Garret Wilson created JEXL-342: ---------------------------------- Summary: Support for Java Optional. Key: JEXL-342 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/JEXL-342 Project: Commons JEXL Issue Type: New Feature Affects Versions: 3.1 Reporter: Garret Wilson
Does JEXL provide any native support for Java 8+ {{Optional<>}}? If not can this this easily be added as some sort of plugin, or better yet can it be added to the library? h3. {{Optional}} Traversal I need to create an API that works well for application developers as for those using templates with JEXL expressions. Let's say that the {{Bar}} class has a {{Bar.getName()}}. And the {{Foo}} class has this method: {code:java} Optional<Bar> getBar(String barId); {code} In code getting the "test" foo-bar name would be like this: {code:java} String fooBarName=foo.getBar("test").getName().orElse(null); {code} I want the navigation across {{Optional<>}} to work just as if it were a nullable variable. That is, I want the following JEXL expression to give the same result as {{fooBarName}} above: {code} foo.bar("test").name {code} If {{Foo.getBar(String)}} returned a nullable rather than an {{Optional<>}}, I think JEXL would work for this already. but the whole point of {{Optional<>}} is that I keep nullables out of my code, so I don't want to create inferior APIs inconsistent with the rest of my project just to work with JEXL. h3. {{Optional}} Getter Name As icing on the cake, I would like to have {{Optional<>}} returning getter discovery to recognize the {{findXXX}} pattern, as [Stephen Colebourne suggested|https://blog.joda.org/2015/09/naming-optional-query-methods.html]. I've been using this pattern for several years, and I really like it. Thus to indicate that the {{Foo.getBar(String)}} "getter" doesn't return a nullable but an {{Optional<>}}, I would name it {{Foo.findBar(String)}}, like this: {code:java} Optional<Bar> getBar(String barId); {code} I would thus want the exact same JEXL expression above to still work: {code} foo.bar("test").name {code} Otherwise I'll have to forego use of modern Java constructs and make an outdated style and less safe API just to get JEXL to work. -- This message was sent by Atlassian Jira (v8.3.4#803005)