[CONFIGURATION-500] Attributes in xml config should apply to all entries of a list

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 1.8
• Fix Version/s: 2.0
• Component/s: Expression engine

Environment

Linux, Windows

• Assignee: Oliver Heger
• Reporter: Alex Selg
• Created: 15/Jun/12 11:51
• Updated: 24/Mar/16 20:20
• Resolved: 08/Sep/12 14:58

Description

If you have an XML configuration with lists and attributes like this:

<configuration>
       <someStrings environment="test">str1,str2,str3</someStrings>
       <someStrings environment="prod">str4,str5,str6</someStrings>
</configuration>

and if you have a different implementation of the DefaultExpressionEngine which implements the query() methode to check these attributes

       List<ConfigurationNode> queryResults = super.query(root, key);
       for (ConfigurationNode queryResult : queryResults) {
           attributes = queryResult.getAttributes();
           ...
       }

than you'll only get the attributes for the first node of the list - the
subsequent nodes don't have any attributes set.
So for "str1" I'll get the attribute environment="test", for "str2"
and "str3" I'll get no attributes.

Oliver H. pointed out that this is the intended behaviour (http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/commons-user/201205.mbox/browser).

I think it would be more straightforward assigning attributes to all nodes of a list. Otherwise the list feature seems incomlete to me.
Especially if your lists are a bit longish it would be very nice to avoid repeating tags in your config.xml.