The main requirement that must be adhered to is that your API class
must ultimately implement the Isight-provided
interface com.engineous.sdk.component.ComponentAPI.
However, the Isight
SDK also provides an abstract class, com.engineous.sdk.component.DefaultComponentAPI,
that implements this interface and allows you to implement only the methods
you need.
The methods available to implement are: - initialize
This method will be called by the infrastructure
when an application makes a call to getAPI() for a DtComponent. Your
overriding implementation of this method should call super.initialize(),
which obtains all the general property information from the component,
and then get any component-specific property values to keep them locally
to be configured. - apply
The application programmer is instructed to
call apply() when finished configuring the component. Your overriding
implementation of this method should call super.apply(), which stores
all the general property information from the component, and then store
any component-specific configuration from local variables into the appropriate
properties in the component. - get/set/add/call
The primary methods you must provide
to allow programmatic configuration of your component will follow the
pattern getItemX, setItemX, or addItemX, where ItemX is some meaningful
configuration option for your component; for example, getExpression, setExpression,
or addCalculation. To ensure that the application programmer does
not need direct access to your API class (i.e., does not need to import
it), the calls to your methods will be made by the infrastructure through
Java reflection. For example, if you provide a method called setInputFileName(String
filename), the application programmer will make the call set("inputfilename",
"myinputfile.txt") and the infrastructure will find the corresponding
method in your API class. There are multiple signatures for sending in
different numbers and combinations of arguments that you will find on
the ComponentAPI interface. You can also provide methods that do not
follow the get/set/add prefix pattern; for those methods, the application
programmer will invoke call("methodname", <args>).
Because of the way the component API works using generic get/set/add/call
methods and reflection, it is important that you document the keywords
that an application developer can use with your component API along with
the arguments that must be provided with those calls.
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