[jdom-interest] detach() [eg]

[Joseph Bowbeer]

ERH writes:

> I suspect IllegalStateException was intended for situations
> where thread issues could leave an object in an illegal state;
> e.g. a thread finished half an update before it was interrupted.

I agree with Elliotte that adding ISE to Document is an uncomfortable
stretch.

Having a "getter" method throw an ISE is not very bean-like.  Users expect
"getter" methods to work without exception or side-effects.  Introspection
is based on this contract.

While there are some "getters" that throw ISE, such as getWriter() and
getOutputStream() in the servlet API, these methods are producing a value,
not simply fetching a property.  These "getters" have no associated
"setters", and they are understood to be active methods, with documented
side-effects.  (With URL connections, even the order in which the getters
are called is important.)

None of the description above applies documents.  The way I see it, the root
is a property of the document, and a property has a value, or is null.

By the way, have we seen real code samples where an ISE would actually help?
A code snippet or two might shed some light on this.

I agree with Patrick that the "root" of the problem is that Element.detach
can operate implicitly on the Document's rootElement property.  If we
prevent elt.detach() from operating on a root element, then we prevent the
dangerous side-effects.  As long as we provide an explicit way for the
programmer to remove/replace the rootElement of the Document, then it
probably matters less to us that the Document's rootElement might be null --
because the programmer did it explicitly.

--
Joe Bowbeer