Reflection on a Scala case class

Question

I'm trying to write a trait (in Scala 2.8) that can be mixed in to a case class, allowing its fields to be inspected at runtime, for a particular debugging purpose. I want to get them back in the order that they were declared in the source file, and I'd like to omit any other fields inside the case class. For example:

trait CaseClassReflector extends Product {

  def getFields: List[(String, Any)] = {
    var fieldValueToName: Map[Any, String] = Map()
    for (field <- getClass.getDeclaredFields) {
      field.setAccessible(true)
      fieldValueToName += (field.get(this) -> field.getName) 
    }
    productIterator.toList map { value => fieldValueToName(value) -> value }
  }

}

case class Colour(red: Int, green: Int, blue: Int) extends CaseClassReflector {
  val other: Int = 42
}

scala> val c = Colour(234, 123, 23)
c: Colour = Colour(234,123,23)

scala> val fields = c.getFields    
fields: List[(String, Any)] = List((red,234), (green,123), (blue,23))

The above implementation is clearly flawed because it guesses the relationship between a field's position in the Product and its name by equality of the value on those field, so that the following, say, will not work:

Colour(0, 0, 0).getFields

Is there any way this can be implemented?

Answer 1

Look in trunk and you'll find this. Listen to the comment, this is not supported: but since I also needed those names...

/** private[scala] so nobody gets the idea this is a supported interface.
 */
private[scala] def caseParamNames(path: String): Option[List[String]] = {
  val (outer, inner) = (path indexOf '$') match {
    case -1   => (path, "")
    case x    => (path take x, path drop (x + 1))
  }

  for {
    clazz <- getSystemLoader.tryToLoadClass[AnyRef](outer)
    ssig <- ScalaSigParser.parse(clazz)
  }
  yield {
    val f: PartialFunction[Symbol, List[String]] =
      if (inner.isEmpty) {
        case x: MethodSymbol if x.isCaseAccessor && (x.name endsWith " ") => List(x.name dropRight 1)
      }
      else {
        case x: ClassSymbol if x.name == inner  =>
          val xs = x.children filter (child => child.isCaseAccessor && (child.name endsWith " "))
          xs.toList map (_.name dropRight 1)
      }

    (ssig.symbols partialMap f).flatten toList
  }
}

Answer 2

In every example I've seen the fields are in reverse order: the last item in the getFields array is the first one listed in the case class. If you use case classes "nicely", then you should just be able to map productElement(n) onto getDeclaredFields()( getDeclaredFields.length-n-1).

But this is rather dangerous, as I don't know of anything in the spec that insists that it must be that way, and if you override a val in the case class, it won't even appear in getDeclaredFields (it'll appear in the fields of that superclass).

You might change your code to assume things are this way, but check that the getter method with that name and the productIterator return the same value and throw an exception if they don't (which means that you don't actually know what corresponds to what).

Answer 3

Here's a short and working version, based on the example above

  trait CaseClassReflector extends Product {
    def getFields = getClass.getDeclaredFields.map(field => {
      field setAccessible true
      field.getName -> field.get(this)
    })
  }

Answer 4

You can also use the ProductCompletion from the interpreter package to get to attribute names and values of case classes:

import tools.nsc.interpreter.ProductCompletion

// get attribute names
new ProductCompletion(Colour(1, 2, 3)).caseNames
// returns: List(red, green, blue)

// get attribute values
new ProductCompletion(Colour(1, 2, 3)).caseFields

---

Edit: hints by roland and virtualeyes

It is necessary to include the scalap library which is part of the scala-lang collection.

Thanks for your hints, roland and virtualeyes.