Re: [Springframework-developer] beandoc tool

[Darren D. <da...@da...>]

On Friday 05 November 2004 16:19, Andy Depue wrote:
> I wonder if one could device a way to separate it enough so that it could
> be paired with different already-existing BeanFactorys?  For example,
> some people are experimenting with configuration formats other than
> XML... it would be cool if this tool could work for those alternate
> formats (such as a database based Spring config or a Groovy based Spring
> config)... Let the alternate config implementations create their internal
> representation of the config and then use this internal representation as
> the basis for all beandocs.  I'm not very familiar to the internal
> workings of the BeanFactory or ApplicationContext, so I'm not sure if
> this is braindead easy or pipe dream impossible?

A standard internal representation of bean factory configurations, entirely=
=20
seperate from the config itself is ideal.  I'm not completely au fait with=
=20
this aspect of Spring - the last time I tried to figure it out, I got a bit=
=20
lost in the distinction between the bean definition readers and the bean=20
factories.  I found it difficult to see clear distinction between the two=20
aspects - I should delve into this again.

The current code in the beandoc tool essentially works this way now.  It=20
parses the config files to produce in-memory DOM representations, and then=
=20
works on this representation, decorating it with additional attributes=20
based on beandoc configuration to make the XSLT part much simpler.  The=20
output of HTML and the .dot files (used to make the graphs) is generated=20
from this decorated DOM and not the actual config files.  Input file=20
parsing would be trivial to refactor into an interfaced plug-in for=20
beandoc.

Any input file in any format existing or new could be used to create the=20
same DOM, so long as the parsers can be written for it - as they already=20
have been for XML of course.  So this would be a perfectly adequate format=
=20
for that standard representation.

=2D-=20
Darren Davison
Public Key: #DD356B0D