[Seaside] Accessing configuration values from the configuration

[Julian Fitzell]

David Shaffer wrote:
> William E Harford wrote:
> 
> 
>>That was my first idea but the idea of changing the base Seaside classes
>>turned me off. I think changing the seaside code base for a custom site
>>specific purpose is bad practice. 
>> 
>>
> 
> Adding a method is usually as robust as subclassing but, as I mentioned,
> if you don't like it you can always get around it by not using the
> visitor pattern.  Just write your own editor method inside your
> attribute class.

Adding a method is indeed perfectly acceptable in many cases in 
Smalltalk, William.  Particularly if you are using Monticello (or more 
specifically PackageInfo I suppose, but whatever) as you can include the 
method within your package even though it's on another class.  In many 
cases, adding a method is the cleanest and simplest design decision. 
Not that I'm saying you should necessarily do so in this case, but your 
code snippet seemed a bit C-like, so I though perhaps you were new to 
Smalltalk (forgive me if I'm wrong :) ).

>>Plus I also think it will be easier and clearer to do it by writing my
>>own configuration class and not modifying the Seaside code. 
>> 
>>
> 
> Agreed if you figure it out.  It isn't clear to me that the
> configuration framework supports changing the attribute list although I
> don't see directly why you couldn't.  I just didn't think about that
> possibility so certainly that seems like a reasonable thing to try.

I think the config stuff should be fine with the attribute list changing 
(I certainly can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work off the top 
of my head).  But, I also recall thinking that we should be able to 
easily support custom editors for config options.  As I keep saying, 
none of this is fresh enough in my mind though... if it doesn't seem 
easy, I suspect I never quite got to that part when I was implementing 
it last year.  Avi's been mumbling about simplifying the configuration 
stuff a bit anyway, so how about I promise to dig back into this stuff 
next week (I'm going hiking this weekend).  That way I can hopefully 
better answer your questions and I can properly debate the issue with 
Avi.  :)

>>Thanks for your suggestion. 
>> 
>>
> 
> No problem.  Keep us posted on what you learn!

Indeed... the configuration stuff is not very broadly used yet so we're 
keen for any feedback on how it needs improving.

Julian


-- 
   Julian Fitzell  --  Beta4 Productions
julian at beta4.com  --  http://www.beta4.com
Seaside: http://seaside.st/