Question

Lift uses a PartialFunction on their implementation of Comet Actors, and you usually end up with this on your class:

override def lowPriority: PartialFunction[Any,Unit] = {
  case MyCaseClass1(a)        => do something here
  case MyCaseClass2(a)        => do something here
  case AlwaysPresentCaseClass => default action
}

What I’d like to do, and I’m not sure if it is even possible is to split that Partial Function so that the last case can be moved into a trait.

So when I have a new comet actor I simply do:

class MyNewComet extends MyActorTrait {
  override def lowPriority: PartialFunction[Any,Unit] = {
    case MyCaseClass1(a)        => do something here
    case MyCaseClass2(a)        => do something here
  }
}

And Somehow the trait MyActorTrait will have the missing

case AlwaysPresentCaseClass => default action

Answer 1

Try this:

trait MyActorTrait extends /* whatever class provides lowPriority */ {
   def default: PartialFunction[Any, Unit] = {
           case AlwaysPresentCaseClass => default action
   }

   abstract override def lowPriority: PartialFunction[Any,Unit] =
       super.lowPriority orElse default
}

The only problem is that you can’t do MyNewComet extends MyActorTrait. Instead, you can either have class MyNewCometDefault extends MyNewComet with MyActorTrait, or new MyNewComet with MyActorTrait.