Re: WebObjects and dependency injection (DI)
Re: WebObjects and dependency injection (DI)
- Subject: Re: WebObjects and dependency injection (DI)
- From: Lachlan Deck <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:50:16 +1000
On 22/09/2009, at 4:07 PM, Anjo Krank wrote:
I'm not sure you understand... the String thing is only the
bottleneck. I have caller code like:
ERXSQLHelper sqlHelper = ERXSQLHelper.newSQLHelper(ec, model.name
());
ERXSQLHelper sqlHelper = ERXSQLHelper.newSQLHelper(ec, dbc);
ERXSQLHelper sqlHelper = ERXSQLHelper.newSQLHelper(ec,
channel);
Surely you don't suggest I need to create a "module" in every top-
level caller?
My argument being, I have a lot of code that depends on various
"services" and their instantiation. But 90% of the time, this code
depends on user input, program state and external stuff. It's very
rare that I actually know at compile time what implementation I
have. We normally use Class.forName().newInstance() in some way or
other to handle that. So can DI help me there? If yes, how?
Yeah, this is what I assumed Anjo was getting at - after some thought,
of course (as Anjo's usually the king of succinctness :)
It seems to me that factory instantiations (as above) and/or making
use of delegates provides all the opportunities for environment/
context-based switching that DI promises. i.e., both delegate style
and DI style require the declaration of injection points and
interfaces to implement, factories providing all the opportunities for
custom implementations etc... so Andrus would you like to elaborate
on why you think DI would be particularly advantageous over these
given that it would require hacks?
And Kieran: properties are there to make things *easier* I wouldn't
want to avoid if's at the cost of putting every constructor in
there... I dread the guy who has to deal with that after you...
Cheers, Anjo
Am 22.09.2009 um 00:11 schrieb Henrique Prange:
Hi Anjo,
You would not need a static method to create new ERXSQLHelper
objects if you were using a DI container. For example, using Guice
you could declare a helper property that must be injected.
@Inject
ERXSQLHelper helper;
If you were too lazy you could let the user define which
implementation to use. For example, using Guice this is achieved
with a Module with the following binding:
bind(ERXSQLHelper.class).to(OracleSQLHelper.class);
If I had to implement this using Guice, I would create an
ERXSQLHelper provider that would return the right ERXSQLHelper
based on the chosen database. Of course, to avoid the same code
(nested ifs) inside the provider, I would refactor the way the
database type is defined too.
IMHO, one advantage of this approach is I could create my own
extension of ERXSQLHelper class and bind to all ERXSQLHelper
declarations easily. I just need to create my own Module with the
following code:
bind(ERXSQLHelper.class).to(MyOwnSQLHelper.class);
I could do the same thing with the current implementation, but I
need to set a property that is not type safe and you had to write a
lot of boilerplate code to support this.
Guice fail fast mechanism also helps to find problems earlier. If
something is wrong with the bindings, an exception is thrown as
soon as you create the Injector. In your example, I would get a
NoClassDefFound in runtime, during a very important presentation,
of course. :p
And last, but not least, you could bind a MockERXSQLHelper class
when unit testing classes that depend upon ERXSQLHelper.
Cheers,
Henrique
Anjo Krank wrote:
U-huh. So how about a real world example and not these cooked up
things. Take a look at the ERXSQLHelper. Depending on various
types of input it creates a concrete subclass. Can DI change this
to sth more "clean"?
Cheers, Anjo
public static ERXSQLHelper newSQLHelper(String
databaseProductName) {
synchronized (_sqlHelperMap) {
ERXSQLHelper sqlHelper = _sqlHelperMap.get(databaseProductName);
if (sqlHelper == null) {
try {
String sqlHelperClassName = ERXProperties.stringForKey
(databaseProductName + ".SQLHelper");
if (sqlHelperClassName == null) {
if (databaseProductName.equalsIgnoreCase("frontbase")) {
sqlHelper = new FrontBaseSQLHelper();
}
else if (databaseProductName.equalsIgnoreCase("mysql")) {
sqlHelper = new MySQLSQLHelper();
}
else if (databaseProductName.equalsIgnoreCase("oracle")) {
sqlHelper = new OracleSQLHelper();
}
else if (databaseProductName.equalsIgnoreCase
("postgresql")) {
sqlHelper = new PostgresqlSQLHelper();
}
else if (databaseProductName.equalsIgnoreCase
("openbase")) {
sqlHelper = new OpenBaseSQLHelper();
}
else if (databaseProductName.equalsIgnoreCase("derby")) {
sqlHelper = new DerbySQLHelper();
}
else if (databaseProductName.equalsIgnoreCase
("microsoft")) {
sqlHelper = new MicrosoftSQLHelper();
}
else {
try {
sqlHelper = (ERXSQLHelper) Class.forName
(ERXSQLHelper.class.getName() + "$" + databaseProductName +
"SQLHelper").newInstance();
}
catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {
sqlHelper = new ERXSQLHelper();
}
}
}
else {
sqlHelper = (ERXSQLHelper) Class.forName
(sqlHelperClassName).newInstance();
}
_sqlHelperMap.put(databaseProductName, sqlHelper);
}
catch (Exception e) {
throw new NSForwardException(e, "Failed to create sql
helper for the database with the product name '" +
databaseProductName + "'.");
}
}
return sqlHelper;
}
}
Am 21.09.2009 um 23:24 schrieb Andrew Lindesay:
Hi Anjo;
I guess this could be helpful in _some_ situations; I take for
example, the Jetty server. Jetty can have a number of "handlers"
added to it. Each handler does something like re-writes, feeds
disk-based content, runs servlets etc.. etc.. The Jetty authors
could not have envisaged all of the possible handlers that might
have been written for Jetty, but because of the configuration
style which follows the same line of thinking as Andrus is
describing, it is possible to configure additional handlers. So
that's a good example of where this seems quite helpful and
Andrus' other examples also feel like good examples, but I agree
that it seems like over-kill for many situations.
cheers.
Thanks for the write-up, but yeah, this can all be achieved w/o
it. I really don't see why I shouldn't configure my app with if
(Configration.isStaging())... and instead use DI. At least my
way I easily find all the occurrences and have full logic
support if(!Configuration.isStaging()). How is DI "cleaner" in
any way when:
- I have any number of DI containers and their various syntax to
chose from
- I can't *find* the dependencies when I really want or need
them. Have you ever tried to debug such an app that wasn't
written by yourself? Take a look at the Red5 Media server for
some fun...
___
Andrew Lindesay
www.lindesay.co.nz
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with regards,
--
Lachlan Deck
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