[Zope-dev] improving the utility and adapter lookup APIs

[Thomas Lotze]

Gary Poster wrote:

> 
> On Nov 25, 2009, at 11:17 AM, Thomas Lotze wrote:
> 
>> What about a simple and consistent API for all components including
>> utilities, adapters and multiadapters:
>> 
>> IFoo()
>> IFoo(x)
>> IFoo(x, y)
>> 
>> I seem to remember there had been some discussion at some point about
>> dropping or at least loosening the distinction between utilities and
>> adapters anyway, so this would be the opportunity to do so at the API
>> level.
> 
> That was discussed and rejected near the very beginning of the Z3
> effort, in my memory.

OK. If that was a hard and fast decision, I'll not argue further.

> They are too different.  Our use of adapters
> generally involves looking something up and automatically calling it. 
> Our use of utilities generally involves simply looking something up and
> returning it.

I do think, however, that this is more a problem with registration than
with look-up. You need to know whether to register a factory or an
instance of a component, but whatever you look up will provide the
interface you require and doesn't have to be called in either case.

-- 
Thomas