> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Chiverton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Tuesday, 10 July 2007 7:16 PM
> To: CF-Talk
> Subject: Re: SURVEY RESULTS: Is ColdFusion OO?
>
>
> On Tuesday 10 Jul 2007, Sean Corfield wrote:
> > In ColdFusion, all type checking is done at run time. So if you use
> > interfaces, you will get a *runtime* check, just like all the other
> > checks. And if you screw up, you'll get a runtime error. If you use
> > interfaces, the error just has different text in it (OK, that's a
> > *slight* oversimplification :)
>
> I want Interfaces so I can aid other developers intergrating with
> my code- it
> explictly codes the contract.
>
I love the idea of documenting the intention - something that can be very
obscure using mixins. However, as Sean and Ben Nadel have pointed out,
there is no enforceable contract, so cfinterface turns into an elaborate
commenting mechanism with a runtime performance penalty. That reminds me of
another idea for documenting intention in a structured way that *doesn't*
have a performance penalty.
I'm certainly not the first person to point this out, but you can add
arbitrary attributes to the cfcomponent, cffunction and cfargument tags that
then appear in the metadata. I'd love to see the community generate some
momentum on a standard set of metadata to aid in code introspection.
For example, if converting code from typed to untyped for performance
reasons, instead of removing "type" and "returntype" attributes, why not
change them to "_type" and "_returntype", thus documenting the original
intention?. If ducktyping, the _type attribute could read "any CFC that
implements getID()" for example. It would then be simple matter to adapt
CF's builtin CFC introspection to read these attributes.
Similarly, if you have a function in a superclass like this:
<cffunction name="doSomething">
<cfthrow "Subclass responsibility">
</cffunction>
why not add an "abstract" attribute to document the intention. From there
it's not too hard to parse the metadata into XMI and produce a UML diagram,
if that's what floats your boat. And I know there's somebody out there
(sorry -forgot who you are) who uses cfproperty tags to document composition
relationships.
This *is* just documentation, *not* an attempt to add Java-style
annotations, and isn't necessarily any more accurate than any other
documentation. The cool thing is the ability to import it into other tools.
Jaime Metcher
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