Did project Able graduate from the sandbox?

Also, Ted had some questions above – i am wondering if you have any thoughts on those.

Cheers,
Rahul

Any chance of setting them up.

This is a showstopper for me, since my own applications use GUIDs, which are not pure numeric strings.

According to the spec, “The hash (”#”, ASCII 23 hex) character is reserved as a delimiter to separate the URI of an object from a fragment identifier”.

• http://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/uri-spec.html

So, why not,

/person/#ABCD/view

instead, perhaps as an alternative escape character when the attribute is not numeric.

Also, moving the parameter into the middle of the string seems like it will cause incompatiblity with other systems. For example, the Confluence macros expect that a parameter can be tacked onto the end of a query string. It might be simpler to go with URIs that use a conventional sequence

• /person/view/1
• /person/view/#1234-abcd-5678-efgh

When the “default” attribute is not being used, we might also support expanding the pattern

• /person/view/personid#1/flavor#vanilla

where the last token without a # is the last token in the action path.

While the latter is not a vast improvement over query strings, I understand that some proxies don’t like query strings, and prefer URIs that look like references to a static resource. For composing Action URIs, this at least simplifies whether to ? or not to ?.

—-

> 1. Actions must be stored in com.opensymphony.able.actions.

Why not just use “actions” for the package? If the code doesn’t belong to com.opensymphony (or org.apache), why bother with the extra verbiage?

> 2. Sub-packages in that package are treated as directories.
> 3. Actions must be named in the style FooAction, meaning classes that don’t end in “Action” won’t be mapped.

Given #1, is not #3 redundant? Why not just use Foo for the classname? If it is a class under the “actions” package, then it should be by definition an action class.

> 4. Results are assumed to be found at /path/to/action-resultValue.jsp. For example, if
> com.opensymphony.able.actions.foo.BarAction returns “success”, then Able will look for /foo/bar-success.jsp.

Hmmm, did we change the example from the Foo Action to the Bar Action?

Given a Bar action in the package actions.foo, I’d prefer we make the default path /foo/Bar-success.jsp, since this corresponds to the Action package and result code exactly. (I like the way this convention lines up with the Classname-mapping-validator.xml.)

If we are automating mapping, then we should automate mapping, and avoid introducing arbitrary inconsistencies.

> 5. If that JSP can’t be found, Able will try /foo/bar.jsp. This is done because there is a common pattern of sharing the
> same JSP for several result values.

As mentioned, for consistency, /foo/Bar.jsp

Extension to 1/3/4/5

If we accept the best practice “Link only to mappings, never to pages”, are we really linking to Action classes or to server pages?

Which begs the question: Should the framework generate mappings based on Action classes or server pages?

If we are looking to see if we have this page or that page, perhaps we should do that up front and generate the mappings based on the pages.

In this case, there would be a virtual mapping for each page, which may (or may not) be augmented by an Action or other meta-helper, such as validation, conversion, or localization.

We might even consider doing both. Everything in the “actions” package or “pages” folder is mapped.

—-

@Results(values = {
@Result(name = Action.SUCCESS, type = Redirect.class,
location = “http://www.hostedqa.com”)
})
public class FooAction extends AbleActionSupport {
…

What is the purpose of the “location” attribute? Is it optional? Is still a way to change the default result type?

—-

• Annotation-based result mapping
• Flash scope support
• Seamless un-checked checkbox support
• Partial page identification
• iBatis DAO wrapper

Are these not issues that can be addressed in the Struts HEAD, regardless of the Able ActionMapper?

-Ted.

You can do things like including common column lists, etc with iBATIS (if that is the issue).

If not, post an enhancement request on JIRA and we will try to get it in the next release if we can.

Re: QuickStart – I turned off the class re-loading because it isn’t reliable. We will be taking it out of Struts 2.0 entirely. Unfortunate, but necessary for now.

Re: validation – no particular reason. My philosophy is only to create that stuff when I need to reduce code duplication.

Re: repeated ibatis queries – yes, you do have to repeat the columns. I’m hoping we can extend some APIs of iBatis to eventually make that less painful.

Re: holistic updates – I tend to be pragmatic. Sometimes I have a general need to update the whole table, and other times I just want to offer a single update query. With iBatis, you can choose the best option for the situation on hand – something you can’t do with Hibernate and other more full featured ORM frameworks.