HOWTO improve Helma 1.x

I am currently working on improving and extending Helma 1.x. This page serves as a public todo list summing up tasks that should be or could be done (but are no bugs) to improve Helma 1.x.

• HopObject
  • HopObject.forEach() should behave exactly like rhino's Array.forEach http://dev.helma.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=537
  • deprecate either count() or size(), I'd prefer to deprecate count(). simon: would prefer collection.length (mimic array)
  • deprecate invalidate(id), as it can be done as get(id).invalidate()
  • rename the magic properties (__id__, __parent__, ...). Some properties currently exist with one underscore in front (_property) as well as with two in front and two at the end (__property__). Some only use one syntax, some are case-sensitive, some others are not.
  • move getById(id, proto) to app.getById(proto, id) or remove it as it is unrelated to the HopObject called on, leave Constructor.getById(id) as it is.
  • rename getChildElement to onGetChildElement to reflect that it is an event handler
  • make getOrderedView() return something else. Currently it returns some object that is similar to a HopObject, but is not a HopObject. Some functions are missing, some throw an "unsupported exception". There should be something like a HopCollection, being extended by HopObject.
  • some functions like getOrderedView() throw RuntimeExceptions when called on an incompatible (transient) HopObject, some others just return null. I propose to change all functions to throw exceptions, as one can check with isPersistent() before doing a call that might not be supported.
• Properties files
  • As every other directory or file is configurable, the location of the db.properties file should be too. I'd suggest to add dpPropsFile.
• Scripting engines
  • Implement a configurable class shutter implementation for Rhino
  • Move configuration properties only influencing a specific scripting engine to it's own properties file (i.e. have separated configurations).
• POST/GET data
  • queryParams, postParams very long. rename to smth shorter like res.GET and res.POST (uppercase would also hint their immutability)
  • remove res.data. we should encourage clean seperation between POST/GET data
    • even more so if http-method-routing / REST catches on (also see http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/interact/forms.html#h-17.13.1, and http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec9.html )
    • http://dev.helma.org/trac/helma/changeset/9671