Java7 enhancements for jaxws codegen...

[Daniel Kulp <dk...@apache.org>]

Since we’re Java7 on CXF 3.1, I was thinking of ways to make the generated code more useful.   There isn’t much we can do about the JAX-WS frontend since the spec puts restrictions on that, but the “cxf” frontend allows us some extra flexibility.   The main thing I’d like to do is get the Closeable interface onto the proxies somehow.  Getting the BindingProvider and Client interfaces also fully declared would save a lot of casting as well. 

 I’d like to be able to do something like:

try (MyServicePort port = service.getSOAPPort()) {
  port.makeCall();
}

and have the close method automatically called.  My first thought was to add the Closeable interface as the superclass of the SEI.   This works PERFECTLY for the clients.   The problem is that we tend to also use the SEI on the service implementations and once you do that, you could need to implement all the other methods which makes no sense on the clients.  My next hope was do change the getSOAPPort() call to something like:

<T extends MyServicePort & Closeable> <T> getSOAPPort();

but the compiler doesn’t seem to like that for return values.  :(

The only other thought I had would be to generate a separate interface someplace like:

interface MySoapPortProxy extends MySoapPort, Closeable, BindingProvider, Client {
}

and make the methods return that instead.   If they just care about the MySoapPort methods, they can just do the normal:

MySoapPort proxy = service.getSOAPPort();

if they want the extra functionality:

MySoapPortProxy proxy = service.getSOAPPort();

I’d need to update the runtime a bit to detect these sub=interfaces, but that’s not a big deal.   

Thoughts?  Other ideas?  Another question:  do we generate these pretty much empty interfaces as separate classes and thus easy to import/use or as a inner interface of the Service?  Not worth pursuing?


-- 
Daniel Kulp
dkulp@apache.org - http://dankulp.com/blog
Talend Community Coder - http://coders.talend.com