[ruby-talk:12074] Re: Ruby & AOP

A lot of the discussion has been hovering around basically this question -
what would be the cleanest/most useful primitive for doing AOP or AOP-like
things?  advice.c was my first try at such a thing, but I'm not entirely
happy with it.  Something like "called" might be good - ideally usage
would be something like

class Foo
	def called(method, *args, &block)

		#do stuff (including manipulation of args)

		retval = send(method, args) &block

		#do more stuff

		return retval
	end
end

It's a little messier than the way advice.c currently works, but since the
primitive would most likely be used only within higer level AOP packages,
maybe that doesn't actually matter - and it would probably fix the
has_block? bug in advice.c that Guy pointed out.

The implementation exactly as I describe it above, however, wouldn't work
- it would end up in infinite recursion of send/called/send/called.  The
way both AspectR and advice.c solve this is to store the "real" method
under a mangled name, so that in fact "called" would look either like

def called(mangled_method, *args, &block)
	#do stuff (unmangling method if needed)
	send(mangled_method, args) &block
end

or

def called(method, *args, &block)
	#do stuff
	send(mangle(method), args) &block
end

Actually implementing this would be very easy, it would just be a
simplified advice.c.

Thoughts, anyone?

 On Tue, 6 Mar 2001, Dennis Decker Jensen wrote:

> So here is my main thougth: What about adding another callback named
> "called"? Object.called seems like the right place..(??)
> 
> It could be used something like this (wild fantasy code snippet):
> ---------------------
> class Thing
> 	attr_reader :x
> 
> 	def initialize(x, y)
> 		@x,@y = x, y
> 	end
> 
> 	def printXAndY
> 		print "x: #{@x} y: #{@y}\n"
> 	end
> 
> 	def Thing.called(object, method, returned_object, *args)
> 		puts "In class method: "
> 		print "#{object}.#{method}(#{args}\n"
> 	end
> 
> 	def called(object, method, returned_object, *args)
> 		puts "In instance method: "
> 		print "#{object}.#{method}(#{args})\n"
> 		args[0] = 7 if method =~ "printXandY"
> 	end
> end
> 
> t = Thing.new(12,24) # would generate something like:
> In class method: Thing.new(12, 24)
> In instance method: t.initialize(12, 24)
> 
> t.printXandY # would generate something like:
> In instance method: t.printXandY()
> 
> puts t.x # would generate something like:
> In instance method: t.x()
> 7
> ---------------------
> 
> It looks nice from a usage point of view. Pure Star Trek! Is it feasible?
> 
> The idea is to pass arguments similar to the ones passed on in AspectR and
> be able to change the arguments in place. Oh - wait - there is going to be a
> problem with that... Ruby variable assignment only changes the reference and
> not the object itself.
> 
> Sigh! I'm sorry about that.
> 
> I'm afraid though that I haven't got a clue regarding the implementation or
> issues involved. Does anyone have knowledge to see if it could be possible
> somehow? Would it be worth the effort?
> 
> Dennis Decker Jensen
>