Generics

If you look at the API documentation for the basic array type, List, you’ll see that the type is actually List<E>. The <…> notation marks List as a generic (or parameterized) type—a type that has formal type parameters. By convention, most type variables have single-letter names, such as E, T, S, K, and V.

Why use generics?

Generics are often required for type safety, but they have more benefits than just allowing your code to run:

• Properly specifying generic types results in better generated code.
• You can use generics to reduce code duplication.

If you intend for a list to contain only strings, you can declare it as List<String> (read that as “list of string”). That way you, your fellow programmers, and your tools can detect that assigning a non-string to the list is probably a mistake. Here’s an example:

var names = <String>[];
names.addAll(['Seth', 'Kathy', 'Lars']);
names.add(42); // Error

Another reason for using generics is to reduce code duplication. Generics let you share a single interface and implementation between many types, while still taking advantage of static analysis. For example, say you create an interface for caching an object:

abstract class ObjectCache {
  Object getByKey(String key);
  void setByKey(String key, Object value);
}

You discover that you want a string-specific version of this interface, so you create another interface:

abstract class StringCache {
  String getByKey(String key);
  void setByKey(String key, String value);
}

Later, you decide you want a number-specific version of this interface… You get the idea.

Generic types can save you the trouble of creating all these interfaces. Instead, you can create a single interface that takes a type parameter:

abstract class Cache<T> {
  T getByKey(String key);
  void setByKey(String key, T value);
}

In this code, T is the stand-in type. It’s a placeholder that you can think of as a type that a developer will define later.

Using collection literals

List, set, and map literals can be parameterized. Parameterized literals are just like the literals you’ve already seen, except that you add <type> (for lists and sets) or <keyType, valueType> (for maps) before the opening bracket. Here is an example of using typed literals:

var names = <String>['Seth', 'Kathy', 'Lars'];
var uniqueNames = <String>{'Seth', 'Kathy', 'Lars'};
var pages = <String, String>{
  'index.html': 'Homepage',
  'robots.txt': 'Hints for web robots',
  'humans.txt': 'We are people, not machines'
};

Using parameterized types with constructors

To specify one or more types when using a constructor, put the types in angle brackets (<...>) just after the class name. For example:

var nameSet = Set<String>.from(names);

The following code creates a map that has integer keys and values of type View:

var views = Map<int, View>();

Generic collections and the types they contain

Dart generic types are reified, which means that they carry their type information around at runtime. For example, you can test the type of a collection:

var names = <String>[];
names.addAll(['Seth', 'Kathy', 'Lars']);
print(names is List<String>); // true

Restricting the parameterized type

When implementing a generic type, you might want to limit the types that can be provided as arguments, so that the argument must be a subtype of a particular type. You can do this using extends.

A common use case is ensuring that a type is non-nullable by making it a subtype of Object (instead of the default, Object?).

class Foo<T extends Object> {
  // Any type provided to Foo for T must be non-nullable.
}

You can use extends with other types besides Object. Here’s an example of extending SomeBaseClass, so that members of SomeBaseClass can be called on objects of type T:

class Foo<T extends SomeBaseClass> {
  // Implementation goes here...
  String toString() => "Instance of 'Foo<$T>'";
}

class Extender extends SomeBaseClass {...}

It’s OK to use SomeBaseClass or any of its subtypes as the generic argument:

var someBaseClassFoo = Foo<SomeBaseClass>();
var extenderFoo = Foo<Extender>();

It’s also OK to specify no generic argument:

var foo = Foo();
print(foo); // Instance of 'Foo<SomeBaseClass>'

Specifying any non-SomeBaseClass type results in an error:

var foo = Foo<Object>();

Using generic methods

Methods and functions also allow type arguments:

T first<T>(List<T> ts) {
  // Do some initial work or error checking, then...
  T tmp = ts[0];
  // Do some additional checking or processing...
  return tmp;
}

Here the generic type parameter on first (<T>) allows you to use the type argument T in several places:

• In the function’s return type (T).
• In the type of an argument (List<T>).
• In the type of a local variable (T tmp).