We have tried different approaches to specifying the patterns. The current favorite is to use inner annotations for specifying the roles.
So, instead of our earlier approach:
@CompositePattern(role = CompositeRole.COMPONENT, participants =
{DistributionList.class, Person.class})
public abstract class Contact {
public abstract void sendMail(String msg);
public void add(Contact contact) {}
public void remove(Contact contact) {}
}
We want to do the following:
@CompositePattern.Component
@PatternParticipants({DistributionList.class, Person.class})
public abstract class Contact {
public abstract void sendMail(String msg);
public void add(Contact contact) {}
public void remove(Contact contact) {}
}
I think that is easier to read and understand.
Would love to hear your opinions on this.
Heinz
I really like the inner annotations approach, although it might have one downside: The user does not have code completion hints to find out that a @PatternParticipants should be used in conjunction with the concrete pattern.
I already started using it for the exercises! Great.
Yes, we agree. Unfortunately annotations do not have inheritance, which means we would have to include the
Class[] participants() default {};attribute in every single inner annotation. I can whack that in with vi if you feel it should be there rather. Then we could do the following:@CompositePattern.Component(participants={DistributionList.class, Person.class})public abstract class Contact {
public abstract void sendMail(String msg);
public void add(Contact contact) {}
public void remove(Contact contact) {}
}
Heinz