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POidiomatic property changed notification in scala?
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copied!<p>I'm trying to find a cleaner alternative (that is idiomatic to Scala) to the kind of thing you see with data-binding in WPF/silverlight data-binding - that is, implementing INotifyPropertyChanged. First, some background:</p> <p>In .Net WPF or silverlight applications, you have the concept of two-way data-binding (that is, binding the value of some element of the UI to a .net property of the DataContext in such a way that changes to the UI element affect the property, and vise versa. One way to enable this is to implement the INotifyPropertyChanged interface in your DataContext. Unfortunately, this introduces a lot of boilerplate code for any property you add to the "ModelView" type. Here is how it might look in Scala:</p> <pre><code>trait IDrawable extends INotifyPropertyChanged { protected var drawOrder : Int = 0 def DrawOrder : Int = drawOrder def DrawOrder_=(value : Int) { if(drawOrder != value) { drawOrder = value OnPropertyChanged("DrawOrder") } } protected var visible : Boolean = true def Visible : Boolean = visible def Visible_=(value: Boolean) = { if(visible != value) { visible = value OnPropertyChanged("Visible") } } def Mutate() : Unit = { if(Visible) { DrawOrder += 1 // Should trigger the PropertyChanged "Event" of INotifyPropertyChanged trait } } } </code></pre> <p>For the sake of space, let's assume the INotifyPropertyChanged type is a trait that manages a list of callbacks of type (AnyRef, String) => Unit, and that OnPropertyChanged is a method that invokes all those callbacks, passing "this" as the AnyRef, and the passed-in String). This would just be an event in C#. </p> <p>You can immediately see the problem: that's a ton of boilerplate code for just two properties. I've always wanted to write something like this instead:</p> <pre><code>trait IDrawable { val Visible = new ObservableProperty[Boolean]('Visible, true) val DrawOrder = new ObservableProperty[Int]('DrawOrder, 0) def Mutate() : Unit = { if(Visible) { DrawOrder += 1 // Should trigger the PropertyChanged "Event" of ObservableProperty class } } } </code></pre> <p>I know that I can easily write it like this, if ObservableProperty[T] has Value/Value_= methods (this is the method I'm using now):</p> <pre><code>trait IDrawable { // on a side note, is there some way to get a Symbol representing the Visible field // on the following line, instead of hard-coding it in the ObservableProperty // constructor? val Visible = new ObservableProperty[Boolean]('Visible, true) val DrawOrder = new ObservableProperty[Int]('DrawOrder, 0) def Mutate() : Unit = { if(Visible.Value) { DrawOrder.Value += 1 } } } // given this implementation of ObservableProperty[T] in my library // note: IEvent, Event, and EventArgs are classes in my library for // handling lists of callbacks - they work similarly to events in C# class PropertyChangedEventArgs(val PropertyName: Symbol) extends EventArgs("") class ObservableProperty[T](val PropertyName: Symbol, private var value: T) { protected val propertyChanged = new Event[PropertyChangedEventArgs] def PropertyChanged: IEvent[PropertyChangedEventArgs] = propertyChanged def Value = value; def Value_=(value: T) { if(this.value != value) { this.value = value propertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(PropertyName)) } } } </code></pre> <p>But is there any way to implement the first version using implicits or some other feature/idiom of Scala to make ObservableProperty instances function as if they were regular "properties" in scala, without needing to call the Value methods? The only other thing I can think of is something like this, which is more verbose than either of the above two versions, but is still less verbose than the original:</p> <pre><code>trait IDrawable { private val visible = new ObservableProperty[Boolean]('Visible, false) def Visible = visible.Value def Visible_=(value: Boolean): Unit = { visible.Value = value } private val drawOrder = new ObservableProperty[Int]('DrawOrder, 0) def DrawOrder = drawOrder.Value def DrawOrder_=(value: Int): Unit = { drawOrder.Value = value } def Mutate() : Unit = { if(Visible) { DrawOrder += 1 } } } </code></pre>

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