[forge-dev] Wondering about coding convention #philosophy

[Vineet Reynolds Pereira]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Antonio Goncalves" <antonio.mailing at gmail.com>
> To: "forge-dev List" <forge-dev at lists.jboss.org>
> Sent: Sunday, October 20, 2013 10:20:49 PM
> Subject: [forge-dev]  Wondering about coding convention #philosophy
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I love Forge because it generates code. And that's why my customers start to
> love it too. Basically, they look at Forge as the "way to write Java EE
> code" or if you like "if those guys write code like this, then we should".
> 
> I am digging into some details of the generated code (I am writing a blog
> about several architectural styles starting with Forge) and I feel coding
> convention should be homogenized . I know extensions are written by
> different individuals, but some basic coding conventions should be applied.

+1.

I would consider these architectural styles more than coding conventions,
and I believe it would be wise to 'standardize' some of these for Java EE 6+.

> For example, when you generate a web app with REST and Faces scaffolding,
> you get some difference :
> 
> 
>     * Faces Backing Bean use query builder (e.g getAll method is
>     entityManager.createQuery(criteria.select(criteria.from(Book.class))).getResultList();
>     and
>     * REST Endpoint use dynamic queries (the list all method is "SELECT
>     DISTINCT b FROM Book b ORDER BY b.id "))
> Method names are different and do the same :
> 
> 
>     * JSF : getAll
>     * REST : listAll

They do look similar, but they're not the same in all respects.
The one in REST will contain JOIN FETCH expressions when relationships (@OneToMany, @ManyToMany etc.) are found in the class.
This was done to ensure that serialization would not emit incomplete object graphs.
There are various factors that would be at work here in determining what JPQL queries should be generated.
Obviously in this context, exposing JPA entities directly is bad idea and projections/views of the entities should be used instead.

IMHO we should not be putting persistence concerns in either the JSF beans or the REST resources.
They should go into a service or a repository or whatever data access pattern is suitable for the context.
This is where we lack any standardization at the moment, and it would be better to not limit this exercise to improving the conventions alone, but also the architecture.

I don't believe in packing in persistence concerns however small, into these beans for 
 * we run the risk of generating God classes, and
 * we'd leave users with the task of creating/extracting the persistence layer (which should have been done by Forge in the first place).

> 
> Attributes
> 
> 
>     * private EntityManager em;
>     * private EntityManager entityManager; // em would be better
> Or the use of this keyword (JSF beans use this.entityManager instead of
> directly em in REST)
> 
> And there are several examples like this. If Forge is seen as "the way of
> writing code" maybe something should be created to get homogenized code.
> PMD, Checkstyle, human review and so one.....
> 
> Just wondering....
> 
> 
> --
> Antonio Goncalves
> Software architect and Java Champion
> 
> Web site | Twitter | LinkedIn | Paris JUG | Devoxx France
> 
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