README.md

Maintainable Plugins Challenge: web fragment solution

This repository is my response to Olaf Kock's challenge to find a more mantainable solution to his customization for the RSS-Publisher (see https://liferay.dev/blogs/-/blogs/maintainable-plugins-challenge).

The original customization was done through an ext-module.

I've reached the same goal with a "web fragment", with less code duplication and the advantage of being hot-deployable.

However this is arguably "more mantainable" because it's not an "elegant" solution:

• while I dulicated less code, my code is harder to understand and so harder to mantain;
• I leveraged an internal logic of method getSyndContents in RSSFeedEntry class and that's why I'm forcing syndEntry.setDescription(null);
• I also had to deal with a side effect: because the original implementation uses a "WebCache" I had to clone the original "SyndFeed" object and use reflection (otherwise the full content of the rss would always be displayed regardless of the configuration).

This customization was harder than expected because there were no useful OSGi extension points and also the internal use of the WebCache forced me to use some "reflection" tricks. In other words the original RSS-Publisher does not follow some Liferay's best practices and patterns and that's why it is less customizable and extendible than other modules.

I don't know if there is a simpler solution. IMHO this is an example where "less code" does not mean "better code" and the "ext" solution is preferrable.