libra

Libra is a Java package for creating and evaluating predicate. Java-based and SQL-like predicate are both supported. For SQL predicates, it is using ANTLR to parse the string against a predefined grammar. The Java-based predicates are implementation of Specification pattern and support numeric/text/collection related conditions.

install

Libra can be easily installed with Maven:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.dungba</groupId>
    <artifactId>joo-libra</artifactId>
    <version><!-- latest version. see above --></version>
</dependency>

how to use

By default, you can simply use SqlPredicate class for all the functionality, which supports satisfiedBy method to perform the evaluation. A PredicateContext needs to be passed to the method.

PredicateContext context = new PredicateContext(customer);
SqlPredicate predicate = new SqlPredicate("customer.age > 50 AND customer.isResidence is true");
predicate.satisfiedBy(context);

You can optionally check for syntax errors:

if (predicate.hasError()) {
    predicate.getCause().printStackTrace();
}

or throw the exception if any

predicate.checkForErrorAndThrow();

from 2.0.0 you can retrieve the raw value instead of letting Libra convert it to boolean

PredicateContext context = new PredicateContext(customer);
SqlPredicate predicate = new SqlPredicate("customer.asset - customer.liability");
Object rawValue = predicate.calculateLiteralValue(context);

grammar

Libra supports the following syntax for SQL predicates:

• Logic operators: and, or and not
• Comparison operators: >, >=, <, <=, =, ==, !=, is, is not
• Parenthesises
• List and string operators: contains (for both list and string) and matches (only for string)
• Array indexing: a[0] (this cannot be used to evaluate a Map)
• String literals, single quoted, e.g: 'John'
• Numeric literals: 1, 1.0
• Boolean literals: true, false
• Other literals: null, undefined, empty
• Variables: alphanumerics, _, . (to denote nested object) and [, ] (to denote array index), must starts with alphabet characters.
• List: {1, 2, 3}. Empty list { } is also supported.
• Function: functionName(arg1, arg2...) It's also possible to configure custom function in PredicateContext. Built-in functions: sqrt, avg, sum, min, max, len.
• Stream matching: See below
• Subset filtering: See below

stream matching

Libra 2.0.0 supports stream-like matching, similar to anyMatch, allMatch and noneMatch. The syntax is:

ANY <indexVariableName> IN <listVariableName> SATISFIES <expression>
ALL <indexVariableName> IN <listVariableName> SATISFIES <expression>
NONE <indexVariableName> IN <listVariableName> SATISFIES <expression>

listVariableName is the name of the list variable you want to perform matching on. indexVariableName is the name of the temporary variable used in each loop. For example: ANY $job IN jobs satisfies $job.salary > 1000 will try to find out if there is ANY element in jobs which its salary property is greater than 1000. Starting from Libra 2.1.0 the temporary variable name must be started with $.

subset filtering

Libra 2.1.0 supports subset filtering from list:

WITH <indexVariableName> IN <listVariableName> SATISFIES <expression>

For example WITH $job IN jobs satisfies $job.salary > 1000 will returns a list of jobs which the salary attribute is greater than 1000.

You can also transform the returned list element using transformation expression:

For example: $job.salary WITH $job IN jobs satisfies $job.salary > 1000 will returns a list of salary that is greater than 1000 from the job list.

examples

Some examples of SQL predicates:

name is 'John' and age > 27
employments contains 'LEGO assistant' and name is 'Anh Dzung Bui'
experiences >= 4 or (skills contains 'Java' and projects is not empty)
avg(4, 5, 6) is 5

More examples can be seen inside the test cases

quirks and limitations

Some special cases or limitations are covered here:

• Literals, if stand alone in their own branch, will be converted into predicate according to their types:
  • String & list literals will be considered as true if and only they are not null and not empty
  • Number literals will be considered as true if and only they are not null and not zero
  • null will always be considered as false
• If literals are compared with any other type, the comparison will be as normal
  • 0 is false will be evaluated as false, since 0 and false have different type
• Variables, if stand alone in their own branch, will be converted into predicate according to their types:
  • String & list variables will be considered as true if and only if they are not null and not empty
  • Number variables will be considered as true if and only if they are not null and not zero
  • Boolean variables will be considered as their own values
  • null variables will always be considered as false
• When comparing number, they will be converted into BigDecimal, so 0.0, 0 or 0L are all equal

optimizers

Libra currently supports a simple Constant Folding optimization. It will reduces constant-only conditional branches into a single branch. To enable the optimizations, use OptimizedAntlrSqlPredicateParser as below:

SqlPredicate predicate = new SqlPredicate(predicateString, new OptimizedAntlrSqlPredicateParser());

This will take more time to compile the SQL but will reduce evaluation time.

extends

The SqlPredicate class allows you to use your own SqlPredicateParser:

SqlPredicate predicate = new SqlPredicate(predicateString, new MyPredicateParser());

you can implement SqlPredicateParser, or extend the AbstractAntlrSqlPredicateParser to use your own grammar. For the former, the interface has only one method public Predicate parse(String predicate) throws MalformedSyntaxException, so you can even use lambda expression to construct it, like:

SqlPredicate predicate = new SqlPredicate(predicateString, predicate -> {
   return something; 
});

or use method reference:

SqlPredicate predicate = new SqlPredicate(predicateString, this::parseSql);

performance considerations

It is better to cache the parsed version of sql and if possible, try to load all of them at startup. If you keep the SqlPredicate objects, they will contain the parsed predicate to be reused.

The runtime evaluation is quite fast (2 millions ops/sec with Java object or 5 millions ops/sec with Map). You can also consider using Map because it's significantly faster.

license

This library is distributed under MIT license. See LICENSE