It turns out that the type class instances actually need to be implicit values, rather than objects. The MyCaseClass
object above works because its serializer is assigned to an implicit value. However, this implementation
object MyCaseClass {
implicit object MyCaseClassSerializer extends Serializer[MyCaseClass] {
override def write(out: DataOutput, t: MyCaseClass): Unit = {
out.writeUTF(t.s)
}
}
}
fails with the error
Main.scala:9: error: could not find implicit value for evidence parameter of type mypackage.Serializer[mypackage.MyCaseClass]
serialize(out, caseClassInstance)
^
In my real code, I was using an auxiliary function to generate the Serializer[T]
(see https://github.com/NICTA/scoobi/blob/24f48008b193f4e87b9ec04d5c8736ce0725d006/src/main/scala/com/nicta/scoobi/core/WireFormat.scala#L137). Despite the function having its own explicit return type, the type of the assigned value was not being inferred correctly by the compiler.
Below is the full example from the question with such a Serializer
-generator.
package mypackage
import java.io.{DataOutput, DataOutputStream}
object Main {
import Serializer._
def main(args: Array[String]): Unit = {
val caseClassInstance = MyCaseClass("string")
val out: DataOutput = new DataOutputStream(System.out)
serialize(out, caseClassInstance)
}
def serialize[T : Serializer](out: DataOutput, t: T): Unit = {
implicitly[Serializer[T]].write(out, t)
}
}
object MyCaseClass {
import Serializer._
// does not compile without Serializer[MyCaseClass] type annotation
implicit val serializer: Serializer[MyCaseClass] =
mkCaseSerializer(MyCaseClass.apply _, MyCaseClass.unapply _)
}
case class MyCaseClass(s: String)
trait Serializer[T] {
def write(out: DataOutput, t: T): Unit
}
object Serializer {
// does not compile without Serializer[String] type annotation
implicit val stringSerializer: Serializer[String] = new Serializer[String] {
override def write(out: DataOutput, s: String): Unit = {
out.writeUTF(s)
}
}
class CaseClassSerializer[T, A : Serializer](
apply: A => T, unapply: T => Option[A]) extends Serializer[T] {
override def write(out: DataOutput, t: T): Unit = {
implicitly[Serializer[A]].write(out, unapply(t).get)
}
}
def mkCaseSerializer[T, A : Serializer]
(apply: A => T, unapply: T => Option[A]): Serializer[T] =
new CaseClassSerializer(apply, unapply)
}