[jdom-interest] Factories

[Jason Hunter]

Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:

> At 6:30 PM -0800 2/27/04, Jason Hunter wrote:
> 
>> FYI, I just made an interesting commit.  People not on the commits 
>> list might want to take a look:
>>
>> http://lists.denveronline.net/lists/jdom-commits/2004-February/001745.html 
>>
>>
>> This change also made me think, should JDOMFactory really be an 
>> interface, a class, or an abstract class?  The problem with an 
>> interface is that if we add methods after 1.0 it breaks everyone 
>> implementing the interface.  With a class or abstract class, we can 
>> add w/o breakage so long as the new methods can have a standard 
>> implementation.
> 
> The problem with this is that the unchecked factory can be used directly 
> without a parser. The Builder should use it by default, but it should 
> only be accessible to the Builder. i.e. it should be package protected, 
> and should not require the user to set it. For more safety it should 
> only be used if the parser is a known good parser, and not a custom 
> XMLReader or XMLFilter.

I had a feeling you might point that out, Rusty.  :-)  And I'd agree 
with you if the design were such that you could easily get yourself into 
trouble.  But you can't.  You have to try really hard and use an awkward 
API in a class named "unchecked".  (Note I explicitly avoided calling it 
a "fast builder" but rather chose "unchecked builder").

If you do choose to make use of the class, you know you're taking risk 
in exchange for speed.  In some business situations, this is a perfectly 
reasonable compromise to make.

-jh-