A moniker identifies a specific component instance in the component tree using a topological path.
Note: Use component URLs to identify the location from which the component's manifest and assets are retrieved; use monikers to identify a specific instance of a component.
There are three types of monikers:
Monikers are stable identifiers. Assuming the component topology does not change, the monikers used to identify component instances in the topology will remain the same.
Each time a component instance is destroyed and a new component instance with the same name is created in its place in the component topology (as a child of the same parent), the new instance is assigned a unique instance identifier to distinguish it from prior instances in that place.
Monikers include unique instance identifiers to prevent confusion of old component instances with new component instances of the same name as the tree evolves.
Monikers may contain privacy-sensitive information about other components that the user is running.
To preserve the encapsulation of the system, components should be unable to determine the identity of other components running outside of their own realm. Accordingly, monikers are only transmitted on a need-to-know basis or in an obfuscated form.
For example, components are not given information about their own absolute moniker because it would also reveal information about their parents and ancestors.
Monikers may be collected in system logs. They are also used to implement the component framework's persistence features.
TODO: Describe obfuscation strategy.
This section describes the syntax used for displaying monikers to users.
Parents assign names to each of their children. Dynamically created children are arranged by their parent into named collections.
Syntax: Each name is a string of 1 to 100 of the following characters: a-z, 0-9, _, ., -.
See component manifest documentation for more details.
Instance identifiers ensure uniqueness of monikers over time whenever a parent destroys a component instance and creates a new one with the same name.
Syntax: Decimal formatted 32-bit unsigned integer using characters: 0-9.
Represented by the child's collection name (if any), name, and instance identifier delimited by :.
Syntax: {name}:{id} or {collection}:{name}:{id}
Examples:
truck:2: child “truck” (instance id 2)animals:bear:1: child “bear” (instance id 1) in collection “animals”TODO: Add a diagram to go along with the examples.
Represented by the minimal sequence of child monikers encountered when tracing upwards from a source to the common ancestor of the source and target and then downwards to the target.
A relative path begins with . and is followed by path segments. \ denotes an upwards traversal segment. / denotes a downwards traversal segment. There is no trailing \ or /.
Relative monikers are invertible; a path from source to target can be transformed into a path from target to source because information about both paths is fully encoded by the representation.
In contrast, file system paths are not invertible because they use .. to denote upwards traversal so some inverse traversal information is missing.
Syntax: .\{path from source to ancestor}/{path from ancestor to target}
Examples:
.: self - no traversal needed./truck:2: a child - traverse down truck:2./truck:2/axle:1: a grandchild - traverse down truck:2 then down axle:1.\truck:2/animals:bear:1: a cousin - traverse up truck:2 then down animals:bear:1.\animals:bear:1/truck:2: a cousin - inverse of the prior example, constructed by reversing the segments of the traversalTODO: Add a diagram to go along with the examples.
Represented by the absolute path from the root to the component instance as a sequence of child monikers.
An absolute path begins with / and is followed by downwards traversal path segments delimited by /. There is no trailing /.
Syntax: /{path from root to target}
Examples:
/: the root itself (it has no name because it has no parent)/objects:2/animals:deer:1: from root traverse down objects:2 then down animals:deer:1TODO: Add a diagram to go along with the examples.