QuackFuzed [ Ramblings of a Con..ColdFuzed Mind ]

I wonder if this is due to the metaData being cached. Does the method show up if you do structKeyExists? What about getMetaData()?

@ sparkpool and Brad - The mixin methods do *not* appear in the getMetadata() struct, either.

@ Brad - structKeyExists() returns true.

@ Nathan - I think it works quite well. However, I am by no means suggesting that one should exclusively use mixins, nor am I suggesting that they are better than a utility object. As a matter of fact, I use both. My general rule of thumb is, if the object in question needs some of those utility methods, and they will be called from outside the object, I use a mixin. What I don't want to see throughout my application is #getFoo().getUtilObject().doSomething()#.

@ Brad - Perhaps I am misunderstanding what you're saying, but I am not making any changes to the CFC. This is a component that has existed as-is for years. It simply does not show the mixed-in methods in the <cfdump> or the getMetadata() call.

Are you saying that in your environment that <cfdump> and getMetadata() both show mixin methods?

@Matt: I understand you are not actually modifying the CFC file itself, but _are_ modifying an instance of that component once it is in memory. What I was suggesting was that CF9's new Component Cache setting might be causing run-time modifications to instantiated components to not be reflected in the metaData.
Of course, I'm not 100% certain what the component cache does, so I'm just guessing.

I am at work now where my CF9 test machine is, so I will play with it. My last comment was made from home with no way to try it out.

@Matt: The component cache seems to have no affect on this. After reading the description on the setting-- it actually seems to apply to WHERE the component is found in your directory structure rather than its meta data.

So, my main question is how you would be able to dynamically determine all the methods a CFC has AND take into account any mixins added after instantiation.

I will point out that any fields added to the component DO still show up in CF9 when dumping it an object:
<cfset MyCFC.feild2 = "bar">

The only way I can find to determine all the methods a component has is to loop over it as a collection and test the meta data of each item to see if it is a struct with a name and parameters key.

Method Names:<br>
<cfloop collection="#myCFC#" item="i">
   <cfif isStruct(getMetaData(myCFC[i])) and structKeyExists(getMetaData(myCFC[i]),"name") and structKeyExists(getMetaData(myCFC[i]),"parameters")>
      #i# <br>
   </cfif>
</cfloop>

I just ran some tests it in CF7 and CF8 to refresh my memory on what used to work, and while the mixin method does show up when cfdumping a component in CF8, it still never showed up in the getMetaData().

So, I guess we've _never_ gotten mixin methods in getMetaData(), but we at least use to be able to see them in CFDump. Honestly, I think they should show up in both places. They need to give us our cfdump action back, AND finally fix getMetaData to work correctly.

Sorry to ramble, but another thing on sniffing out the collection items-- the name of the method in the meta data dump of the methods shows the original function name-- not the name of the pointer to it in the CFC. Kind makes sense-- but it's still interesting.