[jdom-interest] API Inertia

[Elliotte Rusty Harold]

At 3:25 AM -0700 5/2/01, Joseph Bowbeer wrote:
>PS - Here's an attempt to show a simple Visitor example:
>

Interesting. I'll have to read up on this pattern. Time to crack open 
Gamma again. One question below:

>For example, the XPath getValue method for Attribute, Element, etc.
>could be implemented using a XPathValueVisitor.
>
>This would require that every object in a document implement Visitable.
>
>     interface Visitable {
>         void accept(Visitor visitor);
>     }
>
>The XPathValueVisitor computes the value appropriate for the particular
>visitable instance:
>
>     class XPathValueVisitor extends Visitor {
>         Object value;
>         void visitElement(Element element) {
>             value = element.whatever();
>         }
>         void visitAttribute(Attribute attribute) {
>             value = attribute.whatever();
>         }
>         // ...etc...
>     }
>

Why don't the visit methods return the values requested instead of 
void? Why the extra level of indirection?

And one final note: this sort of stuff is not well-understood in the 
community we're targetting. Even simpler creational patterns like 
Factory Method and Abstract Factory throw many programmers for a 
loop. This is precisely why JDOM uses concrete classes rather than 
interfaces like DOM, and the added simplicity has been much 
appreciated.

I like taking advantage of design patterns in our implementation and 
package private API. I'm not so sure I want to require people using 
the API to be comfortable with patterns though.
-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo at metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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