I ended up turning to a Clojure REPL to solve an issue in that project I totally didn’t sneak Clojure into before and realized I did some things the hard way last time.

First up: you don’t need to create and compile a Java class from Clojure to call into Clojure code from Java. If I had actually read the Java Interop reference guide on Clojure.org, I would have noticed that there’s a section on calling Clojure from Java. It’s much, much easier.

If I define this namespace/function:

(ns project.util)

(defn get-my-thing []
	{:my :thing})

I can call it like so:

// In Java code:

// First, find the require function. Then use it to load the project.util namespace
IFn require = Clojure.var("clojure.core", "require");
require.invoke(Clojure.read("project.util"));

// After project.util is loaded, we can look up the function and call it directly.
IFn getMyThing = Clojure.var("project.util", "get-my-thing");
getMyThing.invoke();

Easy peasy. I don’t have to jump through the gen-class hoops, and bonus! I don’t have to compile my Clojure code ahead of time. I just need to make sure the source files are on the class path.

You should of course compile your Clojure code if you’re distributing an application built on it. It’ll load faster, plus you might not want it readable.

What I specifically didn’t want to hook into that project that I totally wasn’t sneaking Clojure into is a REPL: I want to be able to poke directly at the application’s state while it’s running. To do that, I’ll need to make sure that tools.nrepl is available on the classpath, and require/launch it from within the application.

I could probably use Clojure 1.8’s socket server repl instead, but I plan on using Cider to talk to it, so nrepl’s a better choice.

In Java code:

public static void launchNrepl(int port) {
	try {
		IFn require = Clojure.var("clojure.core", "require");
		require.invoke(Clojure.read("clojure.tools.nrepl.server"));

		// Note: passing "::" as the :bind parameter makes this listen on all interfaces.
		// You might not want that.
		IFn startServer = Clojure.var("clojure.tools.nrepl.server", "start-server");
		startServer.invoke(Clojure.read(":bind"), "::", Clojure.read(":port"), port);
	}
	catch (Exception e) {
		// log the error
	}
}

In my theoretical project where I totally didn’t do this I also load in a namespace of helper code I’ve written to wrap around the Java objects we already have written.