So I have a Swift file with some class Whatever. This class has a number of private properties. Like this:
class Whatever
{
private let privateString = "Blabla"
private let privateInt = 125
// a lot of code here
}
I would like to create an extension for this class in a separate file. Just in order to avoid having a large file with enormous amount of code. But I can't. An extension in a separate file cannot access private properties of the class. So I'm forced to either make private properties internal or maintain a single large file. Is there any technical solution to this problem except creating a module for this functionality?
You can't access private properties from another files.
The only thing I can think of that may help you is to use to replace private with private(set) which provide you a read-only access from other files.
This doesn't come up in iOS programming much, but I think a lot of iOS programmers know this instinctively, make you model classes just store values, and maybe some really basic methods on them, then you have model controllers that can modify the model classes, in Mac OS we always talked about model, model controllers, view controllers, and views, but in reality I think this was the model, view, control pattern and the model, view, presenter pattern combined, and model controls where the real controllers, and view controllers where the presents.
Related
I'm looking for a way of condensing some of my AS3 code to avoid almost duplicate commands.
The issue is that I have multiple variables with almost the same name e.g. frenchLanguage, englishLanguage, germanLanguage, spanishLanguage
My Controller class contains public static variables (these are accessed across multiple classes) and I need a way to be able to call a few of these variables dynamically. If the variables are in the class you are calling them from you can do this to access them dynamically:
this["spanish"+"Language"]
In AS3 it's not possible to write something like:
Controller.this["spanish"+"Language"]
Is there any way to achieve this? Although everything is working I want to be able to keep my code as minimal as possible.
It is possible to access public static properties of a class this way (assuming the class name is Controller as in your example:
Controller['propertyName']
I'm not sure how this helps to have "minimal code", but this would be a different topic/question, which might need some more details on what you want to achive.
Having said that, I like the approach DodgerThud suggests in the comments of grouping similar values in a (dynamic) Object or Dictonary and give it a proper name.
Keep in mind, that if the string you pass in as the key to the class or dynamic object is created from (textual) user input you should have some checks for the validity of that data, otherwise your programm might crash or expose other fields to the user.
It would make sense to utilize a Dictionary object for a set of variables inherited: it provides a solid logic and it happens to work...
I do not think this is what you are trying to accomplish. I may be wrong.
Classes in AS3 are always wrapped within a package - this is true whether you have compiled from Flash, Flex, Air, or any other...
Don't let Adobe confuse you. This was only done in AS3 to use Java-Based conventions. Regardless, a loosely typed language is often misunderstood, unfortunately. So:
this["SuperObject"]["SubObject"]["ObjectsMethod"][ObjectsMethodsVariable"](args..);
... is technically reliable because the compiler avoids dot notation but at runtime it will collect a lot of unnecessary data to maintain those types of calls.
If efficiency becomes an issue..
Use:
package packages {
import flash.*.*:
class This implements ISpecialInterface {
// Data Objects and Function Model
// for This Class
}
package packages {
import...
class ISpecialInterface extends IEventDispatcher
Being able to share data between multiple view controllers and doing that in a way that makes use of recommended patterns such as MVC seems to be essential to create good apps, but my problem is that these things aren't clear at all for me.
I am conscient that this question is really dense, but for things to be clear I think you really need to understand the whole thing.
First of all we need to be sure of what Model, View and Controller are doing, here is how I would describe them, please tell me if I'm right about that:
Model : a class that's responsible for managing data, and only that (for example, a class that will go on the web to retrieve information, such as weather forecast).
View : a view is an object that's displayed to the user, who can often interact with it, that's the objects that you can drag and drop in Interface Builder (for example a button) and you might also create one from scratch, or custom an already existing one by subclassing it.
Controller : a controller is responsible for managing a view and its subviews, it receives events (such as viewDidLoad, or even when the user taps a button) and can react to it, for example, it might change the text of a label.
Now about the way they are interacting between each other, I'd say that the controller is between the view and the model, it's managing the view and might ask for data to the model. In addition to receiving events from the view, it might also receive events from the model, for example, if the controller asks to the model for a specific data on the web (let's say if it asks weather for a specific city) the data won't be available immediately, instead, the model will notify the controller so that it can update the view with the data it received. Am I right?
One of the first thing I'm wondering is if an object could be considered as a model if it isn't here to retrieve data, but to do other things that are simply not related to the view, for example, could an object that's responsible for communicating and managing a bluetooth accessory considered as a model ? Could an object that sends data to a cloud considered as a model ? And what about a Tic Tac Toe AI ?
Then, singleton instances, I often heard of them when an app had to share data between multiple views, but first of all, I never really understood why it was necessary to use them in this case ?
Then, here is a singleton that I found in an article of the We Heart Swift website.
class Singleton {
struct Static {
static let instance = Singleton()
}
class var sharedInstance: Singleton {
return Static.instance
}
}
Singleton.sharedInstance
The problem if that I have had difficulties to find anywhere more details about why it's written in this way, and most of all, can a singleton have an initializer that takes arguments? How to add properties and methods to a singleton like this one? What are exactly the Static structure and the sharedInstance?
My last question is about why, technically, does a singleton makes it possible to get an access to things we have defined somewhere else? What I mean is that if I create an instance of let's say, a Dog class in my AppDelegate, and if I want to access to this specific instance in a view controller, then it wouldn't be possible, so how does singleton makes that possible under the hood?
EDIT : Oh, and, is the use of singletons recommended by Apple?
Thank you.
It has to do with the static in the struct. Static is essentially a class variable that persists for every instance of that class, so when you make the shared instance static, every time you access it, even from another instance of Singleton.instance it is the same variable because it is static. It persists amongst instances. However, Swift does not support class variables yet, so when it does, that should quickly replace the Struct syntax that is common of singletons. It is very similar to static variables in java.
For example:
class Singleton {
var someVar = 0
struct Static {
static let instance = Singleton()
}
}
to create a singleton with a variable and the following to access it:
let foo = Singleton.Static.instance
foo.someVar = 11
let bar = Singleton.Static.instance
println(bar.someVar) // Prints 11
As you can see, bar.someVar was never set, and that is because the variable for the shared instance was set, so it prints 11.
I had convenience methods littered all over the place. I have now pushed these in to a couple of helper classes and I made the helper classes protected members of my layer supertypes.
Everything was going along swimmingly until I came to Zend View. I have extended Zend View to make my layer supertype but when I try to attach a protected member it throws a:
Zend View Exception: Setting private or protected class members is not
allowed.
Firstly, why would such members not be allowed? Any ideas? Secondly, have you circumvented it in the past? And how did that go? (It seems that the framework detects protected members by the presence of a leading underscore. This seems a bit hit-and-miss, and also easy to get around).
Note - I'm not saying that I would circumvent it. I'm just trying to find out what others have done in the past (since it seems an odd constraint).
It's an important point for me since I am using traits to bring the helpers and associated proxy methods into each superclass. I don't want to maintain a separate trait just for the View. Alternatively, I don't want to make the helpers public members of each superclass.
Thank you!
Data encapsulation.
Underscore properties are not allowed primarily so that the developer can't accidentally overwrite View properties that are part of the framework.
This essentially protects all of the framework's View properties and allows you, the developer, free rain over any public properties you wish to set.
The authors of Zend View can then be sure of two things: (1) they control (and author) the private and protected class properties and (2) you control the public properties. This makes for logical data encapsulation and maintainable class overloading.
I have inherited a project that has an awkwardly big interface declared (lets call it IDataProvider). There are methods for all aspects of the application bunched up inside the file. Not that it's a huge problem but i'd rather have them split into smaller files with descriptive name. To refactor the interface and break it up in multiple interfaces (let's say IVehicleProvider, IDriverProvider etc...) will require massive code refactoring, because there are a lot of classes that implement the interface. I'm thinking of two other ways of sorting things out: 1) Create multiple files for each individual aspect of the application and make the interface partial or 2) Create multiple interfaces like IVehicleProvider, IDriverProvider and have IDataProvider interface inhertit from them.
Which of the above would you rather do and why? Or if you can think of better way, please tell.
Thanks
This book suggests that interfaces belong, not to the provider, but rather to the client of the interface. That is, that you should define them based on their users rather than the classes that implement them. Applied to your situation, users of IDataProvider each use (probably) only a small subset of the functionality of that big interface. Pick one of those clients. Extract the subset of functionality that it uses into a new interface, and remove that functionality from IDataProvider (but if you want to let IDataProvider extend your new interface to preserve existing behavior, feel free). Repeat until done - and then get rid of IDataProvider.
This is difficult to answer without any tags or information telling us the technology or technologies in which you are working.
Assuming .NET, the initial refactoring should be very minimal.
The classes that implement the original interface already implement it in its entirety.
Once you create the smaller interfaces, you just change:
public class SomeProvider : IAmAHugeInterface { … }
with:
public class SomeProvider : IProvideA, IProvideB, IProvideC, IProvideD { … }
…and your code runs exactly the way it did before, as long as you haven't added or removed any members from what was there to begin with.
From there, you can whittle down the classes on an as-needed or as-encountered basis and remove the extra methods and interfaces from the declaration.
Is it correct that most if not all of the classes which implement this single big interface have lots of methods which either don't do anything or throw exceptions?
If that isn't the case, and you have great big classes with lots of different concerns bundled into it then you will be in for a painful refactoring, but I think handling this refactoring now is the best approach - the alternatives you suggest simply push you into different bad situations, deferring the pain for little gain.
One thing to can do is apply multiple interfaces to a single class (in most languages) so you can just create your new interfaces and replace the single big interface with the multiple smaller ones:
public class BigNastyClass : IBigNastyInterface
{
}
Goes to:
public class BigNastyClass : ISmallerInferface1, ISmallerInterface2 ...
{
}
If you don't have huge classes which implement the entire interface, I would tackle the problem on a class by class basis. For each class which implements this big interface introduce a new specific interface for just that class.
This way you only need to refactor your code base one class at a time.
DriverProvider for example will go from:
public class DriverProvider : IBigNastyInterface
{
}
To:
public class DriverProvider : IDriverProvider
{
}
Now you simply remove all the unused methods that weren't doing anything beyond simply satisfying the big interface, and fix up any methods where DriverProvider's need to be passed in.
I would do the latter. Make the individual, smaller interfaces, and then make the 'big' interface an aggregation of them.
After that, you can refactor the big interface away in the consumers of it as applicable.
I'm working with the MVVM pattern + a simple ServiceLocator implementation, now to my problem how am I supposed to setup the services when the views are running in design time?
Iv tried this but it does not seem to work in VS 2010 or some thing, I know it worked on my old computer but on my new it does not. so does any one know a good alternative?
Edit: (On behalf of Merlyn Morgan-Graham)
Well what I'm trying to do is this, I have my view, ViewModel and services now the difference here is that I have 2 implementations of each service one for design time and one for run time.
for a better explanation look here.
If you want to decouple your view from your viewmodel, and your viewmodel from your model/dal (basically, if you want to use MVVM), then your view model and data model shouldn't know anything about design time. Design time only applies to the view.
This article shows a way to define your design time data via XML/XAML, so your code underneath doesn't have to know anything about it:
http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/visual-studio-2010-beta2-sample-data-project-templates/
After Edit: It turns out that you'll still have to use your view model for your existing XAML bindings to work. This will just populate the view model rather than having to create a new data model. I'm not sure, but there might be classes that allow you to use the WPF binding mechanism to take care of this... Views?
Resume Before Edit...:
As far as the solution in the article you linked first, the designer doesn't instantiate anything but your class, and the code it references. That means that assembly attributes won't be instantiated unless your view code somehow directly references them.
If you really want to couple your view models to your views during design time, and make it so that design time services are registered, then you have to place the service registration code in your view class, or a class the view class directly references.
To do that, you could use static constructors of your views to register your design time services. You could also write a static method on some other class (application?) to (conditionally) register the design time services. Then, call that method in the constructor of your views.
Or you could simply register them in the constructor for each of your views.
Basically, what you want to do is possible, but that method linked in the first article isn't. If you read farther in the comments, you'll see that his method is broken.
You may also want to question the idea of hooking your view model to your view during design time, because the MVVM pattern was made to avoid that sort of thing.
You usually don't need to access services at design-time... Typically, you don't even use your real ViewModels at design-time, you use dummy design data, as explained here. If you really need to use your real ViewModels, you can implement dummy versions of your services, and use them instead of the real services :
if (DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode(new DependencyObject()))
{
// Design time
ServiceLocator.Instance.Register<IService1>(new DummyService1());
ServiceLocator.Instance.Register<IService2>(new DummyService2());
}
else
{
// Run time
ServiceLocator.Instance.Register<IService1>(new RealService1());
ServiceLocator.Instance.Register<IService2>(new RealService2());
}
Also I do agree to all who have concerns regarding the use of the service locator at design time, I do believe that this is a valid scenario in some use cases.
This is not a discussion on why/why not, this is simple the way it (almost) worked for me.
There is still a problem which I did not solve yet: this only works for one view at a time.
Create a simple bootstrapper for setting up your IoC of choice. Notice the ISupportInitialize interface.
public class Bootstrapper: ISupportInitialize
{
#region ISupportInitialize Members
public void BeginInit() { }
public void EndInit()
{
if (DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode(new DependencyObject()))
Setup();
}
#endregion
public static void Setup() { SetupServiceLocator(); }
static void SetupServiceLocator()
{
ContainerBuilder builder = new ContainerBuilder();
builder.RegisterType<ConfigService>().As<IConfigService>().ExternallyOwned().SingleInstance();
IContainer container = builder.Build();
ServiceLocator.SetLocatorProvider(() => new AutofacServiceLocator(container));
}
}
Use the Bootstrapper as before for runtime mode, e.g.:
public partial class App : Application
{
protected override void OnStartup(StartupEventArgs e)
{
base.OnStartup(e);
Bootstrapper.Setup();
}
}
Additionally you need to add it to the application resources for design mode support:
<Application x:Class="MonitoringConfigurator.App"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:local="clr-namespace:MyBootstrapperNamespace"
StartupUri="MainWindow.xaml">
<Application.Resources>
<local:Bootstrapper x:Key="Bootstrapper" />
</Application.Resources>
</Application>