Sylvain Wallez wrote:
Carsten Ziegeler wrote:
Daniel Fagerstrom wrote:
So the innocent looking i/o modules give us a quite a number of problems if we want to build an OM from them.
Yes, I agree.
So what do I propose instead? If we think of it the only thing we need is access to objects (and preferably script (SL) and expression language (EL) friendly objects). Then it is the task for the EL or SL to do the accessing. If the object is read or write able or booth will be seen from its get and/or set methods or whatever the reflection engine in the EL or SL supports.Sounds like a good solution for me. Now, these "modules" will be Avalon components, so I think we should remove the objectModel parameter from the interface. (An avalon component can get the object model if it's contextualizable) This simplifies the interface even more and makes calling it easier:
So instead of i/o modules it would be enough with "modules", (but we should really find a better name). And the interface could look like:
interface Module { String ROLE = Module.class.getName();
Object getObject(Map objectModel); }
thats all. So much simpler than i/o modules and we get better behaviour and SoC at the same time.
WDYT?
interface Module { String ROLE = Module.class.getName();
Object getObject(); }
Sorry, I should have missed something. What is the purpose of a service interface that just returns an object. Why isn't this object the component itself? Just like the current OM contains the request and response objects, and not proxy components that give us access to request and response.
The purpose was mainly to not put any requirements on the _returned_ object, like implementing serviceable or contextuable etc, and also avoiding to exposing these interface to the user. But that is a tradeof, maybe it is better to let the component be the object itself.
Furthermore, how are the module attributes accessed? Does this become the responsibility of the EL in which the module is used?
Yes, the idea is that the EL or scripting language is responsible for access.
Isn't it too restrictive compared to the variety of what modules do?
Don't think so (returning an Object does not to restrict things that much ;) ), but I haven't thought in detail about all modules, any examples where it wouldn't work?
Or it will require us writing a lot of Scriptable implementations to expose attributes as dynamic properties.
Yes, my idea was to package the script OM from FOM as "modules". But if we can find an interface that gives the EL and script implementation more help, that would be better.
What about a AttributeHolder interface:
interface AttributeHolder { Object getAttribute(String name); void setAttribute(String name, Object value); void removeAttribute(String name); Enumeration getAttributeNames(); }
This interface gathers both input and output features which solves the current duality between input and output modules. Input-only modules can simply throw a UnsupportedOperationException on set and remove.
This interface can eventually also be applied to a number of other objects such as Request, Session and Context (the env one), CForms widgets, etc that all already have these methods.
Thoughts?
The important thing for the "modules" is to provide script friendly access of environment data in a simple way. I assumed that the easiest way would be to support "POJO" interfaces with get and set methods and Maps so that it would be easy to use for the reflection parts of ELs and scripting languages, but I don't know that much about it. If an AttributeHolder is a better anwer to those requirements we should take that route instead.
/Daniel
