This introduction will deepen your understanding of Zest™, as we touches on a couple of the common features of Zest™. It is expected that you have gone through and understood the "Zest™ in 10 minutes" introduction.

If you want to reproduce what’s explained in this tutorial, remember to depend on the Core Runtime artifact that depends on Core API, Core SPI, Core Bootstrap and Core Functional & I/O APIs:

Moreover, you’ll need an EntityStore for persistence and an Indexing engine for querying. Choose among the available implementations listed in the Extensions section.

See the Depend on Zest™ in your build tutorial for details.

We will go back to the OrderEntity example;

@Concerns( { PurchaseLimitConcern.class, InventoryConcern.class } )
public interface OrderEntity
    extends Order, Confirmable,
            HasSequenceNumber, HasCustomer, HasLineItems,
            EntityComposite
{
}

Let’s say that this is an existing Composite, perhaps found in a library or used in a previous object, but we want to add that it tracks all the changes to the order and the confirmation of such order.

First we need to create (or also find in a library) the mechanics of the audit trail. It could be something like this;

public interface HasAuditTrail<M>
{
    AuditTrail<M> auditTrail();
}

public interface AuditTrail<M> extends Property<List<Action<M>>>
{}

public interface Action<T> extends ValueComposite          // [2][3]
{
    enum Type { added, removed, completed };

    @Optional Property<T> item();                          // [1]

    Property<Type> action();                               // [1]
}

public interface Trailable<M>
{
    void itemAdded( M item );
    void itemRemoved( M item );
    void completed();
}

public class TrailableMixin<M>
        implements Trailable<M>
{
    private @This HasAuditTrail<M> hasTrail;

    @Override
    public void itemAdded( M item )
    {
        addAction( item, Action.Type.added );
    }

    @Override
    public void itemRemoved( M item )
    {
        addAction( item, Action.Type.removed );
    }

    @Override
    public void completed()
    {
        addAction( null, Action.Type.completed );
    }

    private Action<M> addAction( M item, Action.Type type )
    {
        ValueBuilder<Action> builder =
                module.newValueBuilder(Action.class);       // [4]
        Action<M> prototype = builder.prototypeFor( Action.class );
        prototype.item().set( item );
        prototype.action().set( type );
        Action instance = builder.newInstance();
        hasTrail.auditTrail().get().add( instance );
        return instance;
    }
}

Quite a lot of Zest™ features are leveraged above; [1] Property is a first class citizen in Zest™, instead of getters/setters naming convention to declare properties. [2] ValueComposite for Action means that it is among other things Immutable. [3] The Action extends a Property. We call that Property subtyping and highly recommended. [4] The CompositeBuilder creates Immutable Action instances.

We also need a Concern to hang into the methods of the Order interface.

public abstract class OrderAuditTrailConcern
        extends ConcernOf<Order>
        implements Order
{
    @This Trailable<LineItem> trail;

    @Override
    public void addLineItem( LineItem item )
    {
        next.addLineItem( item );
        trail.itemAdded( item );
    }

    @Override
    public void removeLineItem( LineItem item )
    {
        next.removeLineItem( item );
        trail.itemRemoved( item );
    }

    @Override
    public void completed()
    {
        next.completed();
        trail.completed();
    }
}

In this case, we have chosen to make an Order specific Concern for the more generic AuditTrail subsystem, and would belong in the client (Order) code and not with the library (AuditTrail). Pay attention to the @This annotation for a type that is not present in the Composite type interface. This is called a private Mixin, meaning the Mixin is only reachable from Fragments within the same Composite instance.

But the AuditTrail subsystem could provide a Generic Concern, that operates on a naming pattern (for instance). In this case, we would move the coding of the concern from the application developer to the library developer, again increasing the re-use value. It could look like this;

public class AuditTrailConcern
        extends ConcernOf<InvocationHandler>
        implements InvocationHandler
{
    @This Trailable trail;

    @Override
    public Object invoke( Object proxy, Method m, Object[] args )
            throws Throwable
    {
        Object retValue = next.invoke(proxy, m, args);
        String methodName = m.getName();
        if( methodName.startsWith( "add" ) )
        {
            trail.itemAdded( args[0] );
        }
        else if( methodName.startsWith( "remove" ) )
        {
            trail.itemRemoved( args[0] );
        }
        else if( methodName.startsWith( "complete" ) ||
                methodName.startsWith( "commit" ) )
        {
            trail.completed();
        }

        return retValue;
    }
}

The above construct is called a Generic Concern, since it implements java.lang.reflect.InvocationHandler instead of the interface of the domain model. The ConcernOf baseclass will also need to be of InvocationHandler type, and the Zest™ Runtime will handle the chaining between domain model style and this generic style of interceptor call chain.

Finally, we need to declare the Concern in the OrderEntity;

@Concerns({
        AuditTrailConcern.class,
        PurchaseLimitConcern.class,
        InventoryConcern.class
})

@Mixins( TrailableMixin.class )
public interface OrderEntity
        extends Order, Confirmable,
        HasSequenceNumber, HasCustomer, HasLineItems,
        EntityComposite
{
}

We also place it first, so that the AuditTrailConcern will be the first Concern in the interceptor chain (a.k.a InvocationStack), so that in case any of the other Concerns throws an Exception, the AuditTrail is not updated (In fact, the AuditTrail should perhaps be a SideEffect rather than a Concern. It is largely depending on how we define SideEffect, since the side effect in this case is within the composite instance it is a border case.).

So let’s move on to something more complicated. As we have mentioned, EntityComposite is automatically persisted to an underlying store (provided the Runtime is setup with one at bootstrap initialization), but how do I locate an Order?

Glad you asked. It is done via the Query API. It is important to understand that Indexing and Query are separated from the persistence concern of storage and retrieval. This enables many performance optimization opportunities as well as a more flexible Indexing strategy. The other thing to understand is that the Query API is using the domain model, in Java, and not some String based query language. We have made this choice to ensure refactoring safety. In rare cases, the Query API is not capable enough, in which case Zest™ still provides the ability to look up and execute native queries.

Let’s say that we want to find a particular Order from its SequenceNumber.

import static org.qi4j.api.query.QueryExpressions.eq;
import static org.qi4j.api.query.QueryExpressions.gt;
import static org.qi4j.api.query.QueryExpressions.templateFor;

import org.qi4j.api.query.QueryBuilder;

  [...snip...]

    @Structure private UnitOfWorkFactory uowFactory; //Injected
      [...snip...]

        UnitOfWork uow = uowFactory.currentUnitOfWork();
        QueryBuilder<Order> builder = module.newQueryBuilder( Order.class );

        String orderNumber = "12345";
        HasSequenceNumber template = templateFor( HasSequenceNumber.class );
        builder.where( eq( template.number(), orderNumber ) );
        Query<Order> query = uow.newQuery( builder);

        Iterator<Order> result = query.iterator();

        if( result.hasNext() )
        {
            Order order = result.next();
        }
        else
        {
            // Deal with it wasn't found.
        }

The important bits are;

Another example,

QueryBuilder<Order> builder = module.newQueryBuilder( Order.class );

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
cal.setTime( new Date() );
cal.roll( Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, -90 );
Date last90days = cal.getTime();
Order template = templateFor( Order.class );
builder.where( gt( template.createdDate(), last90days ) );
Query<Order> query = uow.newQuery(builder);

for( Order order : query )
{
    report.addOrderToReport( order );
}

In the above case, we find the Orders that has been created in the last 90 days, and add them to a report to be generated. This example assumes that the Order type has a Property<Date> createdDate() method.

Now, Orders has a relation to the CustomerComposite which is also an Entity. Let’s create a query for all customers that has made an Order in the last 30 days;

QueryBuilder<HasCustomer> builder = module.newQueryBuilder( HasCustomer.class );

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
cal.setTime( new Date() );
cal.roll( Calendar.MONTH, -1 );
Date lastMonth = cal.getTime();
Order template1 = templateFor( Order.class );
builder.where( gt( template1.createdDate(), lastMonth ) );
Query<HasCustomer> query = uow.newQuery(builder);

for( HasCustomer hasCustomer : query )
{
    report.addCustomerToReport( hasCustomer.name().get() );
}

This covers the most basic Query capabilities and how to use it. For Querying to work, an Indexing subsystem must be assembled during bootstrap. At the time of this writing, only an RDF indexing subsystem exist, and is added most easily by assembly.addAssembler( new RdfNativeSesameStoreAssembler() ).

It can be a bit confusing to see Zest™ use Java itself as a Query language, but since we have practically killed the classes and only operate with interfaces, it is possible to do a lot of seemingly magic stuff. Just keep in mind that it is pure Java, albeit heavy use of dynamic proxies to capture the intent of the query.