Companion Objects

A companion object in Scala is an object that’s declared in the same file as a class, and has the same name as the class. For instance, when the following code is saved in a file named Pizza.scala, the Pizza object is considered to be a companion object to the Pizza class:

class Pizza {
}

object Pizza {
}

This has several benefits. First, a companion object and its class can access each other’s private members (fields and methods). This means that the printFilename method in this class will work because it can access the HiddenFilename field in its companion object:

class SomeClass {
    def printFilename() = {
        println(SomeClass.HiddenFilename)
    }
}

object SomeClass {
    private val HiddenFilename = "/tmp/foo.bar"
}

A companion object offers much more functionality than this, and we’ll demonstrate a few of its most important features in the rest of this lesson.

Creating new instances without the new keyword

You probably noticed in some examples in this book that you can create new instances of certain classes without having to use the new keyword before the class name, as in this example:

val zenMasters = List(
    Person("Nansen"),
    Person("Joshu")
)

This functionality comes from the use of companion objects. What happens is that when you define an apply method in a companion object, it has a special meaning to the Scala compiler. There’s a little syntactic sugar baked into Scala that lets you type this code:

val p = Person("Fred Flinstone")

and during the compilation process the compiler turns that code into this code:

val p = Person.apply("Fred Flinstone")

The apply method in the companion object acts as a Factory Method, and Scala’s syntactic sugar lets you use the syntax shown, creating new class instances without using the new keyword.

Enabling that functionality

To demonstrate how this feature works, here’s a class named Person along with an apply method in its companion object:

class Person {
    var name = ""
}

object Person {
    def apply(name: String): Person = {
        var p = new Person
        p.name = name
        p
    }
}

To test this code, paste both the class and the object in the Scala REPL at the same time using this technique:

• Start the Scala REPL from your command line (with the scala command)
• Type :paste and press the [Enter] key
• The REPL should respond with this text:

// Entering paste mode (ctrl-D to finish)

• Now paste both the class and object into the REPL at the same time
• Press Ctrl-D to finish the “paste” process

When that process works you should see this output in the REPL:

defined class Person
defined object Person

The REPL requires that a class and its companion object be entered at the same time with this technique.

Now you can create a new instance of the Person class like this:

val p = Person.apply("Fred Flinstone")

That code directly calls apply in the companion object. More importantly, you can also create a new instance like this:

val p = Person("Fred Flinstone")

and this:

val zenMasters = List(
    Person("Nansen"),
    Person("Joshu")
)

To be clear, what happens in this process is:

• You type something like val p = Person("Fred")
• The Scala compiler sees that there is no new keyword before Person
• The compiler looks for an apply method in the companion object of the Person class that matches the type signature you entered
• If it finds an apply method, it uses it; if it doesn’t, you get a compiler error

Creating multiple constructors

You can create multiple apply methods in a companion object to provide multiple constructors. The following code shows how to create both one- and two-argument constructors. Because we introduced Option values in the previous lesson, this example also shows how to use Option in a situation like this:

class Person {
    var name: Option[String] = None
    var age: Option[Int] = None
    override def toString = s"$name, $age"
}

object Person {

    // a one-arg constructor
    def apply(name: Option[String]): Person = {
        var p = new Person
        p.name = name
        p
    }

    // a two-arg constructor
    def apply(name: Option[String], age: Option[Int]): Person = {
        var p = new Person
        p.name = name
        p.age = age
        p
    }

}

If you paste that code into the REPL as before, you’ll see that you can create new Person instances like this:

val p1 = Person(Some("Fred"))
val p2 = Person(None)

val p3 = Person(Some("Wilma"), Some(33))
val p4 = Person(Some("Wilma"), None)

When you print those values you’ll see these results:

val p1: Person = Some(Fred), None
val p2: Person = None, None
val p3: Person = Some(Wilma), Some(33)
val p4: Person = Some(Wilma), None

When running tests like this, it’s best to clear the REPL’s memory. To do this, use the :reset command inside the REPL before using the :paste command.

Adding an unapply method

Just as adding an apply method in a companion object lets you construct new object instances, adding an unapply lets you de-construct object instances. We’ll demonstrate this with an example.

Here’s a different version of a Person class and a companion object:

class Person(var name: String, var age: Int)

object Person {
    def unapply(p: Person): String = s"${p.name}, ${p.age}"
}

Notice that the companion object defines an unapply method. That method takes an input parameter of the type Person, and returns a String. To test the unapply method manually, first create a new Person instance:

val p = new Person("Lori", 29)

Then test unapply like this:

val result = Person.unapply(p)

This is what the unapply result looks like in the REPL:

scala> val result = Person.unapply(p)
result: String = Lori, 29

As shown, unapply de-constructs the Person instance it’s given. In Scala, when you put an unapply method in a companion object, it’s said that you’ve created an extractor method, because you’ve created a way to extract the fields out of the object.

unapply can return different types

In that example unapply returns a String, but you can write it to return anything. Here’s an example that returns the two fields in a tuple:

class Person(var name: String, var age: Int)

object Person {
    def unapply(p: Person): Tuple2[String, Int] = (p.name, p.age)
}

Here’s what that method looks like in the REPL:

scala> val result = Person.unapply(p)
result: (String, Int) = (Lori,29)

Because this unapply method returns the class fields as a tuple, you can also do this:

scala> val (name, age) = Person.unapply(p)
name: String = Lori
age: Int = 29

unapply extractors in the real world

A benefit of using unapply to create an extractor is that if you follow the proper Scala conventions, they enable a convenient form of pattern-matching in match expressions.

We’ll discuss that more in the next lesson, but as you’ll see, the story gets even better: You rarely need to write an unapply method yourself. Instead, what happens is that you get apply and unapply methods for free when you create your classes as case classes rather than as the “regular” Scala classes you’ve seen so far. We’ll dive into case classes in the next lesson.

Key points

The key points of this lesson are:

• A companion object is an object that’s declared in the same file as a class, and has the same name as the class
• A companion object and its class can access each other’s private members
• A companion object’s apply method lets you create new instances of a class without using the new keyword
• A companion object’s unapply method lets you de-construct an instance of a class into its individual components