[seam-dev] How to store data in contexts

[Gavin King]

I really don't think this is a good idea. We should be encouraging
people to use the New Way.

On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 2:18 AM, Dan Allen <dan.j.allen at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 9:06 AM, Gavin King <gavin.king at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Right.
>>
>> Contextual is there so that frameworks can put stuff in contexts for
>> "special" cases.
>>
>> It's not really meant to be used by application code or "normal"
>> framework code. Stick the stuff in a bean, or use a producer method.
>
> So the question was also brought up whether we should provide the unified
> API to the standard attribute maps in the Servlet and JSF APIs. Ideally, of
> course, you are using beans and producer methods to populate these contexts.
> But one of the major usability improvements provided by Seam was the fact
> that you had one way to access all contexts. Given that we have all been
> involved in writing applications for companies, you should know as well as I
> do that it's extremely common to have to use these attribute maps for one
> thing or another. It's life. Clint said in the meeting you can always just
> get a handle to that map the regular way. Let me remind you how this is done
> in JSF:
>
> application scope:
> FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getApplicationMap()
> request scope:
> FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getRequestMap()
> session scope:
> FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getSessionMap()
> view scope: FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getViewRoot().getViewMap()
> flash scope: very bizarre mix of request map and some internal state
>
> All I'm saying is that I think Seam should provide producers that expose
> these maps so that they are injectable (as the type AttributeMap). I'm not
> saying we use these maps to manipulate or access beans. This is for
> integration with legacy systems, storing data ad-hoc in a non-JSR-299 way,
> or whatever else the case may be. The question is going to come up and I
> think people will just look for solutions elsewhere (sourceforge.net) to
> patch Seam to provide something like this. It's not perfect. It's life.
>
> -Dan
>
> --
> Dan Allen
> Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat | Author of Seam in Action
>
> http://mojavelinux.com
> http://mojavelinux.com/seaminaction
> http://in.relation.to/Bloggers/Dan
>
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-- 
Gavin King
gavin.king at gmail.com
http://in.relation.to/Bloggers/Gavin
http://hibernate.org
http://seamframework.org