Why I have to define a subclass to get the Type of superclass' generic param? Is the limit necessary?
I read the code of Fastjson of Alibaba and tried to figure out why use TypeReference must create an anonymous subclass. Then I found that an object cannot get its own generic param Type even its own Type.
public class TypeReference {
static ConcurrentMap<Type, Type> classTypeCache
= new ConcurrentHashMap<Type, Type>(16, 0.75f, 1);
protected final Type type;
protected TypeReference() {
Type superClass = getClass().getGenericSuperclass();
Type type = ((ParameterizedType) superClass).getActualTypeArguments()[0];
Type cachedType = classTypeCache.get(type);
if (cachedType == null) {
classTypeCache.putIfAbsent(type, type);
cachedType = classTypeCache.get(type);
}
this.type = cachedType;
}
// ...
}
Sorry for my poor English. Thanks for your answers.
Because of Type Erasure.
Consider the following example
List<String> stringList = new ArrayList<>();
List<Number> numberList = new ArrayList<>();
System.out.println(stringList.getClass() == numberList.getClass());
This will print true. Regardless of the generic type, both instances of ArrayList have the same class and a single Class object. So how could this single Class object return the right Type for both objects?
We can even get a step further,
List<String> stringList = Collections.emptyList();
List<Number> numberList = Collections.emptyList();
System.out.println(stringList == (Object)numberList);
Objects do not know their generic type. If a collection is immutable and always empty, it can be used to represent arbitrary empty lists. The same applies to stateless functions
Function<String, String> stringFunction = Function.identity();
Function<Number, Number> numberFunction = Function.identity();
System.out.println(stringFunction == (Object)numberFunction);
Prints true (on most systems; this is not a guaranteed behavior).
Generic types are only retained in some specific cases, like the signatures of field and method declarations and generic super types.
That’s why you need to create a subclass to exploit the fact that it will store the declared generic supertype. While it sometimes would be useful to construct a Type instance in a simpler way and a suitable factory method can be regarded a missing feature, getting the actual generic type of an arbitrary object (or its Class) is not possible in general.
Related
I'm a beginner learning dart from the book dart apprentice and I reached where they were discussing constructors in dart classes, the book was implying that constructors create instances of the class which I understood but I needed more info about constructors. So I googled and some results repeated what was already in the book about it being used to create instances of a class while others also showed that it's used to instantiate class properties, but my problem is with the other answer which I found that they are used to instantiate properties of a class, but my question is: I instantiate all class properties when I create the class by declaring the property variables, like this:
class UserClass{
userClassProperty = "";
anotherUserClassProperty = ""; }
why is the constructor also needed to instantiate class properties?
Often, values are unique to every class instance.
Consider the following example:
class Point {
final int x;
final int y;
const Point(this.x, this.y);
double get distanceToOrigin => sqrt(x * x + y * y);
}
If the x and y values were defined inside the class, it would be pretty useless. Instead, different Point objects can be instantiated with different values, which means the same code can be used for different situations.
Ok, so constructors instantiate or start a class by collecting all the data the class needs to start to start working. Constructors are so important that the dart compiler provides one even if you don't explicitly create one. For example, you create a class for mammals like this :
class Mammal{
String name = "cat";
int numberOfLegs = 2;
}
Although you don't explicitly add a constructor the dart compiler adds a default constructor like this :
class Mammal{
Mammal(); //This is added by dart during the class instantiation by default.
String name = "cat";
int numberOfLegs = 2;
}
Yeah, that's how crucial constructors are to the dart compiler.
And on the topic of why are they necessary even when you declare all the properties by yourself in the class, as hacker1024 said it would make the class pretty useless, as the point of the existence of classes is to create variants but with different properties. Not adding a constructor to your class and defining all the properties in the class would mean that your class doesn't take property arguments which in turn also means that different variants of your class can't be created. Again this goes directly against the point of the existence of dart classes. For example, you have a class like this :
class Mammals{
Strig name = "Human";
int numberOfLegs = 2;
bool hasFur = false;
}
final cat = Mammal();
final human = Mammal();
print(cat.numberOfLegs); //Prints 2
//2
print(human.numberOfLegs); //Also prints 2
//2
print(cat.hasFur);
// false
Yeah, this class is problematic. Cats with 2 legs? You would agree with me that that's not how things are in reality. And also the class is pretty useless in the sense that it's not modular, no matter which kind of mammal we create be it a cat, a sheep or even a cow the name property is going to be the default one we set, that is "Human". When we create a class to simulate mammals we want to be able to define what kind of properties it has, not use some fixed values. So you want to create a class which has a constructor like this :
class Mammals{
Mammals(String name,int noOfLegs, bool hasFur){
this.name = name;
this.noOfLegs = noOfLegs;
this.hasFur = hasFur;
}
String name = "";
int noOfLegs = 0;
bool hasFur = False;
}
final cat = Mammal("Cat", 4, True); //Now you can pass in the properties ou want.
final human = Mammal("Human", 2, false);
print(cat.name); //This prints the customized name of the object cat instead of some fixed value
//Cat
print(human.name); //This prints the customized name of the object human
Now we have two instances of the class with separate property values.
Although this adds a little more code, the modularity benefit is worth it.
I'd like to store instances of models in a common provider using their classes or interfaces as a keys and then pop them up by class references. I have written some code:
class Provider {
public function new() { }
public function set<T:Any>(instance:T, ?type:Class<T>) {
if (type == null)
type = Type.getClass(instance);
if (type != null && instance != null)
map.set(type, instance);
}
public function get<T:Any>(type:Class<T>):Null<T> {
return cast map.get(type);
}
var map = new Map<Class<Any>, Any>();
}
...alas, it's even doesn't compile.
Probably I have to use qualified class name as a key rather than class/interface reference? But I'd like to keep neat get function design that takes type as argument and returns object just of type taken, without additional type casting.
Is it possible or should I change my approach to this problem?
The issue of using Class<T> as a Map key come up every so often, here is a related discussion. The naive approach of Map<Class<T>, T> fails to compile with something like this:
Abstract haxe.ds.Map has no #:to function that accepts haxe.IMap<Class<Main.T>, Main.T>`
There's several different approaches to this problem:
One can use Type reflection to obtain the fully qualified name of a class instance, and then use that as a key in a Map<String, T>:
var map = new Map<String, Any>();
var name = Type.getClassName(Main);
map[name] = value;
For convenience, you would probably want to have a wrapper that does this for you, such as this ClassMap implementation.
A simpler solution is to simply "trick" Haxe into compiling it by using an empty structure type ({}) as the key type. This causes ObjectMap to be chosen as the underlying map implementation.
var map = new Map<{}, Any>();
map[Main] = value;
However, that allows you to use things as keys that are not of type Class<T>, such as:
map[{foo: "bar"}] = value;
The type safety issues of the previous approach can be remedied by using this ClassKey abstract:
#:coreType abstract ClassKey from Class<Dynamic> to {} {}
This still uses ObjectMap as the underlying map implementation due to the to {} implicit cast. However, using a structure as a key now fails at compile time:
var map = new Map<ClassKey, Any>();
map[{foo: "bar"}] = value; // No #:arrayAccess function accepts arguments [...]
I created an extension method that lets me treat a List as DbSet for testing purposes (actually, I found this idea in another question here on stack overflow, and it's been fairly useful). Coded as follows:
public static DbSet<T> AsDbSet<T>(this List<T> sourceList) where T : class
{
var queryable = sourceList.AsQueryable();
var mockDbSet = new Mock<DbSet<T>>();
mockDbSet.As<IQueryable<T>>().Setup(m => m.Provider).Returns(queryable.Provider);
mockDbSet.As<IQueryable<T>>().Setup(m => m.Expression).Returns(queryable.Expression);
mockDbSet.As<IQueryable<T>>().Setup(m => m.ElementType).Returns(queryable.ElementType);
mockDbSet.As<IQueryable<T>>().Setup(m => m.GetEnumerator()).Returns(queryable.GetEnumerator());
mockDbSet.Setup(d => d.Add(It.IsAny<T>())).Callback<T>(sourceList.Add);
mockDbSet.Setup(d => d.Find(It.IsAny<object[]>())).Callback(sourceList.Find);
return mockDbSet.Object;
}
I had been using Add for awhile, and that works perfectly. However, when I try to add the callback for Find, I get a compiler error saying that it can't convert a method group to an action. Why is sourceList.Add an Action, but sourceList.Find is a method group?
I'll admit I'm not particularly familiar with C# delegates, so it's likely I'm missing something very obvious. Thanks in advance.
The reason Add works is because the List<T>.Add method group contains a single method which takes a single argument of type T and returns void. This method has the same signature as an Action<T> which is one of the overloads of the Callback method (the one with a single generic type parameter, Callback<T>), therefore the List<T>.Add method group can be converted to an Action<T>.
With Find, you are trying to call the Callback method (as opposed to Callback<T>) which expects an Action parameter (as opposed to Action<T>). The difference here is that an Action does not take any parameters, but an Action<T> takes a single parameter of type T. The List<T>.Find method group cannot be converted to an Action because all the Find methods (there is only one anyway) take input parameters.
The following will compile:
public static DbSet<T> AsDbSet<T>(this List<T> sourceList) where T : class
{
var mockDbSet = new Mock<DbSet<T>>();
mockDbSet.Setup(d => d.Find(It.IsAny<object[]>())).Callback<Predicate<T>>(t => sourceList.Find(t));
return mockDbSet.Object;
}
Note that I have called .Callback<Predicate<T>> because the List<T>.Find method expects and argument of type Predicate. Also note I have had to write t => sourceList.Find(t) instead of sourceList.Find because Find returns a value (which means it doesn't match the signature of Action<Predicate<T>>). By writing it as a lambda expression the return value will be thrown away.
Note that although this compiles it will not actually work because the DbSet.Find method actually takes an object[] for it's parameter, not a Predicate<T>, so you will likely have to do something like this:
public static DbSet<T> AsDbSet<T>(this List<T> sourceList) where T : class
{
var mockDbSet = new Mock<DbSet<T>>();
mockDbSet.Setup(d => d.Find(It.IsAny<object[]>())).Callback<object[]>(keyValues => sourceList.Find(keyValues.Contains));
return mockDbSet.Object;
}
This last point has more to do with how to use the Moq library that how to use method groups, delegates and lambdas - there is all sorts of syntactic sugar going on with this line which is hiding what is actually relevant to the compiler and what isn't.
I am attempting to make a mock implementation of IDbSet<T>, and I happen to be doing it in F#.
type MockDbSet<'T when 'T : not struct>(items:seq<'T>) =
let collection = ResizeArray(items)
new () = MockDbSet(Seq.empty)
interface IDbSet<'T> with
member x.Add entity = collection.Add entity; entity
member x.Attach entity = collection.Add entity; entity
member x.Remove entity = collection.Remove entity |> ignore; entity
member x.Create() = Unchecked.defaultof<'T>
member x.Create<'TD when 'TD : not struct and 'TD :> 'T>() = Unchecked.defaultof<'TD>
member x.Find([<ParamArray>] values) = raise <| NotImplementedException()
member x.Local = Collections.ObjectModel.ObservableCollection(collection)
interface System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable<'T> with
member x.GetEnumerator() =
collection.GetEnumerator() :> System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerator<_>
interface System.Collections.IEnumerable with
member x.GetEnumerator() =
collection.GetEnumerator() :> System.Collections.IEnumerator
interface IQueryable<'T> with
member x.ElementType = typeof<'T>
member x.Expression =
collection.AsQueryable().Expression
member x.Provider =
collection.AsQueryable().Provider
Everything is fine, except for this line:
member x.Create<'TD when 'TD : not struct and 'TD :> 'T>() = Unchecked.defaultof<'TD>
...which gives me these compiler errors:
error FS0698: Invalid constraint: the type used for the constraint is
sealed, which means the constraint could only be satisfied by at most
one solution
warning FS0064: This construct causes code to be less
generic than indicated by the type annotations. The type variable 'TD
has been constrained to be type ''T'.
error FS0663: This type
parameter has been used in a way that constrains it to always be ''T
when 'T : not struct'
error FS0661: One or more of the explicit class
or function type variables for this binding could not be generalized,
because they were constrained to other types
This line is attempting to implement this method, which according to that page has the following signature in C#:
TDerivedEntity Create<TDerivedEntity>()
where TDerivedEntity : class, TEntity
And this signature in F#:
abstract Create : unit -> 'TDerivedEntity when 'TDerivedEntity : not struct and 'TEntity
When I try to use the example F# signature, I get a variety of syntax errors, which doesn't surprise me because that signature doesn't even look like valid F#.
I'm not really sure what to make of these error messages, or how to write my constraints to satisfy both the interface and the F# compiler. I'm starting to wonder if it's even possible to implement this particular Microsoft interface in this particular Microsoft programming language. Any suggestions would be welcomed.
The method Create needs a subtype constraint between 2 generic type parameters. I'm afraid there is no way to add a subtype constraint to a generic type parameter based on another one in F#. They're always assumed to be equal, see the spec New constraints of the form type :> 'b are solved again as type = 'b.
See this related answer to a similar problem.
We should request to include this feature in the next F# version.
I was very disappointed by this at first. I still am in some ways, but there is a workaround in EF6. You can inherit DbSet<'TEntity> directly, and use overrides to implement the collection in memory. This will suffice for most cases; you can inherit from this type if you want a concrete implementation of Find.
type FakeDbSet<'TEntity when 'TEntity : not struct>(items: seq<'TEntity>) =
inherit DbSet<'TEntity>()
let data = ObservableCollection<'TEntity>(items)
let query = data.AsQueryable()
new() = FakeDbSet(Seq.empty)
override __.Add(item: 'TEntity) = data.Add(item); item
override __.Remove(item: 'TEntity) = data.Remove(item) |> ignore; item
override __.Attach(item: 'TEntity) = data.Add(item); item
override __.Create() = Activator.CreateInstance<'TEntity>()
override __.Local with get() = data
interface System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable<'TEntity> with
member __.GetEnumerator() = data.GetEnumerator() :> System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerator<_>
interface System.Collections.IEnumerable with
member __.GetEnumerator() = data.GetEnumerator() :> System.Collections.IEnumerator
interface IQueryable<'TEntity> with
member __.ElementType = typeof<'TEntity>
member __.Expression = query.Expression
member __.Provider = query.Provider
I've got an object, which I'll call MyObject. It's a class that controls a particular data row.
I've then got a collection class, called MyObjectCollection:
public class MyObjectCollection : List<MyObject> {}
Why can I not do the following:
List<MyObject> list = this.DoSomethingHere();
MyObjectCollection collection = (MyObjectCollection)list;
Thanks in advance.
Edit: The error is InvalidCastException
My guess is that DoSomethingHere doesn't return an instance of MyObjectCollection.
Let's get rid of all the generics etc here, as they're not relevant. Here's what I suspect you're trying to do:
public static object CreateAnObject()
{
return new object();
}
object o = CreateAnObject();
string s = (string) o;
That will fail (at execution time) and quite rightly so.
To bring it back to your code, unless DoSomethingHere actually returns a MyObjectCollection at execution time, the cast will fail.
Because a List<MyObject> is not a MyObjectCollection. The reverse is true: you could cast a MyObjectCollection to a List because MyObjectCollection inherits from List<MyObject> and thus, for all intents and purposes, IS A List<MyObject>.
The only thing you can do is to define a constructor on MyObjectCollection that takes an Ienumerable as a parameter and initalizes itself with the data in the other one, but that will make a new object containing the same data:
public class MyObjectCollection : List<MyObject>
{
public MyObjectCollection(IEnumerable<MyObject> items)
{
Addrange(items);
}
}
UPDATE:
As noted in the comment, you COULD have the cast succeed at runtime, provided that DoSomething actually returns an instance of MyObjectCollection. If it does, the object effectively is a MyObjectCollection, and the cast is completely legal.
I'd have to say, it is bad practice in my view to upcast something like that. If the function returns a List, you should not rely on a specific implementation of List. Either modify the return type of DoSomething, if you own that function, and return a MyObjectCollection, or deal with it as a list.
Without knowing what exactly is created inside DoSomething() we have to assume either:
You have a misunderstanding about the inheritence in .Net.
you have
A : B
B DoSomething()
{
return new B();
}
// then this is
B b = new B();
A a = (A)b;
Clearly b is a B but not an A. B might look much like A but it is not (if you traverse the parentage of b you won't find A anywhere)
This is true irrespective of the Generics involved (though that sometimes can cause situations where something that could work doesn't see the co-contra variance in c# 4.0)
or
A : B
B DoSomething()
{
return new A();
}
// then this is
B b = new A();
A a = (A)b;
Which in the absence of Generics will work.
You can't do it because (I guessing) the list instance returned from DoSomethingHere isn't derived from MyObjectCollection
You could create an implicit operator that would allow you to convert between your object and the list. You would need an constructor that takes a list and to property that returns the underlaying list.
public static implicit operator List<MyObject>(MyObjectCollection oCollection)
{
//Convert here
return MyObjectCollection.BaseList;
}
public static implicit operator MyObjectCollection(List<MyObject> oList)
{
//Convert here
return new MyObjectCollection(oList);
}