Subj : NativeDate question regarding Rhino and Java interface
To   : netscape.public.mozilla.jseng
From : barnabas.wolf@mssm.edu (Barnabas Wolf)
Date : Thu Jan 30 2003 11:27 am

I have been trying to figure out the best way to pass Dates from
javascript to Java.  Rhino does not convert NativeDate to Date on
calling Java methods, nor does NativeDate not allow any introspection
by Rhino-aware Java methods.

I am aware of various workarounds in JavaScript, but considering
everything else Rhino does Right, I find these workarounds ugly,
inconvenient, and unintuitive.  Plus, I would like to avoid re-writing
a lot of JavaScript code that we already have.
 
What solutions are there to this problem?  It seems to me that two
complementsry changes might be necessary in Rhino:

1. an addition to NativeJavaObject.coerceType to allow Rhino to 
   do the conversion when trying to call methods that take a 
   java.util.Date argument.

2. An addition to NativeDate, such as implementing the Wrapper 
   interface, that can return   new Date((long)this.date).  
   This would allow Rhino-aware Java code to extract the 
   information.

I have implemented #2, since that is what I needed most.  It seems to
work, but I am not familiar enough with Rhino internals to tell
whether the Wrapper interface could create some new problems.  Any
comments?

Any other suggestions?

Would anyone else be interested in patches that fix this problem?

thanks,
Barnabas

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