution, which I thought somewhat balances the hackiness and modularization:
class ParameterSet{
struct Param{
const char *paramString;
bool isInt();
int toInt();
float toFloat();
..
}
ParameterSet(const char *input);
Param at(size_t index);
size_t length();
char m_buffer[100];
Param m_params[10];
}
bool command1HandlerMoreSafe(const ParameterSet *paramSet);
Building an abstraction layer around this might make things more complex and thereby bug prone. I wouldn't do that unless the amount of commands you are supposed to handle is vast, needs to be maintained, and this is one of the main tasks of your application.
With the pre-requisites to keep type safe and keep parsing separate from algorithms, you could build something similar to the following C-like pseudo code:
typedef enum
{
INT,
STR
} type_t; // for marking which type that is supported by the command
typedef struct
{
type_t type;
const char* text; // what kind of text that is expected in case of strings
} arg_t;
typedef struct
{
const char* name; // the name of the command
arg_t* args; // list of allowed arguments
size_t args_n; // size of that list
void (*callback)(void); // placeholder for callback functions of different types
} command_t;
You can then make callback handler functions that aren't concerned about parsing, but only about their dedicated task:
void cmd_branch (const char* str);
void cmd_kill (int n);
The array of commands might look something like this:
const command_t commands[] =
{
{ // BRANCH [FAST][SLOW]
.name="BRANCH",
.args=(entry_t[]){ {STR,"FAST"}, {STR,"SLOW"} },
.args_n=2,
.callback= (void(*)(void)) cmd_branch,
},
{ // KILL [7][9]
.name="KILL",
.args=(entry_t[]){ {INT, NULL} },
.args_n=1,
.callback= (void(*)(void)) cmd_kill,
}
};
The parse function will then do:
Find which command that was received by searching the above list (bsearch if large list).
Check what type of arguments the received command supports
Parse arguments accordingly
Call the relevant function with arguments of the appropriate type
Since this example just used some dummy type function pointer (void(*)(void)), you'll have to cast to the correct type. Can be done by for example C11 _Generic:
call(commands[i], int_val);
which expands to:
#define call(command, arg) _Generic((arg), \
int: (void(*)(int)) command.callback, \
const char*: (void(*)(const char*)) command.callback )(arg)
One way to keep the command handling interfaces the same is to fall back on the venerable argv / argc interface that main() receives. Assuming the received commands have some notion of words (perhaps whitespace separated), it could go like this:
Receive the input string.
Parse the input into words where the first word is the name of the command and the remaining words are its arguments.
As the parsing proceeds, place a pointer to the string that contains each word in an array and keep count of the number of elements in the array.
Using the first word, look up a command function pointer. You can use something like bsearch() if the commands are all known at compile time. Perhaps a hash table might also be appropriate. However you implement the mapping, the result is a pointer to a function that takes an array of pointers to the arguments and a count of the number of elements in the pointer array.
Invoke the command function via its pointer and pass the array of parsed words and the count, just like main() is invoked by startup code.
From there, each command function can deal with what its arguments specifically mean, converting strings representations to internal forms as necessary.

Is there a way to make a function have different behavior if its return value will be used as an rvalue reference instead of an lvalue?

I have a routine that does some moderately expensive operations, and the client could consume the result as either a string, integer, or a number of other data types. I have a public data type that is a wrapper around an internal data type. My public class looks something like this:
class Result {
public:
static Result compute(/* args */) {
Result result;
result.fData = new ExpensiveInternalObject(/* args */);
return result;
}
// ... constructors, destructor, assignment operators ...
std::string toString() const { return fData->toString(); }
int32_t toInteger() const { return fData->toInteger(); }
double toDouble() const { return fData->toDouble(); }
private:
ExpensiveInternalObject* fData;
}
If you want the string, you can use it like this:
// Example A
std::string resultString = Result::compute(/*...*/).toString();
If you want more than one of the return types, you do it like this:
// Example B
Result result = Result::compute(/*...*/);
std::string resultString = result.toString();
int32_t resultInteger = result.toInteger();
Everything works.
However, I want to modify this class such that there is no need to allocate memory on the heap if the user needs only one of the result types. For example, I want Example A to essentially do the equivalent of,
auto result = ExpensiveInternalObject(/* args */);
std::string resultString = result.toString();
I've thought about structuring the code such that the args are saved into the instance of Result, make the ExpensiveInternalObject not be calculated until the terminal functions (toString/toInteger/toDouble), and overload the terminal functions with rvalue reference qualifiers, like this:
class Result {
// ...
std::string toString() const & {
if (fData == nullptr) {
const_cast<Result*>(this)->fData = new ExpensiveInternalObject(/*...*/);
}
return fData->toString();
}
std::string toString() && {
auto result = ExpensiveInternalObject(/*...*/);
return result.toString();
}
// ...
}
Although this avoids the heap allocation for the Example A call site, the problem with this approach is that you have to start thinking about thread safety issues. You'd probably want to make fData an std::atomic, which adds overhead to the Example B call site.
Another option would be to make two versions of compute() under different names, one for the Example A use case and one for the Example B use case, but this isn't very friendly to the user of the API, because now they have to study which version of the method to use, and they will get poor performance if they choose the wrong one.
I can't make ExpensiveInternalObject a value field inside Result (as opposed to a pointer) because doing so would require exposing too many internals in the public header file.
Is there a way to make the first function, compute(), know whether its return value is going to become an rvalue reference or whether it is going to become an lvalue, and have different behavior for each case?
You can achieve the syntax you asked for using a kind of proxy object.
Instead of a Result, Result::compute could return an object that represents a promise of a Result. This Promise object could have a conversion operator that implicitly converts to a Result so that "Example B" still works as before. But the promise could also have its own toString(), toInteger(), ... member functions for "Example A":
class Result {
public:
class Promise {
private:
// args
public:
std::string toString() const {
auto result = ExpensiveInternalObject(/* args */);
return result.toString();
}
operator Result() {
Result result;
result.fData = new ExpensiveInternalObject(/* args */);
return result;
}
};
// ...
};
Live demo.
This approach has its downsides though. For example, what if, instead you wrote:
auto result = Result::compute(/*...*/);
std::string resultString = result.toString();
int32_t resultInteger = result.toInteger();
result is now not of Result type but actually a Result::Promise and you end up computing ExpensiveInternalObject twice! You can at least make this to fail to compile by adding an rvalue reference qualifier to the toString(), toInteger(), ... member functions on Result::Promise but it is not ideal.
Considering you can't overload a function by its return type, and you wanted to avoid making two different versions of compute(), the only thing I can think of is setting a flag in the copy constructor of Result. This could work with your particular example, but not in general. For example, it won't work if you're taking a reference, which you can't disallow.

How can I ensure that correct function is called in case there are multiple candidates

In C++ is perfectly legitimate to do:
bool x = "hi";
Because "hi" is translated by compiler to a char array and returns a pointer to that array, which is a number and number can be implicitly converted to bool (0 is false, anything else is true).
So I have these ctor:
Exception(QString Text, bool __IsRecoverable = true);
Exception(QString Text, QString _Source, bool __IsRecoverable = true);
Sadly I figured out that calling
Exception *e = new Exception("error happened", "main.cpp #test");
It creates a new instance of "Exception" class which is created using Exception(QString Text, bool __IsRecoverable = true); constructor, which is wrong to a point.
Is there a simple way to ensure that correct function is called, other than restructuring the constructors entirely, changing position of arguments, etc?
Firstly, I'm not sure why you're dynamically allocating an exception class. I'm not sure that's ever a good idea.
You can explicitly construct a QString:
Exception e("error happened", QString("main.cpp #test"));
Or you can pass the third argument:
Exception e("error happened", "main.cpp #test", true);
Or you can add an additional constructor that takes const char* and will be preferred over the conversion to bool:
Exception(QString Text, const char* Source, bool IsRecoverable = true);
You can easily make this forward to the QString version. Also note that names beginning with an underscore and a capital letter or with two underscores are reserved.
My suggestion would be to not use default arguments. They contribute to overload resolution problems like this, and anyway it is not very readable to just see true as an argument. Whoever's reading the code then has to stop and go look up what the true means. Even if it's yourself you may forget it in a few months time when you come back to the code, especially if you do this sort of thing a lot.
For example:
struct Exception: public whatever
{
Exception(char const *text);
Exception(char const *text, char const *source);
};
struct RecoverableException: public Exception
{
RecoverableException(char const *text);
RecoverableException(char const *text, char const *source);
};
It's a little bit more typing in this source file but the payoff is that your code which actually uses the exceptions is simpler and clearer.
To implement these constructors you could have them all call a particular function in the .cpp file with relevant arguments selecting which behaviour you want.
I have a preference for using char const * rather than QString as I am paranoid about two things:
unwanted conversions
memory allocation failure
If constructing a QString throws then things go downhill fast. But you may choose to not worry about this possibility because if the system ran out of memory and your exception handling doesn't prepare for that possibility then it's going to terminate either way.

Is it possible to *safely* return a TCHAR* from a function?

I've created a function that will convert all the event notification codes to strings. Pretty simple stuff really.
I've got a bunch of consts like
const _bstr_t DIRECTSHOW_MSG_EC_ACTIVATE("A video window is being activated or deactivated.");
const _bstr_t DIRECTSHOW_MSG_EC_BUFFERING_DATA("The graph is buffering data, or has stopped buffering data.");
const _bstr_t DIRECTSHOW_MSG_EC_BUILT("Send by the Video Control when a graph has been built. Not forwarded to applications.");
.... etc....
and my function
TCHAR* GetDirectShowMessageDisplayText( int messageNumber )
{
switch( messageNumber )
{
case EC_ACTIVATE: return DIRECTSHOW_MSG_EC_ACTIVATE;
case EC_BUFFERING_DATA: return DIRECTSHOW_MSG_EC_BUFFERING_DATA;
case EC_BUILT: return DIRECTSHOW_MSG_EC_BUILT;
... etc ...
No big deal. Took me 5 minutes to throw together.
... but I simply don't trust that I've got all the possible values, so I want to have a default to return something like "Unexpected notification code (7410)" if no matches are found.
Unfortunately, I can't think of anyway to return a valid pointer, without forcing the caller to delete the string's memory ... which is not only nasty, but also conflicts with the simplicity of the other return values.
So I can't think of any way to do this without changing the return value to a parameter where the user passes in a buffer and a string length. Which would make my function look like
BOOL GetDirectShowMessageDisplayText( int messageNumber, TCHAR* outBuffer, int bufferLength )
{
... etc ...
I really don't want to do that. There must be a better way.
Is there?
I'm coming back to C++ after a 10 year hiatus, so if it's something obvious, don't discount that I've overlooked it for a reason.
C++? std::string. It's not going to destroy the performance on any modern computer.
However if you have some need to over-optimize this, you have three options:
Go with the buffer your example has.
Have the users delete the string afterwards. Many APIs like this provide their own delete function for deleting each kind of dynamically allocated return data.
Return a pointer to a static buffer which you fill in with the return string on each call. This does have some drawbacks, though, in that it's not thread safe, and it can be confusing because the returned pointer's value will change the next time someone calls the function. If non-thread-safety is acceptable and you document the limitations, it should be all right though.
If you are returning a point to a string constant, the caller will not have to delete the string - they'll only have to if you are new-ing the memory used by the string every time. If you're just returning a pointer to a string entry in a table of error messages, I would change the return type to TCHAR const * const and you should be OK.
Of course this will not prevent users of your code to attempt to delete the memory referenced by the pointer but there is only so much you can do to prevent abuse.
Just declare use a static string as a default result:
TCHAR* GetDirectShowMessageDisplayText( int messageNumber )
{
switch( messageNumber )
{
// ...
default:
static TCHAR[] default_value = "This is a default result...";
return default_value;
}
}
You may also declare "default_value" outside of the function.
UPDATE:
If you want to insert a message number in that string then it won't be thread-safe (if you are using multiple threads). However, the solution for that problem is to use thread-specific string. Here is an example using Boost.Thread:
#include <cstdio>
#include <boost/thread/tss.hpp>
#define TCHAR char // This is just because I don't have TCHAR...
static void errorMessageCleanup (TCHAR *msg)
{
delete []msg;
}
static boost::thread_specific_ptr<TCHAR> errorMsg (errorMessageCleanup);
static TCHAR *
formatErrorMessage (int number)
{
static const size_t MSG_MAX_SIZE = 256;
if (errorMsg.get () == NULL)
errorMsg.reset (new TCHAR [MSG_MAX_SIZE]);
snprintf (errorMsg.get (), MSG_MAX_SIZE, "Unexpected notification code (%d)", number);
return errorMsg.get ();
}
int
main ()
{
printf ("Message: %s\n", formatErrorMessage (1));
}
The only limitation of this solution is that returned string cannot be passed by the client to the other thread.
Perhaps have a static string buffer you return a pointer to:
std::ostringstream ss;
ss << "Unexpected notification code (" << messageNumber << ")";
static string temp = ss.str(); // static string always has a buffer
return temp.c_str(); // return pointer to buffer
This is not thread safe, and if you persistently hold the returned pointer and call it twice with different messageNumbers, they all point to the same buffer in temp - so both pointers now point to the same message. The solution? Return a std::string from the function - that's modern C++ style, try to avoid C style pointers and buffers. (It looks like you might want to invent a tstring which would be std::string in ANSI and std::wstring in unicode, although I'd recommend just going unicode-only... do you really have any reason to support non-unicode builds?)
You return some sort of self-releasing smart pointer or your own custom string class. You should follow the interface as it's defined in std::string for easiest use.
class bstr_string {
_bstr_t contents;
public:
bool operator==(const bstr_string& eq);
...
~bstr_string() {
// free _bstr_t
}
};
In C++, you never deal with raw pointers unless you have an important reason, you always use self-managing classes. Usually, Microsoft use raw pointers because they want their interfaces to be C-compatible, but if you don't care, then don't use raw pointers.
The simple solution does seem to be to just return a std::string. It does imply one dynamic memory allocation, but you'd probably get that in any case (as either the user or your function would have to make the allocation explicitly)
An alternative might be to allow the user to pass in an output iterator which you write the string into. Then the user is given complete control over how and when to allocate and store the string.
On the first go-round I missed that this was a C++ question rather than a plain C question. Having C++ to hand opens up another possibility: a self-managing pointer class that can be told whether or not to delete.
class MsgText : public boost::noncopyable
{
const char* msg;
bool shouldDelete;
public:
MsgText(const char *msg, bool shouldDelete = false)
: msg(msg), shouldDelete(shouldDelete)
{}
~MsgText()
{
if (shouldDelete)
free(msg);
}
operator const char*() const
{
return msg;
}
};
const MsgText GetDirectShowMessageDisplayText(int messageNumber)
{
switch(messageNumber)
{
case EC_ACTIVATE:
return MsgText("A video window is being activated or deactivated.");
// etc
default: {
char *msg = asprintf("Undocumented message (%u)", messageNumber);
return MsgText(msg, true);
}
}
}
(I don't remember if Windows CRT has asprintf, but it's easy enough to rewrite the above on top of std::string if it doesn't.)
Note the use of boost::noncopyable, though - if you copy this kind of object you risk double frees. Unfortunately, that may cause problems with returning it from your message-pretty-printer function. I'm not sure what the right way to deal with that is, I'm not actually much of a C++ guru.
You already use _bstr_t, so if you can just return those directly:
_bstr_t GetDirectShowMessageDisplayText(int messageNumber);
If you need to build a different message at runtime you can pack it into a _bstr_t too. Now the ownership is clear and the use is still simple thanks to RAII.
The overhead is negligible (_bstr_t uses ref-counting) and the calling code can still use _bstr_ts conversion to wchar_t* and char* if needed.
There's no good answer here, but this kludge might suffice.
const char *GetDirectShowMessageDisplayText(int messageNumber)
{
switch(messageNumber)
{
// ...
default: {
static char defaultMessage[] = "Unexpected notification code #4294967296";
char *pos = defaultMessage + sizeof "Unexpected notification code #" - 1;
snprintf(pos, sizeof "4294967296" - 1, "%u", messageNumber);
return defaultMessage;
}
}
}
If you do this, callers must be aware that the string they get back from GetDirectShowMessageText might be clobbered by a subsequent call to the function. And it's not thread safe, obviously. But those might be acceptable limitations for your application.