It says in the docs: "In addition, each of these also have a corresponding {file}.meta.js meta file which will be used for reflection and other functionality."
Q1: does this mean we only need to include these files if we are using reflection?
Q2: what is the "other functionality"?
Turns out the docs are wrong. This file is not used for reflection. It is used by the compiler and useful should you need to distribute your kotlin code as a library.
Related
In Node.js, I could get an array of the objects in foo with
Object.keys(require("foo"));
Is there any way I could do the same thing in Rust?
mod foo;
getobjs(foo);
No, there is no way to do this. This level of introspection of compile-time information simply doesn't exist at runtime. The concept of a module doesn't even exist.
If you are interested in compile-time information, you can do such things as build and view the docs (cargo doc --open) to see all the public items of the entire crate. You can probably also view the crate's documentation online before you use it.
There are also tools like the Rust Language Server which provide this type of information (and more) to editors and IDEs.
Let's say I have a few extension methods for "MyClass".
My question is, what's the best practice to organize/store these methods?
Should they be simply put into a "MyClassExtensions" Kotlin file?
I have tried to encapsulate these methods within a class, but after importing the class I couldn't seem to figure out how to use/access the extension methods.
Edit:
For clarification, I was not asking for help what to call a file that contains extension methods. I was asking about best practices/approaches to store/organize such methods. Ie. should they be simply put into kotlin files, or should they be encapsulated in a class. I am coming from a Java background, so I'm used to store stuff in classes.
As far as I am concerned, you should put them into a utility file, as you did in Java code base before.
But mention, you no longer need to put them into a class. Top-level functions are the best choice.
You can refer to the kotlin standard library or some open source projects like anko, those would be good examples.
In my case, I put extensions of one class into a file which have the same name of the original file in another package, and use
#JvmMultifileClass
to reduce the number of generated class files.
I see kotlin.List and kotlin.MutableList is implemented by java.util.ArrayList. But where did kotlin put this trick? Compiler or somewhere in stdlib?
If kotlin supports making a class implementing an interface outside of its definition file like the ArrayList case, it will be fascinated.
No, it is not supported.
You are right, that is only a compiler trick. There are lots of magic applied to the collections to make them right. Fortunately it is not available to the devs. Special paragraph in the docs: https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/java-interop.html#mapped-types
Apache Camel comes with some relatively nice Groovy extensions so that you, for instance, can use closures with the Java DSL for defining routes.
Most, if not all, of the additional methods providing these extensions seem to be located in the class CamelGroovyMethods with static methods like
public static ProcessorDefinition<?> process(ProcessorDefinition<?> self,
Closure<?> processorLogic){/* implementation */}
How is the actual extension of the Camel java classes realised? Is CamelGroovyMethods used as a category somewhere, and if so, where is use(CamelGroovyMethods) called?
Just a guess, but as they are called extension methods they have probably been defined as such. Look in the jar, you should find a file called org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.ExtensionModule in META-INF/services. Have a look at Creating an extension module. I've used this technique myself and it works great except if you want to provide custom constructors, that requires an alternate mechanism.
...
Yep, found it ExtensionModule file in GitHub. They even provided the dsld file to assist with code completion in Eclipse.
I'm aware this might be a broad question (there's no specific code for you to look at), but I'm hoping I'd get some insights as to what to do, or how to approach the problem.
To keep things simple, suppose the compiler that I'm writing performs these three steps:
parse (and bind all variables)
typecheck
codegen
Also the language that I'm building the compiler for wants to support late-analysis/late-binding (ie., it has a function that takes a String, which is to be compiled and executed as a piece of source-code during runtime).
Now during parse-phase, I have a piece of context that I need to keep around till run-time for the sole benefit of the aforementioned function (because it needs to parse and typecheck its argument in that context).
So the question, how should I do this? What do other compilers do?
Should I just serialise the context object to disk (codegen for it) and resurrect it during run-time or something?
Thanks
Yes, you'll need to emit the type information (or other context, you weren't very specific) in your object/executable files, so that your eval can read it at runtime. You might look at Java's .class file format for inspiration; Java doesn't have eval as such, but you can dynamically spin new bytecode at runtime that must be linked in a type-safe manner. David Conrad's comment is spot-on: this information can also be used to implement reflection, if your language has such a feature.
That's as much as I can help you without more specifics.