I've been working with Dart for a few weeks now, and so far so good. I've run into a problem, however, when trying to access variables from a class that's a few levels higher. I'm not sure how best to explain this without an actual sample, so here's a quick example:
http://pastebin.com/r2ru6G2w
To put this as simply as possible:
AClass has a variable named "parameter."
BClass inherits from AClass, also has a constructor parameter (incomingParameter) that is assigned to the "parameter" variable from AClass.
CClass inherits from BClass, also has a constructor parameter (incomingParameter) that is simply passed on to BClass via the super initializer.
DClass inherits from CClass, but does not have any constructor parameter. Instead, I'm trying to pass the "parameter" variables all the way from AClass into the super initializer.
This results in an error, that says "Only static members can be accessed in initializers." Fair enough. Any idea how to get around this?
Thanks for all the help,
MR
Related
We have an app that makes fairly extensive use of TIniFile. In the past we created our own descendant class, let's call it TMyIniFile, that overrides WriteString. We create one instance of this that the entire app uses. That instance is passed all around through properties and parameters, but the type of all of these is still TIniFile, since that is what it was originally. This seems to work, calling our overridden method through polymorphism, even though all the variable types are still TIniFile. This seems to be proper since we descend from TIniFile.
Now we are making some changes where we want to switch TMyIniFile to descend from TMemIniFile instead of TIniFile. Those are both descendants of TCustomIniFile. We'll also probably be overriding some more methods. I'm inclined to leave all the declarations as TIniFile even though technically our class is no longer a descendant of it, just to avoid having to change a lot of source files if I don't need to.
In every tutorial example of polymorphism, the variable is declared as the base class, and an instance is created of the descendant class and assigned to the variable of the base class. So I assume this is the "right" way to do it. What I'm looking at doing now will end up having the variables declared as, what I guess you'd call a "sibling" class, so this "seems wrong". Is this a bad thing to do? Am I asking for trouble, or does polymorphism actually allow for this sort of thing?
TIniFile and TMemIniFile are distinct classes that do not derive from each other, so you simply cannot create a TMemIniFile object and assign it to a TIniFile variable, and vice versa. The compiler won't let you do that. And using a type-cast to force it will be dangerous.
You will just have to update the rest of your code to change all of the TIniFile declarations to TCustomIniFile instead, which is the common ancestor for both classes. That is the "correct" thing to do.
The compiler is your friend - why would you lie to it by using the wrong type ... and if you do lie to it why would you expect it to know what you want it to do?
You should use a base class that you derive from, like TCustomIniFile. I would expect compile issues if you are trying to make assignments which are known at compile time to be wrong.
The different classes have different signatures so the compiler needs to know which class it is using to call the correct method or access the correct property. With virtual methods the different classes setup their own implementation of those methods so that the correct one is called - so using a pointer to a base type when you call the virtual method it calls that method in the derived type because it is in the class vtable.
So if the code does compile, it's very likely that the compiler will not be doing the right thing ...
I am trying to call a method of a class that I only know by name as a String. Now therefore I would need a ClassMirror of that class that allowes me to instantiate an instance. However, creating ClassMirrors seems to be only possible by entering a type using reflectClass(Type) or by passing an already existing instance of that class into reflect(dynamic). So these aren`t helping if I only have a String.
In Java you can do this pretty easily, by calling Class.forName(String). Then you would get a Constructor instance, make it accessibly and call it.
Does anyone know if this is even possible in dart? What seems weird is that once you have a ClassMirror you can access fields and methods by passing symbols, which can be created by Strings.
You can put a specific list of strings to map to a specific list of closures to create a new object with specific parameters.
But you can't get a reflection without using dart:mirrors, which is being deprecated, and also had a negative impact on tree shaking to get the payload size down.
In general, you're invited to look at the package:reflectable to achieve most of what you'd want out of dart:mirrors, using source-to-source builders.
I'm trying understand what's the mean of this two final lines of code, on colons... It's a syntax question.
I'm following this github example and I have this doubt on my head.
Can someone help me with this?.
class DietPlan extends ParseObject implements ParseCloneable {
DietPlan() : super(keyDietPlan);
DietPlan.clone() : this();
The part after : is called "initializer list.
It is a list of expressions that can access constructor parameters and can assign to instance fields, even final instance fields.
The first colon, i.e. DietPlan() : super(keyDietPlan); means that you are calling the super constructor, constructor of ParseCloneable in this case.
This is a core OOP concept, you can extend or implement one class to another and you must call the superclass constructor if you do so. This is just a style of doing the same in Dart.
The second colon works in similar way, to understand that you need to understand what is cloning of objects,
Object cloning refers to creation of exact copy of an object. It creates a new instance of the class of current object and initializes all its fields with exactly the contents of the corresponding fields of this object.
This is whats happening on the second line.
Can I get an InstanceMirror without using any constructor in Dart?
More precisely: I have a class with or without any special constructor, yet I'd like to get an InstanceMirror without having to provide a constructor or any arguments at all.
For example PHP offers ReflectionClass::newInstanceWithoutConstructor
Cheers
Why do you need an InstanceMirror and why can't you use a ClassMirror?
Just list all the available constructors from the ClassMirror and then use a constructor with 0 arguments to create a new instance.
The PHP Version says: "Creates a new class instance without invoking the constructor.". For me this totally makes no sense. That's why there are constructors: To be called at creation time.
New
If the class doesn't have a constructor, a default constructor with no arguments is implicitly created for this class and you can use it.
If a class has one or more explicit constructors, you can create a new instance only by using one of them.
Old
I'm not sure if I fully understand your questions, but basically - no. If your class doesn't have a constructor an implicit default constructor is used.
An instance of a class is created with new SomeClass which creates a new instance and calls the constructor. There are other ways like literals {'x': 1, 'y': 2} but I'm pretty sure this way a constructor is called as well.
I'm trying to do some XNA development with IronRuby but are struggling with both generics (Load) and accessing some of the base-class properties such as Content.
Any hints?
Regarding Generics - if you want to create a generic object, use square brackets in order to define the generic type. For example:
list = System::Collections::Generic::List[System::String].new
Regarding base class properties, there is no "base" keyword in Ruby so you can use "self" or just call the method or property directly. You might also try to mangle the property name (for instance, HelloWorld is mangled to hello_world). I suggest that in order to access the Content propery, just call it this way:
self.content
Hope it helps,
Shay.