Re: [Webmacro-devel] New features for 2.0?

[Eric R. <eb...@tc...>]

<snip>

>  The down-side is that *valid*
> input has to get parsed twice -- once to validate, and once to get the
> value.  I suppose this is pretty negligible compared to the normal 
> latency
> of a request.

Agreed, there's a lot more going on during request processing and 
template evaluation than just a simple Integer.parseInt()

> Another approach might be to change the casting functions to return 
> objects
> instead of primitives.  E.g.,
>    Integer toInt(Object o);
> instead of
>    int toInt(Object o);

I like this idea a lot!  We use $toInt() and $toLong() everywhere, and 
every time we pass in a bad value, we get a stinkin' exception where a 
Null would be better.

Might be nice if we also had $toInt($input, $DefaultValue) variations 
too, for the cases where $input isn't a valid int and a Null isn't good 
enough.

Something like:
	#set $xid = $toInt($Form.XID, -1)

As an aside, it would be nice if WM were smart enough to up-cast 
Integers to Longs when calling methods on a context object:

	public String passALong(long l) { return l + ""; }

	$Obj.passALong(1)

as far as I remember, this doesn't work.  Ya gotta write this:
	$Obj.passALong($toLong(1))

which is just annoying b/c you gotta keep up with the argument types of 
all your methods.  Just knowing that it's a "number" should be good 
enough.

eric