Gabe said: > Nathan, > Would you please remind me again why we need configurable scopes > for tools? Scopes are important but why do they need to be configurable? > Can you show a concrete example or two of tools where the scope is not > fixed by the design of the tool but rather should be configurable > by the application developer?
<sigh>must i repeat myself?</sigh> :-)) the example i gave previously was regarding the DateTool i submitted. if configurable scopes are allowed, it may be beneficial to alter DateTool to implement ContextTool (or whatever we end up calling that interface). I can easily envision a single DateTool class that can function appropriately according to the scope for which it was designated. if a developer wished to use it statically across the application, it would be constructed using the default constructor and thus reflect the locale of the application. if, however, a developer wished to have the tool reflect the locale for a request, they would designate it as 'request' scope in the toolbox.xml and the toolbox manager would then use the ContextTool interface to obtain instances of the tool. again, i readily concede that examples such as this will probably be the exception rather than the rule and certainly developers can always extend tool classes to implement different scope designs, but i believe this is a nice feature and a more elegant solution to using tools in multiple scopes than forcing developers to extend a tool they wish to use in a different scope. the other reason (and this is perhaps the larger one) i prefer to specify scope in the configuration file, is that it is more informative that way and requires less special knowledge. if scope is only set by the interfaces a tool implements, one must then look at the source for each tool and know which interface is for which scope. so even should supporting variable-scope tools be voted down, i think it may still be beneficial to use the config file to confirm the desired scope of tools. i suppose the last reason i think we should support variable-scope tools is simply "why not?" seriously, it would take at least as much work (if not more) to enforce fixed-scope by design as it took me to implement configurable scope in my code. is there a good reason to force scope to be fixed by design? Nathan Bubna [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
