Can't extend

[subt2]

Maybe it's my lack of imagination, but my understanding of best practices is that if I want to extend FoxBot with additional commands and functionality but still be able to easily inherit future changes then I shouldn't fork the code, I should utilize FoxBot.jar and create a new class that either creates or is a child of FoxBot and go from there.

My problem with this is that FoxBot.jar is inaccessible. I can't call the start method (why is that private, anyway?) and I can't register my own commands and listeners.

Could you please make sample java code that uses FoxBot.jar, starts it up, adds a listener, and adds a command? Making this (and the code changes required to make it work) would go a long way towards others being able to use this project.

I'd envision the sample code could be

import co.foxdev.foxbot.*;

public static void main(String[] args) {
  Foxbot foxbot = new FoxBot;
  foxbot.initialize(); // does everything but connect
  MyCommand myCommand = new MyCommand();//MyCommand being a child of co.foxdev.foxbot.Command
  foxbot.registerCommand(myCommand);
  MyListener myListener = new MyListener();
  foxbot.registerListener(myListener);
  foxbot.start(); //initializes if not already done, then connects.
}

or maybe better yet, change your reflections property to be an array of reflections, create FoxBot.addReflections that would add to this array, and change registerListeners and registerCommands to loop through this array. Then the code simplifies to

import co.foxdev.foxbot.*;

public static void main(String[] args) {
  Foxbot foxbot = new FoxBot;
  foxbot.addReflections('org.foo.myextendedfoxbot');
  foxbot.start();
}

I'm happy to struggle with doing these code changes myself, but first I'd like your assurance that you'd want this functionality. Do the changes I'm proposing even make sense?

[lwatsondev]

So essentially, you want some kind of dynamic module loading system? If so, that's pretty much what I plan to do at some point, but my idea of it is one where the bot loads the modules into it's classpath and initialises them, not the other way around. See Bukkit's plugin system.

With this system, you would basically write your classes and compile them into a standalone jar with FoxBot as a dependency, drop the jar into a folder, and then run the bot itself. It will then find and load all of the modules as if they were written into the bot itself. The modules themselves wouldn't have any kind of main() method as you would expect it. Instead, the bot would look for an onLoad() method which is where any initialisation would happen. Does this make sense? Like I said, I intend it to be very similiar to the way Bukkit loads it's plugins.

If you're willing to do this yourself, I'm happy to accept pull requests into the [https://github.com/FoxDev/FoxBot/tree/feature-modules](modules branch). If not, I'll need some coffee... :3

[subt2]

I like your plan a lot. I'll follow your link to Bukkit and look it over and see if I feel comfortable giving it a try.

Lee Watson notifications@github.com wrote:

So essentially, you want some kind of dynamic module loading system? If so, that's pretty much what I plan to do at some point, but my idea of it is one where the bot loads the modules into it's classpath and initialises them, not the other way around. See Bukkit's plugin system.

With this system, you would basically write your classes and compile them into a standalone jar with FoxBot as a dependency, drop the jar into a folder, and then run the bot itself. It will then find and load all of the modules as if they were written into the bot itself. The modules themselves wouldn't have any kind of main() method as you would expect it. Instead, the bot would look for an onLoad() method which is where any initialisation would happen. Does this make sense? Like I said, I intend it to be very similiar to the way Bukkit loads it's plugins.

If you're willing to do this yourself, I'm happy to accept pull requests into the [https://github.com/FoxDev/FoxBot/tree/feature-modules](modules branch). If not, I'll need some coffee... :3

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