[jboss-user] [JBoss Tools (users)] - Re: Feedback on the Smooks editor

[mzeijen]

anonymous wrote : No matter if we use a custom classloader we would need to have a *very* stable API to do this since we would compile against liet say Smooks 1.0 would our code be able to use Smooks 1.1, 1.2 etc. without updating the binaries ? - does Smooks provide that ? 

I believe you need to implement a strategy pattern that can handle every supported Smooks version. For example something like this:

 - SmooksReaderStrategy interface
   - Smooks1_0ReaderStrategy class
   - Smooks1_1ReaderStrategy class

Every one of those implementations knows how to use one specific version of Smooks. So they also have dependencies on that specific version. That is why you can't build against only one version of Smooks, you need to build against all of them. Because you can't do that within one bundle, you need to split it up in multiple bundles. The parts of the Smooks editor could then look something like this:

 - SmookEditor
 - SmooksReader API
 - Smooks1_0Reader implementation 
 - Smooks1_1Reader implementation

If I understand OSGI correctly then you wouldn't even need to worry to much about classloading, because every bundle can have it's own independent bundle dependencies. The SmooksEditor would have dependencies on the SmooksReader API and all it's implementations. Every implementation would a dependency on one specific version of Smooks.

You could even make every reader a separate Eclipse plugin. That way you could implement new Readers for new versions of Smooks and use them with older versions of the editor. You only need to install the plugin.

anonymous wrote : And what about the model that we load - is that stable ? I'm asking since I don't know :) 

The model that the Smooks editor gets from the Readers wouldn't change in between Smooks editors because they would belong to SmooksReader API. The Reader implementations would take care of the proper translation between the model that Smooks uses and the model that the Editor uses. 

anonymous wrote : About partial documents then users don't have syntax correct files - they type and it will be imperfect. That would mean as soon as the user type the graphical editor would not be able to show anything - that might be ok as you write it. 

Yeah, you would have that same problem with the current Smooks editor. The editor would need to tell the user that the source model can't be read because of a syntax problem.

anonymous wrote : Another issue is that Smooks might not be able to load any of the related classes referred to in the editor because the classes are not compiled yet - does it support that ?

No, Smooks doesn't currently support that. In this special case we would need a special reader. Maybe we can reuse the code that is now used by the editor to read the java model?

I think that the Smooks team would be happy to provide support for implementing any special readers like that special Java reader or a XSD reader. I know I would at least ;).

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