Because of legacy (unfortunate) reasons, we have the same xml roots for 2 different representations. With xstream, how would we let unmarshaller to use a class we need while unmarshalling.
I am thinking of passing some context (through ThreadContext) so that xstream would use that information to pick the right class during unmarshalling, though I am not sure where to start. Any suggestions are very appreciated.
Notes:
Root tags are same for both XML
No other information (attribute) on root tag is available to distingish 2 representations
Cannot change the xml because of legacy reasons
Ideally I would like the solution to work with Spring-OXM but will take shortcuts if needed
You know in advance which of the two representations you are about to parse.
So you can create two instances of the xStream in the beginning, and configure the converters and aliases differently for each of them, and use one instance per representation.
This approach seems to me cleaner and more controllable than setting a global context variable and then having a bunch of ifs inside the converters, and dealing with potential ambiguities.
Related
I am searching a solution for a tricky question.
I would like to use GWT static string internationalization, thus using Constants, ConstantsWithLookup and Messages, but the strings must come from the server at runtime, instead that compile time.
Is there already a project that does such a thing, or should I write my own GWT generators?
Thanks to everyone that will help me.
UPDATE: The Dictionary is not an option, because the application is almost complete and I cannot change all the application for this.
UPDATE 2: In fact Dictionary is an option if it is wrapped by a Costants-like or Messages-like interface.
What you ask for is not static i18n at all. Some of the reasons why GWT's i18n is virtually all static:
It is a synchronous API. Fetching resources from the server will either require an async API to spread throughout the entire application (ie, passing a Future to a widget telling it where to get its inner text once that string has been fetched from the server) or you will have to basically block execution of the app until the i18n resources have been downloaded at the beginning (which will give poor experience for users).
We can optimize the generated code to only include those formatters and associated data that are actually needed by the messages in the app. If you don't include any plural messages, we don't have to include that code, etc. Expressions can be inlined, dead code removed, and class references removed entirely in most cases.
We can make use of things at compile time that would be hard or expensive to do at runtime. For example, simply parsing the message format strings takes a fair amount of code, and none of that needs to be included in the compiled output. Let's say you fetch strings for your app from the server, and you find that one of them has {0,localtime,YMd} in it -- now you need ICU4J in order to localize that -- oops! Even if it could all be compiled to JS, it would be huge. Perhaps you can support a subset of GWT's i18n in this way, but you will have to include every formatter that might possibly be referenced from a message, even though most of them never would be.
If you really want dynamic i18n, then do as the other answers suggest and use Dictionary (note however that you won't be able to properly localize your app if it has any complexity to its messages). If you need more than can be provided by that, then bite the bullet and use static i18n.
There are two options: Good and Less Good.
Good:
The standard way, static string i18n were all language permutations are optimized and inlined where they are used (i.e. put the Japanese company name into the HTML template for a button/column/header).
Because the full suite of i18n can be elaborate with support for pluralization and message builders, #nnoations, and automatic i18n, it is preferable. It is also the fastest option for performance.
Less Good:
Often because you need to work with a legacy system, so Good is not good enough. Here rather than all the rocket widgets, you just need to get text in boxes. Then use the dynamic string i18n and drop the strings into your page with something like an old school Dictionary object.
I'm currently prototyping a small project in Plone and trying to KISS as much as possible while the requirements are still in flux. To that end, I've resisted creating any custom content types for now and have been using marker interfaces to distinguish between "types" of content.
Now that I'm looking at workflow, I've realised that they're bound to types, and there doesn't seem to be a mechanism for assigning them to markers. I think I could wrap portal_workflow with my own version that looks for markers and returns the appropriate workflow if found, however, this doesn't feel like a tenable approach.
Is there a way of assigning workflow to markers that I've missed, or should I just bite the bullet and create some lightweight custom content types instead?
There's not really a built-in feature to use markers, but at http://www.martinaspeli.net/articles/dcworkflows-hidden-gems, Martin Aspeli hints that it is possible:
Note that in Plone, the workflow chain of an object is looked up by
multi-adapting the object and the workflow to the IWorkflowChain
interface. The adapter factory should return a tuple of string
workflow names (IWorkflowChain is a specialisation of IReadSequence,
i.e. a tuple). The default obviously looks at the mappings in the
portal_workflow tool, but it is possible to override the mapping, e.g.
in resopnse to some marker interface.
I was a little surprised when I started using Lift how heavily it uses reflection (or appears to), it was a little unexpected in a statically-typed functional language. My experience with JSP was similar.
I'm pretty new to web development, so I don't really know how these tools work, but I'm wondering,
What aspects of web development encourage using reflection?
Are there any tools (in statically typed languages) that handle (1) referring to code from a template page (2) object-relational mapping, in a way that does not use reflection?
Please see lift source. It doesn't use reflection for most of the code that I have studied. Almost everything is statically typed. If you are referring to lift views they are processed as Xml nodes, that too is not reflection.
Specifically referring to the <lift:Foo.bar/> issue:
When <lift:Foo.bar/> is encountered in the code, Lift makes a few guesses, how the original name should have been (different naming conventions) and then calls java.lang.Class.forName to get the class. (Relevant code in LiftSession.scala and ClassHelpers.scala.) It will only find classes registered with addToPackages during boot.
Note that it is also possible (and common) to register classes and methods manually. Convention is still that all transformations must be of the form NodeSeq => NodeSeq because that is the only thing which makes sense for an untyped HTML/XHTML output.
So, what you have is Lift‘s internal registry of node transformations on one side, and on the other side the implicit registry of the module. Both types use a simple string lookup to execute a method. I guess it is arguable if one is more reflection based than the other.
Would like to get some thoughts on how to best organize session vars within a scala / lift application.
I've read over a number of scala materials online and have found generally the following paradigm in all examples that introduce session vars:
declare an object that extends the SessionVar class
put that object into a file that contains a snippet (or any file)
access that object from anywhere in the codebase (lift will take care of the session var's lifecycle based on the lifetime of the user's http session)
Perhaps I'm not understanding something, but I'm concerned that this approach would lead to a whole bunch of these objects in various files all over the place. Its not such a big deal if its a small app, but when a project gets larger this could lead to chaos.
For those who have worked on larger scala projects, is there a generally accepted better approach? (even if its something simple like putting all of these objects into a common file?)
Thanks.
This is a bit subjective, but I'll give it a try. I think it depends on the scope the session var has in your project.
If you need the session var only in one snippet, you should make it a private member of that class.
If you need it in several but not all snippets, put those snippets in a package and make the object private to that package. If you have a lot of them, you could create an extra file to hold them.
If you need it globally, put it into a central location, maybe inside a package object.
If possible, avoid using SessionVars completely.
SessionVars should be used sparingly in your application. They are similar to Servlet Session Variables, except they are type safe.
How many session variables do you need? Personally, I have a session variable for the primary key of the current user and maybe one or two more. The rest of the state of the application should be stored in closures (because functions associated with GUIDs close over scope).
We seems to be abstracting a lot of logic way from web pages and creating "helper" classes. Sadly, these classes are all sounding the same, e.g
ADHelper, (Active Directory)
AuthenicationHelper,
SharePointHelper
Do other people have a large number of classes with this naming convention?
I would say that it qualifies as a code smell, but remember that a code smell doesn't necessarily spell trouble. It is something you should look into and then decide if it is okay.
Having said that I personally find that a name like that adds very little value and because it is so generic the type may easily become a bucket of non-related utility methods. I.e. a helper class may turn into a Large Class, which is one of the common code smells.
If possible I suggest finding a type name that more closely describes what the methods do. Of course this may prompt additional helper classes, but as long as their names are helpful I don't mind the numbers.
Some time ago I came across a class called XmlHelper during a code review. It had a number of methods that obviously all had to do with Xml. However, it wasn't clear from the type name what the methods had in common (aside from being Xml-related). It turned out that some of the methods were formatting Xml and others were parsing Xml. So IMO the class should have been split in two or more parts with more specific names.
As always, it depends on the context.
When you work with your own API I would definitely consider it a code smell, because FooHelper indicates that it operates on Foo, but the behavior would most likely belong directly on the Foo class.
However, when you work with existing APIs (such as types in the BCL), you can't change the implementation, so extension methods become one of the ways to address shortcomings in the original API. You could choose to names such classes FooHelper just as well as FooExtension. It's equally smelly (or not).
Depends on the actual content of the classes.
If a huge amount of actual business logic/business rules are in the helper classes, then I would say yes.
If the classes are really just helpers that can be used in other enterprise applications (re-use in the absolute sense of the word -- not copy then customize), then I would say the helpers aren't a code smell.
It is an interesting point, if a word becomes 'boilerplate' in names then its probably a bit whiffy - if not quite a real smell. Perhaps using a 'Helper' folder and then allowing it to appear in the namespace keeps its use without overusing the word?
Application.Helper.SharePoint
Application.Helper.Authentication
and so on
In many cases, I use classes ending with Helper for static classes containing extension methods. Doesn't seem smelly to me. You can't put them into a non-static class, and the class itself does not matter, so Helper is fine, I think. Users of such a class won't see the class name anyway.
The .NET Framework does this as well (for example in the LogicalTreeHelper class from WPF, which just has a few static (non-extension) methods).
Ask yourself if the code would be better if the code in your helper class would be refactored to "real" classes, i.e. objects that fit into your class hierarchy. Code has to be somewhere, and if you can't make out a class/object where it really belongs to, like simple helper functions (hence "Helper"), you should be fine.
I wouldn't say that it is a code smell. In ASP.NET MVC it is quite common.