Re: [TreatNonCallableAsNull] alternative?

On Thursday, 16 February 2012 at 15:50, Boris Zbarsky wrote:

> On 2/16/12 10:46 AM, Marcos Caceres wrote:
> > The WebIDL spec warns against using [TreatNonCallableAsNull] "unless required to specify the behavior of legacy APIs", but does not provide guidance on what to do in a situation where an Editor might need such a thing
>  
>  
>  
> If you're writing IDL for something that's already in the wild with this  
> behavior, you need it.
>  
> If you're writing a spec for something new, you don't.
>  
> > Can you please add some more text to the warning saying what the alternative is
>  
> Just don't use the extended attribute.
>  
> > Interface SomeThing : EventTarget{
> > [TreatNonCallableAsNull] attribute SomeCallBack? onclose;
> > }
> >  
> > So I could have both:
> >  
> > window.something.onclose = function(){ ... }
> > window.something.addEventListener("close"….)
>  
>  
>  
> You don't need the extended attribute for that. That will just work.
>  
> What you need [TreatNonCallableAsNull] is if you want this:
>  
> window.something.onclose = 5;
>  
> or
>  
> window.something.onclose = "monkeypants";
>  
> to just silently remove the event handler, if any, set via onclose  
> before instead of throwing an exception.
>  
> For new specs, it seems like throwing an exception would be preferable,  
> right?
>  

I was not sure; I guess that is exactly the question I wanted to ask - and probably what should be stated in the spec :) Ideally, I wanted my new "something.onclose" to work exactly the same as window.onclose (which gives the magic behaviour of [TreatNonCallableAsNull] for error handling) … but if new "best practice" is just to throw, I'm happy to not use [TreatNonCallableAsNull].  

Cam, can you please add to the spec "For new specs, throwing an exception is preferable to relying on the legacy behaviour of [TreatNonCallableAsNull]." or some such.

Received on Thursday, 16 February 2012 16:03:26 UTC