Formatting for typedefs

[rooftopsparrow]

Hello thriftrw!

I was curious if there was a way to apply formatting to a particular typedef or field definition globally?

For example, if we have a thrift typedef:

typedef IPAddress list<byte>

struct Connection {
  1: IPAddress host,
  2: i32 port
}

that 90% of the time we would want displayed as an IP address string.

Ideally, there would be a way to read from a thrift buffer then convert ( optionally ) to a formatted JS object. Also, it would be great to define the inverse as well; go from a formatted field to the raw type definition.

thrift.Connection.fromFormatted({ host: '127.0.0.1', port: 1234 }) // => Connection { host: [ 127, 0, 0, 1 ], port: 1234 }
thrift.Connection.fromBuffer(buffer).toFormatted() // { host: '127.0.0.1', port: 1234 })

If this is something that doesn't exist I'd be very interested in contributing. Thanks!

[kriskowal]

Something similar could be supported with an annotation like (js.type = 'ipv4-string') with the implication that the type would be able to coerce strings containing ipv4 addresses when encoding, and prefer the string representation when decoding. Alternately there could be a (js.type = 'AddressObject') that would do the same for an AddressObject type that would resemble your {host,port} representation. The pattern exists for i64 alternate representations. On the wire, i32 would always be a four byte signed number, but you can use the annotation to control the code representation.

In general though, it would be preferable I think to perform the conversion in your handler.