[jdom-interest] Factories

[Bradley S. Huffman]

Jason Hunter writes:

> 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.

I'm agree with Elliotte in that it would be nice to have it hidden,
unfortunately Java's package system doesn't allow it.

Brad