Dynamic Invocation

Introduction#

Scala allows you to use dynamic invocation when calling methods or accessing fields on an object. Instead of having this built deep into the language, this is accomplished through rewriting rules similar to those of implicit conversions, enabled by the marker trait scala.Dynamic. This allows you to emulate the ability to dynamically add properties to objects present in dynamic languages, and more.

Syntax#

class Foo extends Dynamic
foo.field
foo.field = value
foo.method(args)
foo.method(namedArg = x, y)

Remarks#

In order to declare subtypes of Dynamic, the language feature dynamics must be enabled, either by importing scala.language.dynamics or by the -language:dynamics compiler option. Users of this Dynamic who do not define their own subtypes do not need to enable this.

Field Accesses

This:

class Foo extends Dynamic {
  // Expressions are only rewritten to use Dynamic if they are not already valid
  // Therefore foo.realField will not use select/updateDynamic
  var realField: Int = 5
  // Called for expressions of the type foo.field
  def selectDynamic(fieldName: String) = ???
  def updateDynamic(fieldName: String)(value: Int) = ???
}

allows for simple access to fields:

val foo: Foo = ???
foo.realField // Does NOT use Dynamic; accesses the actual field
foo.realField = 10 // Actual field access here too
foo.unrealField // Becomes foo.selectDynamic(unrealField)
foo.field = 10  // Becomes foo.updateDynamic("field")(10)
foo.field = "10" // Does not compile; "10" is not an Int.
foo.x() // Does not compile; Foo does not define applyDynamic, which is used for methods.
foo.x.apply() // DOES compile, as Nothing is a subtype of () => Any
// Remember, the compiler is still doing static type checks, it just has one more way to
// "recover" and rewrite otherwise invalid code now.

Method Calls

This:

class Villain(val minions: Map[String, Minion]) extends Dynamic {
  def applyDynamic(name: String)(jobs: Task*) = jobs.foreach(minions(name).do)
  def applyDynamicNamed(name: String)(jobs: (String, Task)*) = jobs.foreach {
    // If a parameter does not have a name, and is simply given, the name passed as ""
    case ("", task) => minions(name).do(task)
    case (subsys, task) => minions(name).subsystems(subsys).do(task)
  }
}

allows for calls to methods, with and without named parameters:

val gru: Villain = ???
gru.blu() // Becomes gru.applyDynamic("blu")()
// Becomes gru.applyDynamicNamed("stu")(("fooer", ???), ("boomer", ???), ("", ???),
//         ("computer breaker", ???), ("fooer", ???))
// Note how the `???` without a name is given the name ""
// Note how both occurrences of `fooer` are passed to the method
gru.stu(fooer = ???, boomer = ???, ???, `computer breaker` = ???, fooer = ???)
gru.ERR("a") // Somehow, scalac thinks "a" is not a Task, though it clearly is (it isn't)

Interaction Between Field Access and Update Method

Slightly counterintuitively (but also the only sane way to make it work), this:

val dyn: Dynamic = ???
dyn.x(y) = z

is equivalent to:

dyn.selectDynamic("x").update(y, z)

while

dyn.x(y)

is still

dyn.applyDynamic("x")(y)

It is important to be aware of this, or else it may sneak by unnoticed and cause strange errors.