Niall Pemberton wrote:
If they're always String[] then Thomas's solution is fine - but do you want
to be able to handle other types? LazyDynaBean does something pretty similar
to this - have a look at the growIndexedProperty() method for dynamically
growing arrays and createIndexedProperty() method for instantiating new
arrays.
Actually, I spent a while trying to crack this nut and then it occurred
to me that since these objects are configured via XML, all I'm going to
have basically *are* Strings anyway, so Thomas's solution will do the trick.
If and when I want to support other data types, I could do something like:
String type = (PropertyUtils.getPropertyType(obj, "myArray")).getName();
if (type.equalsIgnoreCase("string")) {
String[] o = new String[values.size()];
BeanUtils.setProperty(obj, "myArray", values.toArray(o));
} else if (type.equalsIgnoreCase("integer")) {
Integer[] o = new Integer[values.size()];
BeanUtils.setProperty(obj, "myArray", values.toArray(o));
}
// ... and so on for all supported types
I wouldn't claim that's pretty code, but it would get the job done. I
could only support those types that BeanUtils can automatically convert
to anyway (ignoring the possibility of custom converters), so it's not
all that bad an answer I think.
Anyway the java.lang.reflect.Array has useful (static) methods for
manipulating arrays...
1) Instantiating an Array
Object myArray = Array.newInstance(type.getComponentType(), arraySize);
2) Setting a value in an array, e.g....
Array.set(myArray, index, value);
3) Finding the length of an array
Array.getLength(myArray);
Niall
Yep, knew about these already... unfortunately, the one thing that would
make this a piece of cake is not available here, or in Java t all:
dynamic casting. If you could do that, it would be trivial to do
something like:
Class type = PropertyUtils.getPropertyType(obj, "myArray");
Object v = Array.newInstance(type, values.size());
BeanUtils.setProperty(obj, "myArray", values.toArray((type.getName())v));
That still assumes that getName() returned the type in a useable form,
which of course it doesn't anyway (which complicates my above if block,
but I digress), so my pipe dream is even more so :)
I think I'm good to go for now. I can re-visit this at a later time.
FYI, I took a look at the LazyDynaBean code... I'm not sure it would
help from my initial reading of it, but I want to take another look and
make sure I didn't miss something. Thanks for pointing it out in any case!
Frank
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