Patrick Steffen Pedersen
Faculty of Engineering and Science, Department of Electronic Systems, Section of Signal and Information Processing, Aalborg University, 9220 Aalborg, Denmark

Christian Schou Oxvig
Faculty of Engineering and Science, Department of Electronic Systems, Section of Signal and Information Processing, Aalborg University, 9220 Aalborg, Denmark

Jan Østergaard
Faculty of Engineering and Science, Department of Electronic Systems, Section of Signal and Information Processing, Aalborg University, 9220 Aalborg, Denmark

Torben Larsen
Faculty of Engineering and Science, Department of Electronic Systems, Section of Signal and Information Processing, Aalborg University, 9220 Aalborg, Denmark

Abstract

Python does not have a built-in mechanism to validate the value of function arguments. This can lead to nonsensical exceptions, unexpected behaviour, erroneous results and the like. In the present paper, we define the concept of so-called application-driven data types which place a layer of abstraction on top of Python data types. With this concept in mind, we discuss the current argument validation solutions of PyDBC, Traitlets and Numtraits, MyPy, PyValid, and PyContracts. We find that they share the issue of expressing the validation scheme in terms of Python objects rather than in terms of the data they hold. Consequently, we lay out a suggestion for a validation strategy including what qualifies as a validation scheme, how to create an interface which promotes both usability and readability, and which Python constructs to encourage using for validation encapsulation. A reference implementation of the suggested validation strategy is part of the open-source Python package, Magni which is thus presented along with a number of examples of the usages of this package.

Keywords

Function Argument Validation, Application-driven Data Types, Signal Processing, Computational Science

DOI

10.25080/Majora-629e541a-00f

Bibtex entry

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Copyright © 2016 Patrick Steffen Pedersen et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.