Bindgen 2.0 Released

My hobby project bindgen just got a new release: 2.0.

bindgen provides expression language-like capabilities, but with type-safe method calls instead of opaque strings like OGNL.

Stateless Bindings

The biggest change is that bindings can now be stateless.

Previously, a binding could only be bound to 1 instance at a time, making them not safe for use across multiple threads. You could reuse them within a thread, with a set(instance)-based idiom like:

FooBinding fb = new FooBinding();
StringBinding nb = fb.name(); // could be more complex, e.g. fb.bar().name()
    
Foo foo = new Foo("foo");
fb.set(foo); // binds fb to the foo instance
nb.get(); // returns "foo"

But the gap between fb.set and nb.get() meant another thread could step in and interleave a set behind your back.

Now there are getWithRoot and setWithRoot methods that are stateless and so thread-safe:

FooBinding fb = new FooBinding();
StringBinding nb = fb.name();

Foo foo = new Foo("foo");
nb.getWithRoot(foo); // returns "foo"

This means you can instantiate a binding just once and reuse it across many instances/threads.

Joist is starting to use these stateless bindings for its validation rules. The iterative nature (e.g. foo.employer().name()) of bindgen is more flexible than Joist’s previous approach.

Links

Checkout more at:

• github
• Joist’s bindgen pages:
  • Examples
  • Performance
  • Screencasts
  • Setup