[webkit-dev] AncestorChainWalker substance and style thoughts

[Darin Adler]

I am trying to learn about code related to shadow DOM that needs to be understood by anyone working on an part of the DOM.

I have some questions and concerns about AncestorChainWalker. If there is a document I should be reading that covers these, please point me to it.

The parentNode and parentElement functions are just plain old functions that are used to walk the ancestor chain of the normal DOM. But the shadow DOM AncestorChainWalker is a class. Why? It seems that it could just be a function with two return values. Is it more efficient to have it be a class? Can the operation be correctly done without storing m_distributedNode in a data member?

There is a function in AncestorChainWalker named parent. That name is a noun, so the function should be a const function that returns a value. Since it’s not, the function name should be a verb phrase, such as advanceToParent, or event just “advance” since it’s in the context of an ancestor chain walker.

The function crossingInsertionPoint should be named isCrossingInsertionPoint as the data member is. But also, since the walker sits still on a single node, I don’t think it makes sense to talk about the position as “is crossing”. It should be “just crossed” or something like that instead. Unless an insertion point is like a bridge and is not itself a “true node”.

The function that returns the current node in the ancestor chain is named “get”. That’s not a good name, and should be avoided if possible. It could be named “node” or “currentNode” instead.

-- Darin