Hello all...
I find myself all the time overloading toString() of my ActionForms for debugging
purposes, so I can easily dump the current state of the object. I had been doing this
for each ActionForm class, specifically for it, but it ocurrs to me that a
general-purpose reflection-based approach would be better.
I'd like to propose adding this functionality to the ActionForm base class. Here's
the code I propose adding:
import java.lang.reflect.Field;
public static final AVERAGE_FIELD_SIZE = 25;
public String toString() {
String str = "";
StringBuffer sb = null;
try {
Field[] fields = this.getClass().getDeclaredFields();
sb = new StringBuffer(fields.length * AVERAGE_FIELD_SIZE);
for (int i = 0; i < fields.length; i++) {
if (sb.length() > 0) { sb.append(", "); }
sb.append(fields[i].getName() + "=" + fields[i].get(this));
}
str = sb.toString().trim();
} catch (Exception e) {
str = "Exception in ActionForm.toString() : " + e;
}
return str;
}
The value of AVERAGE_FIELD_SIZE is a matter of debate, and it's of course impossible
to come up with a real value, so something reasonable is the answer. 25 struck me as
a decent starting point.
What does everyone think? I find this functionality to be very useful in my work, and
I suspect others may as well. The code doesn't add any dependencies outside J2SE, and
it's certainly simple enough as to not be particularly risky.
Thanks all!
Frank W. Zammetti
Founder and Chief Software Architect
Omnytex Technologies
http://www.omnytex.com
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