Re: Aren’t membranes incompatible with private data via WeakMaps?

[Mark S. Miller]

Answering the question in the subject line, no. The key is the difference
between a standalone proxy and a membrane. With a membrane, the key is that
the:

* Countdown class
* Countdown.prototype
* Countdown.prototype.dec
* instances of the Countdown class
* the WeakMaps used by the Countdown class to store it private state
(_counter, _action)

are all on one side of the membrane. As is conventional, let's call that
the wet side, and the other side the dry side. Say both a Countdown
instance c and the WeakMap _action get passed through the membrane. Let's
name the corresponding dry proxies dry_c and dry_action. If, on the dry
side, someone does

    dry_action.get(dry_c)

then this would trap on dry_action, passing dry_c back through the
membrane, resulting in the dry_action handler performing, on the wet side

    const r = _action.get(c)

The wet result, r, of this invocation would get passed back through the
membrane, leading to the original expression returning dry_r.

Alternatively, let's say that someone on the dry side does

    dry_c.dec()

This traps on dry_c, which looks up c's inherited "dec" method, passes that
back through the membrane, resulting in a dry_dec proxy for that method.
When that is invoked with dry_c as its this, it traps, invoking the wet dec
method with c as its this.

Conclusion: it all works fine.







On Sat, Nov 21, 2015 at 3:02 PM, Axel Rauschmayer <rauschma at icloud.com>
wrote:

> Take, for example, the following class, which uses WeakMaps for its
> private data:
>
> ```js
> let _counter = new WeakMap();
> let _action = new WeakMap();
> class Countdown {
>     constructor(counter, action) {
>         _counter.set(this, counter);
>         _action.set(this, action);
>     }
>     dec() {
>         let counter = _counter.get(this);
>         if (counter < 1) return;
>         counter--;
>         _counter.set(this, counter);
>         if (counter === 0) {
>             _action.get(this)();
>         }
>     }
> }
> ```
>
> If you wrap an instance of `Countdown` with a revocable Proxy (e.g. when
> it is returned by a method inside a membrane) that resets its private
> state, because its `this` changes.
>
> Right? If yes then I’d expect that to cause problems for code that uses
> WeakMaps for private data.
>
> --
> Dr. Axel Rauschmayer
> axel at rauschma.de
> rauschma.de
>
>
>
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>



-- 
    Cheers,
    --MarkM
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