Shut it Down

Object-Oriented Programming with S3 and R6 in R

Richie Cotton

Data Evangelist at DataCamp

ch5_3-Shut-it-down.003.png

ch5_3-Shut-it-down.004.png

initialize() customizes startup

finalize() customizes cleanup

thing_factory <- R6Class(
  "Thing",
  private = list(
    ..a_field = 123
  ),
  public = list(

    initialize = function(a_field) {
      if(!missing(a_field)) {
        private$a_field = a_field
      }
    },

    finalize = function() {
      message("Finalizing the Thing")
    }

  )
)

a_thing <- thing_factory$new()

rm(a_thing)

gc()

Finalizing the Thing
         used (Mb) gc trigger (Mb) max used (Mb)
Ncells 443079 23.7     750400 40.1   592000 31.7
Vcells 718499  5.5    1308461 10.0  1092342  8.4

library(RSQLite)
database_manager_factory <- R6Class(
  "DatabaseManager",
  private = list(

   conn = NULL

  ),
  public = list(

    initialize = function(a_field) {
      private$conn <- dbConnect("some-database.sqlite")
    },

    finalize = function() {
      dbDisconnect(private$conn)
    }

  )
)

Summary

finalize() cleans up after R6 objects
It is useful when working with databases
It gets called during garbage collection

Let's practice!

Object-Oriented Programming with S3 and R6 in R