Craig McClanahan wrote:
If you're using JavaScript, why would you restrict yourself to that (even if you *could* figure it out)? You can dynamically add fields to a JavaScript object, so an analog of the set properties rule would just define a field on the object for every attribute in the XML element.
That's a good point... that thinking leads to a path where instead of populating pre-made objects from a parsed XML document, the objects themselves are created on-the-fly. Or more precisely, you wouldn't have to deal in pre-defefined objects.
But, then that would seem to eliminate the possibility of parent-child relationships since that depends on a setter in a bean adding another bean to an internal collection, and I don't think that's the kind of thing one would want to happen automagically, assuming it could.
There may well be the opportunity for new rules in a dynamically-typed language that only make sense there.
Note that there's no type safety issue (at least at this point) either ... JavaScript fields don't have an innate type, so there is nothing you can do that corresponds to Java's reflection to say "what should I convert this string attribute value to before I save it." Instead, conversion happens on usage of the corresponding field value.
Yep, that was exactly my point too :) Although, the conversion could be built-in to the setter by the prototype designer, but that's outside the scope of what Digester would do.
Personally, I think trying to do a literal conversion would be artificially limiting in the world of a dynamic language. Something that emulated the spirit, but not the detailed semantics, might be more what you are after.
Yes, I agree. To me, there are a few Digester rules that are pretty much must-haves... ObjectCreateRule, SetPropertiesRule, SetTopRule and CallMethodRule immediately come to mind... there may be some others, but I think the rest are somewhat less important (day 2-type things anyway). It doesn't have to (and maybe shouldn't, and in some cases probably can't) be an exact replica of Digester, but the underlying model of "set some processing rules, hand it an XML document and fire those rules when appropriate" is the key point I think. There rest is just details :)
Craig
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