This presents more of a challenge. We need some way of transforming the inbound URL into a normal request -- with normal parameters -- so that Stripes can locate the right bean, [etc.] Originally I was thinking we'd need to write our own filter to do this, or use URLRewrite. It turns out some clever Stripes devs got there first. They call this the "clean URL" feature. It was initially a user contribution, but the Gregg and Tim liked it so much they put it into the trunk. I have been watching the 1.5 builds, but TOTALLY forgot about this. Needless to day, it completely solves the problem, and it makes my previous comments about needing an external filter totally obsolete. Assuming you buy into the Stripes Way, the URL scheme you describe can be completely accommodated.
BTW, I think this is evil. It gives you a fixed URI scheme, and sooner or later you end up with URLs that look like /foo/-/-/-/ a/-/-/-/c/-/-/-/
You see them all around these days.
"Clean URLs support both prefix mapping (/action/foo/{bar}) and extension mapping (/foo/{bar}.action). Any number of parameters and/or literals may be omitted from the end of a request URL."
The problem is that you can't do it from the middle of the request.
Almost all of our present services are in need of an architectural overview, and what we're trying to do is (sorry to the use the word again, but) rationalize the URL schema.
We can't without breaking the URLs of all the existing websites. *And* some of them are using the ShortViewURLConstructor and some of them are using the DefaultURLConstructor. I think this is a design parameter which we simply cannot afford to break.
(And no, mod_rewrite is not an answer.)
What I'm thinking is that Janne doesn't sound all that enthusiastic about this so it might have to fit into the application as another
The Stripes stuff is great - IF you are writing a new app. If you're trying to retrofit it to the existing schema, I would very strongly hesitate to just use it because it's great and we have it - that'll end up in a translation layer in front of the Beans which just muddy the waters so that we can use Annotations. It'll be just like the Command superstructure, but in another form ;-)
Note that this CleanURI feature is new in Stripes 1.5 (which isn't even out yet in a stable form), and there have been tons of successful applications made in Stripes 1.4 and earlier. I don't see it as a strong requirement to enforce this architecture.
/Janne
