As does Velocity....I think it calls it UberIntrospector or something.....
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Martin van den Bemt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
06/17/02 12:19 AM
Please respond to "Jakarta Commons Developers List"
To: Jakarta Commons Developers List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
cc:
Subject: Re: [BeanUtils][Betwixt][commons] Proposal:
Reflection/Introspection/MetaData package
Also check this with the ant team, who have a lot of introspection in
there code.. It works on all jdk versions afaik.
See o.a.tools.ant.Introspectionhelper.
+1 on the idea btw..
Mvgr,
Martin
On Sun, 2002-06-16 at 13:40, Stephen Colebourne wrote:
> Hi,
> Currently, Betwixt and other users of BeanUtils rely on the java.beans
class
> Introspector to extract details from a class. Introspector is a very old
and
> limited class in todays terms:
> - it doesn't support collections, just simple objects and arrays
> - it doesn't support modern conventions such as addXxx() adds to a the
xxx
> list
> - it doesn't support overloading well
> - the bean info technique is difficult to code, poorly understood and
> limiting
> - it's just too plain dumb.
>
> I propose that BeanUtils/Betwixt/commons should replace Introspector
with a
> more general purpose reflection/introspection package. Architecturally
this
> would sit above reflection, but below Introspection:
>
> Requirements/Goals:
> - handle classes other than beans
> - support extensible metadata (not just for GUI builders)
> - handle normal (today) bean conventions (get/set/add/put methods)
> - handle future conventions that are not yet standard
> - support method overloading
> - be easily used directly from BeanUtils and Betwixt (and probably
others)
> - be a complete alternative to using java.lang.reflect
> - return immutable objects
>
> My proposed solution (not coded, fully open to discussion):
> Build a system with similarities to Digester. Rules get called when the
> class is examined determine how to link the methods together. For
example
> the FindGetPropertyMethodRule would look at method names starting with
get
> etc. The rule then classifies the method as a GET method and stores it
into
> a structure something like this:
>
> - MethodSetInfo - holds details about a related set of methods.
> public String getName()
> public List getMethodInfos()
> public MethodInfo getMethodInfo(name)
> public Map getMetaData()
> public MetaData getMetaData(String name)
>
> - ClassInfo - main class that holds the representation of class.
Subclass of
> MethodSetInfo
> public List getMethodSetInfos()
> public MethodSetInfo getMethodSetInfo(name)
> public List getMethodSetInfos(methodSetType)
> public MethodSetInfo getMethodSetInfo(methodSetType, name)
> public PropertyInfo getPropertyInfo(name) // convenience
>
> - PropertyInfo - subclass of MethodSetInfo for properties (Lists/Maps
etc.
> tbd)
> public Class getPropertyType()
> public MethodInfo getGetMethodInfo() // convenience
> public MethodInfo getSetMethodInfo() // convenience
> public Object getValue()
> public void setValue()
>
> - MethodInfo - categorised info about a method
> public String getName()
> public Method getMethod()
> publc String getCategory()
> public Map getMetaData()
> public MetaData getMetaData(String name)
> public Object invoke(object, args, respectAccessFlags)
>
> Attached to each element is the ability to hold MetaData. This is
> particularly important for Betwixt. It would allow the XMLBeanInfo class
to
> be held directly on the representation of the class. And I'm sure other
> projects want MetaData - its supposed to be a long standing request for
J2SE
> (I know I need it for the Joda project).
>
> Note that I haven't expanded on the Rule part at the moment. Basically,
> people must be able to write their own rules and add them to the
standard
> rules for beans.
>
> As for which project it belongs with...I suggest lang or something new
> (reflect?). I would like to extract it from BeanUtils because its not
Bean
> specific.
>
>
> Well, its an idea at the moment. There are some similarities to
DynaBeans,
> but I think it goes way further. I already have a partial version of
this,
> but its specific to my needs. It needs some rework anyway, so I thought
> about if it could be generic. Opinions??
>
> Stephen
>
> PS. Three more possibilities for lang:
> Nameable
> MetaData
> Rule
>
>
>
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