Command enhancements in 3.0.1

This is a provisional documentation of command enhancements in a 3.0.1 branch.

Logging improvements

The default log output in 3.0.0 is not very helpful as it outputs [AsyncCommand] for almost everything that flows through the system. One of the goals of 3.0.1 is therefore to significantly improve the log output. Here is what has been done:

• Implemented toString() overrides in many subclasses so that a useful information is printed out. This is not automatic as Parsley wraps commands in command proxies and sometimes even in further objects so the default output was too generic.

• When command groups and flows are given an ID in an MXML configuration, it is now used to aid the log output. This is useful because CommandSequence can by default output only something like

  executing [CommandSequence] with 3 commands

  With the help of an ID, the output may look something like

  executing [CommandSequence loginSequence] with 3 commands

  which is better. Use IDs to your advantage.

• Logs coming from command flow now use the INFO level (used to be a mixture of DEBUG and INFO messages)

API changes

• New Command#description property. Details:
  • This used to be a private variable of AbstractAsyncCommand which was not very useful for providing subclasses a chance to write better output in toString(). The current design fixes it.
  • For group and flow commands defined in MXML, the description property is filled with the id property if it is provided. This was the easiest way of how to aid log output without making too many changes to all sorts of classes. It would probably be more proper if configuration tags supported description property themselves, this would be a possible improvement to a future release.