support for multiple scopes in @In, who's with me?

[dan.j.allen]

I would like to get a sense if anyone would be interested in the @In annotation supporting multiple scopes. Right now, your only option is either one explicit scope, or a hierarchical search of all the scopes. I can imagine that there are times when you want to look in a handful of scopes, but not all of them. For instance, anything within a conversation, but not above.

The new definition would be:

ScopeType[] scope() default {};

This would also eliminate the need for the UNSPECIFIED scope since no scopes would assume a hierarchical search. The logic that would have to change is Component#getValueToInject()

Thoughts? I am holding off on filing a JIRA issue to avoid wasting time.

[dan.j.allen]

Oh, and one other thing. By making this a multi-value attribute, the user can override the order in which the scopes are searched. They are searched in the order specified!

[ellenzhao]

I want it too.

Thanks!
Ellen

[dan.j.allen]

I now have a patch if anyone is interested.

[ellenzhao]

How about the nested conversation? Does it search from the innerst conversation? Thanks?

[ellenzhao]

sorry, i meant "Thanks!"

[dan.j.allen]

The semantics of how it searches a given scope would remain the same as it is today. Meaning, if you put scope = ScopeType.CONVERSATION, then it will just do Component.getInstance("value", ScopeType.CONVERSATION). This patch just let's you work multiple scopes, but the lookup is still the same.