Martin Aspeli wrote: > We need to make sure that we're not inventing a different way to achieve > something which is already possible. This will lead to confusion, > because people will have to know "which way" is applicable in a given > situation, and the distinction will seem arbitrary.
I fear we are indeed inventing a different way to achieve something which is already possible. We aren't doing it arbitrarily, though: the current way just requires the use of an interface instead of a string. Interface usage for such a simple pattern implies a cognitive load that appears to exceed the pain point of most Python developers who are not already familiar with Zope. So we'd like to ameliorate that as best we can. >> In a system like this, there are no interfaces; the string 'root_factory' >> performs the same job as the IRootFactory interface for registration and >> lookup. I'd like to make the ZCA registry operate like this. There's >> really >> no reason for there to be an interface hanging around to represent this >> thing: >> we're using the ZCA as a complicated dictionary here. > > I think there is a reason, though you may not agree it's a good one. The > interface makes a promise about what the component is supposed to be > able to do. We don't enforce that in our duck-typing programming > language, but I think there is value in being able to say, "I want an > object that conforms to this interface (i.e. delivers what the interface > promises) - please get me the best one you've got". That is indeed the promise. But obviously the object you get back needn't *actually* implement the interface you asked for; it's only conventional. It is the same with a dictionary lookup: if you document that, for your application, reg['root_factory'] will return an object implementing IRootFactory, it's pretty much equivalent as far as I can tell. Use of the ZCA API to store and retrieve instances implementing an interface isn't required to get benefit out of the existence of that interface. >> It would also obviously be possible to just add a dictionary instance >> attribute >> to a registry, so instead of subclassing Components from dict, you might do: >> >> reg = getSiteManager() >> reg.simple['root_factory'] = root_factory >> >> To be honest, I don't mind one way or another; I'd just like to push >> whatever >> we do upstream if possible. If we move too far away from the stock ZCA >> facilities, it becomes harder to integrate Zope apps into BFG and vice versa. > > I whole-heartedly agree, and I think it's important that we use the > momentum behind BFG (and other consumers of the ZTK) to drive the ZTK > forward. Anything else would be stupid. > > I'm still concerned that your proposal basically leaves us with two ways > of implementing the singleton pattern with the ZCA, and I'm not sure > that's in our best interest. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts > further, though. I guess I can only point at the rationales in <http://docs.repoze.org/bfg/1.1/designdefense.html#bfg-uses-the-zope-component-architecture-zca> > Off the top of my head, another way to think of this *might* be to say > that the 'dict access' is basically looking up a *named* utility > providing a very generic marker interface, e.g. > zope.component.interfaces.IUtility or even just > zope.interface.Interface. That way reg['foo'] == getUtility(IUtility, > name='foo'). Obviously, assignment would register in the same way. > > I'm not sure it's "better", though. :) That would also be fine, and it would normalize things a bit, although the implementation would be harder and it would result in slower lookups. But if it made folks feel better than inheriting from dict, I'd be +1 on it. - C _______________________________________________ Zope-Dev maillist - [email protected] https://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - https://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce https://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
