I have a class with a private field that is a mutable collection. The field in this particular instance is an ArrayBuffer, although my question extends to any finite, ordered, random-access collection type. I want to expose this field without permitting others to modify it. In Java I would add a method like:
private List<T> theList;
public List<T> getList() {
return Collections.unmodifiableList(theList);
}
In Java we just accept that the result is a List that doesn't fully implement the List interface because #add and friends throw UnsupportedOperationException.
In Scala, I would expect to find an appropriate trait with accessors like iterator, size, and apply (for retrieving values by index) but no mutators. Does such a type exist that I just haven't found yet?
The Scala collection library is oriented to immutability, and immutability doesn't refer only to the fact that you are not allowed to modify a given collection, but also that you are guaranteed that the collection won't be ever modified by anyone.
So you cannot and you shouldn't get a collection like immutable.Seq as a view from a mutable buffer in Scala since it breaks that guarantee.
But you can implement the concept of unmodifiable mutable Seq easy enough like so:
class UnmodifiableSeq[A](buffer: mutable.Seq[A]) extends mutable.Seq[A]{
def update(idx: Int, elem: A) {throw new UnsupportedOperationException()}
def length = buffer.length
def apply(idx: Int) = buffer(idx)
def iterator = buffer.iterator
}
Usage:
val xs = Array(1, 2, 3, 4)
val view = new UnmodifiableSeq(xs)
println(view(2)) >> 3
view(2) = 10 >> Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException
EDIT :
A probably better way of obtaining an unmodifiable view of the collection is by downcasting to collection.Seq which provides no mutable update operations:
val xs = Array(1, 2, 3)
val view: Seq[Int] = xs //this is unmodifiable
or creating a wrapper which extends Seq if you have your own custom mutable class.
class UnmodifiableView[A](col: MutableCollection[A]) extends collection.Seq[A]{
def length = col.length
def apply(idx: Int) = col(idx)
def iterator = col.iterator
}
The scala.collection.Seq trait does not make any guarantees of immutability but it also does not allow any modifying operations so it seems the perfect fit.
Convert your buffer to a Seq, or one of the other unmodifiable collections that are part of the scala.collection package.
myBuffer.toSeq
If you want to:
This is not an option, of course, if your specification specifically requires you to return a Seq, but it
- allows the caller to iterate over it using the same syntax as for Seq's (
for (x <- obj.getStuff))
- allows the caller to easily convert to a Seq or List by using
obj.getStuff.toSeq or obj.getStuff.toList.
(Note that the documentation of .iterator does not explicitly say that the returned object cannot be cast to something modifiable, but the current implementation of ArrayBuffer.iterator indeed gives an unmodifiable iterator.)
If myBuffer.toSeq isn't good enough, you can write your own class extending scala.collection.IndexedSeqOptimized delegating the calls to an underlying collection.
