Message:
UI method
Posted by java/jini Programmer on October 13, 1999 at 7:54 AM
I've been working with user interfaces at my job and this is
what I have come up with for the time being. So chew on this
for a little bit and tell me what you think.
I've been setting up my user interface to implement the same
interface as my service. Now the UI doesn't actually perform
any of the leg work that the service itself should perform.
It simply acts as a liaison between the user and the service by
calling methods within the service depending on what the user
input.
The UI also extends Entry and is set up as attributes of the service.
I did this because the search criteria for a service is often (as in my
case) the
interface which the service implements, so the client already
knows what this interface looks like. This also makes it easier to
pass parameters from the client to the UI, because the method the client
calls is defined by the same interface that the service implements.
The client would make the exact same method call to the UI that it
would make to the service itself. Once a client finds
a service implementing a particular interface then the client
can also look for attributes that implement that same interface if
the client wants to use a UI. Once the UI is accessed via a method defined
by the interface it implements it goes about
its business of creating the UI while calling methods from the service
in which it is associated. Of course, the client can directly access
the service itself if, for what ever reason, it doesn't want to use the
UI. I plan to include 'name' and 'function' fields
for the UI to be more descriptive about it's functionality. Obviously, it would be more practical to define a standard interface
for UIs that is packaged with Jini. And my method is only applicable
if the client knows what interface the service implements.
What are your thoughts?
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