ext/customdecode: Custom expression decoding extension

Most of the time, the standard expression decoding built in to HCL is
sufficient. Sometimes though, it's useful to be able to customize the
decoding of certain arguments where the application intends to use them
in a very specific way, such as in static analysis.

This extension is an approximate analog of gohcl's support for decoding
into an hcl.Expression, allowing hcldec-based applications and
applications with custom functions to similarly capture and manipulate
the physical expressions used in arguments, rather than their values.

This includes one example use-case: the typeexpr extension now includes
a cty.Function called ConvertFunc that takes a type expression as its
second argument. A type expression is not evaluatable in the usual sense,
but thanks to cty capsule types we _can_ produce a cty.Value from one
and then make use of it inside the function implementation, without
exposing this custom type to the broader language:

    convert(["foo"], set(string))

This mechanism is intentionally restricted only to "argument-like"
locations where there is a specific type we are attempting to decode into.
For now, that's hcldec AttrSpec/BlockAttrsSpec -- analogous to gohcl
decoding into hcl.Expression -- and in arguments to functions.

ext/customdecode/README.md

@@ -0,0 +1,209 @@
+# HCL Custom Static Decoding Extension
+
+This HCL extension provides a mechanism for defining arguments in an HCL-based
+language whose values are derived using custom decoding rules against the
+HCL expression syntax, overriding the usual behavior of normal expression
+evaluation.
+
+"Arguments", for the purpose of this extension, currently includes the
+following two contexts:
+
+* For applications using `hcldec` for dynamic decoding, a `hcldec.AttrSpec`
+ or `hcldec.BlockAttrsSpec` can be given a special type constraint that
+ opts in to custom decoding behavior for the attribute(s) that are selected
+ by that specification.
+
+* When working with the HCL native expression syntax, a function given in
+ the `hcl.EvalContext` during evaluation can have parameters with special
+ type constraints that opt in to custom decoding behavior for the argument
+ expression associated with that parameter in any call.
+
+The above use-cases are rather abstract, so we'll consider a motivating
+real-world example: sometimes we (language designers) need to allow users
+to specify type constraints directly in the language itself, such as in
+[Terraform's Input Variables](https://www.terraform.io/docs/configuration/variables.html).
+Terraform's `variable` blocks include an argument called `type` which takes
+a type constraint given using HCL expression building-blocks as defined by
+[the HCL `typeexpr` extension](../typeexpr/README.md).
+
+A "type constraint expression" of that sort is not an expression intended to
+be evaluated in the usual way. Instead, the physical expression is
+deconstructed using [the static analysis operations](../../spec.md#static-analysis)
+to produce a `cty.Type` as the result, rather than a `cty.Value`.
+
+The purpose of this Custom Static Decoding Extension, then, is to provide a
+bridge to allow that sort of custom decoding to be used via mechanisms that
+normally deal in `cty.Value`, such as `hcldec` and native syntax function
+calls as listed above.
+
+(Note: [`gohcl`](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/hashicorp/hcl/v2/gohcl) has
+its own mechanism to support this use case, exploiting the fact that it is
+working directly with "normal" Go types. Decoding into a struct field of
+type `hcl.Expression` obtains the expression directly without evaluating it
+first. The Custom Static Decoding Extension is not necessary for that `gohcl`
+technique. You can also implement custom decoding by working directly with
+the lowest-level HCL API, which separates extraction of and evaluation of
+expressions into two steps.)
+
+## Custom Decoding Types
+
+This extension relies on a convention implemented in terms of
+[_Capsule Types_ in the underlying `cty` type system](https://github.com/zclconf/go-cty/blob/master/docs/types.md#capsule-types). `cty` allows a capsule type to carry arbitrary
+extension metadata values as an aid to creating higher-level abstractions like
+this extension.
+
+A custom argument decoding mode, then, is implemented by creating a new `cty`
+capsule type that implements the `ExtensionData` custom operation to return
+a decoding function when requested. For example:
+
+```go
+var keywordType cty.Type
+keywordType = cty.CapsuleWithOps("keyword", reflect.TypeOf(""), &cty.CapsuleOps{
+ ExtensionData: func(key interface{}) interface{} {
+ switch key {
+ case customdecode.CustomExpressionDecoder:
+ return customdecode.CustomExpressionDecoderFunc(
+ func(expr hcl.Expression, ctx *hcl.EvalContext) (cty.Value, hcl.Diagnostics) {
+ var diags hcl.Diagnostics
+ kw := hcl.ExprAsKeyword(expr)
+ if kw == "" {
+ diags = append(diags, &hcl.Diagnostic{
+ Severity: hcl.DiagError,
+ Summary: "Invalid keyword",
+ Detail: "A keyword is required",
+ Subject: expr.Range().Ptr(),
+ })
+ return cty.UnkownVal(keywordType), diags
+ }
+ return cty.CapsuleVal(keywordType, &kw)
+ },
+ )
+ default:
+ return nil
+ }
+ },
+})
+```
+
+The boilerplate here is a bit fussy, but the important part for our purposes
+is the `case customdecode.CustomExpressionDecoder:` clause, which uses
+a custom extension key type defined in this package to recognize when a
+component implementing this extension is checking to see if a target type
+has a custom decode implementation.
+
+In the above case we've defined a type that decodes expressions as static
+keywords, so a keyword like `foo` would decode as an encapsulated `"foo"`
+string, while any other sort of expression like `"baz"` or `1 + 1` would
+return an error.
+
+We could then use `keywordType` as a type constraint either for a function
+parameter or a `hcldec` attribute specification, which would require the
+argument for that function parameter or the expression for the matching
+attributes to be a static keyword, rather than an arbitrary expression.
+For example, in a `hcldec.AttrSpec`:
+
+```go
+keywordSpec := &hcldec.AttrSpec{
+ Name: "keyword",
+ Type: keywordType,
+}
+```
+
+The above would accept input like the following and would set its result to
+a `cty.Value` of `keywordType`, after decoding:
+
+```hcl
+keyword = foo
+```
+
+## The Expression and Expression Closure `cty` types
+
+Building on the above, this package also includes two capsule types that use
+the above mechanism to allow calling applications to capture expressions
+directly and thus defer analysis to a later step, after initial decoding.
+
+The `customdecode.ExpressionType` type encapsulates an `hcl.Expression` alone,
+for situations like our type constraint expression example above where it's
+the static structure of the expression we want to inspect, and thus any
+variables and functions defined in the evaluation context are irrelevant.
+
+The `customdecode.ExpressionClosureType` type encapsulates a
+`*customdecode.ExpressionClosure` value, which binds the given expression to
+the `hcl.EvalContext` it was asked to evaluate against and thus allows the
+receiver of that result to later perform normal evaluation of the expression
+with all the same variables and functions that would've been available to it
+naturally.
+
+Both of these types can be used as type constraints either for `hcldec`
+attribute specifications or for function arguments. Here's an example of
+`ExpressionClosureType` to implement a function that can evaluate
+an expression with some additional variables defined locally, which we'll
+call the `with(...)` function:
+
+```go
+var WithFunc = function.New(&function.Spec{
+ Params: []function.Parameter{
+ {
+ Name: "variables",
+ Type: cty.DynamicPseudoType,
+ },
+ {
+ Name: "expression",
+ Type: customdecode.ExpressionClosureType,
+ },
+ },
+ Type: func(args []cty.Value) (cty.Type, error) {
+ varsVal := args[0]
+ exprVal := args[1]
+ if !varsVal.Type().IsObjectType() {
+ return cty.NilVal, function.NewArgErrorf(0, "must be an object defining local variables")
+ }
+ if !varsVal.IsKnown() {
+ // We can't predict our result type until the variables object
+ // is known.
+ return cty.DynamicPseudoType, nil
+ }
+ vars := varsVal.AsValueMap()
+ closure := customdecode.ExpressionClosureFromVal(exprVal)
+ result, err := evalWithLocals(vars, closure)
+ if err != nil {
+ return cty.NilVal, err
+ }
+ return result.Type(), nil
+ },
+ Impl: func(args []cty.Value, retType cty.Type) (cty.Value, error) {
+ varsVal := args[0]
+ exprVal := args[1]
+ vars := varsVal.AsValueMap()
+ closure := customdecode.ExpressionClosureFromVal(exprVal)
+ return evalWithLocals(vars, closure)
+ },
+})
+
+func evalWithLocals(locals map[string]cty.Value, closure *customdecode.ExpressionClosure) (cty.Value, error) {
+ childCtx := closure.EvalContext.NewChild()
+ childCtx.Variables = locals
+ val, diags := closure.Expression.Value(childCtx)
+ if diags.HasErrors() {
+ return cty.NilVal, function.NewArgErrorf(1, "couldn't evaluate expression: %s", diags.Error())
+ }
+ return val, nil
+}
+```
+
+If the above function were placed into an `hcl.EvalContext` as `with`, it
+could be used in a native syntax call to that function as follows:
+
+```hcl
+ foo = with({name = "Cory"}, "${greeting}, ${name}!")
+```
+
+The above assumes a variable in the main context called `greeting`, to which
+the `with` function adds `name` before evaluating the expression given in
+its second argument. This makes that second argument context-sensitive -- it
+would behave differently if the user wrote the same thing somewhere else -- so
+this capability should be used with care to make sure it doesn't cause confusion
+for the end-users of your language.
+
+There are some other examples of this capability to evaluate expressions in
+unusual ways in the `tryfunc` directory that is a sibling of this one.

ext/customdecode/customdecode.go

@@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
+// Package customdecode contains a HCL extension that allows, in certain
+// contexts, expression evaluation to be overridden by custom static analysis.
+//
+// This mechanism is only supported in certain specific contexts where
+// expressions are decoded with a specific target type in mind. For more
+// information, see the documentation on CustomExpressionDecoder.
+package customdecode
+
+import (
+ "github.com/hashicorp/hcl/v2"
+ "github.com/zclconf/go-cty/cty"
+)
+
+type customDecoderImpl int
+
+// CustomExpressionDecoder is a value intended to be used as a cty capsule
+// type ExtensionData key for capsule types whose values are to be obtained
+// by static analysis of an expression rather than normal evaluation of that
+// expression.
+//
+// When a cooperating capsule type is asked for ExtensionData with this key,
+// it must return a non-nil CustomExpressionDecoderFunc value.
+//
+// This mechanism is not universally supported; instead, it's handled in a few
+// specific places where expressions are evaluated with the intent of producing
+// a cty.Value of a type given by the calling application.
+//
+// Specifically, this currently works for type constraints given in
+// hcldec.AttrSpec and hcldec.BlockAttrsSpec, and it works for arguments to
+// function calls in the HCL native syntax. HCL extensions implemented outside
+// of the main HCL module may also implement this; consult their own
+// documentation for details.
+const CustomExpressionDecoder = customDecoderImpl(1)
+
+// CustomExpressionDecoderFunc is the type of value that must be returned by
+// a capsule type handling the key CustomExpressionDecoder in its ExtensionData
+// implementation.
+//
+// If no error diagnostics are returned, the result value MUST be of the
+// capsule type that the decoder function was derived from. If the returned
+// error diagnostics prevent producing a value at all, return cty.NilVal.
+type CustomExpressionDecoderFunc func(expr hcl.Expression, ctx *hcl.EvalContext) (cty.Value, hcl.Diagnostics)
+
+// CustomExpressionDecoderForType takes any cty type and returns its
+// custom expression decoder implementation if it has one. If it is not a
+// capsule type or it does not implement a custom expression decoder, this
+// function returns nil.
+func CustomExpressionDecoderForType(ty cty.Type) CustomExpressionDecoderFunc {
+ if !ty.IsCapsuleType() {
+ return nil
+ }
+ if fn, ok := ty.CapsuleExtensionData(CustomExpressionDecoder).(CustomExpressionDecoderFunc); ok {
+ return fn
+ }
+ return nil
+}