Scala Lift - Dynamically called function - function

Question

I've got a function which loads various models, and currently have this kind of setup:
if(message == "user") {
var model = User.findAll(
("room" -> "demo")
)
} else if (message == "chat") {
var model = Chat.findAll(
("room" -> "demo")
)
}
This is really clunky as I aim to add lots more models in future, I know in javascript you can do something like this:
var models = {
"user" : load_user,
"chat" : load_chat
}
Where "load_user" and "load_chat" would load the respective models, and so I can streamline the whole thing by doing:
var model = models[message]();
Is there a way I can do something similar in Scala, so I can have a simple function which just passes the "message" var to a List or Object of some kind to return the relevant data?
Thanks in advance for any help, much appreciated :)

Answer 1

In Scala you can do:
val model = message match {
case "user" => loadUser() // custom function
case "chat" => loadChat() // another custom function
case _ => handleFailure()
}
You can as well work with a Map like you did in your JavaScript example like so:
scala> def loadUser() = 1 // custom function
loadUser: Int
scala> def loadChat() = 2 // another custom function
loadChat: Int
scala> val foo = Map("user" -> loadUser _, "chat" -> loadChat _)
foo: scala.collection.immutable.Map[java.lang.String,() => Int] = Map(user -> <function0>, chat -> <function0>)
scala> foo("user")()
res1: Int = 1
Pay attention to the use of "_" in order to prevent evaluation of loadUser or loadChat when creating the map.
Personally, I'd stick with pattern matching.