Book Image

Clojure for Java Developers

Book Image

Clojure for Java Developers

Overview of this book

We have reached a point where machines are not getting much faster, software projects need to be delivered quickly, and high quality in software is more demanding as ever. We need to explore new ways of writing software that helps achieve those goals. Clojure offers a new possibility of writing high quality, multi-core software faster than ever, without having to leave your current platform. Clojure for Java developers aims at unleashing the true potential of the Clojure language to use it in your projects. The book begins with the installation and setup of the Clojure environment before moving on to explore the language in-depth. Get acquainted with its various features such as functional programming, concurrency, etc. with the help of example projects. Additionally, you will also, learn how the tooling works, and how it interacts with the Java environment. By the end of this book, you will have a firm grip on Clojure and its features, and use them effectively to write more robust programs.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Clojure for Java Developers
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Multimethods in Clojure


Multimethods are similar to interfaces, they allow you to write a common contract and then a family of functions can fulfill that interface with a specific implementation.

They are extremely flexible, as you will see they grant you a very fine control over what function is going to get invoked for a specific data object.

Multimethods consist of three parts:

  • A function (or method) declaration

  • A dispatch function

  • Each possible implementation of the function

One of the most interesting features of multimethods is that you can implement new functions for already existing types without having to write wrappers around your currently existing object.

The multimethod declaration works the same way as the interface; you define a common contract for the polymorphic function, as shown:

(defmulti name docstring? attr-map? dispatch-fn& options)

The defmulti macro defines the contract for your multimethod, it consists of:

  • The multimethod's name

  • An optional doctstring (this is the documentation...