Details
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Sub-task
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Status: Open
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Major
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Resolution: Unresolved
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Description
Make the contract of org.apache.james.mailbox.model.MailboxPath explicit and documented.
Points to consider:
(1) Make all attributes immutable - can be done quite easily, no discussion expected.
(2) Null values should be forbidden for at least for name and namespace attributes - NullPointerException will be thrown from constructors. A lot of client code uses e.g. getName().length(). Clients should be responsible for the proper values when creating new instances of MailboxPath.
(3) Consider adding a delimiter field. Currently delimiter is implicitly present in the name value anyway. It would allow:
(3.1) removing the delimiter parameter from getHierarchyLevels()
(3.2) adding relativePath(relativeName) method (which is currently done by concatenating path segments with bona fide default delimiter in the client code).
(3.3) name attribute could guarrantee that it does not start with delimiter (which is sometimes checked in the client code now). For names starting with delimiter, either
(3.3.a) constructors should throw IllegalStateException or
(3.3.b) the name attribute would be rewritten silently - should perhaps be prefered, because of the existing client code.
(3.4) Currently, there is no delimiter escaping/unescaping (e.g. in parse() or getHierarchyLevels()). Should there be any?