we prepared ourselves for parsing by going over the basics of the Gherkin Syntax. In this article and the next, we’ll be using the library to parse that syntax. This week, we’ll focus on the fundamentals of this library, and build up a vocabulary of combinators to use. We’ll make heavy use of the typeclass. If you need a refresher on that, check out . As we start coding, you can also follow along with the examples on ! Most of the code here is in . Last week applicative parsing Applicative this article Github here Parser.hs In the coming weeks, we’ll be seeing a couple other parsing libraries as well. If you want to get some ideas about these and more, download our . It summarizes many other useful libraries for writing higher level Haskell. Production Checklist If you’ve never started writing Haskell, now’s your chance! Get our free and learn the basics of getting started! Beginner’s Checklist Getting Started So to start parsing, let’s make some notes about our input format. First, we’ll treat our input feature document as a single string. We’ll remove all empty lines, and then trim leading and trailing whitespace from each line. parseFeatureFromFile :: FilePath -> IO FeatureparseFeatureFromFile inputFile = do fileContents <- lines <$> readFile inputFile let nonEmptyLines = filter (not . isEmpty) fileContents let trimmedLines = map trim nonEmptyLines let finalString = unlines trimmedLines case parseFeature finalString of ... …isEmpty :: String -> BoolisEmpty = all isSpace trim :: String -> Stringtrim input = reverse flippedTrimmed where trimStart = dropWhile isSpace input flipped = reverse trimStart flippedTrimmed = dropWhile isSpace flipped This means a few things for our syntax. First, we don’t care about indentation. Second, we ignore extra lines. This means our parsers might allow certain formats we don’t want. But that’s OK because we’re trying to keep things simple. The RE Type With applicative based parsing, the main data type we’ll be working with is called , for regular expression. This represents a parser, and it’s parameterized by two types: RE data RE s a = ... The type refers to the fundamental unit we’ll be parsing. Since we're parsing our input as a single , this will be . Then the type is the result of the parsing element. This varies from parser to parser. The most basic combinator we can use is . This parses a single symbol of your choosing: s String Char a sym sym :: s - > RE s s parseLowercaseA :: RE Char CharparseLowercaseA = sym ‘a’ To use an parser, we call the function or its infix equivalent . These will return a value if we can match the entire input string, and otherwise: RE match =~ Just Nothing >> match parseLowercaseA “a”Just ‘a’>> “b” =~ parseLowercaseANothing>> “ab” =~ parseLowercaseANothing -- (Needs to parse entire input) Predicates and Strings Naturally, we’ll want some more complicated functionality. Instead of parsing a single input character, we can parse any character that fits a particular predicate by using . So if we want to read any character that was not a newline, we could do: psym parseNonNewline :: RE Char CharparseNonNewline = psym (/= ‘\n’) The combinator allows us to match a particular full string and then return it: string readFeatureWord :: RE Char StringreadFeatureWord = string “Feature” We’ll use this for parsing keywords, though we’ll often end up discarding the “result”. Applicative Combinators Now the type is applicative. This means we can apply all kinds of applicative combinators over it. One of these is , which allows us to apply a single parser several times. Here is one combinator that we’ll use a lot. It allows us to read everything up until a newline and return the resulting string: RE many readUntilEndOfLine :: RE Char StringreadUntilEndOfLine = many (psym (/= '\n')) Beyond this, we’ll want to make use of the applicative operator to combine different parsers. We can also apply a pure function (or constructor) on top of those by using . Suppose we have a data type that stores two characters. Here’s how we can build a parser for it: <*> <$> data TwoChars = TwoChars Char Char parseTwoChars :: RE Char TwoCharsparseTwoChars = TwoChars <$> parseNonNewline <*> parseNonNewline ... >> match parseTwoChars “ab”Just (TwoChars ‘a’ ‘b’) We can also use and , which are cousins of the main applicative operator. The first one will parse but then the right hand parse result. The second discards the left side result. <* *> ignore parseFirst :: RE Char CharparseFirst = parseNonNewline <* parseNonNewline parseSecond :: RE Char CharparseSecond = parseNonNewline *> parseNonnewline … >> match parseFirst “ab”Just ‘a’>> match parseSecond “ab”Just ‘b’>> match parseFirst “a”Nothing Notice the last one fails because the parser needs to have both inputs! We’ll come back to this idea of failure in a second. But now that we know this technique, we can write a couple other useful parsers: readThroughEndOfLine :: RE Char StringreadThroughEndOfLine = readUntilEndOfLine <* sym '\n' readThroughBar :: RE Char StringreadThroughBar = readUntilBar <* sym '|' readUntilBar :: RE Char StringreadUntilBar = many (psym (\c -> c /= '|' && c /= '\n')) The first will parse the rest of the line and then consume the newline character itself. The other parsers accomplish this same task, except with the vertical bar character. We’ll need these when we parse the section next week. Examples Alternatives: Dealing with Parse Failures We introduced the notion of a parser “failing” up above. Of course, we need to be able to offer alternatives when a parser fails! Otherwise our language will be very limited in its structure. Luckily, the type also implements . This means we can use the operator to determine an alternative parser when one fails. Let’s see this in action: RE Alternative <|> parseFeatureTitle :: RE Char StringparseFeatureTitle = string “Feature: “ *> readThroughEndOfLine parseScenarioTitle :: RE Char StringparseScenarioTitle = string “Scenario: “ *> readThroughEndOfLine parseEither :: RE Char StringparseEither = parseFeatureTitle <|> parseScenarioTitle … >> match parseFeatureTitle “Feature: Login\n”Just “Login”>> match parseFeatureTitle “Scenario: Login\n”Nothing>> match parseEither “Scenario: Login\n”Just “Login” Of course, if ALL the options fail, then we’ll still have a failing parser! >> match parseEither “Random: Login\n”Nothing We’ll need this to introduce some level of choice into our parsing system. For instance, it’s up to the user if they want to include a as part of their feature. So we need to be able to read the background if it’s there or else move onto parsing a scenario. Background Cconclusion That wraps up our introduction to the basic combinators of applicative parsing. Next week, we’ll take all the pieces we’ve developed here and put them to work on Gherkin syntax itself. Everything seems pretty small so far. But we’ll see that we can actually build up our results very rapidly once we have the basic pieces in place! If you want to see some more libraries that are useful for important Haskell tasks, take a look at our . It will introduce you to some libraries for parsing, databases, APIs, and much more! Production Checklist If you’re new to Haskell, there’s no better time to start! Download our free ! It will help you download the right tools and start learning the language. Beginners Checklist
