--- "Craig R. McClanahan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, Ranjangaonkar, Vaibhav (HQP) wrote:
>
> > Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 12:56:09 -0700
> > From: "Ranjangaonkar, Vaibhav (HQP)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Reply-To: Struts Developers List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > To: Struts Developers List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Subject: RE: DynaActionForm.getMap() change
> >
> > My 0.2 cents -
> > I think, idea to provide getMap() method is great !
> > Yes, to solve the performance problem, I think, then
> > We will have to keep track when underlying map has
> > Changed. Then, create unmodifiable map only if it changed
> > Since the last time...
> >
>
> The current implementation already has getMap() -- the problem is that
> it
> returns the real HashMap that is internally used to store property
> values,
> which exposes those values to being modified by means other than through
> the DynaActionForm methods.
>
> I don't like the performance impact of creating a new wrapper instance
> on
> every call to getMap(), however -- that can happen lots of times in a
> page. It's probably possible to create the wrapper once and then cache
> it
> (to reduce the impact somewhat), but it is still a spurious object
> creation.
I considered caching as well but thought the implementation might get a
bit ugly. It also doesn't help the form.map.prop issue.
>
> > Actually, this is a common java idiom, I think. Whenever
> > We need to expose a collection from a class, we should
> > return unmodifiable variant of it so that encapsulation
> > doesn't break, but then, we have performance issue, as
> > David said...
> >
> > Thanks.
>
> The reason to think about doing it is usability, which sometimes needs
> to
> win out over O-O purity :-).
I often argue from the OO purist perspective (if you hadn't guessed by now
:-). However, sometimes that's just playing devil's advocate. I think
the usability issue here probably justifies DynaActionForm implementing
Map. Is there any other way of acheiving form.prop for a DynaActionForm?
If we do implement Map we should note in the reasons in the javadoc so
it's less confusing for extenders/customizers.
David
>
> All of the Struts tags, because they use commons-beanutils under the
> covers, treat DynaBean beans and standard JavaBeans identically -- the
> internal implementation knows exactly what to do. So you can say things
> like:
>
> <html:bean:write name="customer" property="firstName"/>
>
> Now, assume you've got a page author that wants to switch and use JSTL
> EL
> expressions instead. Their natural first inclination is going to be to
> write:
>
> <c:out value="${customer.firstName}"/>
>
> which will work fine for a standard JavaBean, but not fine for a
> DynaBean.
> If it *happens* to be a DynaActionForm, you can work around this by
> saying:
>
> <c:out value="${customer.map.firstName}"/>
>
> because we added getMap() to DynaActionForm. This is really confusing
> to
> newcomers, and would be unnecessary if we went to DynaActionForm
> implementing Map. Then, the user's initial guess at how to write the
> expression would have been correct.
>
> Given that JSP 2.0 makes EL expressions available everywhere in a page,
> so
> that you'd be able to write just this instead:
>
> ${customer.firstName}
>
> then I think the usability issue is strong enough that we should look at
> making DynaActionForm implement Map so that it plays nicely with all EL
> expressions.
>
> SIDE NOTE: In JavaServer Faces, the APIs let you customize a thing
> called
> the PropertyResolver, which is the piece of code that interprets the "."
> or "[]" operators in an EL expression. In the most recent release of
> the
> Struts-Faces integration library, I took of advantage of this and
> implemented support for DynaBeans -- but that only works for value
> reference expressions in Faces components, not in other uses of EL in
> the
> page.
>
> Craig
>
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