Factor Clojure code setting many different fields in a Java object

Question

How do I factor code setting many different fields in a Java object? I would like to factor

(set! (. employee name) "Chris")
(set! (. employee age) 100)
(set! (. employee salary) 5000)

to

(doseq [field '((name "Chris") (age 100) (salary 5000))]
  (set! (. employee (first field)) (second field)))

However this won't work because the period is a macro, and tries to evaluate (first field) literally. By the way, I understand that setting fields is not good practice. I need to inter-operate with legacy code.

Answer 1

Try to use setters - but if you have no choice and really need to factor this out, a macro like this would do:

(defmacro set-all [object & fields-and-values]
  (let [obj-sym (gensym)] 
    `(let [~obj-sym ~object]
        ~@(for [[field value] (partition 2 fields-and-values)]
           `(set! (. ~obj-sym ~field)
                  ~value)))))

The gensym is needed in case the expression yielding object has any side effects.

Example usage:

user> (def p (java.awt.Point.))
#'user/p
user> (set-all p x 4 y 5)
5
user> p
#<Point java.awt.Point[x=4,y=5]>