| [higgins-dev] IDAS context provider and endpoint APIs |
I'm starting an implementation of the framework class (IdASEndpoint), and I have the following suggestions/questions:
(1) IContextProvider needs a getIdentifier method. We will want to list registered providers in a human-readable way.
(2) In order to implement the IIdASEndpoint getContextMetadata method, there needs to be a way to connect a context URI with a provider. We can either define a specific format for the ContextRef that does this, or we can rely on the context registration process to map contexts to providers. (I think that providers should explicitly register the contexts that they want to be publicly accessible via the endpoint.) If the latter, we need to change registerContext(URI) to registerContext(URI, provider).
(3) To support (2), do we want an "initialize" method for IContextProvider, or some sort of "registerContexts"? We need to somehow pass the endpoint object to the provider, so that it can perform the registration.
(4) We need IContextProvider to have a getContextMetadata(URI) method, because we can't convert a URI to an IContext without opening the context -- so the endpoint can't call getMetadata on an IContext because it doesn't have one. (Alternatively, we need another way to create an IContext object, and we rely on state information to know whether it's open or not.) (5) Relevant to (4), I'd like to change all of the context-related methods in IIdASEndpoint to use URIs instead of context objects.
...Greg