Can we do conditional imports in Scala? - scala

Question

say I have the following code:
package my
class Foo
class Bar extends Foo
object Chooser {
val isFoo = true
}
I import Foo as:
import my.{Foo => MyClass}
I want to be able to do something like:
If Chooser.isFoo, then:
import my.{Foo => MyClass}
else:
import my.{Bar => MyClass}
I have used Foo in my code as something like this:
object MyObj {
val a = new MyClass
// ...
}
Are there any hidden features of Scala that let me use Bar in place of Foo without modifying the code of MyObj at all. Also what would be the best way to design such code in future so that such extensions are easy?

Answer 1

There isn't but I'm guessing you are more interested in different implementations at runtime than in conditional type import. Your Chooser.isFoo sounds like something that happens during runtime and not in the type system.
One example of how you could do it, since the common type for Foo and Bar is Foo:
val a: Foo =
if (Chooser.isFoo) new my.Foo
else new my.Bar
Edit based on your edit: you could delay the choice by having an abstract type or a type parameter, like so:
class MyObj[T :> Foo] {
val a: T
}
val anInstance = new MyObj[Foo]
val anotherInstance = new MyObj[Bar]
Note the type bound that says that T must be a subclass of Foo, or else you wouldn't know anything about what you can do with a T.

Answer 2

Happen to see this old post & a little curious why it can't do conditional imports in Scala? Maybe old version limit, not sure? But see this, we can import in any place of scala code.
For your scenario, it could be:
try.scala:
package my
class Foo {
}
class Bar extends Foo
object Chooser {
val isFoo = true
}
object MyObj extends App {
if (Chooser.isFoo) {
import my.{Foo => MyClass}
val a = new MyClass
println(a)
} else {
import my.{Bar => MyClass}
val a = new MyClass
println(a)
}
}
run output:
C:\abc\abc>scalac try.scala
C:\abc\abc>scala my.MyObj
my.Foo#6f4a47c7