[Jetty-support] possible change org.mortbay.utl.UrlEncoded?

[Peter M. <pet...@gm...>]

Hi,

I'd like to use the methods like decodeTo in
org.mortbay.utl.UrlEncoded to parse HTTP request bodies. These methods
currently use the MutliMap add method to append key/value pairs that
are found in the body.

The problem for me is I need to preserve the order of the parameters
as they appear in body. My plan for now is to subclass MultiMap so the
add method of my subclass preserves order. This is a bit overkill
because my subclass doesn't really need anything more than the add
method and some way to get an ArrayList out after the parsing is
finished.

In an upcoming version of Jetty, would it be possible to make MutliMap
implement the following interface

package org.mortbay.util;

interface Appendable<K> {
  public void add(K name, Object value);
}

and then change the methods in UrlEncoded to take Appendable parameters?

With this change there would be assurance that my order-preserving
container object I send in place of the usual MultiMap will not need
all the other methods of a MultiMap instance. Also because the
decodeTo methods would take a parameter implementing an interaface, I
would no longer need to subclass MultiMap which is really not what I
should be doing in this case.

I think this is also a nice simplification to the UrlEncoded methods
as it makes it clear that they only need the add method of what is now
the entire MultiMap object.

I hope you find this idea appealing and if I can help make it happen
please let me know what I need to do.

Thanks,
Peter