Re: Idiom for forcing class loading?

From:

Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:18:36 +0000

Message-ID:

<alpine.DEB.1.10.0911202312560.25614@urchin.earth.li>

On Thu, 19 Nov 2009, Jim Janney wrote:

Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li> writes:

On Thu, 19 Nov 2009, Jim Janney wrote:

Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li> writes:

class FooMangler implements Mangler {
    static {
        ManglerRegistry.register("foo", FooMangler.class);
    }
}

To me what smells here is that ManglerRegistry is using static
methods. I'd prefer creating an instance of ManglerRegistry,
registering the appropriate manglers with it, and keeping a
reference to it in the ManglingParser. This requires more coding,
obviously, but gives you more flexibility in that different parsers
can use different registries.

You're absolutely right, of course, and if i was in charge, that's how
it would be done. Sadly, the ManglerRegistry is supplied by someone
else, their parsing code depends on it, and we need their parsing
code. All very annoying.

Ah. In that case, I'd probably just get rid of the static blocks and
do the registration directly in your initializer: that is, change

void initialise() {
Class.forName(Foo.class.getName());
}

to

void initialise() {
ManglerRegistry.register("foo", FooMangler.class);
}

Since you have to reference each class in the initializer anyway, it
doesn't look as if the static blocks are buying you anything.

What i'm not keen on there is that the initialiser class has to know about
FooMangler's relationship with the ManglerRegistry. It doesn't seem like
any of its business to me.

tom

--
Work alone does not suffice: the efforts must be intelligent. -- Charles
B. Rogers