Accessing implicit parameters explicitly at runtime - scala

Question

I'm trying to access an implicit parameter for a generic type. Scala is able to find the implicit just fine in the straightforward case by calling a method with an explicit generic type, such as with printGenericType[Person] below.
However, if I create a TypeTag[Person] and pass it to printGenericTypeGivenTypeTag, Scala is unable to find the implicit parameter.
case class Person(name: String)
case class Animal(age: Int)
implicit val p = Person("cory")
implicit val a = Animal(2)
def main(args: Array[String]): Unit = {
// Can find the implicit Person, prints "Hello Person(cory)"
printGenericType[Person]
// Can find the implicit Animal, prints "Hello Animal(2)"
printGenericType[Animal]
// See comment below
printNamedType("Person")
printNamedType("Animal")
}
def printGenericType[T](implicit t: T) = {
println(s"Hello $t")
}
def printGenericTypeGivenTypeTag[T](typeTag: TypeTag[T])(implicit t: T) = {
println(s"Hello $t")
}
def printNamedType[T](name: String) = {
val typetag: TypeTag[T] = getTypeTag[T](name)
// Cannot find the implicit of type T, compiler error
printGenericTypeGivenTypeTag(typetag)
}
def getTypeTag[T](name:String): TypeTag[T] = ... //Implementation irrelevant
If I understand correctly, Scala locates implicit parameters at compile time, so it makes sense that it can't find an implicit parameter for the generic type T at compile time.
However, I know that an implicit instance of T does exist. Is it possible to rewrite printGenericTypeGivenTypeTag in such a way as to find the implicit value for T? At runtime, the method has access to the actual type of T, so it seems it should be able to locate an implicit parameter of the same type that is in scope.
For the curious, the reasoning behind this is to avoid this:
name match {
case "Person" => printGenericType[Person]
case "Animal" => printGenericType[Animal]
}

Answer 1

To answer the question
You're not really wanting to pass the T implicitly, but rather the TypeTag, and not the T. Here's what I mean, and you're probably better off with an implicit value class.
implicit class GenericPrinter[T](val obj: T) extends AnyVal {
def printGenericType()(implicit tag: TypeTag[T]) = {
// do stuff with the tag
Console.println("Hello $obj")
}
}
val x: Person = Person(...)
x.printGenericType
Now solving the real problem
If you are trying to print case classes, I'd probably go down the implicit macro route for added convenience. It's really trivial to write up a macro that does this for us, e.g output a debug string based on all the constructor params of an arbitrary case class.
trait DeepPrinter[T <: Product with Serializable] {
/**
* Prints a deeply nested debug string for a given case class.
* This uses implicit macros to materialise the printer type class.
* In English, when we request for an implicit printer: DeepPrinter[T],
* the pre-defined compile time macro will generate this method for us
* based on the fields of the given case class.
*
* #param sep A separator to use to delimit the rows in a case class.
* #return A fully traced debug string so we can see how a case class looks like.
*/
def debugString(sep: String = "\n"): String
}
object DeepPrinter {
implicit def deepPrinter[T <: Product with Serializable] = macro DeepPrinterImpl.deepPrinterImpl[T]
}
And the macro is pretty trivial, looks kind of like this.
import language.experimental.macros
import scala.reflect.macros.blackbox
#macrocompat.bundle
class DeepPrinterImpl(val c: blackbox.Context) {
import c.universe._
object CaseField {
def unapply(symbol: TermSymbol): Option[(Name, Type)] = {
if (symbol.isVal && symbol.isCaseAccessor) {
Some(symbol.name -> symbol.typeSignature)
} else {
None
}
}
}
def fields(tpe: Type): Iterable[(Name, Type)] = {
tpe.decls.collect { case CaseField(nm, tpeSn) => nm -> tpeSn }
}
def materialize[T : c.WeakTypeTag]: c.Expr[DeepPrinter[T]] = {
val tpe = weakTypeOf[T]
val (names, types) = fields(tpe).unzip
// change the package name to the correct one here!
val tree = q"""
new com.bla.bla.DeepPrinter[$tpe] {
def debugString(sep: String = "\n") = Seq(..$names).mkString(sep)
}
"""
c.Expr[DeepPrinter[T]](tree)
}
}