RE-AspectLua - Achieving Reuse in AspectLua

aspectLua is a Lua-based dynamic aspect-oriented language that follows the original AspectJ concepts. It suffers from the same problem of AspectJ-like languages with regard to limitations in terms of aspect reusability, modularity and heterogeneous interaction. In this paper we propose RE-AspectLua, a new version of AspectLua that combines aspect interfaces with abstract joinpoints and the use of a connection language, the Lua language, to instantiate, at application composition time, the abstract joinpoints. Thus, the connection language defines the composition of reusable aspects with base code. Using these concepts RE-AspectLua intends to break away from the syntactically manifest coding of aspects in which joinpoints are hard-coded into aspects, thereby promoting general reusability and the heterogeneous composition of an aspect with different base codes. In order to illustrate RE-AspectLua concepts we present two case studies.