Forbidden keys in clojure.spec

Question

I am following the clojure.spec guide. I understand it is possible to declare required and optional attributes when using clojure.spec/keys.

I don't understand what is meant by optional. To me :opt doesn't do anything.

(s/valid? (s/keys :req [:my/a]) {:my/a 1 :my/b 2}) ;=> true

(s/valid? (s/keys :req [:my/a] :opt []) {:my/a 1 :my/b 2}) ;=> true

The guide promises to explain this to me, "We’ll see later where optional attributes can be useful", but I fail to find the explanation. Can I declare forbidden keys? Or somehow declare the set of valid keys to equal the keys in :req and :opt?

Answer 1

This is a very good question, and the clojure.spec API gives the (granted, short and unsatisfying) answer:

The :opt keys serve as documentation and may be used by the generator.

I do not think you can invalidate a map if it contains an extra (this is what you mean by "forbidden" I think) key using this method. However, you could use this spec to make sure ::bad-key is not present:

(s/def ::m (s/and (s/keys :req [::a]) #(not (contains? % ::bad-key))))
(s/valid? ::m {::a "required!"})                        ; => true
(s/valid? ::m {::a "required!" ::b "optional!"})        ; => true
(s/valid? ::m {::a "required!" ::bad-key "no good!"})   ; => false

You could limit the number of keys to exactly the set you want by using this spec:

(s/def ::r (s/and (s/keys :req [::reqd1 ::reqd2]) #(= (count %) 2)))
(s/valid? ::r {::reqd1 "abc" ::reqd2 "xyz"})              ; => true
(s/valid? ::r {::reqd1 "abc" ::reqd2 "xyz" ::extra 123})  ; => false

Still, the best way to handle this IMO, would be to simply ignore that there is a key present that you don't care about.

Hopefully as spec matures, these nice things will be added. Or, maybe they are already there (it is changing rapidly) and I simply don't know about it. This is a very new concept in clojure, so most of us have a lot to learn about it.

UPDATE - December 2016 I just wanted to revisit this 6 months since writing it. It looks like my initial comment about ignoring keys you don't care about is the preferred way to go. In fact, at the clojure/conj conference I attended two weeks ago, Rich's keynote specifically addressed the notion of versioning in all levels of software, from the function level up to the application level. He even specifically mentions this notion of disallowing keys in the talk, which can be found on youtube. He says that it was intentionally designed so that only required keys can be spec'd. Disallowing keys really serves no good purpose, and it should be done with caution.

Regarding the :opt keys, I think the original answer still stands up pretty well--it's documentation, and practically, it allows these optionally specified keys to be generated:

(s/def ::name #{"Bob" "Josh" "Mary" "Susan"})
(s/def ::height-inches (s/int-in 48 90))
(s/def ::person (s/keys :req-un [::name] :opt-un [::height-inches]))

(map first (s/exercise ::person))

; some generated data have :height-inches, some do not
({:name "Susan"}
 {:name "Mary", :height-inches 48}
 {:name "Bob", :height-inches 49}
 {:name "Josh"}