[MO-java-dev] Understanding alt.java.io?

[Tim M. <tim...@po...>]

Guys - I don't understand how alt.java.io.File (the interface that sun
should have used in the first place) helps us mock stuff up?

I must be missing something very obvious - but if I have a MockFile that
conforms to that interface, I can't use it with Sun's FileReader object
which expects a java.io.File (there is a basic type difference problem
here).

So I guess I don't understand the point of it??? At connextra we have
subclassed things like java.io.Reader (as we did for some of the other io
classes - some of which live in the orginial mockobjects code base), and
have implemented the crucial methods that get it to work as a stub and a
mock. This way a MockReader can be used with a BufferedReader and you can
write relevent tests with it.

For trickier classes like File - which really seem to require fileDescriptor
objects we have adopted the "SimpleFile" convention, which just wraps File
and just delegates a subset of the most useful methods. This interface also
provides  getFile, so that if you do use it at a low level in your code you
can get the File object and pass it to something like an XML Document class
(although we tend to use a MockReader in preference to the real file
anyway).

Is alt.java.io.File an equivalent to the SimpleFile strategy? It doesn't
seem to be to me - so I am scratching my head trying to understand how its
being used in production code at the moment?

With regards to some of this stuff, I promise to reintegrate asap to pass on
some of the stuff we have lurking around. Its taken us a long time to get
off visualAge so we can more easily work on open source projects (we are
almost there).

Tim
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.381 / Virus Database: 214 - Release Date: 02/08/2002