rife 1.6.1

The ASM framework is organized around the {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.ClassVisitor ClassVisitor}, {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.FieldVisitor FieldVisitor} and {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.MethodVisitor MethodVisitor} interfaces, which allow one to visit the fields and methods of a class, including the bytecode instructions of each method.

In addition to these main interfaces, ASM provides a {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.ClassReader ClassReader} class, that can parse an existing class and make a given visitor visit it. ASM also provides a {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.ClassWriter ClassWriter} class, which is a visitor that generates Java class files.

In order to generate a class from scratch, only the {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.ClassWriter ClassWriter} class is necessary. Indeed, in order to generate a class, one must just call its visitXXX methods with the appropriate arguments to generate the desired fields and methods. See the "helloworld" example in the ASM distribution for more details about class generation.

In order to modify existing classes, one must use a {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.ClassReader ClassReader} class to analyze the original class, a class modifier, and a {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.ClassWriter ClassWriter} to construct the modified class. The class modifier is just a {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.ClassVisitor ClassVisitor} that delegates most of the work to another {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.ClassVisitor ClassVisitor}, but that sometimes changes some parameter values, or call additional methods, in order to implement the desired modification process. In order to make it easier to implement such class modifiers, ASM provides the {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.ClassAdapter ClassAdapter} and {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.MethodAdapter MethodAdapter} classes, which implement the {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.ClassVisitor ClassVisitor} and {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.MethodVisitor MethodVisitor} interfaces by delegating all work to other visitors. See the "adapt" example in the ASM distribution for more details about class modification.

The size of the core ASM library, asm.jar, is only 31KB, which is much more smaller than the size of the BCEL library (350KB without the class verifier), and than the size of the SERP library (150KB). ASM is also much more faster than these tools. Indeed the overhead of a load time class transformation process is of the order of 60% with ASM, 700% or more with BCEL, and 1100% or more with SERP (see the test/perf directory in the ASM distribution)! @since ASM 1.3

By default ASM strips optional attributes, in order to keep them in the bytecode that is being readed you should pass an array of required attribute instances to {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.ClassReader#accept(com.uwyn.rife.asm.ClassVisitor, com.uwyn.rife.asm.Attribute[], boolean) ClassReader.accept()} method. In order to add custom attributes to the manually constructed bytecode concrete subclasses of the {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.Attribute Attribute} can be passed to the visitAttribute methods of the {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.ClassVisitor ClassVisitor}, {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.FieldVisitor FieldVisitor} and {@link com.uwyn.rife.asm.MethodVisitor MethodVisitor} interfaces. @since ASM 1.4.1

Each feature is accessed through dedicated managers. These have several implementations according to the back-end store (for instance, memory or database).

Related Documentation

• [User's guide] Chapter 8. Adding authentication
• [User's guide] Chapter 11. Cookbook - authentication
• [Wiki] Authentication Cookbook
• [Examples] Selective authentication

It is geared towards the process of storing, loading, validating, formatting, transforming, versioning, retrieving and streaming of various content types.

Related Documentation

• [Wiki] Content management framework

Related Documentation

• [User's guide] Chapter 6. Adding configuration to the friends application
• [Wiki] Config
• [Examples] Friends listing

Related Documentation

• [User's guide] Chapter 7. Adding database support
• [User's guide] Chapter 10. Cookbook - database
• [Wiki] Database
• [Examples] Friends listing

The web engine gives the best of request-based and component-based approaches in a consistent component object model.

It offers the following advanced features:

• automatic propagation of modifications without having to restart
• integrated web continuations in pure Java
• behavioral inheritance
• logic precedence
• implicit reusable binary and source modules
• enforced non-intrusive methodology for the declaration of the logic flow and the data flow
• embedding fully functional components in views
• configurable state storage
• automated handling of file uploads with an integration of the content management framework for handling and storage of different media types
• support for many Java scripting languages such as Groovy, Jython, Beanshell, Pnuts, Janino, ...
• plain Java builders for all declarations with several alternative frontends in XML, Groovy, Janino, ...
• centralized URL handling with support for localization and internationalization
• IoC support
• Ajax
• Out of container testing
• and much more...

Related Documentation

• [User's guide] Chapter 2. Getting started
• [User's guide] Chapter 3. Creating a more advanced RIFE application
• [User's guide] Chapter 5. A friends database
• [User's guide] Chapter 9. Cookbook
• [Wiki] Elements
• [Wiki] Engine
• [Wiki] IoC support
• [Wiki] Ajax
• [Wiki] Webservices
• [Wiki] Out of container testing
• [Examples] Hello world
• [Examples] Number guess game
• [Examples] Number guess game with continuations
• [Examples] Friends listing
• [Examples] Frames through inheritance
• [Examples] Advanced continuations

The classes that are responsible for performing byte-code instrumentation through agents and transformers.

Common exceptions that are being used during the transformation of byte-code.

Related Documentation

• [Wiki] Mail queue

Related Documentation

• [User's guide] Chapter 6. Adding configuration to the friends application : Some explanation on RIFE participants
• [Wiki] Repository

Related Documentation

• [Wiki] Resources

Each feature is accessed through dedicated managers. These have several implementations according to the back-end store (for instance, memory or database).

Related Documentation

• [User's guide] Chapter 6. Adding configuration to the friends application : Configuration selectors

Related Documentation

• [Wiki] Automated form building
• [Wiki] Constraints
• [Wiki] Validation
• [Wiki] Paged navigation builder

Contains all the classes that perform byte-code analysis and transformations related to meta-data merging and constraints.

Almost all template engines start out with a desire to seperate design from logic, they allow users to push or pull values into the template and then they get stuck. Design is far more complex than setting a couple of values, so they start providing simple logical constructs and loops, maybe even variables, blocks and scopes, functions to reuse code, etc etc ... and in the end run incorporate an entire language (JSP) or create a new one (PHP). All this is based on the assumption that the logic provides data to the design which is then decorated and rendered from within the template. Imho, a fundamental last step is missing which creates an overly complex model to try to simulate it.

When data has been integrated into a design, a template engine should allow the logic to retrieve the result and use the concrete version of the templated layout for real output and manipulation. This means that together with incorporating data, a template engine should also provide results and thus be able to work in a bidirectional fashion instead of the limited common unidirectional approach.

All of a sudden the template engine then becomes extremely simple, no need to integrate any kind of logical constructs or loops, the same logic that provided the data is able to select or repeat results easily. It can extract and combine them and if the template engine is powerful enough, use it as a scratchpad to assemble all the pieces of the layout in an efficient manner. All the required information is already available in the logic. You also don't have to worry anymore about just how much logic bleeds into a template. The entire template becomes totally language independent and designer-friendly.

Related Documentation

• [User's guide] Chapter 4. Templates
• [User's guide] Chapter 9. Cookbook: Filling out templates using beans
• [Wiki] Templates
• [Examples] Recursive templating
• [Examples] Number guess game
• [Examples] Number guess game with continuations
• [Examples] Friends listing
• [Examples] Frames through inheritance