/implementation-enforcer

Automatically exported from code.google.com/p/implementation-enforcer

Primary LanguageJava

#Implementation Enforcer Provides a way to define how does the inheritance (of a class) and/or the implementation of an instance should take place for elements whose enforcement CANNOT be enforced by standard Java code. For example:

  • static elements
  • Class attributes
  • Behavioural aspects as:
    • Transient
    • Volatile
    • final

##Usage example Lets suppose that an API developer desires all the subclasses of the class A to have a method called aMethod which should be static with no parameters and should return void. There is no way he can achieve that by simply using java native functionality, but using this libraries he would be able to do this:

Class A:

import javax.lang.model.element.Modifier;
import ordiel.enforcer.MethodRequester;
import ordiel.enforcer.Types.Void;

@MethodRequester(
	identifier = "aMethod", 
	type = Void.class, 
	parametersTypes={}, 
	parametersIdentifiers = {}, 	
	requestedModifiers={Modifier.STATIC})
public abstract class A {}

Then a developer using the provided API would try to create its own implementation of class A by inheriting from it and would try to do something like:

Class B:

public class B extends A {}

When trying to compile class B the developer is going to receive the next error message:

Console output

In deed if you want to play the role of the API dev and the user of such API (as I did to create this example) you can put those two files in the same folder and then call the command:

javac -cp /path/to/ImplementationEnforcer-0.0.1.jar:. B.java

By doing so you should get that exact same output. In deed such example can be found in the src/test/resources folder of the project (those smart cookies maybe determined that from my console output).

For those who are not quite familiar with the usage of the cli for compiling java code I will do a little walk through to explain that command.

  • First javac is the command to request java that you want to compile a .java file.
  • Second -cp is the flag that specifies that you are going to provide/add elements to the class path.
  • Then /path/to/ImplementationEnforcer-0.0.1.jar:. this is the provided class path, as you can notice it contains the path to the jar containing the implementation enforcer and then separated by a collon is a ., this indicates the current directory so that it can find A; remember that I mention before "those two files in the same folder".
  • Last B.java I am just telling it wich file do I want to compile, which in this case is the one containing the class B.

##TODO

  • If the class/interface where the Method/Type is requested is not abstract throw a warning in the annotation processor to indicate that this use case is not required and may be it may stop being supported in further versions.
  • Check if it is possible to define them in annotations.
  • Maybe it is possible to remove the Types since apparetly java can distinguish from Integer and int when calling int.class and Integer.class.

##Version History

0.0.1

Functional for both methods and attributes.

#Author César Alonso Martínez Sánchez

ordiel1910@gmail.com

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