[jboss-jira] [JBoss JIRA] Commented: (JBRULES-647) RuleModel to populate Descr for rendering to DRL

Tue May 1 08:34:30 EDT 2007

    [ http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBRULES-647?page=comments#action_12360993 ] 

Edson Tirelli commented on JBRULES-647:
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My suggestion is the obvious one: lets start simple and build over it.

> What about date literals? Dates are also kind of a special case I think. On the LHS in drl dates are pretty easy, we just slap quotes around them and the compiler takes care of it. But on the RHS we need to new java.util.Date() - although MVEL may take care of it.
Yes, the old java Date issue. I think what we need to do is to define a general (maybe configurable) mask for dates and automatically parse strings into dates in the input fields. This can be based on the field type, as we already do manipulations for strings (adding quotes) and formulas (removing the = sign).

> Do we allow a field to be set to a bound variable?
Sure. From a code generation perspective, it is already supported. Just a matter of allowing users to chose or type variables in the Web GUI.

> We can deal with string/number literals, but what about dates?
See above.

> Say we want to set a field to a calculation, for a non String, this should work as it is now right? so we have a "value" of "x *3.0 - someVar", then that will be: boundVariable.setSomeField(x * 3.0 - someVar), UNLESS it is a string, in which case it will try to wrap quotes around it (which is not really a problem, as you generall don't do calculations with a string).
The way it is now, from code generation perspective, it is already working. The key thing is that if the field type is String and you want to do manipulations, you MUST use the '=' sign prefixing the expression so that the engine knows it is a formula. If it is not a String, that the '=' is optional. It will work both with and without it.

> I guess my original question remains: shoudl we ask the user to classify if they are doing a literal, a formula or choosing from a list of variables? or is that overkill and unhelpful?
Lets do something similar to what Excel does... if it is a literal, variable, etc, the user simply types/selects it. If it is a formula, user can start the expression with '=' (exactly like excel) or maybe use a wizard when we build one. Only thing is not there yet, but easy to implement as soon as we define how it will work is Date parsing.

Regarding the "type" field in ActionSetField, I think it is a useful declarative information for the model and it is good to have it there, independent of the SuggestionCompletionEngine. I think we may not have the SCE always available everywhere to use and having the field type information makes it kind of "self-contained". 

So, what we do regarding Dates? Does JodaTime has anything useful we can use here?

> RuleModel to populate Descr for rendering to DRL
> ------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: JBRULES-647
>                 URL: http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBRULES-647
>             Project: JBoss Rules
>          Issue Type: Sub-task
>      Security Level: Public(Everyone can see) 
>            Reporter: Michael Neale
>         Assigned To: Edson Tirelli
>

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