Make OGNL expression usage consistent [SWF-40] about spring-webflow HOT 4 CLOSED

Keith Donald commented

Also the following inconsistency exists (in 1.0 M1 nightly)

<action-state id="book">
<action bean="bookingAgent" method="book(${flowScope.reservation})" resultName="confirmation" resultScope="request"/>
</action-state>
"book(${flowScope.reservation})" is not an OGNL expression: it's a specific string-encoding of a spring-binding MethodKey, used by the spring-binding method-binding subsystem. This might be confusing to users?

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Erwin Vervaet commented

There's probably a case to be made for just having ${...} in any string interpreted as an expression that should evaluate agains the RequestContext, at least in those places where it makes sense.

I know users have already been asking for things like this:

<end-state id="..." view="redirect:${requestScope.viewName}?id=${requestScope.obj.id}"/>

Which is not currently supported afaik.

It might also be usefull to have an 'evaluateExpression(String)' method on the RequestContext. That would make it easy for actions to accept expressions as properties, e.g. something like:

<action bean="...">
<property name="foo" value="${flowScope.bar}"/>
</action>

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Keith Donald commented

We've discussed the method binding expression usage, and view the current support to be adequate: a specialized method binding expression specific to SWF, and not OGNL. It's makes it much simpler / concise to users in their specification of a string-encoded method binding expression, and reduces our dependency on OGNL.

Keith

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Keith Donald commented

Fixed all known inconsistencies.

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