Hi everybody.
Don't you think that WebMacro's method of locating it's .properties file,
and specyfing the templates directory is not good?
Locating .propertis is OK under Tomcat - they are contained inside
the web application directory, so there is no ambiguity. On the other
hand, for purely aesthetical reasons, I'd prefer to have both Turbine.properties
and WebMacro.properties in the same directory /WEB-INF/conf or
/WEB-INF/etc. This is much worse under Jserv 1.1 - the classloader fails
to load property files located in zone repositories - at least it failed for me.
This enforces single server-wide WebMacro.properties file, specyfing
template directories for all running applications. This is deinetly bad, because
it can lead to conflicts easily and is exteremely unelegant. I think it would be
good, if there was a way to specify the location of .properties file as
servlet initialization parameter, just as it's done with TurbineResource.properties.
Another thing that bothers me about WebMacro is the way of specyfing
template paths. You can use absolute paths, which is bad, because you
must edit them when you deploy your application in the destination server,
or you can use relative paths, which is even worse, because they are relative
to whatever the servlet container choses to be it's current directory. For
Tomcat, this is the directory where you launched /bin/startup.sh from.
I really like the way that Turbine deals with locating it's properties file -
if the path is relative to web application's root (if the container supports
getRealPath()). This makes deploing your application simpler.
This is my proposal of changes to WebMacro:
1. location of WebMacro.properties should be specified as servlet intialization
argument (be it Turbine or your own servlet extending WMServlet class)
2. if no location is specified, a fallback to standard WebMacro procedures is
preformed
3. the locations of WebMacro.properties, and template direcories may be
absolute, or relative to webapp directory if the container supports it, or
relative to "the current directory" if it doesn't.
Please advise, if this is good, especialy in respect to breaking existing code/
installations.
I volunteer to make necessary changes to WebMacro code, providing that
somebody sends me sources of WebMacro we are using, or points me to
a location where I can get them.
My plan for doing this:
1. make the changes
2. test them on my installation
3. send the patch to Turbine list, so people can test it, and if it's ok
start using it
4. join WebMacro list, explain my idea and post the patch
Again, please advise if this is the correct way of doing things
Rafal
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