Associating additional information with a node

You may need to associate a piece of information with a node without persisting it to disk as part of the model.

For example, you might want to store the result of evaluating a node with an interpreter, or a string to filter a large list of children in the editor.

You could reach for a static Map<SNode, MyInformation> and it could work as long as you use a hash map with weak keys, to avoid memory leaks. For example, a java.util.WeakHashMap would do.

There is a better solution, however: each SNode object manages a hash map of user objects which, as the name suggests, can contain arbitrary objects added by the user. The map is accessed via two methods, SNode#getUserObject(Object key) and SNode#putUserObject(Object key, Object value). User objects free you from the necessity of using weak hash maps, and may be slightly faster.

One caveat: although any Object can serve as a key to the map, it is preferable to stick to plain strings. Since MPS reloads classes as you recompile your code, a key object created before a reload will not equal the same key object created after the reload.