DESCRIBE can't be used to describe user defined types

[cvybhu]

Trying to DESC a UDT using cqlsh throws an error: 'my_udt' not found in keyspace 'ks':

CREATE KEYSPACE ks WITH replication = {'class': 'NetworkTopologyStrategy', 'replication_factor': 1};
CREATE TYPE ks.my_udt (a int, b int);
DESC ks.my_udt;

'my_udt' not found in keyspace 'ks'

It's possible to see information about the UDT by describing the whole keyspace:

DESC ks;

CREATE KEYSPACE ks WITH replication = {'class': 'NetworkTopologyStrategy', 'datacenter1': '1'}  AND durable_writes = true;

CREATE TYPE ks.my_udt (
    a int,
    b int
);

So the code for describing a UDT is already there, but it isn't triggered when someone tries to DESCRIBE the type directly.

Interestingly, it doesn't work on Cassandra as well.

\cc @Jadw1

[Jadw1]

This is because you are using generic describe (without specifying what you want to describe) and generic describe looks for(in order): keyspace, table, index. It doesn't check UDTs, UDFs nor UDAs.

If you use DESC TYPE ks.my_udt it works.
I've followed Cassandra's implementation, but we can easily extend our implementation to include missed items.

[cvybhu]

Ah you're right, DESC TYPE ks.my_udt works.

It's a bit unintuitive, I expected DESC to just describe any entity I specify.
I think it would be nice to extend it to also handle UDTs, UDFs, etc.

But we can also say that the user should just read the DESCRIBE documentation, if you think it's not worth it feel free to close this issue.