Enforcing Type with Boiler Plates

Question

This is an implementation of Mat's List using by Pseudo-inheriting my Pythonic-List. Inheritance is not built into VBA, but it can be simulated by composing the inherited class and mimicking all it's public methods and members. It's a PITA because a modification of a base class needs to be propagated to all sub-classes.

The implementation is simple, just add a private string data member pTypedName, and whenever the client code tries to add an element where TypeName(Element) <> pTypedName raise a type error.

TypedList

Private Members

Private this As List
Private pTypedName As String

Private Methods

Type Check an element that is being added to a list. If the type has not been set then let this element set the typename. Otherwise, raise an error if it's not the correct type.

Private Sub TypeCheck(ByVal element As Variant, ByVal source As String)

    If pTypedName = vbNullString Then pTypedName = TypeName(element)
    If (TypeName(element) <> pTypedName) Then RaiseTypeError element, source

End Sub

Therefore

Dim tList as New TypedList
tList.Append "A"

Is valid and now tList is of type String.

We also want to check every element in a sequence before we let any of the elements enter the list. If our string list is extended with Array("a", "b", "C", 2) we don't want any of the elements entering the list.

Private Sub TypeCheckSequence(ByVal sequence As Variant, ByVal source As String)

    Dim element As Variant
    For Each element In sequence
        TypeCheck element, source
    Next element

End Sub

The above two methods are boiler plate code at the beginning of any method that sets the data in our TypedList.

This is the error that is raised when it fails.

Private Sub RaiseTypeError(ByVal badItem As Variant, ByVal method As String)
    Err.Raise 13, method, "Element is of type " & TypeName(badItem) & _
                         ", not " & TypedName & "."
End Sub

Enumeration

Note we use this.NewEnum instead of this.[_NewEnum] as was in the List class.

Public Property Get NewEnum() As IUnknown
Attribute NewEnum.VB_UserMemId = -4

    Set NewEnum = this.NewEnum

End Property

Public Methods

Client code can ask TypedList what it's type is and set the type only if the list is empty.

Public Property Get TypedName() As String

    TypedName = pTypedName

End Property
Public Property Let TypedName(ByVal typeName_ As String)

    If this.Count > 0 Then
        Err.Raise 9, TypeName(Me) & ".TypedName", _
            "Can only set typename of an empty list."
    End If

    pTypedName = typeName_

End Property

After this it's fairly boring and redundant. I wish I wasn't required to write all of this out.

TypeCheck Entrances

Mimic all entry points with the type checking BoilerPlate code.

Replacement

Public Property Let Item(ByVal index As Long, ByVal element As Variant)
Attribute Item.VB_UserMemId = 0

    TypeCheck element, TypeName(Me) & ".Item"
    this.Item(index) = element

End Property

Public Property Set Item(ByVal index As Long, ByVal element As Variant)
Attribute Item.VB_UserMemId = 0

    TypeCheck element, TypeName(Me) & ".Item"
    Set this.Item(index) = element

End Property

Public Property Let Slice(ByVal a As Long, ByVal b As Long, ByVal s As Integer, ByVal sequence As Variant)

    TypeCheckSequence sequence, TypeName(Me) & ".Slice"
    this.Slice(a, b, s) = sequence

End Property

Extension

Public Sub Append(ByVal element As Variant)

    TypeCheck element, TypeName(Me) & ".Append"
    this.Append element

End Sub

Public Sub Extend(ByVal sequence As Variant)

    TypeCheckSequence sequence, TypeName(Me) & ".Extend"
    this.Extend sequence

End Sub

Insertion

Public Sub Emplace(ByVal index As Long, ByVal element As Variant)

    TypeCheck element, TypeName(Me) & ".Emplace"
    this.Emplace index, element

End Sub

Public Sub Insert(ByVal index As Long, ByVal sequence As Variant)

    TypeCheckSequence sequence, TypeName(Me) & ".Insert"
    collec.Insert sequence, index

End Sub

Default Interfaces

Now it's just mimic all the other methods. Even more boring...

Access

Public Property Get Item(ByVal index As Long) As Variant
Attribute Item.VB_UserMemId = 0
    seq.Assign Item, this.Item(index)
End Property

Public Property Get Slice(ByVal a As Long, ByVal b As Long, ByVal s As Integer) As List
    Set Slice = this.Slice(a, b, s)
End Property

Removal

Public Sub Remove(ByVal index As Long)
    this.Remove index
End Sub

Public Sub Clear(ByVal start As Long, ByVal size As Long)
    this.Clear start, size
End Sub

Aux

Public Function Count() As Long
    Count = this.Count
End Function

Public Function Exists(ByVal sought As Variant) As Boolean
    Exists = this.Exists(sought)
End Function

Public Function ToString() As String
    ToString = this.ToString
End Function

Answer 1

All in all I think this looks pretty good. Without proper inheritance, you're pretty much stuck with the boiler plate properties that simply call on the private untyped List's properties. Everything in regards to that was done right, vba just kinda sucks like that.

The only thing I really noticed that I didn't like was the way you're using magic numbers to raise errors.

   Err.Raise 9, TypeName(Me) & ".TypedName", _
        "Can only set typename of an empty list."

And

Private Sub RaiseTypeError(ByVal badItem As Variant, ByVal method As String)
    Err.Raise 13, method, "Element is of type " & TypeName(badItem) & _
             ", not " & TypedName & "."
End Sub

First, I find it in consistent to use a sub in one place, but a direct raise in another. I know you're only using error #9 in one place now, but pulling this out will certainly make it easier to use it elsewhere in the future.

But I mentioned the magic numbers didn't I? Normally, I would recommend defining some module scoped constants to make it clear that the code is raising a Subscript out of Range and Type Mismatch error (respectively), but these are built in VB errors we're raising. We're likely to use these in many places in many modules. Given that, I think it's absolutely worth the time to create a module with a public [VbErrorNumbers] Enum. It's some work, but you only ever have to do it once. In fact, I believe I'm going to do this myself later today. A full list of built in VBA errors can be found here.

Answer 2

The only thing I can add that @RubberDuck hasn't mentioned, is that using the this identifier to refer to the encapsulated List can be confusing... but probably only because I have a convention to use this to refer to a private type that regroups an instance's private fields under a single entity; I would have called it something like encapsulated, or underlying. No biggie though.

I like that you reject an array/sequence where a single element isn't "type-safe", it's very neat.