Static Facade in Java - java

I have this basic code
public abstract class SquallDAO<T extends SquallBean> {
List<T> _find(String whereClause, String sortColumn, Integer lowerLimit, Integer upperLimit) throws Exception { ... }
}
class UserDAO extends SquallDAO<User> { }
and I'd like to be able to stand up a static facade for in the base class SquallDAO. In the derived class it works fine :
class UserDAO extends SquallDAO<User> {
public static SquallDAO getInstance() { if ( instance != null ) return new UserDao();
}
public static find(...) { return getInstance()._find(...) }
}
but I have a lot of these methods and would like to move them all to some shared base class.
How can I achieve this? I'm not married to this solution, just looking for a elegant way for a static facade and keep inheritance.
Thanks!

A method cannot be both static and overridable. And you cannot declare static methods in interface (for above reason). At least for all Java versions below 8 (thanks to Giovanni Botta for noticing that Java 8 now allows that).
If you managed to put getInstance and find in a common base class, as Java implements generic through type erasuse, you would have no way in find to get the proper subclass from where you will actually get the (singleton) instance.
The only way I know that allows to move those almost identical functions to a common base class would be to get rid of that singleton pattern and instead use dependency injection.
Say you have a class that currently uses UserDAO.find. You would declare an object in that class of type SquallDAO<T> that you initialize through DI, something like :
SquallDAO<T> dao;
// setter for DI omitted
...
List<T> l = dao.find(...);
That way you can correctly call find from a common base class (maybe a service ...), with Java being able to call the correct find implementation.
You will find more details on that in framework implementing the DI pattern like SpringFramework or in Java EE

Related

How do I correctly generate a dynamic proxy class that's based on the right class?

I have an interface defined as follows:
public interface Cache {
}
Then an abstract class implementing the above:
public abstract class AbstractCache implements Cache {
}
Then a concrete class inheriting from above:
public class RealTimeCache extends AbstractCache {
}
Then another class defined as follows:
public class CacheProbe {
public static <T> T probe(T base) {
return (T) Proxy.newProxyInstance(
base.getClass().getClassLoader(),
new Class[]{Cache.class},
new MethodCountInvocationHandler(base) // I am not mentioning this class as it's irrelevant
);
}
}
I have a class as follows which is using all of the above:
public class CacheLoader<T extends Cache> {
public T load() {
T result = getResult(...);
CacheProbe x = new CacheProbe(result);
return x.probe();
}
}
Lastly, the lines causing the issue (located outside above classes):
final CacheLoader<RealTimeCache> cacheLoader = getNewLoader(); //Method of this method is irrelevant and unchangeable
RealTimeCache x = cacheLoader.load(); //This is the line which is causing a runtime issue
Problem is, at run time the following exception is thrown at the last line mentioned above:
java.lang.ClassCastException: com.sun.proxy.$Proxy57 cannot be cast to RealTimeCache
However I don't see how this is possible because the dynamic proxy class generated is based on Cache.
How do I fix this ?
Please note that I can only change CacheProbe class in order to fix this. Cache, AbstractCache, RealTimeCache, CacheLoader and those last two lines are unchangeable.
However I don't see how this is possible because the dynamic proxy class generated is based on Cache.
Yes, the docs for java.lang.reflect.Proxy say
Proxy provides static methods for creating dynamic proxy classes and instances, and it is also the superclass of all dynamic proxy classes created by those methods.
(emphasis added)
Thus, you cannot use Proxy to create (an instance of) a subclass of an arbitrary class of your choice.
How do I fix this ?
You can create an ordinary subclass of RealTimeCache, and return an instance of that. Proxy is meant primarily to serve for interfaces that are not known until runtime, and in that case the only way to interact with them anyway is the interface type. That's not your scenario.
If necessary, you can implement such a subclass in terms of a MethodCountInvocationHandler, just as your proxy class uses, but I'm sure it would be easier to implement whatever tooling that is supposed to provide directly.

Java Class scope and library

I am creating a Java library, as a final product in intend to distribute this .jar to developers.
I am "translating" my library from Objective-C where I control which classes header files are available to the developer. In other words I am only exposing to the developer a few classes they can handle.
In my Java library I am using packages and my package has grown quite big. So I decided to separate into different packages my models and controllers. But now the models I wanted to keep private I need to mark as public in order to use from the main package.
My question is does this go against what I was doing in Objective-C ?
For example I have an Event class which is really only used internally and I don't want the user to know about it or think about it. I have another class TimedEvent, which the user can get an instance of an manage.
In my Objective-C, I simply excluded Event class from the library public scope, allowing TimedEvent.
If I am making things more tidy in my library then it seems packages aren't the way. Since now, my main controller is in the main package and all the models are in another package - forced to have a public scope.
Opinions ?
This is possible with Java but there are reasons why (almost) no one does it...
If you put the implementation and the interface into the same package, then you can omit all access modifiers (private, protected, public) from classes and methods to give them "default" or "package" visibility: Only classes in the same package are allowed to see/use them.
Drawback: You'll have to mix API and implementation.
The other approach is to move the implementation into a package *.private.*. No more mixing of API and implementation but malicious users can easily access the implementation - it's just a naming convention. Like a STOP sign: It means something ("be careful") but doesn't actually stop you.
Lastly, you can implement the interface inside of the interface. For example:
public interface IFoo {
String getName();
private static class Foo implements IFoo {
public String getName();
}
public static class FooFactory {
public static IFoo create() { return new Foo(); }
}
}
Ugly, ain't it?
The common approach to controlling exposure of your classes to the world is hiding implementations behind interfaces and factories.
Create an interface for your TimedEvent, and a class for creating instances of TimedEvent interface
Put the interface in the main package, and the factory in a sub-package
Give the factory public visibility
Implement the interface in the sub-package, giving it package visibility
Create an instance of the class implementing the TimedEvent interface in the factory
Here is an example of how you can do it:
package com.my.main;
public interface TimedEvent {
void fire();
}
package com.my.main.events;
import com.my.main;
public class EventFactory {
public TimedEvent makeTimedEvent() { return new TimedEvent (); }
}
// TimedEventImpl has package visibility - it is not public.
class TimedEventImpl implements TimedEvent {
public void fire() {
// Fire a timed event
}
}
The users would access TimedEvent like this:
com.my.main.events.EventFactory f = new com.my.main.events.EventFactory();
com.my.main.TimedEvent evt = f.makeTimedEvent();
evt.fire();

suppress a singleton constructor in java with powermock

I'm trying to unit-test some classes that make use of a Singleton class whose constructor does some things I can't (and shouldn't) do from the unit-test environment. My ideal scenario would be to end up with the constructor completely suppressed and then stub out the other member methods that my test classes invoke. My problem is that I can't seem to get the constructor suppressed.
My understanding of a way to solve this would be something like the following:
public class MySingleton extends AbstractSingletonParent {
public final static MySingleton Only = new MySingleton();
private MySingleton(){
super(someVar); // I want the super-class constructor to not be called
//
//more code I want to avoid
}
public Object stubbedMethod() {}
}
public class ClassToBeTested {
public void SomeMethod(){
Object o = MySingleton.Only.stubbedMethod();
}
}
#RunWith(PowerMockRunner.class)
#PrepareForTest(MySingleton.class)
public class TestClass {
#Test
public void SomeTest() {
suppress(constructor(MySingleton.class));
mockStatic(MySingleton.class);
PowerMock.replay(MySingleton.class);
// invoke ClassToBeTested, etc
PowerMock.verify(MySingleton.class);
//make some assertions
}
}
Unfortunately during the createMock invocation, the MySingleton constructor is hit, and it still calls the super constructor.
Am I doing something silly? I found an example on the web doing almost exactly this, but it was using a deprecated suppressConstructor method. Despite the deprecation I tried that, too, to no avail...
Is what I'm trying to do possible? If so, what am I doing wrong?
*Edited version now works.
You need to annotate TestClass with the #PrepareForTest annotation so it has a chance to manipulate the bytecode of the singletons.
Also, the superclass ctor supression signature should include somevar's class; right now you're just suppressing the default ctor.
See the #PrepareForTest API docs. Here's a blog post with some more details as well.
FWIW, it's working for me:
#RunWith(PowerMockRunner.class)
#PrepareForTest({EvilBase.class, NicerSingleton.class})
public class TestEvil {
#Test
public void testEvil() {
suppress(constructor(EvilBase.class));
assertEquals(69, EvilBase.getInstance().theMethod());
}
#Test
public void testNice() {
suppress(constructor(EvilBase.class));
suppress(constructor(NicerSingleton.class));
assertEquals(42, NicerSingleton.getInstance().theMethod());
}
}
How about you set the instance field ('only' in your code) of your Singleton with an instance instantiated with the constructor you want (you can do all of this with the Reflection API or dp4j).
The motivating example of a dp4j publication discusses that.
I am not sure what is it that you are doing wrong. But on the design side, i can suggest you look into dependency injection i.e. DI.
For making your code testable, make use of DI. With DI you would pass the singleton class as an constructor argument to your test class. And now since you pass an argument, inside your test case you can create a custom implementation of the AbstractSingleton class and your test case should work fine.
With DI, your code will become more testable.

can't cast to implemented interface

i'm very confused...
I have a class which directly implements an interface:
public class Device implements AutocompleteResult
{...}
Here is proof that I'm looking at the right variables:
Object match = ...;
log.debug(match.getClass()); // Outputs 'Device'
log.debug(match.getClass().getInterfaces()[0]); // Outputs 'AutocompleteResult'
Yet when I try to cast an instance of the class to the interface:
AutocompleteResult result = (AutocompleteResult) match;
I get a ClassCastException!
ClassCastException: Device cannot be cast to AutocompleteResult
Also, isAssignableFrom returns false and i'm not sure why:
log.debug(AutocompleteResult.class.isAssignableFrom(Device.class));
from the doc:
Determines if the class or interface represented by this Class object is either the same as, or is a superclass or superinterface of, the class or interface represented by the specified Class parameter.
Shouldn't I always be able to cast a object to an interface its class implements?
Thanks.
This can happen if two different classloaders load a class named AutocompleteResult.
These two classes are then treated as entirely different classes, even if they have the same package and name (and even implementation/fields/methods).
A common cause for this is if you use some kind of plugin system and both your base classes and the plugin classes provide the same class.
To check for this issue print the value returned by Class.getClassLoader() on both offending classes (i.e. the class of the interface implemented by Device and the result of AutocompleteResult.class).
AKA when Java apparently doesn't Java.
I hit this problem recently with Play Framework 2.6.3, what helped me was this:
https://www.playframework.com/documentation/2.6.x/ThreadPools#Application-class-loader
I leave this info here for the people that might have the same problem.
To make it clearer, what helps is:
Injecting Application on an Eager Singleton and then using its classloader to load the classes I was having issues with.
To make it clearer
public class Module {
#Override
public void configure {
bind(TheClassLoaderLoader.class).asEagerSingleton()
public static class TheClassLoaderLoader {
#Inject
public TheClassLoaderLoader( Application application) {
ClassLoader classloader = application.classloader();
Class<?> interfaceClass = classloader.loadClass(InterfaceClass.class.getName());
classloader.loadClass(ImplementsInterfaceClass.class.getName()).asSubclass(interfaceClass);
The example here https://playframework.com/documentation/2.6.x/JavaDependencyInjection#Configurable-bindings
That uses Environment often throws a frustrating ClassNotFoundException
Cheers

Java: Factory method with reflection?

My factory class has a collection of classes, I don't want that dependency, when I add a subclass of SuperClass I need the factory file to stay unchanged
edit:
My factory class has to return all Superclass's subclasses instances, but I can't have a collections of them (or their names) because that's means I will have to change the Factory file whenever I add a new subclass!
package reflection;
public final class Factory {
private final SuperClass[] subclasses_collection
= {new SubClass1(), new SubClass2() /* ...SubClassN */};
public final SuperClass[] getAllSubClasses() {
return subclasses_collection;
}
}
instead of
new SubClass1()
do something like this
Class clazz = Class.forName("SubClass1");
Object subclass1 = clazz.newInstance();
if you want to pass arguments to the constructor, consult this article, section Creating New Objects
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/ALT/Reflection/
To find all the subclasses of a given class, I would check out this java world site. It goes through a package, loads the classes, and tests them to see if there are any subclasses.
If you want to search for all subclasses of a class, you can use reflection, as Jeffrey says. However, rather than writing the code to do that yourself, or copy-and-pasting it from some random article, i would use ResolverUtil from the Stripes web framework, which does exactly what you want (and more!).
An alternative to classpath scanning would be to build up a registry at runtime. You could create a base class like this:
public abstract class SuperClass {
private static final Set<Class<? extends SuperClass>> SUB_CLASSES = new HashSet<Class<? extends SuperClass>>();
/* instance initializer */ {
SUB_CLASSES.put(getClass());
}
}
Every subclass of that which is instantiated will add itself to the set of subclasses. Your factory can then use that set. All you have to do is ensure that all the subclasses are instantiated at some point - perhaps using a configuration file, or through startup actions of other parts of your system.

Categories