pubit-migration-notes.txt

PubIt to Playframework Migration Notes

PARADIGM SHIFTS:
	- Stop putting app data in the session.
	- Everywhere we are stashing things into the session, we should stash into the 
	  Scope.Flash or pass it through the call chain
	- Exceptions are caught, logged and then execution resumes silently - makes debugging problems horrible - slow and hard - either handle exceptions or don't catch them and hide them.

cd pubit_play
sh update_code.sh
cp -r ../pubit_app/WebContent/WEB-INF/lib/* lib/
mkdir -p app/views/bn && cp -r ../pubit_app/WebContent/WEB-INF/templates app/views/bn
cp -r ../pubit_app/WebContent/Images/* public/images/
cp -r ../pubit_app/WebContent/js public
cp -r ../pubit_app/WebContent/css public

## Later on, merge public/js into public/javascripts
## Later on, merge public/css into public/stylesheets

## remove an .svn directories that were copied
find . -name ".svn" -type d -exec rm -rf {} \;

Replace all %{expansions}% to ${variable} in html files

Create BnController class and the index method.

Add the route:
GET     /bn                                     BnController.index

Remove the class com/bn/pubit/client/util/Base64.java - it's redundant, makes errors and not used

In each html page that has a hook in it, move the hook call to the corresponding controller method.  Use @Before annotations to share hooks across actions

History of moving hook methods out of HTML into Controllers:

	pi_reg_account
		- Top line had %{run:com.bn.pubit.client.hook.AccountRegistration:account}%
		  This hook code is now called from the controller method BnController.pi_reg_account()
		

    LookupData hook class
		- Made all the hook methods public, so we can call them directly from controllers
        - Probably deserves a compose method refactoring - right after calling a hook, stash the results in renderArgs()
		- Bad Legacy Code: Hook methods catch exceptions and only log them - hiding them from the user - fix those ...

Need to make attributes of WebServices class public, so that we can easily turn them into Model classes using reflection - might even be able to use them as our model classes then.

CLEANUP NEEDED
How/Why is the "time" hash entry used?  Its passed into all the logout methods, but I don't see it being used

Moved jars from lib/se into lib so play will pick them up

Exception Handling is poorly implemented - exceptions are masked in many places making it
  (a) hard to debug originating exceptions and (b) worse we keep on running like everythings ok - for example
   a user could hit the Account page and see not data in any dropdown fields, yet there is no indication
   that the backend services to populate the dropdowns are not working.

callGetWS() in WSUtil should use a finally to close up the resources instead of doing it in every try/catch handler

Any calls to session.getAttribute() in the WS service classes need to be changed - STOP STASHING DATAINTO THE SESSION!!!