Is anyone actively thinking about the future of UIBean?
This class has several features that I find immensely frustrating as a user:
1. UIBean includes a property for every imaginable html attribute and
tooltips etc. When these these aren't applicable to subclasses they
have to be overridden and/or removed from the TLD
2. UIBean is tightly coupled to the TemplateEngineManager. It seems
you can't create tags that utilise Struts2's template/theme feature
unless you subclass UIBean
3. UIBean is tightly coupled to the OGNL expressions (a parent class
performs the expression evaluation)
4. They're extremely troublesome to unit test due to #2 and #3
#3 is fundamental and I don't think it's worth the effort to refactor
UIBean to be EL-independent. Rather creating a new base class would be
easier
#4 can be eased by moving some of the existing base test classes into
core (eg. dojo plugin includes the necessary tools in its own test
source branch)
#2 is my priority - if there were an interface for a "Templatable
Component" that the TemplateEngine's used rather than UIBean directly
this would be resolved, although when I last checked even this was a
non-trivial change
#1 wouldn't be a problem if #2 was solved.
Whenever I've tried to "fix" it I feel like I'm pulling at an endless
piece of string. My efforts have always unravelled and I've fallen back
to a work-around of a "naked" UIBean for my own Component-based tags.
I suspect UIBean may be a lost cause? I mean it does the job well for
the existing tags (except the known template inheritance issues) but it
can't readily budge from the existing design without severely breaking
every existing subclass (the fragile base class problem). Have the
efforts to create tags for other EL's addressed this? Are there any
thoughts on the direction of UIBean? Or have I missed something?
regards,
Jeromy Evans
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