Hi all, I've been playing with clojure for a few weeks now, and it's a good time. One deficiency I've noticed is that the clojure api and clojure.contrib documentation is really lacking in simple examples. I do python for my day job and I really like what doctests have done for the python documentation culture. There are simple examples of a function's use in its documentation, and those examples are verified to be correct.
I threw together a clojure namespace to do the same: http://github.com/Kobold/clj-doc-test Right now it is very simplistic, but it works. I've tried to make it integrate as seamlessly as possible by writing it on top of clojure.test. If this seems like a good idea, I'd eventually like to go through clojure.contrib and add doc-tests to those. I'm happy to do it myself to improve clojure's documentation. Feedback on both the idea of doc-testing and my code are very welcome! The introduction I wrote to doc-test is below. Thanks! Andy Kish. ------------------------------------- doc-test is a Clojure namespace that provides Python-like doctests [1]. WHY DOC-TEST? ------------- Examples are very useful in documentation and help to clarify the meaning of descriptions. Take #'clojure.set/join: "When passed 2 rels, returns the rel corresponding to the natural join. When passed an additional keymap, joins on the corresponding keys." Que? A simple example is much more clear for someone reading the docs for the first time: (def languages #{{:name "C" :type "procedural"} {:name "Clojure" :type "functional"} {:name "Haskell" :type "functional"}}) (def fun-level #{{:type "procedural" :funness "meh"} {:type "functional" :funness "awesome"}}) => (clojure.set/join languages fun-level) #{{:name "Haskell", :type "functional", :funness "awesome"} {:name "Clojure", :type "functional", :funness "awesome"} {:name "C", :type "procedural", :funness "meh"}} Awesome. The only problem is that sometimes documentation and actual code fall out of sync with each other. Doc-tests provide a way to assure that doesn't happen. The examples in the documentation are tested with the rest of the code! HOW TO DOC-TEST --------------- Here's an example function with some doc-tests: (defn adder "A simple function to test the doctest macro with. => ((adder 1) 2) 4 ; incorrect! => ((adder 4) 5) 9" [n1] (fn [n2] (+ n1 n2))) To generate the tests from #'adder's doc-string: (doc-test adder) Put this wherever you've put the rest of your #'clojure.test/deftests. When the above test is run this error occurs: FAIL in (adder__doc-test__88) (doc_test_tests.clj:19) expected: (clojure.core/= ((adder 1) 2) (quote 4)) actual: (not (clojure.core/= 3 4)) Doc-test makes efforts to make test failures easier to debug. Because your documentation is turned into standard clojure.test declarations, we see the failure display in the same way. The test name is the symbol's name along with "__doc-test__". The expected and actual statements are also exactly what was in the doc-string. [1] http://docs.python.org/library/doctest.html [2] http://clojure.org/API#toc662 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
