Plugins exporting contracts and format independant contract loading
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Key: FOR-632
URL: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-632
Project: Forrest
Type: Improvement
Components: Views
Reporter: Ross Gardler
Assigned to: Ross Gardler
Fix For: 0.8-dev
I've finally got a use case for views, so I'm jumping in with both feet instead
of dipping my toe in the lovely warm waters. So, here is my first observation
about the way things work, and a suggestion for an improvement. I want to run
this by the views folk before I implement it as I am not quite swimming
comfortably yet. Lazy consensus is in opertion though, i.e I will do this if
noone objects.
The Problem
===========
I have enabled plugins to export contracts. However, this is not a perfect
solution since there is now way of knowing what format the contract produces.
So we need a way of identifying the right contract for the right format.
This is solved in the existing system by having a viewHelper plugin that tells
us in its name what format it is (e.g. o.a.f.p.output.viewHelper.xhtml) and by
having a matcher in that plugins xmap that resolves the contract:
<map:match pattern="resolve.contract.xhtml.*">
<map:select type="exists">
<map:when test="{project:resources}/templates/{1}.ft">
<map:generate src="{project:resources}/templates/{1}.ft"/>
</map:when>
...
I see two issues with this solution:
1 - it prevents plugins providing contracts for multiple formats because they
will always have the same name (e.g. contract-name.ft)
2- the above matcher will be duplicated across all output formats, therefore is
a maintenance problem.
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Problem 1 can be solved by modifying the plugin naming convention to include a
format identifier, e.g.
contract-name.xhtml.ft
contract-name.pdf.ft
contract-name.txt.ft
---
Problem 2 can then be solved by moving the contract resolver match into the
internal views plugin and modifying it as follows:
<map:match pattern="resolve.contract.*.*">
<map:select type="exists">
<map:when test="{project:resources}/templates/{1}.{2}.ft">
<map:generate src="{project:resources}/templates/{1}.{2}.ft"/>
</map:when>
...
---
If nobody points out the flaw in my approach I will have a blast at soon(ish)
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