Unified EL Design Tasks

Facet Mechanism for Framework Selection

Please see: EL_Versioned_Framework_Selector

A mechanism based on WTP-based facets that:

• allows the end-user to define which version of Unified EL is in use. This is done indirectly by the selection of JSF facet version.

Design-Time EL Context Framework

Please see: EL_Context_Framework_Design

A new extension point-based, extensible framework that:

• parallels the ELContext API provided by Unified EL.
• allows third-party contributors to add design time analogous to runtime ELResolvers, FunctionMapper and Variable Mapper objects.
• provides a context-based mechanism (extending context resolvers) for selecting the correct ELContext to resolve a unified EL expression.
• a simple, comprehensive mechanism through which tool end-users can configure third-party contributions in use.

EL Variable Support

A generic mechanism by which non-JSF sources contribute design time EL symbol information. Emphasis is on supporting JSTL tags like c:forEach.

Java 1.5 Support

Type signatures and semantic analysis mechanisms must be updated to support Java enumerations and generics.

Composite Type Descriptor

Type descriptors are currently used to describe the type of a variable or property and what child properties they have. Currently a symbol can only be described as being of a single type. A composite type descriptor needs to be added to support the fact that an EL symbol may be of multiple types. For example a managed bean may be considered to be a JavaBean but may also be treated as a List or Map if it implements these interfaces.

EL Validation Rules

The validation rules used for EL expressions both in JSF 1.1 and 1.2 need to be enumerated. This will feed a new piece of configuration UI that allows the tool end-user to modify the enablement and severity of different problems found by the validator in a similar way to that which JDT currently provides with Java problems.

Managed-Bean Data

Managed bean data can be embedded with the bean declaration in the faces-config.xml file. This data can be used to improve what the EL framework knows about managed beans and can improve validation and content-assist features.