[ovirt-devel] Custom Properties code duplication

Hello, While adding network custom properties towards oVirt 3.5, I got to take a good look at the custom properties code in the backend and frontend. It seems to me like there's a lot of code duplication, and I would like to suggest the following refactoring: 1. Remove dependencies on Pattern/Matcher and ApacheCommons methods from *CustomPropertiesUtils.java, to make them compilable with GWT, and move these utilities to the common package. The usage of the said methods is minimal and could easily be replaced with String methods, etc. 2. Modify KeyValueModel to delegate to the common utilities instead of duplicating code, e.g. for validation. 3. Move some validation, which is relevant to all custom properties (e.g. duplicate keys), from specific utils (e.g. VmPropertiesUtils) up to the shared CustomPropertiesUtils. 4. Optionally change the implementation of custom properties members in entities (e.g. VM) from String to Map<String, String>, which would obviate the need for different conversion methods between String/Map - (de)serialization would only be required in DB interaction. The main argument against this would be that the frontend is to be moved over the REST, and might not be written in Java much longer anyway. However, to my understanding, there's some time until these changes take effect. And even if the frontend is to be written in JavaScript, at least initially the existing frontend code will have to still be used somehow (e.g. auto-translated to JavaScript). That is to say, this refactoring might still be beneficial for the not-so-short term. Before going through with this, I wanted to ask for your thoughts and to hear any specific objections to the proposed changes. Yours, Lior.