[Cosmo-dev] CosmoUI Data Model Proposal

[Matthew Eernisse]

Responses below.

Bobby Rullo wrote:
> I may be using the terminology incorrectly (I wanted to say "class" 
> originally but I knew that was wrong for sure!) but I don't understand 
> your explanation - could you point me to the crockford article?

Yeah, there doesn't seem to be any real consensus on what to call it, 
since it's not actually a class, but it's still used as a template for 
other objects.

Crockford refers to them as 'pseudo-classes' in his "Advanced 
JavaScript" lecture up on YUI Theater:

http://yuiblog.com/blog/2006/11/27/video-crockford-advjs/

He calls the pattern of using constructor functions (e.g, 'new 
Thinger()') to create objects 'Pseudoclassical Inheritance,' because it 
tries to make JS's prototype-based inheritance look like Java.

> I was thinking more like:
> 
> Item.prototype.addStamp = function(stamp){
>     this.stamps[stamp.namespace] = stamp;
> }

Should that be:

this.stamps[stamp.stampMetaData.namespace] = new stamp();

The namespace looks like it's down in the metadata -- and you need an 
instance of the empty stamp, right?

It looks like the only stuff that's actually hardcoded is the name of 
the pseudo-class (e.g., 'EventStamp'), and all the attributes in 
StampAttribute. Is the idea to have some code that runs on init that 
creates the constructor functions for all the various stamp types 
programmatically?

> Why not have both? I'm not talking about convenience methods for every 
> type of stamp, just stamps that are part of core functionality. Wouldn't 
> you rather type:
> 
> item.getEventStamp();
> 
> than
> 
> item.getStamp(SOME_CONSTANT)
> 
> ?

Less typing = good. :)

>> I'm guessing that since that's mostly view-specific, we'll be 
>> maintaining sorted/filtered lists (Hash, some sort of collection, 
>> whatever) in the various views that point to the Items that are also 
>> in some central list. Is that what you're thinking?
>>
> 
> Yes to the first bit, but I wasn't really thinking of any central list, 
> if you mean by that  a single place where "known" items are stored.

If there's no central list of items, where do you put the things you 
load from the server? Or rather, if there are multiple views all 
consuming the same data, where does that data live?


Matthew