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

[Keats <ke...@xa...>]

>
> > 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.

It turns out that I was already returning Object wrapped primitives to this
change is trivial.

> 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)

This is simple enough.  I doesn't even require a configuration change in
WebMacro, since it will pick up all versions of a named function in the
config.

 One issue here (related to your next point) is for non-integer conversion
you'll need to cast the default value.  Eg,

   #set $age = $toShort($Form.AGE, $toShort(0))

or better,

  #const $short0 = $toShort(0)
  #set $age = $toShort($Form.AGE, $short0)

I could implement the default argument as a generic Object, but then we'd
need two conversions for each call.  Hmmm.

> 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.

Yeah I remember looking at this a ways back.  I believe we made it work for
WMScript expression, but not for method calls.  It gets complicated since
you can have multiple signature for a method.  Plus we don't encourage
method calls from templates.

Keats