[Middlegen-user] newbie q #2: how to use value objects?

[Michael Harm]

Hi again.

I've been using dataobjects with middlegen/ejbdoclet (jboss 3.2.1,
oracle 9i), but I find that often in my session beans I'd like to be
able to optionally stick in references to other data objects that have
an fk relationship to my object. For instance, if a Person bean has a
set of related Address beans, I'd like it to not only have the field in
AddressData for the person pk, but also a PersonData member. When I
need to slap that in, I can, (thereby making a 'heavy' dataobject), or
optionally not (for a 'light' one).

Value objects in xdoclet/ejbdoclet seem the thing to use. But I'm
having a hard time integrating the standard middlegen stuff with that.
ejbdoclet wants @ejb.value-object tags in the comments for cmr fields
to create the objects; otherwise I just get the column fields and
that's no better than what the dataobject guy gives me. But middlegen
doesn't seem to want to create these tags for the cmr objects (like, in
the comments above the generated 'getFooByBarId' things in the entity
bean). I can make merged files for the column field accessors, but it
doesn't end up in the object reference accessors like 'getFooByBarId'.
I tried hacking the velocity template to stick 'em in there, and told
the valueobject directive in ejbdoclet to suffix them with "Data" and
not "Value", and that compiles, but the resultant value objects have
references to Local beans, not other value objects. In other words, my
AddressData guy has members like PersonLocal, not PersonData. Which
means I can't use them outside a transaction context, which is the
whole reason I want to use value/data objects in the first place.

So there's probably something very simple that I'm missing here.

I understand that the whole value object thing is undergoing a major
refactoring, and there's an effort to replace dataobjects with
valueobjects entirely. What's the status of that? Is there a pointer
to info about it? The user mailing list has only a couple references
to it. Is that the animal I want to be looking at? Should I check out
that branch in cvs, or is it still undergoing major development?

Or should I just try my hand at butchering xdoclet's template for data
objects to make it also include private fields, getters and setters for
referenced objects (like PersonData in the example above), and call it
a day? Pretend that I never heard about value objects, and instead
have it generate extended data objects?

Thanks for any info!

cheers,

Mike Harm

[Eivind Waaler]

Hi Mike.

I suggest you try obtaining the VALUEOBJECT_REFACTORING_BRANCH from the
Middlegen cvs. This has been modified with support for value objects and
session bean facades. It is by far a perfect implementation of value
object support, but might take you a step further..

I'd be interested in any changes or suggestions you would have in this :-)

CVS info here:
http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=36044

Let me know if you have any problems..

.eivind

Post by Michael Harm
Hi again.
I've been using dataobjects with middlegen/ejbdoclet (jboss 3.2.1,
oracle 9i), but I find that often in my session beans I'd like to be
able to optionally stick in references to other data objects that have
an fk relationship to my object. For instance, if a Person bean has a
set of related Address beans, I'd like it to not only have the field in
AddressData for the person pk, but also a PersonData member. When I
need to slap that in, I can, (thereby making a 'heavy' dataobject), or
optionally not (for a 'light' one).
Value objects in xdoclet/ejbdoclet seem the thing to use. But I'm
having a hard time integrating the standard middlegen stuff with that.
to create the objects; otherwise I just get the column fields and
that's no better than what the dataobject guy gives me. But middlegen
doesn't seem to want to create these tags for the cmr objects (like, in
the comments above the generated 'getFooByBarId' things in the entity
bean). I can make merged files for the column field accessors, but it
doesn't end up in the object reference accessors like 'getFooByBarId'.
I tried hacking the velocity template to stick 'em in there, and told
the valueobject directive in ejbdoclet to suffix them with "Data" and
not "Value", and that compiles, but the resultant value objects have
references to Local beans, not other value objects. In other words, my
AddressData guy has members like PersonLocal, not PersonData. Which
means I can't use them outside a transaction context, which is the
whole reason I want to use value/data objects in the first place.
So there's probably something very simple that I'm missing here.
I understand that the whole value object thing is undergoing a major
refactoring, and there's an effort to replace dataobjects with
valueobjects entirely. What's the status of that? Is there a pointer
to info about it? The user mailing list has only a couple references
to it. Is that the animal I want to be looking at? Should I check out
that branch in cvs, or is it still undergoing major development?
Or should I just try my hand at butchering xdoclet's template for data
objects to make it also include private fields, getters and setters for
referenced objects (like PersonData in the example above), and call it
a day? Pretend that I never heard about value objects, and instead
have it generate extended data objects?
Thanks for any info!
cheers,
Mike Harm
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[Eivind Waaler]

Post by Eivind Waaler
Hi Mike.
I suggest you try obtaining the VALUEOBJECT_REFACTORING_BRANCH from the
Middlegen cvs. This has been modified with support for value objects and
session bean facades. It is by far a perfect implementation of value

Hmm, this could get misunderstood. I meant far from perfect.. Tired in the
morning.. :-)

.eivind

Post by Eivind Waaler
object support, but might take you a step further..
I'd be interested in any changes or suggestions you would have in this :-)
http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=36044
Let me know if you have any problems..
.eivind

Post by Michael Harm
Hi again.
I've been using dataobjects with middlegen/ejbdoclet (jboss 3.2.1,
oracle 9i), but I find that often in my session beans I'd like to be
able to optionally stick in references to other data objects that have
an fk relationship to my object. For instance, if a Person bean has a
set of related Address beans, I'd like it to not only have the field in
AddressData for the person pk, but also a PersonData member. When I
need to slap that in, I can, (thereby making a 'heavy' dataobject), or
optionally not (for a 'light' one).
Value objects in xdoclet/ejbdoclet seem the thing to use. But I'm
having a hard time integrating the standard middlegen stuff with that.
to create the objects; otherwise I just get the column fields and
that's no better than what the dataobject guy gives me. But middlegen
doesn't seem to want to create these tags for the cmr objects (like, in
the comments above the generated 'getFooByBarId' things in the entity
bean). I can make merged files for the column field accessors, but it
doesn't end up in the object reference accessors like 'getFooByBarId'.
I tried hacking the velocity template to stick 'em in there, and told
the valueobject directive in ejbdoclet to suffix them with "Data" and
not "Value", and that compiles, but the resultant value objects have
references to Local beans, not other value objects. In other words, my
AddressData guy has members like PersonLocal, not PersonData. Which
means I can't use them outside a transaction context, which is the
whole reason I want to use value/data objects in the first place.
So there's probably something very simple that I'm missing here.
I understand that the whole value object thing is undergoing a major
refactoring, and there's an effort to replace dataobjects with
valueobjects entirely. What's the status of that? Is there a pointer
to info about it? The user mailing list has only a couple references
to it. Is that the animal I want to be looking at? Should I check out
that branch in cvs, or is it still undergoing major development?
Or should I just try my hand at butchering xdoclet's template for data
objects to make it also include private fields, getters and setters for
referenced objects (like PersonData in the example above), and call it
a day? Pretend that I never heard about value objects, and instead
have it generate extended data objects?
Thanks for any info!
cheers,
Mike Harm
-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email sponsored by: Enterprise Linux Forum Conference & Expo
The Event For Linux Datacenter Solutions & Strategies in The Enterprise
Linux in the Boardroom; in the Front Office; & in the Server Room
http://www.enterpriselinuxforum.com
_______________________________________________
middlegen-user mailing list
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/middlegen-user

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[Michael Harm]

Hi again Eivind.

re: VALUEOBJECT_REFACTORING_BRANCH. I checked out that branch this
weekend, but didn't have much luck. Maybe I bumbled something. But I
found that if I have a table like Person that has a field homeAddress
that is an fk into an Address table, and another field workAddress that
is also an fk into the Address table, it wanted to kick out two
entries in the PersonValue object class like so:

edu.blah.blah.blah.AddressLocal Address;
edu.blah.blah.blah.AddressLocal Address;

The two problems with this are: it generates classes for the local
implementation and not the value for Address, meaning I can't use them
outside of a transaction context, and also it didn't generate the name
correctly (should be something like addressByHomeAddress and
addressByWorkAddress)... the compiler isn't very happy with the two
identical variable names in the above generated code. <smile>

What I'd like to see in the PersonValue class for the above would be
more like:

edu.blah.blah.blah.AddressValue addressByHomeAddress;
edu.blah.blah.blah.AddressValue addressByWorkAddress;

So I put that aside for the time being, figuring I'd mention it later,
and down the road check it out again. Instead, for now, I extended the
standard, stock data object generated by ejbdoclet to include what I
want. I honestly don't care if these object references get
automatically populated (as they would for a 'heavy' value object); I
just want a holder for this stuff that I can ship down the wire. I can
populate them myself as need be in my session beans. So I gave myself a
crash course in xdoclet's language (shudder....), and created a
dataobject-custom.xdt merge file in my ejbdoclet merge dir so this
extra stuff gets tacked onto the end of the normal, vanilla data
objects. I'm sure this code is horrible... I had a hard time telling
the <XDtEjbRel:forAllRelationships> tag to generate relationships just
for the CURRENT bean, rather than all beans, so I did a really kludgey
thing using a collection (the only way I could figure out how to pass a
variable into the forAllRelationships scope) to sense which one I
wanted. It looks like this:

<XDtCollection:create name="zorkyzork" type="map"/>
<XDtCollection:put name="zorkyzork" key="owner"
value="<XDtEjbDataObj:ejbName/>"/>
<XDtEjbRel:ifHasRelationships>
<XDtEjbRel:forAllRelationships>
<XDtCollection:ifContains name="zorkyzork" key="owner"
value="<XDtEjbRel:leftEJBName/>">

<XDtEjbRel:ifNotIsMany2Many>
private <XDtEjbRel:rightEJBName/>Data
_<XDtEjbRel:leftFieldName/>=null;
public void
<XDtMethod:setterMethod/>(<XDtEjbRel:rightEJBName/>Data
_<XDtEjbRel:leftFieldName/>)
{
this._<XDtEjbRel:leftFieldName/>=_<XDtEjbRel:leftFieldName/>; }

public <XDtEjbRel:rightEJBName/>Data <XDtMethod:getterMethod/>()
{ return this._<XDtEjbRel:leftFieldName/>; }
</XDtEjbRel:ifNotIsMany2Many>

<XDtEjbRel:ifIsMany2Many>
private java.util.Collection _<XDtEjbRel:leftFieldName/>=null;
public void <XDtMethod:setterMethod/>(java.util.Collection
_<XDtEjbRel:leftFieldName/>)
{
this._<XDtEjbRel:leftFieldName/>=_<XDtEjbRel:leftFieldName/>; }

public java.util.Collection <XDtMethod:getterMethod/>()
{ return this._<XDtEjbRel:leftFieldName/>; }
</XDtEjbRel:ifIsMany2Many>

</XDtCollection:ifContains>

<XDtCollection:ifContains name="zorkyzork" key="owner"
value="<XDtEjbRel:rightEJBName/>">

<XDtEjbRel:ifNotIsOne2One>
private java.util.Collection _<XDtEjbRel:rightFieldName/>=null;
public void <XDtMethod:setterMethod/>(java.util.Collection
_<XDtEjbRel:rightFieldName/>)
{
this._<XDtEjbRel:rightFieldName/>=_<XDtEjbRel:rightFieldName/>; }

public java.util.Collection <XDtMethod:getterMethod/>()
{ return this._<XDtEjbRel:rightFieldName/>; }

</XDtEjbRel:ifNotIsOne2One>

<XDtEjbRel:ifIsOne2One>
private <XDtEjbRel:leftEJBName/>Data
_<XDtEjbRel:rightFieldName/>=null;
public void
<XDtMethod:setterMethod/>(<XDtEjbRel:leftEJBName/>Data
_<XDtEjbRel:rightFieldName/>)
{
this._<XDtEjbRel:rightFieldName/>=_<XDtEjbRel:rightFieldName/>; }

public <XDtEjbRel:leftEJBName/>Data <XDtMethod:getterMethod/>()
{ return this._<XDtEjbRel:rightFieldName/>; }

</XDtEjbRel:ifIsOne2One>

</XDtCollection:ifContains>
</XDtEjbRel:forAllRelationships>
</XDtEjbRel:ifHasRelationships>
<XDtCollection:destroy name="zorkyzork"/>


This looks horrible, and is probably terrible xdocletmanship, but it
generates exactly what I want: for one side of the relations (a 'Trial'
object that has a couple fields that are fks into 'Concept') I get a
TrialData object that has, after all the usual column fields and
hashCode/equals stuff,

private ConceptData _conceptByDiseaseType=null;
public void setConceptByDiseaseType(ConceptData _conceptByDiseaseType)
{ this._conceptByDiseaseType=_conceptByDiseaseType; }

public ConceptData getConceptByDiseaseType()
{ return this._conceptByDiseaseType; }

and at the other end, in 'ConceptData',

private java.util.Collection _trialsByDiseaseType=null;
public void setConceptByDiseaseType(java.util.Collection
_trialsByDiseaseType)
{ this._trialsByDiseaseType=_trialsByDiseaseType; }

public java.util.Collection getConceptByDiseaseType()
{ return this._trialsByDiseaseType; }

Haven't tried it for many2many relationships.. that's next. Wonder if
it'll work. My crufty code doesn't do the package prefix, but that's
ok. (Incidentally, I got into the habit of prefixing my fields with a
"_" because every now and then someone is naughty and creates a table
or a column with a name that is a java keyword... like a publication
table that has a field "abstract", which makes the java compiler really
unhappy when used as a bare variable name).

(p.s. I wish I could tell middlegen to override the package for data
objects... would make packaging a jar for remote, fat clients easier.
It currently insists on putting them in the same package as the entity.
I can do a <packageOverride> in ejbdoclet, but the entity beans
middlegen generates still give a full package spec to the entity bean
package when building data objects. any way around that?)

p.p.s. I knew you meant "far from perfect". Context is 99% of
language... words are just the tent-pegs. <smile>

Now I just need to figure out how to get this "Concept" critter to be
usable by multiple different deployments... (see my other newbie
question).

Cheers,

-mwh

Post by Eivind Waaler
Hi Mike.
I suggest you try obtaining the VALUEOBJECT_REFACTORING_BRANCH from the
Middlegen cvs. This has been modified with support for value objects
and
session bean facades. It is by far a perfect implementation of value
object support, but might take you a step further..
I'd be interested in any changes or suggestions you would have in this
:-)
http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=36044
Let me know if you have any problems..
.eivind

Post by Michael Harm
Hi again.
I've been using dataobjects with middlegen/ejbdoclet (jboss 3.2.1,
oracle 9i), but I find that often in my session beans I'd like to be
able to optionally stick in references to other data objects that have
an fk relationship to my object. For instance, if a Person bean has a
set of related Address beans, I'd like it to not only have the field
in
AddressData for the person pk, but also a PersonData member. When I
need to slap that in, I can, (thereby making a 'heavy' dataobject), or
optionally not (for a 'light' one).
Value objects in xdoclet/ejbdoclet seem the thing to use. But I'm
having a hard time integrating the standard middlegen stuff with that.
to create the objects; otherwise I just get the column fields and
that's no better than what the dataobject guy gives me. But middlegen
doesn't seem to want to create these tags for the cmr objects (like,
in
the comments above the generated 'getFooByBarId' things in the entity
bean). I can make merged files for the column field accessors, but it
doesn't end up in the object reference accessors like 'getFooByBarId'.
I tried hacking the velocity template to stick 'em in there, and
told
the valueobject directive in ejbdoclet to suffix them with "Data" and
not "Value", and that compiles, but the resultant value objects have
references to Local beans, not other value objects. In other words,
my
AddressData guy has members like PersonLocal, not PersonData. Which
means I can't use them outside a transaction context, which is the
whole reason I want to use value/data objects in the first place.
So there's probably something very simple that I'm missing here.
I understand that the whole value object thing is undergoing a major
refactoring, and there's an effort to replace dataobjects with
valueobjects entirely. What's the status of that? Is there a pointer
to info about it? The user mailing list has only a couple references
to it. Is that the animal I want to be looking at? Should I check out
that branch in cvs, or is it still undergoing major development?
Or should I just try my hand at butchering xdoclet's template for data
objects to make it also include private fields, getters and setters
for
referenced objects (like PersonData in the example above), and call it
a day? Pretend that I never heard about value objects, and instead
have it generate extended data objects?
Thanks for any info!
cheers,
Mike Harm
-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email sponsored by: Enterprise Linux Forum Conference &
Expo
The Event For Linux Datacenter Solutions & Strategies in The
Enterprise
Linux in the Boardroom; in the Front Office; & in the Server Room
http://www.enterpriselinuxforum.com
_______________________________________________
middlegen-user mailing list
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/middlegen-user

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Here's your chance to show off your extensive product knowledge
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