I go back and forth with the need to have plugin attributes be strongly typed. First, I am not a fan of it because annotations don't support multiple types well (as Ralph said) and string expressions can be pretty powerful if you want to allow script expressions (as Ralph said). That is my real opinion of the matter. But I don't mind being a team player to help other designs... :-) If you all do decide to go with strongly typed annotations, definitely go with multiple annotation types (as I proposed a few days back).
Yet I don't think you guys should worry too much about strongly typed data here because annotation processing is all about validating the metadata -- no matter what you choose. There isn't any tangible gain on making this feature strongly typed. I would simply treat the default value as an expression and call it a day. That will remove the added complexity of needing other annotations. Cheers, Paul On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 8:48 AM, Matt Sicker <boa...@gmail.com> wrote: > Jackson is how we handle YAML and JSON configs anyways. It might be worth > looking into for 2.1. > > > On 2 June 2014 08:19, Gary Gregory <garydgreg...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> I'm not trying to handle all cases under the sun. But... we've chosen NOT >> to use an XML Schema based XML IO framework (like JAXB or Jackson), instead >> we've invented our own. I know we do JSON as well, but so does Jackson and >> it likely also has a plugin for YAML. So now, every time I'm looking for >> some minor improvement, it means tweaking our custom framework or adding >> boilerplate code to plugins. It's a pain, but that's where we are today. At >> least now, with the new type converters, I get the type conversion from to >> int for free :-) >> >> In this case, I meant, you can only use attribute A or B. >> >> It is probably worth stepping back and looking at the big picture and >> whether we want to invest in improving the current config IO framework or >> at least consider if Jackson would be a better fit. Likely not for 2.0 ;-) >> >> Gary >> >> >> On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 4:03 AM, Ralph Goers <rgo...@apache.org> wrote: >> >>> Are you looking for annotations to handle every kind of thing you might >>> like to do instead of just putting a couple lines of code in the factory >>> method? I would have handled this by saying foo and bar both need to be >>> Integer and then adding a line do code that insures exactly one, or at most >>> one, is present ( depending on what you want ). >>> >>> I really have no idea what it means for an attribute or element to be in >>> a "choice". Does it mean at most one is specified or exactly one? What if I >>> want exactly one in some cases and at most one in others? >>> >>> Ralph >>> >>> On Jun 1, 2014, at 11:53 PM, Gary Gregory <garydgreg...@gmail.com> >>> wrote: >>> >>> How do I tell my plugin that it can have attribute1 or 2, but not both? >>> IOW I want the config framework to do the validation for me. >>> >>> How about: >>> >>> >>> @PluginAttribute(choice="group1") int foo, >>> >>> >>> >>> @PluginAttribute(choice="group1") int bar >>> >>> Same thing for elements. >>> >>> Thoughts? >>> >>> Gary >>> >>> -- >>> E-Mail: garydgreg...@gmail.com | ggreg...@apache.org >>> Java Persistence with Hibernate, Second Edition >>> <http://www.manning.com/bauer3/> >>> JUnit in Action, Second Edition <http://www.manning.com/tahchiev/> >>> Spring Batch in Action <http://www.manning.com/templier/> >>> Blog: http://garygregory.wordpress.com >>> Home: http://garygregory.com/ >>> Tweet! http://twitter.com/GaryGregory >>> >>> >> >> >> -- >> E-Mail: garydgreg...@gmail.com | ggreg...@apache.org >> Java Persistence with Hibernate, Second Edition >> <http://www.manning.com/bauer3/> >> JUnit in Action, Second Edition <http://www.manning.com/tahchiev/> >> Spring Batch in Action <http://www.manning.com/templier/> >> Blog: http://garygregory.wordpress.com >> Home: http://garygregory.com/ >> Tweet! http://twitter.com/GaryGregory >> > > > > -- > Matt Sicker <boa...@gmail.com> >
