Re: [morph-developer] sandbox Morph 2

[Matt S. <Mat...@wh...>]

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner; work has been very busy the 
past couple weeks!

My idea for Morph from the beginning has been that it should offer a 
rich set of default reflectors and transformers and then make it easy 
for you to make a few tweaks to suit your particular use case (the 80/20 
rule).  If all the defaults work well for you, then the Morph abstract 
class works great.  If the defaults aren't quite right, it's kind of a 
PITA to work with the SimpleDelegatingTransformer, SDR, etc.  Basically 
I think Morph addresses the 80% well but falls short the other 20% of 
the time.  To address the other 20%, I have been thinking about 
introducing a non-static version of the Morph class that is 
customizable.  This is kind of like the difference between BeanUtils and 
BeanUtilsBean in Commons-BeanUtils.  Instead of calling the class 
MorphBean I opted for the name MorphSystem, but I am open for other 
suggested names.  Morph2 delegates to a particular, unchangeable 
MorphSystem and will perhaps someday Morph2 will replace the old Morph 
class.

Here is an example of what I am talking about

            ContainerToPrettyTextConverter containerConverter = new 
ContainerToPrettyTextConverter();
            containerConverter.setPrefix(null);
            containerConverter.setSuffix(null);
           
            DefaultToTextConverter toTextConverter = new 
DefaultToTextConverter(new Transformer[] { containerConverter }, true);
           
            BeanToPrettyTextConverter converter = new 
BeanToPrettyTextConverter();
            converter.setToTextConverter(toTextConverter);
            converter.setSeparator("&");
            converter.setPrefix(null);
            converter.setSuffix(null);

This part of the syntax I am OK with:

            ContainerToPrettyTextConverter containerConverter = new 
ContainerToPrettyTextConverter();
            containerConverter.setPrefix(null);
            containerConverter.setSuffix(null);
           
            BeanToPrettyTextConverter converter = new 
BeanToPrettyTextConverter();
            converter.setSeparator("&");
            converter.setPrefix(null);
            converter.setSuffix(null);

This part I am not OK with:

            DefaultToTextConverter toTextConverter = new 
DefaultToTextConverter(new Transformer[] { containerConverter }, true);

            converter.setToTextConverter(toTextConverter);

For the part I am not OK with, instead I would like to see:

MorphSystem m = new MorphSystem();
m.setComponent("containerConverter", containerConverter);
m.setComponent("toTextConverter", toTextConverter);

The idea here is that the MorphSystem looks for all the 
containerConverter references in all the converters that are part of it 
and appropriately wires them up to point to the custom 
containerConverter the user specifies. 

I actually started on a class called MorphSystem years ago and then 
shelved it because I thought that I was basically duplicating the work 
you see in a dependency injection framework.  So, instead of going this 
route I figured it should be possible to use Spring or some other DI 
framework for the same effect.  Experience has shown me that for this 
use DI is cumbersome at best and painfully counterintuitive at worst.

So, what do you think about all this?

Matt S

Matt Benson wrote:
> So, tell me about this... :)
>
> -Matt B
>
>
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