I have a few transforms that are related in my application.

{:aH "abc"} ;;phase-1
{:aH :what-x-means} ;;phase-2
{:a-h :what-x-needs-to-be-for-an-external-app} ;;phase-3

maybe this is more of a controlled generation question?

maybe conform/unform is what im looking for here?

where a named conformer would be the transform between two phases, so I could (s/def ::phase-1->phase-2 (s/conformer ...)) (s/conform ::phase-1->phase-2 {:aH "abc"})

@d._.b Hm, hard to say without seeing the code, but I suspect it’d be easier to just write transform functions with a transformation library and use the specs to validate each transform is working

Generally speaking, using a conformer to transform data can cause issues https://groups.google.com/d/msg/clojure/Tdb3ksDeVnU/LAdniiZNAgAJ

@bbrinck yes, this makes sense to me. it is fine for me to write the transform functions and validate the transform, but for some of these specs, the difference is very small. For instance, "person": {:name "bob"} => {:name (get {"bob" :fun-bob} "bob")} => {:nick-name "fun-bob"}. It would be nice if I could link the specs as an ordering, and then choose which phase I want to generate.

from an initial state or spec

@d._.b Yep, I can see how this would be convenient. I can’t speak for spec maintainers, but from what I’ve read so far, they have consistently indicated they want to stay away from transformation (and leave this to other libraries - both libraries that are spec-aware or those that are spec-agnostic)

I can certainly see the use, but this can’t be done in spec today and I doubt it will be added 🙂 . https://github.com/nathanmarz/specter might be a good fit here

Not sure if it is something targeted at what you are hoping to do, but late in the Google group discussion linked above is a mention of the project spec-coerce, which the author says "instead of making conforms that do coercion, it uses the spec and a separated registry to conform the value (similar to what spec does to find the generators for a given spec)". https://github.com/wilkerlucio/spec-coerce

+1 spec-coerce

@d._.b tested spec-driven data expansion some time ago, via conforming. Not sure if that’s an good idea, but here’s an example: https://www.metosin.fi/blog/clojure-spec-as-a-runtime-transformation-engine/#data-macros

it’s not a good idea

would it be a good idea to add support for spec coercion in the core? or support for generic walking with coercion as one application for walking.

Thanks for those recommendations.

When an entity like “foo” exists in numerous, ordered forms, it feels superfluous to name intermediate specs, and edges on “types”. I don’t want that extra, unnecessary complexity in my programs, so I’m looking for a way to define a “foo” as a succession of small transformations, where the phases (minor transforms) are named loosely, abstractly. One place to define all of the successions of miniature transforms is better than enshrining stronger, named entities. The names wind up feeling forced.

:thing/upcased-name feels like extra nonsense if it’s a short-lived intermediate.

Coalescing specs into logical, ordered groupings feels valuable if only to avoid the naming of tiny-delta intermediates.

I think I'm getting the hang of test/check and custom generators, but I'm getting this oddball response from one of my fdef's: https://github.com/mathpunk/simplexity/blob/complexes/src/simplexity/core.clj#L70

What's really baking my noodle is, there are a few things I can think of that might just be plain broke in the way I'm writing this, but, it would be broke with MUCH smaller examples than I seem to be getting as examples of failing results

I'm trying to define different specs for different implementations of a protocol, which I don't know if it's even possible. This code passes my example tests, but when I try and test/check any of the functions, I just get an empty sequence: https://github.com/mathpunk/simplexity/blob/complexes/src/simplexity/simplex.clj

You can’t spec protocol functions

Why is the predicate function in the below error message :clojure.spec.alpha/unknown?

(s/assert nat-int? -1)
ExceptionInfo Spec assertion failed
val: -1 fails predicate: :clojure.spec.alpha/unknown
  clojure.core/ex-info (core.clj:4739)

I need to wrap with s/spec?

(s/assert (s/spec nat-int?) -1)
ExceptionInfo Spec assertion failed
val: -1 fails predicate: nat-int?
  clojure.core/ex-info (core.clj:4739)

it’s a bug - there is a pending patch for it

wrapping with s/spec bypasses it

https://dev.clojure.org/jira/browse/CLJ-2068