simfil

simfil is a C++ 20 library and a language for querying structured map feature data. The library provides an efficient in-memory storage pool for map data, optimized for the simfil query language, along with a query interpreter to query the actual data.

Although simfil is made for querying map feature data, it is easy to plug in custom data models, such as the generic JSON interface the library also comes with.

Design Considerations

• Simplicity: the language should be very simple but yet powerful to allow for complex queries.
• Speed: querying models should be fast and scale to multiple cores.
• Efficiency: the internal model should be memory efficient, as simfil is designed to query huge amounts of data.

Query Language

For details about the language see the Language Guide.

Examples

All examples shown below can be executed by loading the json file examples/example.json using the interactive command line tool <builddir>/repl/simfil-repl INPUT (see [Using the Interactive Command Line Tool](#Using the Interactive Command Line Tool)).

All person's names

*.name

John
Angelika
Franz

All persons older than 30 years using a subquery

Subqueries, denoted by braces {...} can be used as predicates for the current object. Insides a subquery, the current value is accessible through the special name _.

*.{age > 30}.name

Angelika
Franz

Combining name and surname constructing a temporary value using string concatenation

*.(name + " " + surname)

John Doe
Angelika Musterfrau
Franz Eder

All persons with attribute "A" > 0 using nested subqueries

*.{attribs.*.{id == "A" and value > 0}}.name

Franz

Find Primes in Range 1 to 25

Some types have special operators. The type irange supports the unpack operator ... to expand its list of values.

range(1,25)...{count((_ % range(1,_)...) == 0) == 2}

2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23

Building the Project

simfil uses CMake as build system and can be built using all three major compilers, GCC, Clang and MSVC. Dependencies outsides the repository are automatically downloaded using either CMakes FetchContent system or Conan.

With Conan

conan install . --build missing
cmake --preset conan-release -DSIMFIL_WITH_TESTS=ON -DSIMFIL_WITH_REPL=ON
cmake --build --preset conan-release
ctest --preset conan-release

With FetchContent

mkdir -p build && cd build
cmake .. -DSIMFIL_WITH_TESTS=ON -DSIMFIL_WITH_REPL=ON && cmake --build .
ctest

Using the Interactive Command Line Tool

The project contains an interactive command line program (repl: “Read-Eval-Print-Loop”) to to test queries against a JSON datasource: simfil-repl.

<build-dir>/repl/simfil-repl <json-file>

All of the example queries above can be tested by loading example.json:

<buil-dir>/repl/simfil-repl <worktree>/examples/example.json

The repl provides some extra commands for testing queries:

• /any Toggle wrapping input with an any(...) call to only get boolean results (default off)
• /mt Toggle multithreading (default on)
• /verbose Toggle verbosity (default on)

Extending the Language

The query language can be extended by additional functions and addititonal types.

Using the Library

Conan Package

Using Conan

Simfil is published on conan.io. All you have to do is to add it to your conanfile:

[requires]
simfil/0.1.1

[generators]
CMakeDeps
CMakeToolchain

Using Conan Editable Mode

You can link the local simfil source directory as a Conan 2 editable mode package via conan editable add <simfil-dir>. Note that you have to pass --build=editable to your conan install invocation, otherwise the CMake build fails with errors about not finding the library.

To use the editable package, just set the version to the one in this repositories conanfile.py, which is dev:

[requires]
simfil/dev

[generators]
CMakeDeps
CMakeToolchain

Installing the Package Locally

To use this library as a dependency you can install it locally using conan create <simfil-dir> --build=missing -s compiler.cppstd=20, which exports the package into the local conan registry. Note that for developing simfil it is recomendet to use Conans "editable mode".

Note: Installing locally with simfil registered as an editable package at the same time will fail. You have to first remove the package from editable mode, the error messages do not give a hint about the conflict!

CMake FetchContent

To link against simfil vial CMake, all you have to do is to add the following to you CMakeLists.txt:

# Using CMakes FetchContent
FetchContent_Declare(simfil
  GIT_REPOSITORY "https://github.com/Klebert-Engineering/simfil.git"
  GIT_TAG        "main"
  GIT_SHALLOW    ON)
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(simfil)

# Link against the simfil target
target_link_libraries(<my-app> PUBLIC simfil)

Minimal Usage Example

#include "simfil/simfil.h"
#include "simfil/model/model.h"
#include "simfil/model/string-pool.h"

// Shared string pool used for string interning
auto strings = std::make_shared<simfil::StringPool>();

// Declare a model with one object
auto model = std::make_shared<simfil::ModelPool>(strings);

auto obj = model->newObject();
obj->addField("name", "demo");
model->addRoot(obj);

// Compilation and evaluation environment
// to register custom functions or callbacks.
auto env = simfil::Environment{strings};

// Compile query string to a simfil::Expression.
auto query = simfil::compile(env, "name", false);

// Evalualte query and get result of type simfil::Value.
auto result = simfil::eval(env, *query, *model);

for (auto&& value : result)
    std::cout << value.toString() << "\n";

The full source of the example can be found here.

Dependencies

• nlohmann/json for JSON model support (switch: SIMFIL_WITH_MODEL_JSON, default: YES).
• fraillt/bitsery for binary en- and decoding.
• slavenf/sfl-library for small and segmented vector containers.
• fmtlib/fmt string formatting library.