json config files not using strings get hard to understand execption

[behrica]

a config file like:

{
    "config": {
        "components": [
            {
                "name": "trainer",
                "type": "org.tribuo.classification.dtree.CARTClassificationTrainer",
                "properties": {
                    "maxDepth": 6,
                    "seed": "12345"
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

throws an exception like:

Cannot invoke "String.hashCode()" because "this.value" is null

because maxDepth is not given as a String, but as a number.
which is not very helpfull for a user to find an error in this config file

[Craigacp]

We can fix the exception to be more useful. It's unfortunate that we can't use the types in things like json and edn very well, OLCUT is extremely lazy so we avoid anything that looks like type checking until the user wants to instantiate an object, and I worry that if we loaded things in with types then converted to strings and then back out to numerical types we might not get exactly the same things (e.g. if we went through float when the target type was double).

[Craigacp]

Something like this?

com.oracle.labs.mlrg.olcut.config.io.ConfigLoaderException: Invalid value in component a, propertylist doubleArray, node = [{"item":1.0E-16},{"item":2.0E-16},{"item":"3.16"}], all OLCUT values must be strings, numerical types are not parsed.

[Craigacp]

Huh, I'd added a sensible exception for property maps when I added JSON support, but not for property lists or properties. That's a straightforward fix.

[enragedginger]

Thank you!