Dynamic defdelegate - idea for contract shim modules

#1

I like using defdelegate along with @behaviours to make nice simple contract shim modules. The only gotcha is that defdelegate is a compile-time construct, so the module that is delegated to is fixed per-env upon compile.

I’ve put together a little experiment that mirrors defdelegate but enables runtime configuration of the delegated module…

It lets you define a contract module

defmodule SomeContract do
  use RuntimeDelegate, default: DefaultImpl

  @callback fun(binary, atom) :: term
  defdelegate fun(foo, bar)
end

defmodule DefaultImpl do
  @behaviour SomeContract

  def fun(foo, bar) do
    # Do the real thing
    {__MODULE__, foo, bar}
  end
end

defmodule AlternateImpl do
  @behaviour SomeContract

  def fun(foo, bar) do
    # Do it another way
    {__MODULE__, foo, bar}
  end
end

And then you can control it at runtime:

assert {DefaultImpl, "foo", :bar} = SomeContract.fun("foo", :bar)

Application.put_env(:contract, SomeContract, AlternateImpl)
assert {AlternateImpl, "foo", :bar} = SomeContract.fun("foo", :bar)

It could be used to avoid hitting APIs in tests, or to do controlled rollout of new code, etc…

It’s not a lot of code, just a little macro that re-uses some of the code for Kernel.defdelegate

defmodule RuntimeDelegate do
  defmodule DefDelegate do
    defmacro defdelegate(fun) do
      fun = Macro.escape(fun, unquote: true)
      quote bind_quoted: [fun: fun] do
        [{name, args, as, as_args}] = Kernel.Utils.defdelegate(fun, [])
        def unquote(name)(unquote_splicing(args)) do
          impl = Application.get_env(:contract, __MODULE__) || @default_impl
          unless impl, do: raise(ArgumentError, "No implementation found")
          impl.unquote(as)(unquote_splicing(as_args))
        end
      end
    end
  end

  defmacro __using__(opts) do
    quote bind_quoted: [opts: opts] do
      @default_impl opts[:default]
      import Kernel, except: [defdelegate: 2]
      import RuntimeDelegate.DefDelegate
    end
  end
end

Thought I’d toss it out there to see what folks thought… I think of it in the spirit of Jose’s article about explicit contracts: http://blog.plataformatec.com.br/2015/10/mocks-and-explicit-contracts/

4 Likes
#2

Thanks @binaryseed, I think this is great! I am following Jose’s post on mocks, but I struggle with swapping out contract implementations in a frictionless way (dependency injection sadly doesn’t work that well in my case). I recently discovered the defdelegate + @behaviours pattern, but in my particular case I need runtime config, so I was stuck. I believe this will solve my needs perfectly, so thanks for sharing!

I’m not sure if there are any gotchas or anti-patterns around this, so I am curious to hear what others think as well, and if I run into any trouble with it I will share.

#3

I did notice one potential issue - Kernel.Utils.defdelegate says it will be removed in v2.0

(Oh, and I only just now realized this is 2 years old. That might explain why I’m getting an error using it at the moment. The error is fixable if you remove the wrapping square brackets from the match of Kernel.Utils.defdelegate )

1 Like