COMP598 Homework 5 – Data Collection & Cleaning Solution

Please read the instructions carefully and follow the specifications of the assignment closely.
Cleaning data (15 pts)
In this assignment, you will be practicing your skills to clean up messy JSON entries. You will be cleaning files containing user posts, which are recorded as JSON data.
python3 clean.py -i <input_file> -o <output_file>
The input file will contain one JSON dictionary per line, similar to the sample input. Please refer to example.json (located in the data/ folder of the HW template) to get a better idea of the input data. Remember: example.json is just an example, and your script will be tested on other input files as well. Your script will need to handle arbitrary JSON dictionaries - but you can assume they will have some or all of the following keys: title or title_text; createdAt; text; author; total_count; tags.
The output file should also have one JSON dictionary (i.e., post) per line.
Your script should do the following:
1. Remove all the posts that don’t have either a title or title_text field.
2. For objects with a title_text field, rename the field in the output object to title.
5. Remove all the posts that are invalid JSON dictionaries.
6. Remove all the posts where the author field is empty, null, or N/A.
7. The value in the total_count can only be type int, float, str. You must attempt to cast float and str to an int value. Some examples:
▪ “3” → 3; “27” → 27
▪ “twenty” → INVALID
▪ 22.1 → 22; 22.9 → 22
▪ If you are unable to cast total_count to int, remove the post.
8. Remove all posts if the type of total_count is anything else rather than int, float, str. If total_count is not present, you do not have to remove the JSON object; keep it in the output file.
9. The tags field should be a list of individual words (where each word does NOT contain a space). Any element that contains spaces should be split into separate words. If the tags field is not present, you do not have to drop the record; keep the record in the output file. In the input files we'll use, tags will always be a list. Do not worry about conversions.
▪ E.g., if tags is [“golf”, “tennis”, “football games”], after processing it should be [“golf”, “tennis”, “football”, “games”]
- Python provides a very powerful datetime package called… datetime - When working with JSON data, the json package is your friend.
Unit Tests (15 pts)
You might have noticed this assignment does not come with unit tests - that is because this time, you are supposed to write your own tests to test the script you wrote previously.
You will write, at minimum, 6 unit tests for the script clean.py in part 1. Each unit test should test one of the following constraints:
1. Posts that don’t have either “title” or “title_text” should be removed.
2. createdAt dates that don’t pass the ISO datetime standard should be removed.
3. Any lines that contain invalid JSON dictionaries should be ignored.
4. Any lines for which "author" is null, N/A or empty.
5. total_count is a string containing a cast-able number, total_count is cast to an int properly.
6. The tags field gets split on spaces when given a tag containing THREE words (e.g., “nba basketball game”).
Your unit tests should be written using the unittest package. All tests should be (test) methods contained in one CleanTest class, sitting in a file called test_clean.py. The template for this exercise already contains the file - it is under submission_template/test/test_clean.py.
For writing these tests, we'll rely on the idea of fixtures - properly mocked data targeting specific constraints. Putting it simply, fixtures are a way to test data within unit tests. When writing the tests, use the fixtures we provide (they are in the fixtures folder, inside the tests folder). Since there are 6 test requirements, there are 6 fixtures; each of them contains exactly one line that breaks the constraints we suggested, and hence removed/transformed by your code. For example, for the first test, the fixture in the JSON object has neither a “title” nor a “title_text” key (see the file named test_1.json in the template folder). Write a test that loads the fixture file and write an assertion of what is expected to happen given the broken input.
We provide you with 6 fixture files. You can write more if you want (no extra points for that; but this might be a good coding exercise).
Note that we don’t specify HOW you test your code … only the contract that your test must follow.
Tips:
- We will test your code by substituting in our own data files (e.g., “test_2.json”) and running your unit tests. So be sure to follow the guidelines above concerning
Submission Instructions
See the details in the hw5 directory in the homework code repository.