Re: [Webmacro-devel] Capitalised properties in WM, why?!

[Marc P. <ma...@an...>]

On Fri, 4 Apr 2003 15:06:08 -0500, <kea...@na...> wrote:

> It seems like we discuss this issue every 6 months or so.
>
> My reply is that WMScript is *not* Java.  While it uses the JavaBeans 
> naming
> convention for property introspection, it does *not* use this convention
> itself.
>
> WMScript is designed to be usuable by people who have no knowlege of 
> Java.
> As far as possible it strives to hide the implementation details.  So the
> template author has no need to know that $Contact.LastName is actually
> calling getLastName() on a com.foo.BusContact instance, or maybe just
> get("LastName") on a Hashtable instance.

Yes, I think this is great. It's just a bit problematic and in places 
contradictory...

> If we did it the other way around, then references like $user.name would 
> be
> resolved to user.getName(), user.get("name"), or user.name.  This seems 
> OK,
> but then what about $user.Name?  What would be the accessor for this
> property?  I suppose we could reverse the case and look for 
> user.getname().

...or getName(). Who needs two methods getname() and getName() to return 
different things? Nobody with their brain engaged...  so resolving both to 
getName() as per Lane's suggestion would be a good idea I think... although 
there is the problem of it being strange behaviour.

I mean, we could argue that all property lookups should be completely case 
insensitive on the basis that web designers should not have to understand 
the intricacies of Java.

> Ultimately how WMScript properties are translated into Java properties is 
> a
> question of style.  The choice was made years ago, and it seems senseless 
> to
> revisit it now.

Yes, agreed. I was just searching for the logic behind it - in case there 
was any <g>.

FWIW, using #bean somewhat muddies the separation from Java, especially as 
we call it a "bean" and then don't use the bean conventions ;-)

-- 
Marc Palmer