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Monkey Forums/Monkey Programming/Categories

Samah

(Posted 2012) [#1]

Mark,

How much work would it be to add Objective-C style categories to Monkey?
Basically something like this (keywords are just a suggestion):

' in another module, possibly someone else's code:
Class Foo
  Method SomeMethod()
    Print "Hello"
  End
End

' in the dev's code after importing the other module
' note that "Foo" here is not a new class, and refers to the existing one
Class Foo Category Bar
  Method AnotherMethod()
    Print "World"
  End
End

' code that uses it
Function Main()
  Local f:Foo = New Foo
  f.SomeMethod() ' works
  f.AnotherMethod() ' works, because the Bar category gives all Foo instances that extra method
End

I ask because this would be a nice roundabout way of extending parts of Mojo without having to hack or fork it. Specifically, it would be a way for me to add some field accessors to the Image class for MonkeyLua. :)

Not sure how useful this would be for other developers, but it's still a cool feature to have.

Edit: For non-Objective-C programmers: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/cocoa/conceptual/objectivec/chapters/occategories.html
I believe they're similar to extension points in .NET