Matching template filter expressions with nom

Question

I'm working on a templating engine where some of the syntax could be like:

{{ somevar|filter }}

In place of somevar could be an arbitrary "expression", which is to say, either a variable name like somevar, or a nested filter expression (like {{ somevar|filter|anotherfilter }}). I'm trying to parse this using Rust's nom parser combinator library, but failing to get it to work so far.

Here's the parser I've come up with so far:

#[macro_use]
extern crate nom;

use std::str;

#[derive(Debug)]
pub enum Expr<'a> {
    Var(&'a [u8]),
    Filter(&'a str, Box<Expr<'a>>),
}

#[derive(Debug)]
pub enum Node<'a> {
    Lit(&'a [u8]),
    Expr(Expr<'a>),
}

named!(expr_var<Expr>, dbg_dmp!(map!(nom::alphanumeric, Expr::Var)));

named!(expr_filter<Expr>,
    dbg_dmp!(do_parse!(
         val: any_expr >>
         tag_s!("|") >>
         name: map_res!(nom::alphanumeric, str::from_utf8) >>
         (Expr::Filter(name, Box::new(val)))
    ))
);

named!(any_expr<Expr>, dbg_dmp!(ws!(
    alt_complete!(
        expr_filter |
        expr_var  
    ))));

named!(expr_node<Node>, dbg_dmp!(map!(
    delimited!(tag_s!("{{"), any_expr, tag_s!("}}")),
    Node::Expr)));

named!(parse_template< Vec<Node> >, many1!(expr_node));

With a playground. The current version panics through a stack overflow. I can fix this by reversing the expr_var | expr_filter order in any_expr, but then I'm back to basically the same error as before.

Answer 1

I fixed it by writing my own parser function:

named!(expr_var<Expr>, map!(nom::alphanumeric, Expr::Var));

fn expr_filtered(i: &[u8]) -> IResult<&[u8], Expr> {
    let (mut left, mut expr) = match expr_var(i) {
        IResult::Error(err) => { return IResult::Error(err); },
        IResult::Incomplete(needed) => { return IResult::Incomplete(needed); },
        IResult::Done(left, res) => (left, res),
    };
    while left[0] == b'|' {
        match nom::alphanumeric(&left[1..]) {
            IResult::Error(err) => {
                return IResult::Error(err);
            },
            IResult::Incomplete(needed) => {
                return IResult::Incomplete(needed);
            },
            IResult::Done(new_left, res) => {
                left = new_left;
                expr = Expr::Filter(str::from_utf8(res).unwrap(), Box::new(expr));
            },
        };
    }
    return IResult::Done(left, expr);
}

named!(expr_node<Node>, map!(
    delimited!(tag_s!("{{"), ws!(expr_filtered), tag_s!("}}")),
Node::Expr));

There is probably some nicer way to do the same thing with nom macros, but at least I got something working.

Answer 2

I can't say I dig your question: there is no example of the text that should be parsed and neither do you describe the problem that you've encountered while building the parser.

Still, maybe the following example will be helpful. A working recursive parser:

#[macro_use]
extern crate nom;

use nom::alphanumeric;

type Variable = String;
type Filter = String;

named! (plain_expression (&str) -> (Variable, Filter), do_parse! (
    tag_s! ("{{") >>
    variable: alphanumeric >>
    tag_s! ("|") >>
    filter: alphanumeric >>
    tag_s! ("}}") >>
    ((variable.into(), filter.into()))));

#[derive(Debug)]
enum Expression {
    Plain(Variable, Filter),
    Recursive(Box<Expression>, Filter),
}

named! (recursive_expression (&str) -> Expression,
  alt_complete! (
    map! (plain_expression, |(v, f)| Expression::Plain (v, f)) |
    do_parse! (
      tag_s! ("{{") >>
      sub: recursive_expression >>
      tag_s! ("|") >>
      filter: alphanumeric >>
      tag_s! ("}}") >>
      (Expression::Recursive (Box::new (sub), filter.into())))));

fn main() {
    let plain = "{{var|fil}}";
    let recursive = "{{{{{{var1|fil1}}|fil2}}|fil3}}";
    // Prints: Done("", ("var", "fil")).
    println!("{:?}", plain_expression(plain));
    // Prints: Done("", Recursive(Recursive(Plain("var1", "fil1"), "fil2"), "fil3")).
    println!("{:?}", recursive_expression(recursive));
}

(playground).