Jun 10 2014

Scala For-Comprehension Advanced usage

Let’s say we want to find all three-pair additions that equate to 10 (order is irrelevant so we don’t want dups). What we would normally do in imperative Java would be 3 nested for loops with indexes say i, j and k where i ranges from 1 till 10, j starts from i+1 and k starts from j+1. The body of the for loop would be the if predicate case. We would also need a variable to store the results.

Instead in Scala:


val l = List(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)

for {
   (a,i) <- l.zipWithIndex
   (b,j) <- l.zipWithIndex.drop(i+1)
      c  <- l.drop(j+1)
   if 10 == a + b + c
} println(s"$a $b $c")

We can also use for comprehension with yield as a returned assignable result rather than println

May 2 2014

Stopwatch implementation in Scala

Timing method operations can be a labouring task littering the method body with the timing variables (sometimes short-lived as in debug mode). Thankfully we can treat the timing activity as a pass-by-name method argument of our newly defined timing operation:

def timed [T] (f: => T): T = {
 val startTime = System.currentTimeMillis()
 try f finally println(s"Function completed in: ${System.currentTimeMillis() - startTime} ms" )
}
Apr 27 2014

Scala call-by-name

The arguement notation : => A denotes passing the argument in call-by-name manner not the traditional call-by-value fashion. That essentially means:

  • If the parameter is never used, it is never evaluated
  • If the parameter is used multiple times, it is getting evaluated each and every time in the by-name invocation

Traditionally call-by-value invocation would be evalutated just once and the calculated value would be just pushed in the method stack:

def myprint(date: java.util.Date):Unit = for(i->1 to 5) println(date)

scala> myprint( {Thread.sleep(1000); new java.util.Date()} )
Sun Apr 27 10:10:37 GMT 2014
Sun Apr 27 10:10:37 GMT 2014
Sun Apr 27 10:10:37 GMT 2014
Sun Apr 27 10:10:37 GMT 2014
Sun Apr 27 10:10:37 GMT 2014

whereas call-by-name would be evaluated each and every time anew:

def myprint(date :=> java.util.Date):Unit = for(i->1 to 5) println(date)

scala&gt; myprint( {Thread.sleep(1000); new java.util.Date()} )
Sun Apr 27 10:12:46 GMT 2014
Sun Apr 27 10:12:47 GMT 2014
Sun Apr 27 10:12:48 GMT 2014
Sun Apr 27 10:12:49 GMT 2014
Sun Apr 27 10:12:50 GMT 2014
Apr 25 2014

How to add Options in Scala

Options are Monads and we can perform operations in their underlying types in a typesafe way using Scalaz:

  import scalaz._
  import Scalaz._

  val a: Option[BigDecimal] = BigDecimal("0.123").some
  val b: Option[BigDecimal] = BigDecimal("1.234").some
  val c: Option[BigDecimal] = BigDecimal("2.345").some

  println( (a |@| b |@| c) { _ + _ + _ } )

  //yields: Some(3.702)

and if the chain is broken, we don’t have to worry since it’s getting short-circuited:

  import scalaz._
  import Scalaz._

  val a: Option[BigDecimal] = BigDecimal("0.123").some
  val b: Option[BigDecimal] = None
  val c: Option[BigDecimal] = BigDecimal("2.345").some

  println( (a |@| b |@| c) { _ + _ + _ } )

  //yields: None
Apr 20 2014

Spring JPA, Hibernate, Data XML configuration

Here’s a cleaned up, plug’n’play version of a Spring database XML config taken from a demo project employing Spring Data for the Repositories interfaces and Hibernate behind JPA.

<beans 	xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
		xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
		xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
		xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
		xmlns:jpa="http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa"
	xsi:schemaLocation="
		http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans 
		http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
		http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx
		http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx.xsd
		http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa
		http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa/spring-jpa.xsd">

	<bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager"
		  p:entityManagerFactory-ref="entityManagerFactory" />


	<jpa:repositories base-package="com.to.my.data.repository"
					  transaction-manager-ref="transactionManager"
					  entity-manager-factory-ref="entityManagerFactory"/>

	<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="transactionManager"/>
	

	
	<bean id="entityManagerFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean">
		<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
		<property name="jpaVendorAdapter">
			<bean class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.vendor.HibernateJpaVendorAdapter"
					p:database="${database.database}"
					p:databasePlatform="${database.databasePlatform}"
					p:showSql="${database.showSql}"
					p:generateDdl="${database.generateDdl}" />
		</property>
		<property name="jpaProperties">
			<props>
				<prop key="hibernate.dialect">${database.databasePlatform}</prop>
				<prop key="hibernate.max_fetch_depth">3</prop>
				<prop key="hibernate.fetch_size">50</prop>
				<prop key="hibernate.batch_size">10</prop>
				<prop key="hibernate.show_sql">true</prop>
			</props>
		</property>
		<property name="packagesToScan" value="com.to.my.bean"/>
	</bean>
	
	<bean class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close" id="dataSource"
			p:driverClassName="${database.driverClassName}"
			p:url="${database.url}"
			p:username="${database.username}"
			p:password="${database.password}"
			p:testOnBorrow="true"
			p:testOnReturn="true"
			p:testWhileIdle="true"
			p:timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="1800000"
			p:numTestsPerEvictionRun="3"
			p:minEvictableIdleTimeMillis="1800000"
			p:initialSize="1"
			p:maxActive="50"
			p:maxIdle="20"/>

</beans>
Apr 18 2014

Scala Pimp-My-Library example

Recently working on a project test there was an incompatibility of the assert keyword between ScalaTest and Scalaz. I was looking after Scalaz’s feature of invoking some on any data type after import scalaz.Scalaz._

After a while I gave up and wrote it myself, surprisingly simple and concise:

class SomeType[T](t:T){
def some = Some(t)
}
implicit def typeToSomeType[T](t:T) = new SomeType(t)

Making possible:

scala> 123.some
res7: Some[Int] = Some(123)

scala>"hi".some
res8: Some[String] = Some(hi)

Implicits is a nice way to type-safe upon compile time some global state (as long as it doesn’t become unwieldy long).

In Groovy we could achieve same effect via the MetaClass object, but without compile time type-safety as Groovy it’s a dynamic language and all the magic happens at runtime. Also we can’t use parametric polymorphism while invoking the MetaClass object (or at least I don’t know how to do it!).

groovy> String.metaClass.quote={"*"+delegate+"*"}
===> groovysh_evaluate$_run_closure1@4b51ac10
groovy:000> "hi".quote()
===> *hi*
Feb 6 2014

ConcurrentHashMap computeIfAbsent method in Java 8

The very nifty method computeIfAbsent has been added in the ConcurrentMap interface in Java 8 as part of the atomic operations of the ConcurrentMap interface. It’s more precisely a default method that provides an alternative to what we use to code ourselves:

if (map.get(key) == null) {
   V newValue = mappingFunction.apply(key);
   if (newValue != null)
      return map.putIfAbsent(key, newValue);
   }
}

but this time providing a function as a second argument.

Most often this method will be used in the context of ConcurrentHashMap in which case the method is implemented in a thread-safe synchronised way.

In terms of usage the method is handy for situations where we want to maintain a thread-safe cache of expensive one-off computed resources.

Here’s another example of holding a key-value pair where value is a thread-safe counter represented by an AtomicInteger:

private final Map counters = new ConcurrentHashMap();

private void accumulate(String name) {
    counters.computeIfAbsent(name, k -> new AtomicInteger()).incrementAndGet();
}
Jan 23 2014

Visitor Design Pattern in Scala

Scala provides built-in support for the Visitor Design Pattern through the use of pattern matching.

The Visitor Design Pattern is trying to address the problem of never-ending new functionality that is otherwise implemented by adding new methods in the inheritance tree.

According to the Visitor pattern the inheritance tree is decoupled from a new functionality and encapsulated in a separate object that packs all implementations according to the inheritance tree normally by using method overloading of all the various types.

In Scala by the use of the built-in pattern matching this becomes very easy:

class Animal { def walk:String }

class Dog extends Animal { override def walk = "on 4" }

class Man extends Animal { override def walk = "on 2" }

/**
 *  Visitor Pattern provides a solution to never-ending new
 *  functionality that would otherwise be implemented with new
 *  method in the hierarchy tree.
 */
def talk(animal: Animal) = animal match {
  case Dog => "wav wav"
  case Man => "hi"
}

/**
 *  New functionality implemented in separate methods that
 *  uses pattern matching to implement tailored functionality.
 */
def swim(animal: Animal) = animal match {
  case Dog => "on 4"
  case Man => "on 4"
}