2.4 Anonymous Structure

Anonymous structures can be used to group data without explicitly creating a type. The following example creates a structure with two fields, x and name, and initializes their values to 12 and "foo" respectively:

class Main {
  static public function main() {
    var myStructure = {x: 12, name: "foo"};
  }
}

The general syntactic rules are as follows:

1. A structure is enclosed in curly braces {} and
2. has a comma-separated list of key-value pairs.
3. A colon separates the key, which must be a valid identifier, from the value.
4. The value can be any Haxe expression.

Rule 4 implies that structures can be nested and complex, e.g.:

var user = {
  name : "Nicolas",
    age : 32,
    pos : [
      { x : 0, y : 0 },
        { x : 1, y : -1 }
  ],
};

Fields of structures, like classes, are accessed using a dot (.):

// get value of name, which is "Nicolas"
user.name;
// set value of age to 33
user.age = 33;

It is worth noting that using anonymous structures does not subvert the typing system. The compiler ensures that only available fields are accessed, which means the following program does not compile:

class Test {
  static public function main() {
    var point = { x: 0.0, y: 12.0 };
    // { y : Float, x : Float } has no field z
    point.z;
  }
}

The error message indicates that the compiler knows the type of point: it is a structure with fields x and y of type Float. Since it has no field z, the access fails. The type of point is known through type inference, which thankfully saves us from using explicit types for local variables. If point was a field instead, explicit typing would be necessary:

class Path {
    var start : { x : Int, y : Int };
    var target : { x : Int, y : Int };
    var current : { x : Int, y : Int };
}

To avoid this kind of redundant type declaration, especially for more complex structures, it is advised to use a typedef:

typedef Point = { x : Int, y : Int }

class Path {
    var start : Point;
    var target : Point;
    var current : Point;
}

You may also use Extensions to "inherit" fields from other structures:

typedef Point3 = { > Point, z : Int }

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