Re: Proposal to switch to an object-literal Intent constructor

It's certainly in vogue.

I prefer to have both methods. The direction of the HTML editor and assist is definitely to go solely with dictionary notation. I just find it to be verbose at times.



On Mar 28, 2012, at 4:50 PM, Greg Billock <gbillock@google.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone!
> 
> I'll be sending several emails in the next few days following up to
> discussions we had at the F2F meeting. One proposal is adding an
> object literal constructor for the Intent object. This object literal
> will be convenient for adding other types of constructor arguments
> which we know we will want (defaults, explicit intents, perhaps even
> more exotic varieties to be discovered later).
> 
> My proposal is to replace the existing signature with the object
> literal constructor.
> 
> Current:
> 
> [Constructor(in string action, in string type, in optional any data,
> in optional sequence<Transferable> transferList, in optional
> dictionary<string> extraData) raises DOMException]
> interface Intent {
>  readonly attribute DOMString     action;
>  readonly attribute DOMString     type;
>  readonly attribute any           data;
>  readonly attribute MessagePort[] ports;
>  string getExtra (DOMString key);
>  void   postResult (any data, optional  sequence);
>  void   postFailure (any data);
> };
> 
> 
> Proposed change:
> 
> dictionary IntentParameters {
> DOMString action;
> DOMString type;
> any data;
> sequence<Transferable> transfer;
> dictionary<string> extras;
> }
> 
> [Constructor(in IntentParameters parameters)]
> interface Intent {
>  readonly attribute DOMString     action;
>  readonly attribute DOMString     type;
>  readonly attribute any           data;
>  readonly attribute MessagePort[] ports;
>  string getExtra (DOMString key);
>  void   postResult (any data, optional  sequence);
>  void   postFailure (any data);
> };
> 
> When using the object literal constructor, the "action" and "type"
> members are required, all others are optional.
> 
> (Aside to Robin: is there a convention for marking required/optional
> dictionary fields? I saw a "type? name" syntax on IndexedDB. Is that
> the standard?)
> 
> The proposal removes the constructor without the object literal:
> 
> [Constructor(in string action, in string type, in optional any data,
> in optional sequence<Transferable> transferList) raises DOMException]
> 
> What do you think? Would it be an advantage to keep this constructor
> to keep the simple use cases simpler? The difference is this:
> 
> var x = new Intent("http://webintents.org/view", "schema.org/Person", person);
> vs
> var x = new Intent({"action":"http://webintents.org/view",
>                    "type":"schema.org/Person",
>                    "data":person});
> 
> Is the shorter first form worth the addition of the extra constructor
> signature? Named arguments are pretty nice...
>

Received on Thursday, 29 March 2012 02:04:35 UTC