Instantiate namespaced javascript class - clojurescript

I want to use google maps api v3, and it needs me to instantiate google.maps.LatLng. Using clojurescript this is what I do:
(ns foocljs.core)
(LatLng. (.-maps js/google) 100 100)
I got an error undefined is not a function, this is the culprit:
new foocljs.core.LatLng(foocljs.core.google.maps, // ... another args
I'm guessing this is because the compiler think that LatLng. is clojure namespaced class. How to deal with this? Thanks.

Using js/a.b.c.d is a bad practice and is likely to break in future versions of the compiler (because it is not a clojure compatible version of interop from what I know)
The good way would be:
(def LatLng (.. js/google -maps -LatLng))
(LatLng. 100 100)

Silly me, I can just do this:
(js/google.maps.LatLng. 100 100)

Related

Why does clojurescript call some js functions with "-" and others not?

Some functions in clojurescript start with a hyphen - like .-onload injs/window context or .-fillstyle in canvas context while others like .getElementById do not start with a -hyphen. Why is this peculiarity? What am i missing here?
I do believe the .- signifies that you’re accessing a property. Read more about js-interop here http://www.spacjer.com/blog/2014/09/12/clojurescript-javascript-interop

Clojurescript Add an Event Listener

(defn domready [handler]
(.addEventListener js/window "DOMContentLoaded" handler))
I borrowed this code from here. The problem is I don't totally understand what's going on. JS interop is still a bit of a mystery to me.
.addEventListener
So this is clearly a procedure call, but it's kind of generic. It's like Clojurescript took everything that was inside an object, took it out, and you use it to call that method on "objects". As long as that "object" has the ".addEventListener" property it will call this. Is that what it's doing? Why not use a keyword instead? like (:addEventListener domElement) that seems more logical to me.
js/window
What is this? Is it a namespace or an object? Are they the same thing?
"DOMContentLoaded"
A string, that's familiar.
handler
Also familiar, but does it have a notion of this? Not that I'm really going to miss this.
.addEventListener
So this is clearly a procedure call, but it's kind
of generic. It's like Clojurescript took everything that was inside an
object, took it out, and you use it to call that method on "objects".
As long as that "object" has the ".addEventListener" property it will
call this. Is that what it's doing? Why not use a keyword instead?
like (:addEventListener domElement) that seems more logical to me.
Your mental model about how this works is mostly fine. What it does when it compiles is move the function name to be run as a method on the first argument.
(.method obj ...args) get's transformed to obj.method(...args)
This type of interop comes from the parent language Clojure.
On why do we have an explicit version of calling the function that's not Clojure idiomatic, I think the idea is to have clear separation between what is native Clojure code with Clojure semantics (immutability, friendly to CLJ data structures, etc) and what is interoperating with the host environment (mutable, not friendly to CLJ data structures, etc).
In my opinion it is better to have clear separation between those two given how different the semantics of CLJS and the host platforms are. For me explicitness is better than implicit in this case (it is easy to spot looking at the code what is JS code in CLJS, and what is pure CLJS).
js/window
What is this? Is it a namespace or an object? Are they the same thing?
Both, js/ is accessing the namespace js, which is where CLJS puts the JS namespace (since there is only one and global). window is just grabbing the window variable from the js namespace.
This is no different from how you access variables in other namespaces in CLJS. If you (def a 1) in (ns cljs.test) and then run cljs.test/a that will give you 1. Same form, ns/something-in-that-ns.
"DOMContentLoaded"
A string, that's familiar.
\o/
handler
Also familiar, but does it have a notion of this? Not that I'm really going to miss this.
Not sure what this has to do with handler. It is just a higher order function passed into domready as a parameter, like you would do in JS: function domready (onReady) { window.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", onReady) }
I hope this helps, if you want to try it out live and learn some more, maybe visit the Talking with JS on the Diving into ClojureScript tutorial, or maybe check this section of the lt-cljs-tutorial.
I'm just learning clojurescript so I don't really know if it is the correct answer but I've done it in the following way:
(defn handler [] (js/console.log "ready"))
(js/document.addEventListener "DOMContentLoaded" handler)
which is then translated to
cljs.user.handler = (function cljs$user$handler(){
return console.log("ready");
});
document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",cljs.user.handler);
to check how clojurescript translate code I've used KLIMPSE http://app.klipse.tech/
.addEventListener is a method call on the global Javascript object js/window. This method call takes two parameters: "DOMContentLoaded" and handler.
When you are doing interop (either Java or Javascript) you really are calling methods on objects. There are macros behind what is happening here. What is straight after the ( is a verb, which I usually think of as a function call (although it might also be a macro or a special form). When doing interop what comes after the verb is the instance, and after that the parameters.
If it were straight Javascript it would look like this:
function domready(handler){
window.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded" handler);
}

Clojurescript: Create New Object from Namespace

I'm relatively new to ClojureScript and having never worked in a lisp-like language before, I must say that the documentation is rather... lacking. I just want to transform the following JavaScript statement into ClojureScript:
var obj = new namespace1.namespace2.SomeObject();
I know that you can create new instances of an object in cljs by writing something like
(SomeObject.)
but trying
(def obj (namespace1/namespace2/SomeObject.))
didn't compile. What should I be doing instead?
Have a look at this answer, it is exactly the same question:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/23653459/1400662
Pasted here:
Using js/a.b.c.d is a bad practice and is likely to break in future versions of the compiler (because it is not a clojure compatible version of interop from what I know)
The good way would be:
(def LatLng (.. js/google -maps -LatLng))
(LatLng. 100 100)

How can I get the Clojurescript namespace I am in from within a clojurescript program?

How can I get the Clojurescript namespace I am in from within a clojurescript program? I want to do this do provide certain debug information (it only needs to work in dev mode)
Namespaces are not first class in ClojureScript as they are in Clojure. There's absolutely no way to get the namespace at runtime. It is possible to get this information at macroexpansion time if you're not afraid of accessing some the ClojureScript compiler internals. There should probably be an API for this - but we're not there yet.
You can get the name of the current namespace with this trick, which takes advantage of :: creating a namespaced symbol for you in the current namespace:
(namespace ::x)
You probably don't want to use that value for anything, because if the code is compiled the internal representation will change. If you want to live dangerously, then in the browser you can then access the js object that holds the namespace like this:
(reduce (fn [ns n] (aget ns n))
js/window
(clojure.string/split (namespace ::x) #"\."))
During macro-expansion you can access &env and retrieve namespace information from the :ns key like this:
(:ns &env)
(:name (:ns &env))
This only works at macro-expansion/compile time and not at runtime.
You can try this
(apply str (drop-last 2 (str `_)))

Custom Exceptions in Clojure?

I've been trying to create a user-defined exception in Clojure, and have been having all sorts of problems. I tried the method outlined here:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Clojure_Programming/Concepts#User-Defined_Exceptions
(gen-and-load-class 'user.MyException :extends Exception)
But that doesn't seem to work in Clojure 1.2 (or I'm doing something wrong...). My environment is Clojure 1.2, Emacs, and lein swank.
Thanks for your help!
Rather than generating custom classes, there are two much simpler ways to use custom exceptions:
Use slingshot - this provides custom throw+ and catch+ macros that let you throw and catch any object, as well as exceptions.
In clojure 1.4 and above, you can use clojure.core/ex-info and clojure.core/ex-data to generate and catch a clojure.lang.ExceptionInfo class, which wraps a message and a map of data.
Using this is straightforward:
(throw (ex-info "My hovercraft is full of eels"
{:type :python-exception, :cause :eels}))
(try (...)
(catch clojure.lang.ExceptionInfo e
(if (= :eels (-> e ex-data :cause))
(println "beware the shrieking eels!")
(println "???"))))
Or in a midje test:
(fact "should throw some eels"
(...)
=> (throws clojure.lang.ExceptionInfo
#(= :eels (-> % ex-data :cause))))
Make a file src/user/MyException.clj (where src is on CLASSPATH) containing:
(ns user.MyException
(:gen-class :extends java.lang.Exception))
Check the value of *compile-path* at the REPL. Make sure this directory exists and is on CLASSPATH. Create the directory if it doesn't exist; Clojure won't do so for you.
user> *compile-path*
"/home/user/foo/target/classes/"
user> (System/getProperty "java.class.path")
".......:/home/user/foo/target/classes/:......."
Compile your class:
user> (compile 'user.MyException)
user.MyException
If it worked, in *compile-path* you should now have files something like this:
/home/user/foo/target/
/home/user/foo/target/classes
/home/user/foo/target/classes/user
/home/user/foo/target/classes/user/MyException.class
/home/user/foo/target/classes/user/MyException__init.class
/home/user/foo/target/classes/user/MyException$loading__4410__auto__.class
Restart your Clojure REPL / JVM to load these classes. Again, make sure these new class files are on CLASSPATH. Now you should be able to use your class:
user> (user.MyException.)
#<MyException user.MyException>
FWIW, unless you are creating a custom exception for interop reasons you may want to consider using clojure.contrib.condition instead. It comes with a precompiled custom exception that you piggy-back custom data onto using it's API. I've been able to avoid creating many custom exceptions by using it instead. The docs are here:
http://clojure.github.com/clojure-contrib/condition-api.html