I did a search on the mailing list, and this topic didn't seem to
come up at all. The current spec lists supporting anything less than
J2SE 5.0 as a non-goal, with the reason that annotations are
extensively used.
That's a bummer. I'm wondering if the spec could be refactored to
support a lower-level API, and annotations for language levels that
support it. The lower-level API would basically be programmatic
versions of the annotations. You'd never actually use this, in lieu
of annotations, unless you had to, but that would be the point: at
least you could.
As a simple example, from the WidgetList class in the spec:
@UriTemplate("widgets")
public class WidgetList {
@HttpMethod
@UriTemplate("offers")
WidgetList getDiscounted() {...}
@UriTemplate("{id}")
Widget findWidget(@UriParam("id") String id) {
return lookupWidget(id);
}
}
Now, imagine this without the annotations:
public class WidgetList {
WidgetList getDiscounted() {...}
Widget findWidget(String id) {
return lookupWidget(id);
}
}
And using code like this to register the class:
registeredClass = registry.addServiceClass(WidgetList.class);
registeredMethod = registeredClass.addResourceMethod
("getDiscounted");
registeredMethod.setUriTemplate("offers");
registeredMethod = registeredClass.addSubResourceLocator
("findWidget")
registeredMethod.setUriTemplate("{id}");
registeredMethod.setUriParam("id", 1);
Some additional benes:
* opens the door to allow folks to define their services in some way
other than the annotations.
* the code above showed 'setters' for the service information. If
'getters' were also available, this could serve as a means for
someone to provide a 'description' of the services currently
supported, without having to parse annotations, etc, themselves.
Note, this is just a thought; at least, to show that you can have
your cake and eat it too. I wouldn't expect this kind of support to
be added if there wasn't someone with skin in the game to actually do
the work; presumably from the J2ME side of the house (because it
seems unlikely someone would add this JUST for 1.4 support). What do
the J2ME guys think about this JSR in general?
Before you say J2ME is just for phones, and no one is going to want
to run a server on their phone, please see:
http://java.sun.com/javame/overview/products.jsp
and scroll down to
Sun Java Toolkit for CDC
J2ME is not just about phones. And you also need to see this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jacobian/1160698795/
Phones can run web servers :-)
Patrick Mueller
http://muellerware.org/