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I am using TreeHugger to generate code at runtime. I could not find many documents related to it. My question is, if I generate classes using treehugger, will I be able to access those classes in future?

To be precise: I want to read data coming from files like CSV and create classes at runtime . Can I use that class in future, say in the next class generated at runtime.

I am really new to scala, please forgive if I am not clear in explaining.

Thanks a lot!

Dmytro Mitin
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ssri
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1 Answers1

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I've done something similar, so I'll share what I've learned:

Treehugger ultimately generates code (strings) at runtime to be used in a subsequent, separate run (or I suppose to be eval'd at runtime, but I never got that to work).

So the course of action depends on what you mean by "runtime":

  1. Are your .csv files only available at runtime? If you have access to the files at compile time (as is often the case), then are examples of your two options: experimental (scala macros) or traditional (sbt plugin) -- both approaches are similar but have subtle pros and cons.

  2. If you only have access to the files at runtime, but still need to generate and "type" the classes and make the compiler expect them, then it seems to me that somebody has made a bad design mistake! But if you find yourself stuck in this circumstance, then it is possible to define and load classes at runtime with a bytecode-engineering library and some type-checker black magic (runtime type provider).

Julian Peeters
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  • Thank you @Julian Peeters, your second option is what I need ! It helped me rule out the possibility of using TreeHugger to achieve what I want. I will try to define and load classes at runtime. – ssri Nov 19 '15 at 12:34