[Laszlo-dev] For Review: Change 20070806-maxcarlson-x Summary: Remove setter for LzNode.data

[Max Carlson]

P T Withington wrote:
> On 2007-08-06, at 21:36 EDT, Max Carlson wrote:
> 
>> From my email on Friday:
>> > Per the call this afternoon (and as signed off by David) we will add a
>> > new method to LzNode called setData().
>> >
>> > LzNode.setData(dataelement) is called by the replicator immediately
>> > after the .data property is set and ondata is sent, but before
>> > applyData() is called on the node being replicated.  By default,
>> > setData() creates a new datapath for the replicated view (if one 
>> doesn't
>> > already exist) and it always sets the view datapath to the new
>> > dataelement passed in.
>> >
>> > This approach allows replicated views to use $path expressions and
>> > support datapath bindings out of the box.  setData() can still be
>> > overridden on an instance or subclass of node to do something more
>> > efficient (like read the data directly and set attributes).
>>
>> I didn't expect a setter to be added.  I thought we'd just add the 
>> setData() method to LzNode and follow the contract above.  The change 
>> I made to replicator now does this.
> 
> Surely you can understand my confusion.  Elsewhere in the system, when 
> we define setFoo and foo, it is standard for setters.foo to be 
> 'setFoo'.  In fact, I now find it utterly confusing that we have a 
> setData method that is not the setter for the data attribute.

I do.  Perhaps we should name setData to setReplicatorData or something 
more descriptive.

>> After looking closer at what LzDatapath does now, maybe setData() 
>> should be emulating the behavior of LzDatapath.__LZApplyData().  Do 
>> you think some or all of LzDatapath.__LZApplyData() should be hoisted 
>> up to LzNode (instead of applyData)?
> 
> I'm not sure I follow.  __LZApplyData is how a datapath applies its data 
> to the node that encloses it.  What would it mean for one node to apply 
> its data to its parent node?  When would this happen?

It seems like LzNode.setData() and LzDatapath__LZApplyData() do many of 
the same things.  Perhaps some of this functionality could be moved to 
LzNode and shared.

-- 
Regards,
Max Carlson
OpenLaszlo.org