How to create a List of Wildcard elements Scala - scala

Question

I'm trying to write a function that returns a list (for querying purposes) that has some wildcard elements:
def createPattern(query: List[(String,String)]) = {
val l = List[(_,_,_,_,_,_,_)]
var iter = query
while(iter != null) {
val x = iter.head._1 match {
case "userId" => 0
case "userName" => 1
case "email" => 2
case "userPassword" => 3
case "creationDate" => 4
case "lastLoginDate" => 5
case "removed" => 6
}
l(x) = iter.head._2
iter = iter.tail
}
l
}
So, the user enters some query terms as a list. The function parses through these terms and inserts them into val l. The fields that the user doesn't specify are entered as wildcards.
Val l is causing me troubles. Am I going the right route or are there better ways to do this?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Gosh, where to start. I'd begin by getting an IDE (IntelliJ / Eclipse) which will tell you when you're writing nonsense and why.
Read up on how List works. It's an immutable linked list so your attempts to update by index are very misguided.
Don't use tuples - use case classes.
You shouldn't ever need to use null and I guess here you mean Nil.
Don't use var and while - use for-expression, or the relevant higher-order functions foreach, map etc.
Your code doesn't make much sense as it is, but it seems you're trying to return a 7-element list with the second element of each tuple in the input list mapped via a lookup to position in the output list.
To improve it... don't do that. What you're doing (as programmers have done since arrays were invented) is to use the index as a crude proxy for a Map from Int to whatever. What you want is an actual Map. I don't know what you want to do with it, but wouldn't it be nicer if it were from these key strings themselves, rather than by a number? If so, you can simplify your whole method to
def createPattern(query: List[(String,String)]) = query.toMap
at which point you should realise you probably don't need the method at all, since you can just use toMap at the call site.
If you insist on using an Int index, you could write
def createPattern(query: List[(String,String)]) = {
def intVal(x: String) = x match {
case "userId" => 0
case "userName" => 1
case "email" => 2
case "userPassword" => 3
case "creationDate" => 4
case "lastLoginDate" => 5
case "removed" => 6
}
val tuples = for ((key, value) <- query) yield (intVal(key), value)
tuples.toMap
}

Answer 2

Not sure what you want to do with the resulting list, but you can't create a List of wildcards like that.
What do you want to do with the resulting list, and what type should it be?
Here's how you might build something if you wanted the result to be a List[String], and if you wanted wildcards to be "*":
def createPattern(query:List[(String,String)]) = {
val wildcard = "*"
def orElseWildcard(key:String) = query.find(_._1 == key).getOrElse("",wildcard)._2
orElseWildcard("userID") ::
orElseWildcard("userName") ::
orElseWildcard("email") ::
orElseWildcard("userPassword") ::
orElseWildcard("creationDate") ::
orElseWildcard("lastLoginDate") ::
orElseWildcard("removed") ::
Nil
}

Answer 3

You're not using List, Tuple, iterator, or wild-cards correctly.
I'd take a different approach - maybe something like this:
case class Pattern ( valueMap:Map[String,String] ) {
def this( valueList:List[(String,String)] ) = this( valueList.toMap )
val Seq(
userId,userName,email,userPassword,creationDate,
lastLoginDate,removed
):Seq[Option[String]] = Seq( "userId", "userName",
"email", "userPassword", "creationDate", "lastLoginDate",
"removed" ).map( valueMap.get(_) )
}
Then you can do something like this:
scala> val pattern = new Pattern( List( "userId" -> "Fred" ) )
pattern: Pattern = Pattern(Map(userId -> Fred))
scala> pattern.email
res2: Option[String] = None
scala> pattern.userId
res3: Option[String] = Some(Fred)
, or just use the map directly.