Groovy Goodness: Add Methods Dynamically to Classes with ExpandoMetaClass

We can add new behaviour, like methods, to classes in Groovy dynamically. So this means a method is not added to the class definition in the source code, but to the class definition while an application is already running. Groovy adds a metaClass property to all classes for this purpose. The type of this property is ExpandoMetaClass. We can assign methods (also static), properties, constructors to the metaClass property and the defined behaviour is added dynamically to the class definition. After we have added our behaviour we can create a new instance of the class and invoke the methods, constructors and access the properties just like we are used to do.

// We add the method rightShift to the List class. 
// The implementation is simply calling the remove method of List with
// the provided argument.
List.metaClass.rightShift {
    delegate.remove it
}

def list = ['one', 'two', 'three', 'four']
assert 4 == list.size()

list.rightShift 'two'
assert 3 == list.size()
assert ['one', 'three', 'four'] == list

// Operator overloading in action: rightShift is >>
list >> 'one'
assert 2 == list.size()
assert ['three', 'four'] == list


// We can also add behaviour to a specific instance instead of class.
// Notice we use the instance list instead of class List to assign 
// method groovy to metaClass property.
list.metaClass.groovy {
    delegate.collect { it + ' groovy' }
}

assert ['three groovy', 'four groovy'] == list.groovy()

def newList = ['a', 'b']
try {
    newList.groovy()  // groovy method was added to list instance not List class.
    assert false
} catch (e) {
    assert e instanceof MissingMethodException
}