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at:tutorial:symbiosis

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Symbiosis with Java

AmbientTalk is fully implemented in Java and runs on top of the JVM. Java provides an extensive class library that can be accessed from within AmbientTalk. In other words, Java classes can be instantiated and messages can be sent to Java objects from within AmbientTalk.

The reverse, namely that AmbientTalk objects can accessed from within Java is also possible. AmbientTalk objects are reified at the Java level such that the Java language can be used to send messages and create new objects.

This chapter explains how both sides of this symbiotic relationship between Java and AmbientTalk can be leveraged. The goal of this symbiotic relationship is to complement the advantages of both languages and to alleviate their disadvantages. For example, AmbientTalk can use the extensive class library from Java and Java can benefit from AmbientTalk's superior concurrency abstractions.

Symbiosis Architecture

AmbientTalk has been implemented in Java. Because of this, Java plays two roles: it is both a symbiont language and the implementation language of AmbientTalk (and hence of the linguistic symbiosis itself). Figure \ref{fig:wrappers} illustrates the different objects that play a part in the AmbientTalk/Java symbiosis, according to the implementation model of Inter-language reflection. AmbientTalk objects are physically implemented as Java objects. This is illustrated by means of the ``represents'' relationship. To enable symbiosis, additional objects are required which denote the appearance of objects from one language in the other language. At the implementation level, such appearances are implemented as wrapper objects, which wrap an object from a different language and which perform the protocol mapping which translates between the semantics of the symbiont languages.

Symbiotic representation of AmbientTalk and Java Objects

Accessing Java classes

The complete set of classes that are available in the class path of a running JVM are accessible from AmbientTalk through the jlobby object. For example, referencing the Java Vector class from within AmbientTalk can be accessed with:

>def Vector := jlobby.java.util.Vector
>><java:class java.util.Vector>

Creating Java objects

Java classes can be instantiated in AmbientTalk similar to how AmbientTalk objects are instantiated, i.e. by sending new to the wrapper for the class, which returns a wrapped instance of the Java class. Arguments to new are passed as arguments to the Java constructor. For example, in the snippet code below new method is invoked on the class Vector.

>def aVector := Vector.new()
>><java:[]>

All constructors defined in the corresponding Java class can be accessed too. For example, the Vector class also has a constructor that takes an initial capacity as its argument. This constructor can be called using an integer as the argument of new.

>aVector := Vector.new(30)
>><java:[]>

Invoking methods on Java objects

Java objects appear as AmbientTalk objects whose field and method slots correspond to public instance-level fields and methods in the Java object. These are accessed or invoked as if they were plain AmbientTalk slots. In the example, this means that all public methods and fields of the Vector class are accessible from within AmbientTalk. Hence, to add elements to the vector we can simply invoke the add method on the AmbientTalk wrapper object.

>1.to: 10 do: { |i| aVector.add(i) }
>>nil
>aVector
>><java:[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]>

The AmbientTalk/Java symbiosis treats message sends from AmbientTalk to Java as follows: if a message is sent to a class wrapper, only static fields or methods of the Java class are considered. If the message is sent to an instance wrapper, only non-static fields or methods of the Java class of the wrapped object are considered. If the AmbientTalk selector uniquely identifies a method (i.e. no overloading on the method name is performed in Java), the matching method is invoked. All AmbientTalk arguments are converted to Java objects by means of the data mapping described in the previous section. The Java return value is mapped back to an AmbientTalk value. If the Java method is overloaded based on arity (i.e. each overloaded method takes a different number of arguments), the number of arguments in the AmbientTalk invocation can be used to identify a unique Java method. Hence, overloading based on arity does not require special attention. If the Java method is overloaded based solely on argument types, the interpreter may derive that the actual arguments can only be converted from AmbientTalk to the appropriate Java types for one of the matching overloaded signatures. Again, if only one match remains, the unique match is invoked. In the remaining case in which the actual AmbientTalk arguments satisfy more than one overloaded method signature, the symbiotic invocation fails. It is then the AmbientTalk programmer's responsibility to provide explicit type information in the method invocation.

Overloading

Concurrency

Distribution

Using Java wrappers

Symbionts

Conversions

Thread-Actor Symbiosis

at/tutorial/symbiosis.1182242877.txt.gz · Last modified: 2007/06/19 10:51 (external edit)