Re: [Lambdamoo-server] ANN: Stunt Release 9 Work in Progress

[Todd S. <to...@su...>]

As always, thanks for the feedback and discussion.  Special thanks to Tim
and Albori for testing!

I just pushed more changes to the MOOCode API.  For the most part, this
consisted of opening up built-ins like `verbs()', `properties()', etc. to
accept an anonymous object as the first argument.  Internally, a lot has
changed, and I'm still testing things like db dump/load **so make sure you
keep a backup of your database**.

That said, I'm starting to rework my apps to use this new capability.  A
good example, from my perspective, is request handling in Dialog.

The old way, requests were dispatched to verbs on a user-defined controller
object for handling.  Verbs were handed `request' and `response' frobs,
which represented the HTTP-request-specific and transient aspects of the
workflow.  The controller was static.  Because a controller was static, it
wasn't easy/convenient to implement request-specific state.  It also wasn't
easy to mix in context-specific functionality in a duck-typed sort of way
-- verbs that act one way in a testing context vs. a development or
production context.

The new way, a new anonymous child of the controller is created for each
request.  Context-specific helpers are mixed in as well: in production,
`request()' and `response()' verbs return the corresponding request and
response objects; in a test, they return mocks, for example.  The Dialog
framework is doing something like the following for each request:

  temp = create({<controller>, <request/response>, <session>}, 1);
  temp:(<action>)(<params>);

Other than testing, the big remaining to do is garbage collecting cyclic
references among anonymous objects.

Replies to other comments in the thread:

1) WAIFs -- I used them before, but they didn't solve my problem this time
around.  However, there's nothing that I am aware of that precludes using
both WAIFs and anonymous objects.

2) $runnable -- no way!  I'll add real lambdas soon enough.

Todd