Calling clojure from java

Question

Most of the top google hits for "calling clojure from java" are outdated and recommend using clojure.lang.RT to compile the source code. Could you help with a clear explanation of how to call Clojure from Java assuming you have already built a jar from the Clojure project and included it in the classpath?

Answer 1

EDIT: I wrote this answer almost three years ago. In Clojure 1.6 there is a proper API exactly for the purpose of calling Clojure from Java. Please Alex Miller's answer for up to date information: https://stackoverflow.com/a/23555959/202121

Original answer from 2011:

As I see it, the simplest way (if you don't generate a class with AOT compilation) is to use clojure.lang.RT to access functions in clojure. With it you can mimic what you would have done in Clojure (no need to compile things in special ways):

;; Example usage of the "bar-fn" function from the "foo.ns" namespace from Clojure
(require 'foo.ns)
(foo.ns/bar-fn 1 2 3)

And in Java:

// Example usage of the "bar-fn" function from the "foo.ns" namespace from Java
import clojure.lang.RT;
import clojure.lang.Symbol;
...
RT.var("clojure.core", "require").invoke(Symbol.intern("foo.ns"));
RT.var("foo.ns", "bar-fn").invoke(1, 2, 3);

It is a bit more verbose in Java, but I hope it's clear that the pieces of code are equivalent.

This should work as long as Clojure and the source files (or compiled files) of your Clojure code is on the classpath.

Answer 2

This works with Clojure 1.5.0:

public class CljTest {
    public static Object evalClj(String a) {
        return clojure.lang.Compiler.load(new java.io.StringReader(a));
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        new clojure.lang.RT(); // needed since 1.5.0        
        System.out.println(evalClj("(+ 1 2)"));
    }
}

Answer 3

EDIT This answer was written in 2010, and worked at that time. See Alex Miller's answer for more modern solution.

What kind of code are calling from Java? If you have class generated with gen-class, then simply call it. If you want to call function from script, then look to following example.

If you want to evaluate code from string, inside Java, then you can use following code:

import clojure.lang.RT;
import clojure.lang.Var;
import clojure.lang.Compiler;
import java.io.StringReader;

public class Foo {
  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    // Load the Clojure script -- as a side effect this initializes the runtime.
    String str = "(ns user) (defn foo [a b]   (str a \" \" b))";

    //RT.loadResourceScript("foo.clj");
    Compiler.load(new StringReader(str));

    // Get a reference to the foo function.
    Var foo = RT.var("user", "foo");

    // Call it!
    Object result = foo.invoke("Hi", "there");
    System.out.println(result);
  }
}

Answer 4

I agree with clartaq's answer, but I felt that beginners could also use:

• step-by-step information on how to actually get this running
• information that's current for Clojure 1.3 and recent versions of leiningen.
• a Clojure jar that also includes a main function, so it can be run standalone or linked as a library.

So I covered all that in this blog post.

The Clojure code looks like this:

(ns ThingOne.core
 (:gen-class
    :methods [#^{:static true} [foo [int] void]]))

(defn -foo [i] (println "Hello from Clojure. My input was " i))

(defn -main [] (println "Hello from Clojure -main." ))

The leiningen 1.7.1 project setup looks like this:

(defproject ThingOne "1.0.0-SNAPSHOT"
  :description "Hello, Clojure"
  :dependencies [[org.clojure/clojure "1.3.0"]]
  :aot [ThingOne.core]
  :main ThingOne.core)

The Java code looks like this:

import ThingOne.*;

class HelloJava {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello from Java!");
        core.foo (12345);
    }
}

Or you can also get all the code from this project on github.

Answer 5

You can also use AOT compilation to create class files representing your clojure code. Read the documentation about compilation, gen-class and friends in the Clojure API docs for the details about how to do this, but in essence you will create a class that calls clojure functions for each method invocation.

Another alternative is to use the new defprotocol and deftype functionality, which will also require AOT compilation but provide better performance. I don't know the details of how to do this yet, but a question on the mailing list would probably do the trick.

Answer 6

If the use case is to include a JAR built with Clojure in a Java application, I have found having a separate namespace for the interface between the two worlds to be beneficial:

(ns example-app.interop
  (:require [example-app.core :as core])

;; This example covers two-way communication: the Clojure library 
;; relies on the wrapping Java app for some functionality (through
;; an interface that the Clojure library provides and the Java app
;; implements) and the Java app calls the Clojure library to perform 
;; work. The latter case is covered by a class provided by the Clojure lib.
;; 
;; This namespace should be AOT compiled.

;; The interface that the java app can implement
(gen-interface
  :name com.example.WeatherForecast
  :methods [[getTemperature [] Double]])

;; The class that the java app instantiates
(gen-class
  :name com.example.HighTemperatureMailer
  :state state
  :init init
  ;; Dependency injection - take an instance of the previously defined
  ;; interface as a constructor argument
  :constructors {[com.example.WeatherForecast] []}
  :methods [[sendMails [] void]])

(defn -init [weather-forecast]
  [[] {:weather-forecast weather-forecast}])

;; The actual work is done in the core namespace
(defn -sendMails
  [this]
  (core/send-mails (.state this)))

The core namespace can use the injected instance to accomplish its tasks:

(ns example-app.core)

(defn send-mails 
  [{:keys [weather-forecast]}]
  (let [temp (.getTemperature weather-forecast)] ...)) 

For testing purposes, the interface can be stubbed:

(example-app.core/send-mails 
  (reify com.example.WeatherForecast (getTemperature [this] ...)))