Dynamic mixin in Scala - is it possible?

I believe this is impossible to do strictly at runtime, because traits are mixed in at compile-time into new Java classes. If you mix a trait with an existing class anonymously you can see, looking at the classfiles and using javap, that an anonymous, name-mangled class is created by scalac:

class Foo {
  def bar = 5
}

trait Spam {
  def eggs = 10
}

object Main {
  def main(args: Array[String]) = {
    println((new Foo with Spam).eggs)
  }
}

scalac Mixin.scala; ls *.class returns

Foo.class Main$.class Spam$class.class Main$$anon$1.class Main.class Spam.class

While javap Main\$\$anon\$1 returns

Compiled from "mixin.scala"

public final class Main$$anon$1 extends Foo implements Spam{
    public int eggs();
    public Main$$anon$1();
}

As you can see, scalac creates a new anonymous class that is loaded at runtime; presumably the method eggs in this anonymous class creates an instance of Spam$class and calls eggs on it, but I'm not completely sure.

However, we can do a pretty hacky trick here:

import scala.tools.nsc._;
import scala.reflect.Manifest

object DynamicClassLoader {
  private var id = 0
  def uniqueId = synchronized {  id += 1; "Klass" + id.toString }
}

class DynamicClassLoader extends 
    java.lang.ClassLoader(getClass.getClassLoader) {
  def buildClass[T, V](implicit t: Manifest[T], v: Manifest[V]) = {

    // Create a unique ID
    val id = DynamicClassLoader.uniqueId

    // what's the Scala code we need to generate this class?
    val classDef = "class %s extends %s with %s".
      format(id, t.toString, v.toString)

    println(classDef)

    // fire up a new Scala interpreter/compiler
    val settings = new Settings(null)
    val interpreter = new Interpreter(settings)

    // define this class
    interpreter.compileAndSaveRun("<anon>", classDef)

    // get the bytecode for this new class
    val bytes = interpreter.classLoader.getBytesForClass(id)

    // define the bytecode using this classloader; cast it to what we expect
    defineClass(id, bytes, 0, bytes.length).asInstanceOf[Class[T with V]]
  }

}


val loader = new DynamicClassLoader

val instance = loader.buildClass[Foo, Spam].newInstance
instance.bar
// Int = 5
instance.eggs
// Int = 10

Since you need to use the Scala compiler, AFAIK, this is probably close to the cleanest solution you could do to get this. It's quite slow, but memoization would probably help greatly.

This approach is pretty ridiculous, hacky, and goes against the grain of the language. I imagine all sorts of weirdo bugs could creep in; people who have used Java longer than me warn of the insanity that comes with messing around with classloaders.

I wanted to be able to construct Scala beans in my Spring application context, but I also wanted to be able to specify the mixins to be included in the constructed bean:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
  xmlns:scala="http://www.springframework.org/schema/scala"
  xsi:schemaLocation=...>

  <scala:bean class="org.cakesolutions.scala.services.UserService" >
    <scala:with trait="org.cakesolutions.scala.services.Mixin1" />
    <scala:with trait="org.cakesolutions.scala.services.Mixin2" />

    <scala:property name="dependency" value="Injected" />
  <scala:bean>
</beans>

The difficulty is that Class.forName function does not allow me to specify the mixins. In the end, I extended the above hacky solution to Scala 2.9.1. So, here it is in its full gory; including bits of Spring.

class ScalaBeanFactory(private val beanType: Class[_ <: AnyRef],
                       private val mixinTypes: Seq[Class[_ <: AnyRef]]) {
  val loader = new DynamicClassLoader
  val clazz = loader.buildClass(beanType, mixinTypes)

   def getTypedObject[T] = getObject.asInstanceOf[T]

   def getObject = {
     clazz.newInstance()
   }

   def getObjectType = null
   def isSingleton = true

object DynamicClassLoader {
  private var id = 0
  def uniqueId = synchronized {  id += 1; "Klass" + id.toString }
}

class DynamicClassLoader extends java.lang.ClassLoader(getClass.getClassLoader) {

  def buildClass(t: Class[_ <: AnyRef], vs: Seq[Class[_ <: AnyRef]]) = {
    val id = DynamicClassLoader.uniqueId

    val classDef = new StringBuilder

    classDef.append("class ").append(id)
    classDef.append(" extends ").append(t.getCanonicalName)
    vs.foreach(c => classDef.append(" with %s".format(c.getCanonicalName)))

    val settings = new Settings(null)
    settings.usejavacp.value = true
    val interpreter = new IMain(settings)


    interpreter.compileString(classDef.toString())


    val r = interpreter.classLoader.getResourceAsStream(id)
    val o = new ByteArrayOutputStream
    val b = new Array[Byte](16384)
    Stream.continually(r.read(b)).takeWhile(_ > 0).foreach(o.write(b, 0, _))
    val bytes = o.toByteArray

    defineClass(id, bytes, 0, bytes.length)
  }

}

The code cannot yet deal with constructors with parameters and does not copy annotations from the parent class’s constructor (should it do that?). However, it gives us a good starting point that is usable in the scala Spring namespace. Of course, don’t just take my word for it, verify it in a Specs2 specification:

class ScalaBeanFactorySpec extends Specification {

  "getTypedObject mixes-in the specified traits" in {
    val f1 = new ScalaBeanFactory(classOf[Cat],
                                  Seq(classOf[Speaking], classOf[Eating]))

    val c1 = f1.getTypedObject[Cat with Eating with Speaking]

    c1.isInstanceOf[Cat with Eating with Speaking] must_==(true)

    c1.speak    // in trait Speaking
    c1.eat      // in trait Eating
    c1.meow     // in class Cat
  }

}