Managing trait instance consumers in a generic way - scala

Question

Let's imagine I have the following base trait and case classes
sealed trait BaseTrait
case class Foo(x: Integer = 1) extends BaseTrait
case class Bar(x: String = "abc") extends BaseTrait
I would like to create a generic interface for classes which can process BaseTrait instances, something like the following
class FooProcessor(val model: FooModel) extends BaseProcessor[Foo] {
val v: Option[Foo] = model.baseVar
}
class BarProcessor(val model: BarModel) extends BaseProcessor[Bar] {
val v: Option[Bar] = model.baseVar
}
For this I have the following traits
trait BaseModel[T <: BaseTrait] {
var baseVar: Option[T] = None
}
trait BaseProcessor[T <: BaseTrait] {
def model: BaseModel[T]
def process(x: T): Unit = model.baseVar = Option(x)
}
The model definitions are the following
class FooModel extends BaseModel[Foo]
class BarModel extends BaseModel[Bar]
Now lets imagine I have the following processors somewhere in my app
val fooProcessor = new FooProcessor(new FooModel)
val barProcessor = new BarProcessor(new BarModel)
I would like to handle them in a somewhat generic way, like this
def func[T <: BaseTrait](p: T) {
val c/*: BaseProcessor[_ >: Foo with Bar <: BaseTrait with Product with Serializable]*/ = p match {
case _: Foo => fooProcessor
case _: Bar => barProcessor
c.process(p)
}
The compiler is not really happy about the last line, it says
type mismatch;
found : T
required: _1
If I understand correctly this is basically the compiler trying to prevent barProcessor.process(Foo()) from happening. I've tried a couple of solutions to get around this and achieve the desired behavior:
the simplest way around this is calling the proper *Processor.process with the proper BaseTrait instance inside the match case, which seems to defy the whole point of handling them in a somewhat generic way
use an abstract type in the BaseModel and BaseProcessor, which one hand got rid of the somewhat unneeded type parameter in BaseModel but the compilers complaint is still valid and I was not able to figure out if it's possible to get that to work
get rid of the type parameter and contraint from the BaseModel, and just do a type cast in the processor to get the proper type, but the explicit type cast also isn't really what I was hoping for
Like so:
trait BaseModel {
var baseVar: Option[BaseTrait] = None
}
trait BaseProcessor[T <: BaseTrait] {
def model: BaseModel
def process(x: T): Unit = model.baseVar = Some(x)
def getBaseValue: T = model.baseVar.map(_.asInstanceOf[T])
}
I guess one could also somehow convince the compiler that the two types (T of the Processor and T of the func parameter p) are equivalent, but that also seems like an overkill (and I'm also not really sure how it can be done).
So my question is the following: is it possible to do what I'm trying to achieve here (managing processors in a uniform way + each processor knows their specific type of BaseTrait) in a somewhat easy fashion? Is there a better model for this which I'm missing?
Update
As per Tim's answer making the controllers implicit solves the problem, however if you want to have a class where you define your controllers + have 'func' on it's interface the compiler no longer seems to properly resolve the implicits. So if I try to do something like this
class ProcessorContainer {
implicit val fooProcessor = new FooProcessor(new FooModel)
implicit val barProcessor = new BarProcessor(new BarModel)
def func[T <: BaseTrait](p: T) = typedFunc(p)
private def typedFunc[T <: BaseTrait](p: T)(implicit processor: BaseProcessor[T]) =
processor.process(p)
}
class Test {
val processorContainer = new ProcessorContainer
processorContainer.func(Foo())
processorContainer.func(Bar())
}
I get the following compile error (one for Foo and one for Bar):
could not find implicit value for parameter processor: BaseProcessor[Foo]
not enough arguments for method
Is there a way around this? I could of course expose the controllers so they can be passed in implicitly, however I'd prefer not doing that.

Answer 1

You can create a simple typeclass by making the processors implicit and passing them as an extra argument to func:
implicit val fooProcessor = new FooProcessor(new FooModel)
implicit val barProcessor = new BarProcessor(new BarModel)
def func[T <: BaseTrait](p: T)(implicit processor: BaseProcessor[T]) =
processor.process(p)
If you pass a Foo to func it will call FooProcessor.process on it, and if you pass a Bar to func it will call BarProcessor on it.