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Clojure for Java Developers

You're reading from  Clojure for Java Developers

Product type Book
Published in Feb 2016
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781785281501
Pages 156 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages

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...

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