On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 13:42, Anca
Luca<ancapaula.luca(a)xwiki.com> wrote:
Hi devs,
Short story:
1/ add the CLASS, OBJECT, PROPERTY EntityTypes in the model
+1
2/ serialization for referencing a property of an object
a) wiki:Space.Page^className[objectNumber]#property
b) wiki:Space.Page^className#objectNumber$property
+0.75 for b)
Long story:
1/ I would need to extend the EntityReference to be able to target a
property in an object in a document.
For this, I will need to add
/**
* Represents a Class Entity
*/
CLASS,
/**
* Represents an Object Entity.
*/
OBJECT,
/**
* Represents a Property Entity
*/
PROPERTY,
in the EntityType. Although I would prefer an extensible framework that
would allow to extend the possible entity types without changing an enum
in the platform (for any API user to be able to define its own
references), I think this is fairly extensible (these are key concepts
in the xwiki model and I don't think they would be changed that soon,
and their interpretation is flexible, they could be combined with any
parent to generate either references to class definitions or instances).
here's my +1 for this.
2/ I would also need a 'standard' string serialization for these. Now,
there's also the option to do it in my own module (annotations) because
only I need it ftm, but I prefer to have a platform wide approach. Opinions?
There are 2 choices, with a potentially different combination of separators:
a/ wiki:Space.Page^className[objectNumber]#property
pros: it's a suggestive way to access objects by number ([] is the
standard syntax for array indexed access and the objects are accessed by
index), [] is supported by JCR so maybe we should support it too
cons: [] is somewhat inconsistent with all other separators which are
just one separator, to the left (right) of the entity, harder to
implement the [] separators on the current framework
b/ wiki:Space.Page^className#objectNumber$property
pros: inline with the separator usage we already have (and easier to
implement for this reason), could be easier refactored to contain an
object name instead of the number
cons: $ separator can collide with velocity syntax (can potentially
cause trouble when used in velocity -- an alternative could be the pipe
|), could be harder to drop the object number part of the reference to
refer a property in a class (if wanted, in the future)
I have no other argument between a) and b) but the implementation speed
one, so I'd go for a b)-like approach, in the spirit of the current
separators.
WDYT?
1/ +1
2/ +1 for single separator like in b/ but not sure about the right
separators to choose.
Note that there is strong technical reason to choose different
separators, could be "wiki:Space.Page#className#objectNumber#property"
for example or any other separator.
however, if we use the same separator we lose the possibility to drop the object
name, for example to build references to class property definitions
(wiki:Space.Page^className#property) or class names to refer properties of
documents (for the future typed documents, for example). I'm not sure if we
really want this kind of things right now, but it's good to envisage for the
future.
I still don't have a very strong opinion for one or other of the separators.
Thanks,
Anca
For document reference there was the backward
compatibility aspect but not here.
In any case i would prefer not use $ since it would be a pain in
velocity I think as you said.
Thanks,
Anca
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