Hi,
I've been using the restlet framework for a while now, and it's a
really well-written system, I really like it.
However, I got a nasty surprise the other day when I tried to do
something like this:
1 Reference ref = new Reference("/foo");
2 doSomethingWithRef(ref);
3 doSomethingElseWithRef(ref);
I got strange behavior on line 3, because line 2 mutated the reference
created in line 1, so it was no longer '/foo'.
This was a surprise to me, because I've been working with functional
languages quite a lot recently and they just don't behave this way,
and avoid a lot of nasty side-effects as a result.
I agree that it's a nice design to use a reference to derive another
reference, eg.
Reference ref = new Reference("/foo");
Reference ref2 = ref.addQueryPath("bar=zip");
But it would be really cool if Reference instances were immutable
because then you could safely re-use them, and it would be easier to
avoid bugs when writing restful apps.
In example above, adding a query path shouldn't change the original
reference.
Thanks,
Malcolm
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