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Subject: AW: Playing with annotations for Ant - Sandboxable or not?
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 13:22:03 +0100
Message-ID: <B07F6610DABEA8438092ED2058D7F16603E1F56F@z011134.bk.fin.local>
Thread-Topic: Playing with annotations for Ant - Sandboxable or not?
Thread-Index: AcdOnOtjooGBg5IlS/OJcOH6OnwGkwAAMubw
From: <Jan.Materne@rzf.fin-nrw.de>
To: <dev@ant.apache.org>

>I had an idea to try out using annotations in Ant - starting with a
>simple @Validation for fields.
>
>I know this can't be put in trunk for bwc reasons, but is it the sort
>of thing that should be considered for the sandbox?


Annotations could make life easier, indeed. Maybe via a Java5Helper?

@Task
class MyFooTask {
   @Attribute
   @Validate
   String foo;
   @Element
   @Validate(min=3D2)
   List<Resource> resources;
   public void execute();    // via normal TaskAdapter
   Project p;                // via normal TaskAdapter
}


Java5Helper {
  List<Task> findTasks(Classpath);
}


@Task's attributes
  name - name of the task (taskdef), defaults to the classname in
lowercase=20
         with out a "task" at the end. Here: "myfoo"
 =20
@Attribute's attributes
  name - name of the attribute to use in the xml description. Defaults
to the=20
         field name. Here: <myfoo foo=3D"">

@Element's attributes
  name - name of the nested elements. Defaults to the standard name of
the field type.
         Here: <resource>

@Validate's attributes
  class    - delegation to a custom validation class
  regexp   - string representation must match a given regexp
  required=20
  min|max  - minimum and maximum size of a list
  ...


More ideas (and maybe implementations) could come from binding
frameworks (think about binding of a GUI field to a business class
(converter classes, ...))


The supporting classes could be in the Java5-conditional directory
org\apache\tools\ant\util\java15. In that way new tasks could use these
features (like the Enum's at the moment) without loosing
1.2-compatibility.


Jan

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