[ Groovy Doc ] ExpandoMetaClass - Dynamic method/property name creation (4)

Source From Here 
Preface 
Since Groovy allows you to use Strings as property names this in turns allows you to dynamically create method and property names at runtime. 

The Basics 
To create a method with a dynamic name simply use Groovy's feature of reference property names as strings. You can combine this with Groovy's string interpolation (Gstring) to create method and property names on the fly: 

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1. class Person {  
2.    String name = "Fred"  
3. }  
4.   
5. def methodNames = ["Bob", "John"]  
6.   
7. for(name in methodNames)  
8. {  
9.     // Dynamically adding Method:changeNameToBob to Person class  
10.     Person.metaClass."changeNameTo${name}" = {-> delegate.name = name }  
11.       
12.     def p = new Person()  
13.     printf("Change name from %s", p.name)         
14.     p."changeNameTo${name}"()  
15.     printf(" to %s\n", p.name)  
16. }  

Execution result: 

Change name from Fred to Bob
Change name from Fred to John

The same concept can be applied to static methods and properties. 

A more elaborate example 
In Grails we have a concept of dynamic codecs, classes that can encode and decode data. These classes are called HTMLCodec, JavaScriptCodec etc. an example of which can be seen below: 

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1. import org.springframework.web.util.HtmlUtils  
2. class HTMLCodec {  
3.     static encode = { theTarget ->  
4.         HtmlUtils.htmlEscape(theTarget.toString())  
5.     }  
6.   
7.     static decode = { theTarget ->  
8.         HtmlUtils.htmlUnescape(theTarget.toString())  
9.     }  
10. }  

So what we do with these classes is to evaluate the convention and add "encodeAsXXX" methods to class MyCls based on the first part of the name of the codec class such as "encodeAsHTML". The pseudo code to achieve this is below: 

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1. package test  
2.   
3. /** 
4. * Scans all classes accessible from the context class loader which belong to the given package and subpackages. 
5. * 
6. * @param packageName The base package 
7. * @return The classes 
8. * @throws ClassNotFoundException 
9. * @throws IOException 
10. */  
11. private static ArrayList getClasses(String packageName)  
12.         throws ClassNotFoundException, IOException {  
13.     ClassLoader classLoader = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader();  
14.     assert classLoader != null;  
15.     String path = packageName.replace('.', '/');  
16.     Enumeration resources = classLoader.getResources(path);  
17.     List dirs = new ArrayList();  
18.     while (resources.hasMoreElements()) {  
19.         URL resource = resources.nextElement();  
20.         dirs.add(new File(resource.getFile()));  
21.     }  
22.     ArrayList classes = new ArrayList();  
23.     for (File directory : dirs) {  
24.         classes.addAll(findClasses(directory, packageName));  
25.     }  
26.     return classes  
27. }  
28.   
29. /** 
30. * Recursive method used to find all classes in a given directory and subdirs. 
31. * 
32. * @param directory   The base directory 
33. * @param packageName The package name for classes found inside the base directory 
34. * @return The classes 
35. * @throws ClassNotFoundException 
36. */  
37. private static List findClasses(File directory, String packageName) throws ClassNotFoundException {  
38.     List classes = new ArrayList();  
39.     if (!directory.exists()) {  
40.         return classes;  
41.     }  
42.     File[] files = directory.listFiles();  
43.     for (File file : files) {  
44.         if (file.isDirectory()) {  
45.             assert !file.getName().contains(".");  
46.             classes.addAll(findClasses(file, packageName + "." + file.getName()));  
47.         } else if (file.getName().endsWith(".class")) {  
48.             classes.add(Class.forName(packageName + '.' + file.getName().substring(0, file.getName().length() - 6)));  
49.         }  
50.     }  
51.     return classes;  
52. }  
53.     
54. class HTMLCodec {    
55.     static encode = { theTarget ->    
56.        printf("HTMLEncode: %s\n", theTarget)    
57.     }    
58.     
59.     static decode = { theTarget ->    
60.        printf("HTMLDecode: %s\n", theTarget)    
61.     }    
62. }   
63.   
64. class JohnCodec {  
65.     static encode = { theTarget ->  
66.         printf("JohnEncode: %s\n", theTarget)  
67.     }  
68.      
69.     static decode = { theTarget ->  
70.         printf("JohnDecode: %s\n", theTarget)  
71.     }  
72. }  
73.   
74.   
75. def clzs = getClasses("test")   
76.   
77.   
78. //def codecs = cl.getLoadedClasses().findAll(it.name.endsWith('Codec'))  
79. def codecs = clzs.findAll { it.name.endsWith('Codec') }  
80.   
81. codecs.each { codec ->  
82.     printf("\t[Info] Handle %s\n", codec.name)  
83.     String cname = codec.name.split("\\.")[-1]-'Codec'  
84.     MyClz.metaClass."encodeAs${cname}" = {codec.newInstance().encode(delegate) }  
85.     MyClz.metaClass."decodeFrom${cname}" = {codec.newInstance().decode(delegate) }  
86. }  
87.   
88. class MyClz  
89. {  
90.     def name  
91.       
92.     @Override  
93.     public String toString(){return name}  
94. }  
95.   
96. MyClz mc = new MyClz(name:"test")  
97. mc.encodeAsJohn()  
98. mc.decodeFromJohn()  

Execution Result: 

[Info] Handle test.HTMLCodec
[Info] Handle test.JohnCodec
JohnEncode: test
JohnDecode: test

Supplement 
* Get All Classes Within A Package 
* Strings and GString