Making a Java library "Groovy" - groovy

I fell in love with Groovy and try to use it more and more. Now I have to work with Oracle Forms Jdapi library. When working with this library, you write a lot of code like this:
JdapiIterator progIterator = getWorkForm().getProgramUnits();
while(progIterator.hasNext()) {
ProgramUnit currProgUnit = (ProgramUnit) progIterator.next();
...
}
and of cource I would like to write
getWorkForm().programUnits.each {
...
}
However, I never wrote a Groovy interface to an existing Java library and need some assistance. I know about Groovy 2.0's extension methods, but in that case I am thinking about a class with the same name in a different namespace which delegates only to the functions I would like to keep.
What is the best approach for providing the each functionality, but also all other closures applicable for collections? I would appreciate if you point me in the right direction!

The only method you need to provide is the iterator() method. You then get all of the Groovy Object iteration methods (each(), find(), any(), every(), collect(), ...) for free!

Related

JAXB XJC options: Alternative to com.sun.tools.xjc.Options which is Java9-friendly and OSGi-friendly

In our framework we have an interface with this method in the public API:
JaxbConfiguration newJaxbConfiguration(Options xjcOpts);
In the implementation, we do something like this:
import com.sun.tools.xjc.ModelLoader;
import com.sun.tools.xjc.Options;
import com.sun.tools.xjc.model.Model;
...
public JaxbConfiguration newJaxbConfiguration(Options xjcOpts) {
Model model = ModelLoader.load(xjcOpts, ...);
...
}
However, both OSGi and Java 9's jigsaw don't like that we use com.sun.tools.xjc.Options, not in our implementation and especially not in our public API interface.
How can we get rid of it?
The JDeps website lists some of the JDK internal APIs and the recommended way to replace their usage. However, the use of ModelLoader.load() is not mentioned. My guess is that this use case has not come up enough to get the attention of the JDeps team.
My recommendation would be to refactor this method so that
you pass in the data you're using to construct the Options argument, instead of passing in the Options argument
use that data to construct your JaxbConfiguration object instead of converting from the internal Model.
You don't mention what JaxbConfiguration is or what library it's from so it's hard for me to say exactly how to construct it. Anyway, this answer is about how to remove the use of the internal API. How to construct a JaxbConfiguration is probably a different question.

What do I use to replace ToNullSafeString() removed from AutoMapper 3?

I have code using AutoMapper 3.2.1.0 that uses the method ToNullSafeString().
I upgraded the NUGet package to 4.1.1.0, and I can no longer find the method in their package.Does anyone know the recommended approach to replacing the function? Is there a new construct that is functionally equivalent? If so, I cannot figure what it is. Nor can I find any mention of why it was removed.
This question has actually been answered pretty well in a couple of comments below it. For completeness, here are a couple of actual implementations of solutions.
Short answer
Probably both the simplest and the best solution: Replace all instances of .ToNullSafeString() with ?.ToString(). This does the same, but uses functionality built into newer versions of .Net instead of relying on an external extension method.
Alternative answer
If you've got a bunch of calls to the ToNullSafeString() method from the earlier version Automapper, and for some reason or other you can't or don't want to go through all your code and edit it away right now, you can use this instead.
Add the following class to your project, and make sure it can be reached from any classes that previously called the Automapper-method. Those calls will then automatically point to this instead.
public static class NullSafeStringHelper
{
public static string ToNullSafeString(this object value)
{
return value?.ToString();
}
}

Intellij idea gdsl. Add constructor to the class. Documentation for GDSL

I have an annotation which adds some methods and default constructor to annotated class.
I have managed to create a gdsl, to enable autocompletion in idea for methods, but I'm stuck with constructor and documentation is very poor.
Does anyone have any ideas, how to do this?
Maybe I could find a solution, in existing gdsl, but I can't remember any Transformation, related to constructors. Maybe you can remind me of any of them.
def objectContext = context(ctype: "java.lang.Object")
contributor(objectContext) {
if (hasAnnotation("com.xseagullx.SomeAnnotation")) {
// Here I want to add constructor's declaration(with empty arg's)
// …
// And then my methods.
method name: 'someMethod', type: 'void', params: [:]
}
}
EDITED: OK, if it's as #jasp say, and there is no DSL construct for declaring Constructors, I'm still asking for a good documentation sources, other than JB's confluence page. Tutorials and other sources. I'm familiar with embedded dsl's for groovy, grails and gradle.
Need smth. more structured, if it's possible.
All function invocations inside of GroovyDSL are just calls to wrappers around internal IDEA's Program Structure Interface (PCI). However it doesn't cover all of PCI's abilities, including default constructors functionality I believe. One of an evidence for that is singletonTransform.gdsl, which is bundled into IDEA from 9 version and describes #Singleton AST transformation. Here is it's code:
contributor(context()) {
if (classType?.hasAnnotation("groovy.lang.Singleton")) {
property name: "instance",
type: classType?.getQualifiedName() ?: "java.lang.Object",
isStatic: true
}
}
As you can see it doesn't change a constructor and it's visibility, so IDEA will autocomplete this invalid code:
#Singleton class Foo {}
def foo = new Foo()
Futhermore GDSL that describes the semantics of GroovyDSL (which is actually the part of /plugins/groovy/resources/standardDsls/metaDsl.gdsl of IDEA sources) doesn't provide any ability for describing of constructors.
In this case I suggest you use newify transformation which allows you to describe targetClass.name method returning created instance.
I know this is a bit old, but I found myself looking for something similar.
The DSL you are looking for is
method params: [:], constructor: true although I don't understand why you'd need it; if a class doesn't declare any constructors doesn't IDEA always suggest the default one?

Metaprogramming: adding equals(Object o) and hashCode() to a library class

I have a library of domain objects which need to be used in the project, however we've found a couple of the classes haven't got an equals or hashCode method implemented.
I'm looking for the simplest (and Grooviest) way to add those methods. Obviously I could create a subclass which only adds the methods, but this would be confusing for developers used to the library and would mean we'd have to refactor existing code.
It is not possible to get the source changed (currently).
If I could edit the class I would just use the #EqualsAndHashCode annotation to carry out an AST transformation (at compile time?), but I can't find a way to instruct the compiler to carry out the transformation on a class which I can't directly annotate.
I'm currently trying to work up an example using the ExpandoMetaClass, so I'd do something like:
MySuperClass.metaClass.hashCode = { ->
// Add dynamic hashCode calculation bits here
}
MySuperClass.metaClass.equals = { ->
// Add dynamic hashCode calculation bits here
}
I don't really want to hand-code the hashCode/equals methods for each class, so I'm looking for something dyamic (like #EqualsAndHashCode) which will work with this.
Am I on the right track? Is there a groovier way?
AST Transforms are only applied at compile time, so you'll get no help from the likes of #EqualsAndHashCode. MetaClass hacks are going to be your only option. That said, there are more-elegant ways to impose MetaClass behavior.
Shameless Self Plug I did a talk about this kind of stuff last year at SpringOne 2GX: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/groovy-app-architecture
In short, you might find benefit in creating extensions (unless you're in Grails) - http://mrhaki.blogspot.com/2013/01/groovy-goodness-adding-extra-methods.html, or by explicitly adding mixins - http://groovy.codehaus.org/Runtime+mixins ... But in general, these are just cleaner ways to do the exact same thing you're already doing.

How Does "Use" work in groovy?

Hi I have the following Code Snippet;
class StringCalci
{
static def plus(Integer self, Integer Operand)
{
return self.toInteger() * Operand.toInteger()
}
}
use (StringCalci)
{
println("inside the Use method!")
println( 12 + 3 )
}
println(12+3)
I was been shocked to see the use of Use in groovy. The thing is this I can add methods to the Class at run-time(my own methods).when I was looking at the above code, I was Thinking how does Groovy make things possible like this! The use of println inside the Use is multiplying the two given numbers(because I have Override the plus method) , where as the outside println adds it! My question is how does Groovy recognise the println executes in Use and println outside the Use. Is Use is a keyword/method? I need to understand behind the scenes of this process.. Please let me know :)
Thanks in Advance :)
Welcome to the wonderful world of dynamic languages where everything is possible and nothing is certain!
This feature is called Categories. As for the implementation:
use is in fact not a keyword but a method which the Groovy runtime adds to the Object class, which makes it available everywhere.
I think the functionality is implemented mainly in the class GroovyCategorySupport
Judging from the Javadoc, it's based on keeping a map of overriden methods in a ThreadLocal which is then consulted for every method call.
yeah, that's not so great for performance, but so are pretty much all the dynamic "magic" features that Groovy and similar languages offer (and there's lots of them).

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