R – Best groovy closure idiom replacing java inner classes

closuresgroovy

As new to groovy…

I'm trying to replace the java idiom for event listeners, filters, etc.

My working code in groovy is the following:

def find() {
    ODB odb = ODBFactory.open(files.nodupes); // data nucleus object database
    Objects<Prospect> src = odb.getObjects(new QProspect());

    src.each { println it };

    odb.close();

}

class QProspect extends SimpleNativeQuery {
    public boolean match(Prospect p) {
        if (p.url) {
            return p.url.endsWith(".biz");
        }
        return false;
    }
}

Now, this is far from what I'm used to in java, where the implementation of the Query interface is done right inside the odb.getObjects() method. If I where to code "java" I'd probably do something like the following, yet it's not working:

Objects<Prospect> src = odb.getObjects( {
        boolean match(p) { 
            if (p.url) {
            return p.url.endsWith(".biz");
        }
            return false; 
        }
    } as SimpleNativeQuery);

Or better, I'd like it to be like this:

 Objects<Prospect> src = odb.getObjects( 
      { it.url.endsWith(".biz") } as SimpleNativeQuery
 );

However, what groovy does it to associate the "match" method with the outer script context and fail me.

I find groovy… groovy anyways so I'll stick to learning more about it. Thanks.

What I should've asked was how do we do the "anonymous" class in groovy. Here's the java idiom:

void defReadAFile() {
    File[] files = new File(".").listFiles(new FileFilter() {
        public boolean accept(File file) {
            return file.getPath().endsWith(".biz");
        }
    });
}

Can groovy be as concise with no additional class declaration?

Best Answer

I think it would have helped you to get answers if you'd abstracted the problem so that it didn't rely on the Neodatis DB interface -- that threw me for a loop, as I've never used it. What I've written below about it is based on a very cursory analysis.

For that matter, I've never used Groovy either, though I like what I've seen of it. But seeing as no one else has answered yet, you're stuck with me :-)

I think the problem (or at least part of it) may be that you're expecting too much of the SimpleNativeQuery class from Neodatis. It doesn't look like it even tries to filter the objects before it adds them to the returned collection. I think instead you want to use org.neodatis.odb.impl.core.query.criteria.CriteriaQuery. (Note the "impl" in the package path. This has me a bit nervous, as I don't know for sure if this class is meant to be used by callers. But I don't see any other classes in Neodatis that allow for query criteria to be specified.)

But instead of using CriteriaQuery directly, I think you'd rather wrap it inside of a Groovy class so that you can use it with closures. So, I think a Groovy version of your code with closures might look something like this:

// Create a class that wraps CriteriaQuery and allows you 
// to pass closures.  This is wordy too, but at least it's
// reusable.

import org.neodatis.odb.impl.core.query.criteria;

class GroovyCriteriaQuery extends CriteriaQuery {
    private final c;

    QProspect(theClosure) {
         // I prefer to check for null here, instead of in match()
         if (theClosure == null) {
             throw new InvalidArgumentException("theClosure can't be null!");
         }
         c = theClosure;
    }

    public boolean match(AbstractObjectInfo aoi){
        //!! I'm assuming here that 'aoi' can be used as the actual
        //!! object instance (or at least as proxy for it.)
        //!! (You may have to extract the actual object from aoi before calling c.)
        return c(aoi);
    }
}

// Now use the query class in some random code.

 Objects<Prospect> src = odb.getObjects( 
      new GroovyCriteriaQuery(
          { it.url.endsWith(".biz") } 
      )
 )

I hope this helps!

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