Expose ValidateInputs for python algorithms

[Peter Peterson]

It has been pointed out by scientists that this extra level of checking and error reporting would be useful. It is also a prerequisite for #8495 to get done.

[Peter Peterson]

Re #8979. Adding validateInputs to AlgorithmWrapper.

Changeset: c5109ce3c85fb7f16d259aca687be3e2df2ea2fb

[Peter Peterson]

This is on ​feature/8979_validate_inputs.

To Test: Pick a python algorithm and try these three variants:

• Run it and see that everything is ok
• Add a "validateInputs" method that returns an empty dictionary. Again, everything should be fine.
• Fill in some cursory amount of error checking in "validateInputs" and see that the gui marks the appropriate parameters.

[Martyn Gigg]

Tested with empty dict, single pair & multiple pairs and all expected properties were marked with the error markers.

I also tried with putting a non-string type as a value and it silently ignores it. I wonder if we should show a warning/error in the results log to indicate to the dev that something is wrong? Maybe something like this as a minor modification for the current loop at line 97?

      for (size_t i = 0; i < numItems; ++i)
      {
        boost::python::object value = resultDict[keys[i]];
        try
        {
          std::string key = boost::python::extract<std::string>(keys[i]);
          std::string value = boost::python::extract<std::string>(resultDict[keys[i]]);
          resultMap[key] = value;
        }
        catch(boost::python::error_already_set&)
        {
          this->getLogger().error("validateInputs() - Incorrect type for key/value pair detected in dict. "
                                  "All keys & values must be strings");
        }
      }

[Peter Peterson]

Re #8979. Protecting against non-string types in the dict.

Changeset: f6a4357ddb7cbc724e3d2c8c5d0064b10545178f

[Martyn Gigg]

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/feature/8979_validate_inputs'

Full changeset: ​c819ea8fdaf0885dface461b377503f96849c1c2

[Stuart Campbell]

This ticket has been transferred to github issue ​9822