List of strings to case class with inner case classes - scala

Question

Let's say i have 2 cases classes:
case class Money(amount: Int, currency: String)
case class Human(name: String, money: Money)
is there a nice way to "translate" a list of strings to class Human? smth like:
def superMethod[A](params: List[String]): A = ???
val params: List[Any] = List("john", 100, "dollar")
superMethod(params) // => Human("john", Money(100, "dollar"))
so essentially i know type A only in runtime
UPDATE: i found ~ what i was looking for. it seems i can do it via shapeless. example i found in github

Answer 1

Here is an implementation that works for generic classes A.
It relies on runtime reflection (that is, a different TypeTag can be passed to the method at runtime). The following obvious conditions must be fulfilled in order to use this method:
A must be on the class path, or otherwise be loadable by the used class loader
TypeTag must be available for A at the call site.
The actual implementation is in the Deserializer object. Then comes a little demo.
The deserializer:
import scala.reflect.runtime.universe.{TypeTag, Type}
object Deserializer {
/** Extracts an instance of type `A` from the
* flattened `Any` constructor arguments, and returns
* the constructed instance together with the remaining
* unused arguments.
*/
private def deserializeRecHelper(
flattened: List[Any],
tpe: Type
): (Any, List[Any]) = {
import scala.reflect.runtime.{universe => ru}
// println("Trying to deserialize " + tpe + " from " + flattened)
// println("Constructor alternatives: ")
// val constructorAlternatives = tpe.
// member(ru.termNames.CONSTRUCTOR).
// asTerm.
// alternatives.foreach(println)
val consSymb = tpe.
member(ru.termNames.CONSTRUCTOR).
asTerm.
alternatives(0).
asMethod
val argsTypes: List[Type] = consSymb.paramLists(0).map(_.typeSignature)
if (tpe =:= ru.typeOf[String] || argsTypes.isEmpty) {
val h :: t = flattened
(h, t)
} else {
val args_rems: List[(Any, List[Any])] = argsTypes.scanLeft(
(("throwaway-sentinel-in-deserializeRecHelper": Any), flattened)
) {
case ((_, remFs), t) =>
deserializeRecHelper(remFs, t)
}.tail
val remaining: List[Any] = args_rems.last._2
val args: List[Any] = args_rems.unzip._1
val runtimeMirror = ru.runtimeMirror(getClass.getClassLoader)
val classMirror = runtimeMirror.reflectClass(tpe.typeSymbol.asClass)
val cons = classMirror.reflectConstructor(consSymb)
// println("Build constructor arguments array for " + tpe + " : " + args)
val obj = cons.apply(args:_*)
(obj, remaining)
}
}
def deserialize[A: TypeTag](flattened: List[Any]): A = {
val (a, rem) = deserializeRecHelper(
flattened,
(implicitly: TypeTag[A]).tpe
)
require(
rem.isEmpty,
"Superfluous arguments remained after deserialization: " + rem
)
a.asInstanceOf[A]
}
}
Demo:
case class Person(id: String, money: Money, pet: Pet, lifeMotto: String)
case class Money(num: Int, currency: String)
case class Pet(color: String, species: Species)
case class Species(description: String, name: String)
object Example {
def main(args: Array[String]): Unit = {
val data = List("Bob", 42, "USD", "pink", "invisible", "unicorn", "what's going on ey?")
val p = Deserializer.deserialize[Person](data)
println(p)
}
}
Output:
Person(Bob,Money(42,USD),Pet(pink,Species(invisible,unicorn)),what's going on ey?)
Discussion
This implementation is not restricted to case classes, but it requires each "Tree-node-like" class to have exactly one constructor that accepts either
primitive types (Int, Float), or
strings, or
other "Tree-node-like" classes.
Note that the task is somewhat ill-posed: what does it mean to say that all constructor arguments are flattened in a single list? Given the class Person(name: String, age: Int), will the List[Any] contain every single byte of the name as a separate entry? Probably not. Therefore, strings are handled by the deserializer in a special way, and all other collection-like entities are not supported for the same reasons (unclear where to stop parsing, because size of the collection is not known).

Answer 2

In case A is not a generic type, but effectively Human, you can use a companion object to the case class Human:
object Human {
def fromList(list: List[String]): Human = list match {
case List(name, amount, currency) => Human(name, Money(amount.toInt, currency))
case _ => handle corner case
}
}
Which you can call:
Human.fromList(List("john", "100", "dollar"))
To make it safe, don't forget to handle the case of lists whose size wouldn't be 3; and of lists whose 2nd element can't be cast to an Int:
import scala.util.Try
object Human {
def fromList(list: List[String]): Option[Human] = list match {
case List(name, amount, currency) =>
Try(Human(name, Money(amount.toInt, currency))).toOption
case _ => None
}
}
Edit: Based on your last comment, you might find this usefull:
case class Money(amount: Int, currency: String)
case class Human(name: String, money: Money)
case class SomethingElse(whatever: Double)
object Mapper {
def superMethod(list: List[String]): Option[Any] =
list match {
case List(name, amount, currency) =>
Try(Human(name, Money(amount.toInt, currency))).toOption
case List(whatever) => Try(SomethingElse(whatever.toDouble)).toOption
case _ => None
}
}
println(Mapper.superMethod(List("john", 100, "dollar")))
> Some(Human(john,Money(100,dollar)))
println(Mapper.superMethod(List(17d)))
> Some(SomethingElse(17.0))
or alternatively:
object Mapper {
def superMethod[A](list: List[String]): Option[A] =
(list match {
case List(name, amount, currency) =>
Try(Human(name, Money(amount, currency))).toOption
case List(whatever) =>
Try(SomethingElse(whatever.toDouble)).toOption
case _ => None
}).map(_.asInstanceOf[A])
}
println(Mapper.superMethod[Human](List("john", "100", "dollar")))
> Some(Human(john,Money(100,dollar)))
println(Mapper.superMethod[SomethingElse](List("17.2")))
> Some(SomethingElse(17.0))