inner classes in different files - scala

My classes are a bit large, so I want to split Outer and Inner into different files, but I still want to retain the structure, meaning that I have to type Outer.Inner because that's what makes the most sense in my application.
// Outer.scala
class Outer
object Outer {
class Inner
object Inner
}
How would I go about doing that?
As far as I know Scala doesn't have partial classes like C#, so I'm a little lost on how to go about it.
I have seen this question and I'm not sure that it's helping me in this situation.

Perhaps split them out in traits and then mixin
// Foo.scala
trait Foo {
class Inner
object Inner
}
// Outer.scala
object Outer extends Foo
so now Outer.Inner still works.

Related

difference in using multi level inheritance in scala and using all the levels in 1 level by using "with" keyword

I am a java developer and learnt scala recently. Can anybody help to understand this confusion.
suppose i am having the below code structure.
abstract class A {
val message: String
}
class B extends A {
val message = "I'm an instance of class B"
}
trait C extends A {
def loudMessage = {message.toUpperCase()}
}
class D extends B with C
now the question is about last line of code : when we are extending class B in D, B is already containing the members of class A. Why we should write like this ? Is there any difference ?
Thanks a lot for even reading my question. For the person who is thinking and answered, hats off.
There's no difference, since extending class B, you got the message part, further on mixing in trait C which also needed message, but we already have it from B and now we have the loudMessage from C as well.
Copied from Wikipedia-
a class can only inherit from a single class, but can mix-in as many
traits as desired. Scala resolves method names using a right-first
depth-first search of extended 'traits', before eliminating all but
the last occurrence of each module in the resulting list.
this resolves the diamond problem (multiple inheritance).
It's a general practice to write in traits and mix them in your classes whenever necessary, you'll find them interestingly useful when writing unit tests, create a lot a of fake data/ mocks in traits and mix them in whenever.

References to case objects with trait usage

I've encountered something which I don't quite understand, so lets begin:
If i've got this object:
case object StartMessage
written like above and then obtain its references from two different classes:
class Test2 {
def print(){
println(Integer.toHexString(System.identityHashCode(StartMessage)))
}
}
class Test1 {
def print(){
println(Integer.toHexString(System.identityHashCode(StartMessage)))
}
}
as expected result is:
object ActorMain extends App{
new Test1().print()//45c8e616
new Test2().print()//45c8e616
}
But when i change case object to pack it in trait:
trait model{
case object StartMessage
}
then my classes will have declaration like:
class Test1 extends model{
class Test2 extends model{
I receive:
45c8e616
7d417077
*1. Could you explain it to me? I was thinking that objects are one in whole application, so when i create Trait with objects in it, every time i will extends (use "with") those trait, the object will be the same, not somewhat trait scoped.
*2. Is there another way to obtain functionality to "add" same objects only with extending trait to concrete classes, and not make them visible for whole application? Case is to have cleaner code with possibility to "mark" classes as "they use those objects, while others don't"
Objects defined within trait are singletons given trait scope. It is actually referring to the instance of a trait, not the trait itself. And the resulting behavior is the one that you see -> objects are created per instance. And this leads to the conclusion that you cannot define objects by extending traits to be shared across different classes. There was similar question on SO some time ago, I'll try to find it later.
Personally I would go for passing to classes some sort of a context to provide shared resources.

How forward declare class that is within a class?

I have a class I will call Outer declared in a header Outer.h. There is a class declared inside Outer that I will call Inner.
In another header file class declaration I would like to declare
Outer::Inner *myInner;
I would like to forward declare Outer and Inner rather than including "Outer.h" and potentially getting into "header file loop hell." I have tried various combinations of
class Outer;
class Inner;
class Outer::Inner;
to no avail. Is it possible to do what I am trying to do, or must I move Inner out of Outer or some similar approach?
MSVS 2010 if it matters, but I need to end up with portable code.

Dealing with nested classes in Scala

I am unable to understand how to work with nested classes in Scala esp when I encountered the error below:
class Action {
val entityModelVar = new EntityModel
}
class EntityModel {
class EntityLabel {
....
}
}
The above code-snippet gives an idea about my class structure. Here's two code blocks that puzzle me on how they work.
val actionList=Array[Action](Action1,Action2)
..
val newLabels=actionList(i).test(doc)
actionList(i).retrain(newLabels) //error pointed here
**Error: type mismatch:
found : Seq[a.entityModelVar.EntityLabel]
required : Seq[_13.entityModelVar.EntityLabel] where _13:Action**
However, the following code compiles without any error:
//This works fine
val a=actionList(i)
val newLabels=a.test(doc2)
a.retrain(newLabels)
Also, here is the definition of the retrain function:
def retrain(labels:Seq[entityModelVar.EntityLabel])={
entityModelVar.retrain(labels)
}
and the signature of EntityModel.retrain function:
def retrain(testLabels:Seq[EntityLabel]):Unit
The problem is that the inner class has got to belong to the same instance of the outer class. But is actionList(i) guaranteed to be the same instance between two calls? The compiler doesn't know for certain (maybe another thread fiddles with it? who knows what apply does anyway?), so it complains. The _13 is its name for a temporary variable that it wishes were there to assure that it is the same instance.
Your next one works because the compiler can see that you call actionList(i) once, store that instance, get an inner class from it and then apply it.
So, moral of the story is: you need to make it abundantly obvious to the compiler that your inner class instances match up to their proper outer class, and the best way to do that is to store that outer class in a val where it can't change without you (or the compiler) noticing.
(You can also specify types of individual variables if you break up parameter blocks. So, for instance: def foo(m: EntityModel)(l: m.EntityLabel) would be a way to write a function that takes an outer class an an inner one corresponding to it.)

Why people define class, trait, object inside another object in Scala?

Ok, I'll explain why I ask this question. I begin to read Lift 2.2 source code these days.
It's good if you happened to read lift source code before.
In Lift, I found that, define inner class and inner trait are very heavily used.
object Menu has 2 inner traits and 4 inner classes. object Loc has 18 inner classes, 5 inner traits, 7 inner objects.
There're tons of codes write like this. I wanna to know why the author write like this.
Is it because it's the author's
personal taste or a powerful use of
language feature?
Is there any trade-off for this kind
of usage?
Before 2.8, you had to choose between packages and objects. The problem with packages is that they cannot contain methods or vals on their own. So you have to put all those inside another object, which can get awkward. Observe:
object Encrypt {
private val magicConstant = 0x12345678
def encryptInt(i: Int) = i ^ magicConstant
class EncryptIterator(ii: Iterator[Int]) extends Iterator[Int] {
def hasNext = ii.hasNext
def next = encryptInt(ii.next)
}
}
Now you can import Encrypt._ and gain access to the method encryptInt as well as the class EncryptIterator. Handy!
In contrast,
package encrypt {
object Encrypt {
private[encrypt] val magicConstant = 0x12345678
def encryptInt(i: Int) = i ^ magicConstant
}
class EncryptIterator(ii: Iterator[Int]) extends Iterator[Int] {
def hasNext = ii.hasNext
def next = Encrypt.encryptInt(ii.next)
}
}
It's not a huge difference, but it makes the user import both encrypt._ and encrypt.Encrypt._ or have to keep writing Encrypt.encryptInt over and over. Why not just use an object instead, as in the first pattern? (There's really no performance penalty, since nested classes aren't actually Java inner classes under the hood; they're just regular classes as far as the JVM knows, but with fancy names that tell you that they're nested.)
In 2.8, you can have your cake and eat it too: call the thing a package object, and the compiler will rewrite the code for you so it actually looks like the second example under the hood (except the object Encrypt is actually called package internally), but behaves like the first example in terms of namespace--the vals and defs are right there without needing an extra import.
Thus, projects that were started pre-2.8 often use objects to enclose lots of stuff as if they were a package. Post-2.8, one of the main motivations has been removed. (But just to be clear, using an object still doesn't hurt; it's more that it's conceptually misleading than that it has a negative impact on performance or whatnot.)
(P.S. Please, please don't try to actually encrypt anything that way except as an example or a joke!)
Putting classes, traits and objects in an object is sometimes required when you want to use abstract type variables, see e.g. http://programming-scala.labs.oreilly.com/ch12.html#_parameterized_types_vs_abstract_types
It can be both. Among other things, an instance of an inner class/trait has access to the variables of its parent. Inner classes have to be created with a parent instance, which is an instance of the outer type.
In other cases, it's probably just a way of grouping closely related things, as in your object example. Note that the trait LocParam is sealed, which means that all subclasses have to be in the same compile unit/file.
sblundy has a decent answer. One thing to add is that only with Scala 2.8 do you have package objects which let you group similar things in a package namespace without making a completely separate object. For that reason I will be updating my Lift Modules proposal to use a package object instead of a simple object.