Attribute getter naming in WebIDL bindings

[Boris Zbarsky]

Right now, attribute getters always get prefixed with "Get" in the
WebIDL bindings. So "readonly attribute long foo" becomes "int32_t
GetFoo()" in the C++.

Would it make sense to drop the Get in certain cases? In particular, in
cases in which:

1) The getter is infallible.
2) The return value is not returned via an outparam.
3) The return value is not an interface type or is not nullable.

So this IDL:

readonly attribute long foo;
readonly attribute Iface bar;
readonly attribute Iface? baz;

would become:

int32_t Foo();
already_AddRefed<Iface> Bar();
already_AddRefed<Iface> GetBaz();

(with Iface* instead in cases when the getter is not an addreffing getter).

Thoughts?

-Boris

[Kyle Huey]

Sounds great!

- Kyle

[Ehsan Akhgari]

On 12-08-29 4:32 PM, Kyle Huey wrote:
>> Thoughts?
>>
>
> Sounds great!

Sounds lovely!

Ehsan

[Ms2ger]

It certainly looks nicer, but I'm not a big fan of complicating the
rules for assembling the C++ signature from the WebIDL. XPIDL's
consistency here, IMO, saves time when implementing an interface: you
can focus on the actual implementation, rather than the binding code.

HTH
Ms2ger

[Jonas Sicking]

On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 5:20 PM, Boris Zbarsky <bzba...@mit.edu> wrote:
> Right now, attribute getters always get prefixed with "Get" in the WebIDL
> bindings. So "readonly attribute long foo" becomes "int32_t GetFoo()" in
> the C++.
>
> Would it make sense to drop the Get in certain cases? In particular, in
> cases in which:
>
> 1) The getter is infallible.
> 2) The return value is not returned via an outparam.
> 3) The return value is not an interface type or is not nullable.
>
> So this IDL:
>
> readonly attribute long foo;
> readonly attribute Iface bar;
> readonly attribute Iface? baz;

What would

readonly attribute long? bin;

compile into? If it compiles into something called GetBin then we'd
have a nice consistency that any getters for nullable types are named
GetX and any getters for non-nullable types are named X.

/ Jonas

[Boris Zbarsky]

On 8/30/12 4:16 AM, Ms2ger wrote:
> It certainly looks nicer, but I'm not a big fan of complicating the
> rules for assembling the C++ signature from the WebIDL. XPIDL's
> consistency here, IMO, saves time when implementing an interface: you
> can focus on the actual implementation, rather than the binding code.

One of the goals, honestly, is to have the xpidl getters look exactly
like the C++ getters you'd have if you just wrote C++ getters (or for
that matter like the ones you probably already have).

That is, ideally WebIDL maps to the API you'd pick for your C++ class
for C++ consumers anyway.

-Boris

[Boris Zbarsky]

On 8/30/12 8:26 AM, Jonas Sicking wrote:
> What would
>
> readonly attribute long? bin;
>
> compile into? If it compiles into something called GetBin then we'd
> have a nice consistency that any getters for nullable types are named
> GetX and any getters for non-nullable types are named X.

I was going to make it GetBin after thinking about it, yeah.

Specifically, it would be:

Nullable<int32_t> GetBin();

So my specific logic was going to be like so:

if (fallible || retval_nullable || retval_outparam) {
// prepend "Get"
}

-Boris

[Jonas Sicking]

Sounds great!

/ Jonas