Apache MetaModel allows for extending the query language using User Defined Functions. In fact, the functions that are built into Apache MetaModel are also "just" built-in UDFs.  

Functions in MetaModel come in two forms:  

  • Aggregate functions, which implement the org.apache.metamodel.query.AggregateFunction interface. 

  • Scalar functions, which implement the org.apache.metamodel.query.ScalarFunction interface.  

 

Scalar functions

 

A scalar function is a function that provides a result on each row of the dataset that it is applied to. For instance, the built-in function TO_NUMBER will convert each value to a java.lang.Number instead of some other data type.  

 Normally you can apply the Scalar function TO_NUMBER like this:  

Query q = dataContext.query().from(table).select(FunctionType.TO_NUMBER, "id").toQuery();

If you dig into FunctionType.TO_NUMBER you will find out that it is simply an object that implements ScalarFunction.  Let's imagine you wanted to implement instead now a hash code function. We can implement it like this:

public class HashCodeFunction implements ScalarFunction {

   @Override
   public ColumnType getExpectedColumnType(ColumnType type) {
     return ColumnType.INTEGER;
   }
 
   @Override
   public String getFunctionName() {
     return "HASH_CODE";
   }
 
   @Override
   public Object evaluate(Row row, SelectItem operandItem) {
     Object value = row.getValue(operandItem);
     return value == null ? null : value.hashCode();
   }
}

As you can see the implementation part here is pretty easy. We need only to provide a name, a data type and implement the evaluate(...) method. Now to apply the function to our query:  

Query q = dataContext.query().from(table).select(new HashCodeFunction(), "id").toQuery();

Aggregate functions

Aggregate functions are used to make calculations which span multiple rows of the dataset. Typically used on a complete dataset or in combination with a GROUP BY condition.  

In a similar way to scalar functions, you can also implement your own aggregate functions. Let's say we wanted to implement a DISTINCT_COUNT function (ie. a count of distinct/unique values), we could do it like this:  

 

public class DistinctCountFunction implements AggregateFunction {
 
   @Override
   public String getFunctionName() {
     return "DISTINCT_COUNT";
   }
 
   @Override
   public ColumnType getExpectedColumnType(ColumnType type) {
     return ColumnType.INTEGER;
   }
 
   @Override
   public Object evaluate(Object... values) {
     AggregateBuilder<?> aggregateBuilder = createAggregateBuilder();
     for (Object value : values) {
       aggregateBuilder.add(value);
     }
     return aggregateBuilder.getAggregate();
   }
 
   @Override
   public AggregateBuilder<?> createAggregateBuilder() {
     return new AggregateBuilder<Integer>() {
 
       private Set<Object> uniqueSet = new HashSet<>();
 
       @Override
       public void add(Object o) {
         uniqueSet.add(o);
       }
 
       @Override
       public Integer getAggregate() {
         return uniqueSet.size();
       }
     };
   }
}
  

(you may choose to extend DefaultAggregateFunction which will save you the effort of implementing evaluate(...))  

And again you can apply your function in a query like this:  

Query q = dataContext.query().from(table).select(new DistinctCountFunction(), "type").toQuery();
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