Re: [PATCH v2 05/16] python/qmp.py: add casts to JSON deserialization

[John Snow <jsnow@redhat.com>]

On 6/4/20 9:49 AM, Kevin Wolf wrote:
> Am 02.06.2020 um 23:45 hat John Snow geschrieben:
>> mypy and python type hints are not powerful enough to properly describe
>> JSON messages in Python 3.6. The best we can do, generally, is describe
>> them as Dict[str, Any].
>>
>> Add casts to coerce this type for static analysis; but do NOT enforce
>> this type at runtime in any way.
>>
>> Note: Python 3.8 adds a TypedDict construct which allows for the
>> description of more arbitrary Dictionary shapes. There is a third-party
>> module, "Pydantic", which is compatible with 3.6 that can be used
>> instead of the JSON library that parses JSON messages to fully-typed
>> Python objects, and may be preferable in some cases.
>>
>> (That is well beyond the scope of this commit or series.)
>>
>> Signed-off-by: John Snow <jsnow@redhat.com>
>> ---
>>  python/qemu/qmp.py | 8 ++++++--
>>  1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/python/qemu/qmp.py b/python/qemu/qmp.py
>> index ef3c919b76c..5f3558e3066 100644
>> --- a/python/qemu/qmp.py
>> +++ b/python/qemu/qmp.py
>> @@ -13,6 +13,7 @@
>>  import logging
>>  from typing import (
>>      Any,
>> +    cast,
>>      Dict,
>>      Optional,
>>      TextIO,
>> @@ -130,7 +131,10 @@ def __json_read(self, only_event=False):
>>              data = self.__sockfile.readline()
>>              if not data:
>>                  return None
>> -            resp = json.loads(data)
>> +            # By definition, any JSON received from QMP is a QMPMessage,
>> +            # and we are asserting only at static analysis time that it
>> +            # has a particular shape.
>> +            resp = cast(QMPMessage, json.loads(data))
> 
> Instead of casting, you can just specify the variable type:
> 
>     resp: QMPMessage = json.loads(data)
> 
> I don't think that json.loads() will actually return something other
> than Any anytime soon, but it's generally nicer to avoid casts and if it
> eventually does change, we'll get the type check instead of silencing
> it.
> 

Nice, that works with --strict too. Done.

>>              if 'event' in resp:
>>                  self.logger.debug("<<< %s", resp)
>>                  self.__events.append(resp)
>> @@ -262,7 +266,7 @@ def command(self, cmd, **kwds):
>>          ret = self.cmd(cmd, kwds)
>>          if 'error' in ret:
>>              raise QMPResponseError(ret)
>> -        return ret['return']
>> +        return cast(QMPReturnValue, ret['return'])
> 
> This one can't be easily avoided, though.
> 

Sadly not -- we could conceivably make use of e.g. pydantic to create
arbitrarily nuanced/strict structure definitions that are actually
validated at runtime, but I will save that for a future series.

--js