I'd like to allow a web app to define custom code, such as for custom
data validators or data formatters to be added by a user through
configuration in my web app.
That is, I'd like to have a user of my web app specify some Java code
snippets (either a few lines of code, or perhaps a complete method) that
my base code would call back to do customized data validations if they
have been configured in my web app. An example would be a form that
needs to validate a phone number, but some want a strict NPA-NXX-9999
style format, others allow phone extensions, others may allow an
optional country code prefix, etc. So I'd like my based code to be able
to do something like call a method the user has defined that follows a
naming convention, such as
boolean validatePhone(String phone)
and it would then do the code check set by the user who perhaps only
filled in the code snippet into a textarea in my JSP and I've saved to
the database.
My guess is I'd need to develop some sort of transactional class loader,
one that would be created after dynamically generating the Java code, or
compiling the Java code entered and storing the resulting .class file,
etc. But since they could change the code through my web app, I would
need to be able to auto-recompile (sort like a JSP does in Tomcat) and
by recreating a new classloader on the fly, it would obsolete the old
code during garbage collection and would use the new code going forward.
Is there any place that I can read about some proven approaches to this
sort of dynamic Java class creation, compilation, class loader? Tips?
Thanks,
David
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