Accessing primitives

Most Arez users will make use of annotations to define the reactive components required for their application. For most applications, most of the time, this is sufficient. Very occasionally it is useful to get access to the underlying primitives. This could mean getting access to the ObservableValue instance for an @Observable property, getting access to the ComputableValue instance for a @Memoize property etc. It could also be accessing information about the component such as the component name or the components type name. Access to the underlying primitives is needed for some reactive features (i.e. explicit calls to Observer.schedule() to manually schedule observers or Observer.reportStale()/ComputableValue.reportPossiblyChanged() when non-arez dependencies are included in the system). However another significant reason is to enable integration with framework specific DevTools.

Accessing these these primitives is made possible through the user of the @*Ref annotations. The @*Ref annotations are placed on accessor methods that return the appropriate primitive. Some of these @*Ref annotations rely on either the accessors being named appropriately or on a name field aligning with the corresponding primitives name. i.e. The @ObservableValueRef must set the name parameter to the same value as the associated @Observable property name. Alternatively the name for the @ObservableValueRef annotation can be derived from the accessor name if it is named according to the pattern get[Name]ObservableValue. See the javadocs for the individual annotation requirements.

The @*Ref annotations include the following:

@ComponentNameRef: This method exposes the underlying name of the component.
@ComponentIdRef: This method exposes the underlying id of the component.
@ComponentTypeNameRef: This method exposes the underlying name of the component type.
@ObservableValueRef: This method exposes the underlying ObservableValue for an @Observable property.
@ComputableValueRef: This method exposes the underlying ComputableValue for a @Memoize property.
@ObserverRef: This method exposes the underlying Observer for the @Observe annotated method.
@ContextRef: This method exposes the ArezContext that the component is contained within.
@ComponentRef: This method exposes the native Component associated with the component. This method should NOT be invoked unless native components are enabled. See the Native Components section of the documentation to understand how native components are enabled.