[jira] [Commented] (MAILBOX-175) Make the contract of MailboxPath explicit and documented.

> Make the contract of MailboxPath explicit and documented.
> ---------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: MAILBOX-175
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MAILBOX-175
>             Project: James Mailbox
>          Issue Type: Sub-task
>          Components: api
>            Reporter: Jochen Gazda
>            Assignee: Jochen Gazda
>
> Make the contract of org.apache.james.mailbox.model.MailboxPath explicit and documented.
> Points to consider:
> (1) Make all attributes immutable - can be done quite easily, no discussion expected.
> (2) Null values should be forbidden for at least for name and namespace attributes - NullPointerException will be thrown from constructors. A lot of client code uses e.g. getName().length(). Clients should be responsible for the proper values when creating new instances of MailboxPath.
> (3) Consider adding a delimiter field. Currently delimiter is implicitly present in the name value anyway. It would allow:
>   (3.1) removing the delimiter parameter from getHierarchyLevels()
>   (3.2) adding relativePath(relativeName) method (which is currently done by concatenating path segments with bona fide default delimiter in the client code).
>   (3.3) name attribute could guarrantee that it does not start with delimiter (which is sometimes checked in the client code now). For names starting with delimiter, either
>     (3.3.a) constructors should throw IllegalStateException or
>     (3.3.b) the name attribute would be rewritten silently - should perhaps be prefered, because of the existing client code.
>   (3.4) Currently, there is no delimiter escaping/unescaping (e.g. in parse() or getHierarchyLevels()). Should there be any?