Service Registry

The service registry (Poco::OSP::ServiceRegistry) allows a bundle to provide services to other bundles, and allows a bundle to find the services provided by other bundles.

A bundle can provide and register arbitrary services in the form of interface classes. Every service a bundle provides must be implemented in a class that is a derived class of Poco::OSP::Service. Service objects are reference counted, therefore, the Poco::OSP::Service class is derived from Poco::RefCountedObject.

Subclasses of the Poco::OSP::Service class must implement the Poco::OSP::Service::type() and Poco::OSP::Service::isA() member functions.

A service can be implemented and registered as a singleton, meaning there exists exactly one instance of the service providing services to all bundles in the system, or it can be implemented and registered using a service factory. A service factory provides a unique instance of the service class to everyone requesting an instance of the service.

If a service is to be registered using a service factory, a corresponding service factory object for the service, derived from Poco::OSP::ServiceFactory, must be registered instead of the service object itself.

Registering Services

Services are registered with the registerService() member function of the Poco::OSP::ServiceRegistry class. Each service is registered under a unique name. To ensure uniqueness of the name, the service name should follow the same naming conventions as a bundle name. Besides a name, a service can also have an arbitrary number of service properties. The service properties are name-value pairs and can be freely defined by the service. Other bundles can use the service properties to learn about the capabilities of a service, or even search for a service by its properties.

Service Properties

The properties of a service are defined using the Poco::OSP::Properties class. There are two predefined properties, which are automatically set by the framework:

• name contains the name of the service, and
• type contains the type name (obtained from via std::type_info::name()) of the class implementing the service.

Updating Services

Once a service has been registered, the service properties can be updated. This is done using the Poco::OSP::ServiceRef object returned by Poco::OSP::ServiceRegistry::registerService().

Finding Services

Services can be found by name (Poco::OSP::ServiceRegistry::findByName()) or by property (Poco::OSP::ServiceRegistry::find()). A simple query language can be used for looking up a service by its properties.

Query Language

The query language is similar to C++ expressions and supports comparison (==, !=, <, <=, >, >=), regular expression matching (=~) and logical and/or operations (&&, ||). Subexpressions can be grouped with parenthesis. The data types string, integer, float and boolean are supported. The simplified syntax for the query language is given in the following.

expr          ::= andExpr ["||" andExpr]
andExpr       ::= relExpr ["&&" relExpr]
relExpr       ::= ["!"] (id [relOp value | "=~" matchExpr]) | subExpr
subExpr       ::= "(" expr ")"
relOp         ::= "==" | "!=" | "<" | "<=" | ">" | ">="
value         ::= numLiteral | boolLiteral | stringLiteral
numLiteral    ::= [sign] digit*"."digit*["E"["+" | "-"]digit*]
boolLiteral   ::= "true" | "false"
stringLiteral ::= '"' char* '"'
matchExpr     ::= stringLiteral | regExpr
regExpr       ::= delim char+ delim /* valid Perl regular expression,
                                       enclosed in delim */
delim         ::= "/" | "#"

Examples for valid queries are given in the following:

• name == "com.appinf.osp.sample.service" — a simple string comparison for equality.
• majorVersion > 1 && minorVersion >= 5 — numeric comparisons and logical AND.
• name =~ "com.appinf.osp.*" && someProperty — simple pattern matching and test for existence of someProperty.
• someProperty =~ /[0-9]+/ — regular expression matching.

Service Reference

Information about a service is delivered in Poco::OSP::ServiceRef objects. Using the Poco::OSP::ServiceRef class, an instance of the service object, its properties, or its name can be obtained.

Service Events

The Poco::OSP::ServiceRegistry class provides two events to inform interested bundles about changes in service registrations. The serviceRegistered event is fired whenever a new service is registered. The serviceUnregistered event is fired when a service is unregistered. All events use the Poco::OSP::ServiceEvent class as argument.

Service Listeners

Poco::OSP::ServiceListener objects are used to dynamically react to service registrations and unregistrations. A ServiceListener is created with a Query Language string (in same format as the one passed to Poco::OSP::ServiceRegistry::find()), as well as two event delegates by calling Poco::OSP::ServiceRegistry::createListener().

Whenever a service is registered that matches the given query, the serviceRegistered event is fired.

Correspondingly, whenever a matching service is unregistered, the serviceUnregistered event is fired.

When the ServiceListener is created and there are already services registered that match the query, the serviceRegistered delegate is immediately called for each service.