How to parametrize my exports? - mef

I'd like to be able to parametrize my exports not only with types (as in, generic exports), but also with values.
Something like:
class Greeter
{
readonly string _format;
public Greeter( string format ) { _format = format; }
public string Greet( string name ) { return string.Format( _format, name ); }
}
// ...
var e = new ExportProvider();
e.ExportParametrized<Greeter>( args: new[] { "Hi, {0}!" } );
e.ExportParametrized<Greeter>( args: new[] { "¡Hola, {0}!" } );
// And then:
[ImportMany] IEnumerable<Greeter> Greeters { get; set; }
foreach( var g in Greeters ) Console.WriteLine( g.Greet( "John" ) );
// Should print out:
// Hello, John!
// ¡Hola, John!
One might ask: why don't I simply export the value new Greeter( "Hello, {0}!" ) using ComposablePartExportProvider and CompositionBatch?
While this approach would work in this particular case, it has an important flaw: if the Greeter class had any imports of its own, they would not be satisfied.
The usual way I would go about this is to declare two classes - EnglishGreeter and SpanishGreeter, inherit them both from Greeter, and then provide the appropriate arguments in the call to base constructor.
But this doesn't work for two reasons:
This is a lot of noise to write. Not only do I have to type the whole shebang, I also have to come up with names for those classes, and it doesn't always make sense to have names. Not to mention the DRY principle. But even besides the noise...
Sometimes I don't know the parameters upfront. Say, for example, my greeting formats were coming from some kind of config file.
Here is another thought, to somewhat clarify what I'm looking for.
This problem is almost solved in the TypeCatalog. See, the TypeCatalog knows about the type and it calls the type's constructor to create the part on demand.
One can think of this process from another standpoint: the catalog has a factory function; using that function, it creates the part, then satisfies its non-prerequisite imports, and then returns the part back to the requestor.
Now, in the particular case of TypeCatalog, the factory function just happens to be the type's own constructor. If only I could hook in and replace the factory function with my own, but still leverage the rest of the machinery, that would be exactly what I'm looking for.

You can achieve this by using property exports. You could define a class specifically for those kinds of exports, and it will look like this:
class MyParameterizedExports
{
[Export(typeof(Greeter))]
private Greeter EnglishGreeter
{
get
{
Greeter g = new Greeter("Hi, {0}!");
container.SatisfyImportsOnce(g);
return g;
}
}
[Export(typeof(Greeter))]
private Greeter SpanishGreeter
{
get
{
Greeter g = new Greeter("¡Hola, {0}!");
container.SatisfyImportsOnce(g);
return g;
}
}
}
Here you export two separate Greeter instances without having to define a new class for each type of Greeter.

Related

How to specify generic type such that we can use some operation on the generic type in Flutter?

For example, I expect <T extends type> can works like this:
Class Parent {
String data;
Parent({ this.data });
}
Class Child extends Parent {
Child({ this.data }) : Parent(data: data);
void showData() { print(data); }
}
T wrapper<T extends Parent>(String value) {
var result = T(data: value);
return result;
}
void main() {
var trial = wrapper<Child>("Hello world");
trial.showMessage(); // print "Hello world"
}
But turns out it gives me error at var result = T(data: value);, saying that T is not a function. When I specified , I expect that T can be operated like Parent class, and if I supplied its descendant like Child, the operation done will be Child instead. But the constructor will work either way because T extends Parent. Is such thing possible?
Constructors are not inherited. You know that already, because you wrote one yourself in your child class that does nothing but call the base class with the same parameters.
One could as well write a different constructor. So "X extends Y" says a lot about X, but it does not say anything about how the constructor of X looks (or whether it even has a constructor accessible in that scope). So a constructor call is not in the properties available to you when you specify your generic to "extend Y", because Y can do exactly nothing to make sure all it's derivates follow a specific construction method.
Different languages deal with the problem of "but how do I construct a new instance of my generic type" in different ways, but the underlying concept is common to almost all concepts of generics where the generic code is compiled before knowing the specific types of all T's handled. A constructor is not inherited in most OOP languages, therefor it is not guaranteed to be there for any "X extends Y" even if Y has it.
It might be easy to overlook when you have all your code in one compilation unit. The compiler should be able to figure it out, right? But your code might not be in a single compilation unit:
Codebase one:
Class Parent {
String data;
Parent({ this.data });
}
T wrapper<T extends Parent>(String value) {
var result = T(data: value);
return result;
}
At this point, the compiler has no idea what "Child" might look like. It cannot possibly determine that the child class that will be used in the Future has a constructor like that.
Codebase 2:
Class Child extends Parent {
Child({ this.data }) : Parent(data: data);
void showData() { print(data); }
}
void main() {
var trial = wrapper<Child>("Hello world");
trial.showMessage(); // print "Hello world"
}
Now, at this point, a compiler could figure out that the program it's given would actually work. Some concepts of generics do that, where generics cannot be compiled into independent libraries, they always come as source code, because only the final compiler producing the executable can determine whether it would work with a specific class. Flutter does not do this. Flutter needs the generic itself be valid for the constraints given.
All newer language's versions of generics have followed the path of knowing the constraints beforehand and only allowing code operating inside those constraints. And I think it's good because while it has it's shortcomings, it leaves less room for errors or cryptic error messages.

Using Class<T> as a Map key in Haxe

I'd like to store instances of models in a common provider using their classes or interfaces as a keys and then pop them up by class references. I have written some code:
class Provider {
public function new() { }
public function set<T:Any>(instance:T, ?type:Class<T>) {
if (type == null)
type = Type.getClass(instance);
if (type != null && instance != null)
map.set(type, instance);
}
public function get<T:Any>(type:Class<T>):Null<T> {
return cast map.get(type);
}
var map = new Map<Class<Any>, Any>();
}
...alas, it's even doesn't compile.
Probably I have to use qualified class name as a key rather than class/interface reference? But I'd like to keep neat get function design that takes type as argument and returns object just of type taken, without additional type casting.
Is it possible or should I change my approach to this problem?
The issue of using Class<T> as a Map key come up every so often, here is a related discussion. The naive approach of Map<Class<T>, T> fails to compile with something like this:
Abstract haxe.ds.Map has no #:to function that accepts haxe.IMap<Class<Main.T>, Main.T>`
There's several different approaches to this problem:
One can use Type reflection to obtain the fully qualified name of a class instance, and then use that as a key in a Map<String, T>:
var map = new Map<String, Any>();
var name = Type.getClassName(Main);
map[name] = value;
For convenience, you would probably want to have a wrapper that does this for you, such as this ClassMap implementation.
A simpler solution is to simply "trick" Haxe into compiling it by using an empty structure type ({}) as the key type. This causes ObjectMap to be chosen as the underlying map implementation.
var map = new Map<{}, Any>();
map[Main] = value;
However, that allows you to use things as keys that are not of type Class<T>, such as:
map[{foo: "bar"}] = value;
The type safety issues of the previous approach can be remedied by using this ClassKey abstract:
#:coreType abstract ClassKey from Class<Dynamic> to {} {}
This still uses ObjectMap as the underlying map implementation due to the to {} implicit cast. However, using a structure as a key now fails at compile time:
var map = new Map<ClassKey, Any>();
map[{foo: "bar"}] = value; // No #:arrayAccess function accepts arguments [...]

Polymorphism in Object construction

I want to create specific Object according to the type argument.
Pseudo code looks like this.
sub new {
my $type = shift;
if($type eq "S1") {$interface = X->new(); }
if($type eq "S2") {$interface = Y->new(); }
etc...
return $interface;
}
Options might be:
Substitute "package" name with $type argument. Requires package name coordination with $type.
Use Hash{S1 => X} in the Master constructor to select Value according to $type passed. Requires Hash maintenance when adding new
Object types.
I don't like any of above. Looking trully polimorphic way to accomplish that.
Thank You,
k
Your best option would likely be to use a factory pattern. A factory method takes the parameters for creating an instance of your class, then decides which object to instantiate and return from that. This can also make dependency injection easier for testing.
You'd probably be looking at something like this (in Java-esque code), with an employee object:
public class EmployeeFactory
{
public static create(String type)
{
switch (type) {
case type1:
return new EmployeeTypeOne();
case type2:
return new EmployeeTypeTwo();
default:
throw new Exception("Unrecognized type");
}
}
}
Your employees would inherit from a common interface or abstract class. You can use the factory to handle constructor parameters as well if you prefer, just try to keep things fairly reasonable (don't pass a million parameters - the factory should internally handle complex objects)
See http://refactoring.com/catalog/replaceConstructorWithFactoryMethod.html for more information.
You might like Module::PluginFinder for that. Create all your specific types in a specific namespace and give them each some identifying (constant? sub?) that the main dispatcher will then use to identify which class handles a given type.

Get Class from string -- Call function by string name

OK, what I'm trying to do is fairy complicated, but I'll try to explain.
Let's say we want (at compile-time) all derivedMembers of class someClass. Then we'd simply do :
const string[] methods = [__traits(derivedMembers,someClass)];
Now, how could we get someClass from "someClass"? (yep, its string representation).
Let me explain a bit more what I'm trying to do :
I want to create an "intermediate" function which takes a function name as an argument (along with a params array) and calls the appropriate function from a list of available static methods in a specific (predefined) set of classes. Like execute("someFunc",["one","two","three"]);.
Here's the full (test) code :
class Math {
static string noArgs(string[] s) { writeln(s); return ""; }
static string withOneArg(string[] s) { writeln(s); return ""; }
static string withTwoArgs(string[] s) { writeln(s); return ""; }
}
string cases()
{
string ret = "";
const string[] methods = [__traits(derivedMembers,Math)];
foreach (string s; methods)
{
ret ~= "case \"" ~ s ~ "\": return Math."~s~"(params);";
}
return ret;
}
string execute(string what, string[] params)
{
switch (what)
{
mixin(cases());
default: break;
}
return "";
}
The trouble with the above code is that it only looks for methods in Math. How could I change it, in an elegant D-friendly way, so that it'll go through an array of classes like [Math,String,SomethingElse] -- it doesn't have to be variable (we need it at compile-time anyway)?
UPDATE:
Tried something along the lines of :
const string[] methods = [__traits(derivedMembers,mixin("Math")];
but it complains that Cannot interpret Math at compile time.
UPDATE 2:
Also, tried using Object.factory("Math") but it's still not working. (Perhaps I'm just creating an instance of the Math class?)
Let me rewrite this to show you some cool tricks:
import std.stdio;
class Math {
static string noArgs(string[] s) { writeln(s); return ""; }
static string withOneArg(string[] s) { writeln(s); return ""; }
static string withTwoArgs(string[] s) { writeln(s); return ""; }
}
class String {
static string oneArg(string[] s) { return null; }
}
string execute(string what, string[] params) {
import std.string;
auto parts = what.split(".");
auto className = parts[0];
auto methodName = parts[1];
import std.typetuple;
switch(className) {
default: assert(0, "unknown class");
foreach(possibleClass; TypeTuple!(Math, String)) {
case possibleClass.stringof:
switch(methodName) {
default: assert(0, "unknown method");
foreach(memberName; __traits(derivedMembers, possibleClass)) {
case memberName:
return __traits(getMember, possibleClass, memberName)(params);
break;
}
}
break;
}
}
assert(0);
}
void main() {
execute("Math.withOneArg", ["cool"]);
execute("String.oneArg", ["cool"]);
}
Notice that there are no mixin expressions used at all. Instead of getting an instance of the class from a string, I just made a TypeTuple of all the classes I wanted to use. This is preferable to mixin because then it is less likely to find name classes when used in different scopes; if possibleClasses were a compile-time parameter to execute from a different module, the list of classes would still work, whereas the list of strings would see undefined identifier errors because the library module doesn't import your user module.
Another mixin I removed was the one to generate the cases. This looks insane, but is allowed in D: if you have a compile-time foreach (that is, a foreach over a built-in tuple of some sort, e.g. TypeTuple, template argument lists, the results of __traits...) you can actually put case statements inside them!
So, all you have to do is write a regular switch statement on the run time variable you want to compare against, put the foreach inside it looping over the compile-time stuff you're searching for, case that_loop_var: and boom, you're in business.
Similarly, I used __traits(getMember) rather than a mixin string to call the method. This solution will help avoid name clashes and IMO is cleaner code. It can also potentially handle overloads, if wanted (with __traits(getOverloads) instead of __traits(getMember), you can loop over each one then and match the parameter types).
Finally, nesting switches inside other case statements is allowed. If you need to break out of an outer loop or switch and don't want ambiguity, you can label loops and switches and use break label_name_here; to specify which one you want to break from. Ditto for continue with nested loops.
BTW you could also automatically generate the wrapper functions that convert string[] to other types of arguments if you dove into the std.traits stuff. I wish my book was out already, I wrote about this at some length in there and don't feel like writing it all right now but if you look at std.traits.ParameterTypeTuple and ReturnType in the same module that will get you started if you wanna try it.

Implementing TypeScript interface with bare function signature plus other fields

How do I write a class that implements this TypeScript interface (and keeps the TypeScript compiler happy):
interface MyInterface {
(): string;
text2(content: string);
}
I saw this related answer:
How to make a class implement a call signature in Typescript?
But that only works if the interface only has the bare function signature. It doesn't work if you have additional members (such as function text2) to be implemented.
A class cannot implement everything that is available in a typescript interface. Two prime examples are callable signatures and index operations e.g. : Implement an indexible interface
The reason is that an interface is primarily designed to describe anything that JavaScript objects can do. Therefore it needs to be really robust. A TypeScript class however is designed to represent specifically the prototype inheritance in a more OO conventional / easy to understand / easy to type way.
You can still create an object that follows that interface:
interface MyInterface {
(): string;
text2(content: string);
}
var MyType = ((): MyInterface=>{
var x:any = function():string { // Notice the any
return "Some string"; // Dummy implementation
}
x.text2 = function(content:string){
console.log(content); // Dummy implementation
}
return x;
}
);
There's an easy and type-safe way to do this with ES6's Object.assign:
const foo: MyInterface = Object.assign(
// Callable signature implementation
() => 'hi',
{
// Additional properties
text2(content) { /* ... */ }
}
)
Intersection types, which I don't think were available in TypeScript when this question was originally asked and answered, are the secret sauce to getting the typing right.
Here's an elaboration on the accepted answer.
As far as I know, the only way to implement a call-signature is to use a function/method. To implement the remaining members, just define them on this function. This might seem strange to developers coming from C# or Java, but I think it's normal in JavaScript.
In JavaScript, this would be simple because you can just define the function and then add the members. However, TypeScript's type system doesn't allow this because, in this example, Function doesn't define a text2 member.
So to achieve the result you want, you need to bypass the type system while you define the members on the function, and then you can cast the result to the interface type:
//A closure is used here to encapsulate the temporary untyped variable, "result".
var implementation = (() => {
//"any" type specified to bypass type system for next statement.
//Defines the implementation of the call signature.
var result: any = () => "Hello";
//Defines the implementation of the other member.
result.text2 = (content: string) => { };
//Converts the temporary variable to the interface type.
return <MyInterface>result;
})(); //Invokes the closure to produce the implementation
Note that you don't need to use a closure. You could just declare your temporary variable in the same scope as the resulting interface implementation. Another option is to name the closure function to improve readability.
Here's what I think is a more realistic example:
interface TextRetriever {
(): string;
Replace(text: string);
}
function makeInMemoryTextRetriever(initialText: string) {
var currentText = initialText;
var instance: any = () => currentText;
instance.Replace = (newText: string) => currentText = newText;
return <TextRetriever>instance;
}
var inMemoryTextRetriever = makeInMemoryTextRetriever("Hello");