Component templates

Reference | Component Container

In larger applications, many components can share the same type and some of the same dependencies. The most common example of this is web service handlers, which are implicitly all the same type and will often share the same components for identity and access management. To avoid having to redeclare this, you can use component templates.

A component template can define a type, configuration and dependencies like a component, but it is not instantiated by Granitic. Instead it is referred to by other components.

Declaring a component template

Component templates are declared in the templates JSON object/map at the root of your component definition file:

{
  "templates": {
    "handler": {
      "type": "handler.WsHandler"
    }
  }  
}

Instead of specifying a type your component can now use the compTemplate field (or ct if compTemplate is too verbose) to inherit properties from a template:

{
  "components": {
    "myHandler": {
      "ct": "handler"
    }
  }
}

Child templates

Templates can inherit from a single parent template using the compTemplate or ct instead of a type. In this way you can set up chains of templates.

For example:

{
  "templates": {
    "handler": {
      "type": "handler.WsHandler"
    },
    
    "secureHandler": {
      "ct": "handler",
      "AccessChecker": "+myAccessChecker",
      "RequireAuthentication": true
    },
    
    "secureGetHandler": {
      "ct": "secureHandler",
      "HTTPMethod": "GET"
    }
  },
  
  "components": {
    "myHandler": {
      "ct": "secureGetHandler"
    }
  }  
}

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