[ALOY-932] Improve error messages when attempting to bind to complex objects

GitHub Issue	n/a
Type	Improvement
Priority	Medium
Status	Closed
Resolution	Fixed
Resolution Date	2014-07-23T15:27:46.000+0000
Affected Version/s	n/a
Fix Version/s	Alloy 1.5.0
Components	Models, XML
Labels	qe-manualtest
Reporter	Alan Wamser
Assignee	Feon Sua Xin Miao
Created	2014-01-21T14:45:54.000+0000
Updated	2014-08-14T01:07:21.000+0000

Description

When attempting to bind to a complex object, such as the following, the resulting error messages are not clear and meaningful.

<TableView dataCollection="provider">
    <TableViewRow id="row" onClick="doViewDetails">
        <ImageView id="rowImage" image="{photo.urls.square_75}" />
        <Label id="rowFirstName" text="{first_name}" />
        <Label id="rowLastName" text="{last_name}" />
    </TableViewRow>
</TableView>

Generates: "'undefined' is not an object (evaluating 'Alloy.Models.photo.on')"; Which doesn't clearly identify the problem being the attempt to reference the deep object reference photo.urls.square_75. As pointed out in the original source of this ticket (http://developer.appcelerator.com/question/161740/alloymodelsphotoon#answer-274198), the solution is to map the object property to an attribute of the model, which could be done by extending the model or collection. Error message could possibly point developers to this solution.

Comments

Feon Sua Xin Miao 2014-07-21

PR: https://github.com/appcelerator/alloy/pull/488 Test app: https://github.com/feons/alloy/tree/ALOY-932/test/apps/testing/ALOY-932 Functional Test: Run the test app, Alloy compilation should fail with an error message identify the problem that the developer is trying to bind to a complex object.
Tim Poulsen 2014-07-23

PR merged

Federico Casali 2014-08-14

Verified returning the expected error message, building for Android, iOS and MobileWeb, both from Appcelerator Studio and CLI:

   [INFO] :   ----- MVC GENERATION -----
   [INFO] :   [global style] writing to cache...
   [INFO] :   [models/fruits.js] model processing...
   [INFO] :   [index.xml] view processing...
   [INFO] :   style:      "index.tss"
   [INFO] :   view:       "index.xml"
   [ERROR] :  Attempt to reference the deep object reference : "name.color".
   [ERROR] :  Instead, please map the object property to an attribute of the model.
   [ERROR] :  Alloy compiler failed

TCMS Test added. TiSDK 3.4.0.v20140813022514 Appcelerator Studio 3.3.1.201408121314 CLI 3.4.0-dev Alloy 1.5.0-dev Xcode6-beta5 Closing.

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