Hi guys, I'm (re)reading the custom FieldHandler tutorial (http://www.castor.org/xml-fieldhandlers.html) and tracing through the code, starting from Mapping.loadMapping(), to figure out how and by what class/method the FieldHandler gets set up, and hence where to start in adding a format attribute to <field>.
Can you suggest any other good starting points? Also, is there anything like http://castor.org/design-persist.html but about how the mapping stuff is implemented? I.e. something that would explain the flow and process by which the mapping file is converted into a tree of ClassDescriptors, FieldDescriptors, FieldHandlers, etc? The package docs for Mapping are a good start: http://castor.org/api/org/exolab/castor/mapping/package-summary.html But I can't seem to find something similar for mapping/xml. Once I have a clear idea of how to approach it, I'll open a JIRA issue with the proposal. On the attribute-vs-subelement question: Adding a simple, single string attribute seems straight-forward enough and non-controversial. The attribute can contain a formatting string in whatever formatting syntax the FieldHandler can handle. This will be my default approach, something like: <field name="total" type="string" node="text" handler="FormattingHandler" format="%9.2"> <bind-xml name="total"/> </field> I do want to think about how hard it might be to use an approach that supports arbitrary XML tags. I'm not going to try too hard at it (particularly because the rest of you seem rather skeptical at best about this approach :-), but I figure it's worth taking a few minutes to consider it. Maybe in a <format></format> tag set inside <field>, like so: <field name="total" type="string" node="text" handler="FormattingHandler"> <bind-xml name="total"/> <format> <type>numeric</type> <count>9</count> <decimals>2</decimals> </format> </field> The idea would be that everything inside the <format></format> tags is entirely up to the FieldHandler implementer. The reason I like this approach is because it would give developers a lot more freedom/flexibility in designing their formatter. Having to drop out of XML and use a printf() style formatting language seems kind of ironic. They could even embed an XSLT script to be invoked for formatting. Steven J. Owens [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------- If you wish to unsubscribe from this list, please send an empty message to the following address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------------------------------
