[Helma-user] __defineGetter__ for existing HopObject properties

[Joshua Paine]

Walter Krivanek, VividVisions wrote:
> I can't use __defineGetter__ for properties of a HopObject, which are 
> defined in type.properties, can I?

Looks like no. Which is at odds with the treatment of standard 
properties. E.g., in Rhino and Firefox 2,

a = { a:'hi' };
a.__defineGetter__('a',function(){ return 'bye'; });
a.a;

the above code returns "bye". But apparently in Firefox 3 you'll have to 
delete a.a first before you can define a getter for it (which makes 
sense to me). I don't know if that works with HopObjects, and I also 
don't know if it would result in that property actually being deleted.

You can't access the stored value of the original property from the 
getter anyway, so trying to overload the actual property seems like a 
bad idea to me. In one case where I've needed a getter/setter (stored 
the value in the DB as an Int unix timestamp, wanted to work with it as 
a Date object) I just named the property .modified_ and wrote my getters 
and setters for .modified.

-Joshua