Christian Migowski schrieb:
Hi,

is this considered a bug:

If I load a list with commons-configuration, then add new entries to
that list and try to save it back to file, I get a
"java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: prepareAdd: Passed in key must
contain a whitespace!" exception.
If I do not modify the list, saving works.
If I remove entries from the list, saving works as well.

Very simple demo-program:

XML File:
<config>
   <liste>eintrag 1</liste>
   <liste>eintrag 2</liste>
   <liste>eintrag 3</liste>
</config>

program:

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        XMLConfiguration masterconfig;
        try {
            masterconfig = new XMLConfiguration("democonfig.xml");
            masterconfig.setExpressionEngine(new XPathExpressionEngine());

            List<String> test = masterconfig.getList("liste");

            masterconfig.setProperty("liste", test); //ok, no changes
            masterconfig.save();

            test.remove("eintrag 2");
            masterconfig.setProperty("liste", test); //ok, one <liste>
element is removed from file
            masterconfig.save();

            test.add("neuer eintrag");
            masterconfig.setProperty("liste", test); //exception
            masterconfig.save();

        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

I think commons-configuration should work consistent on all this cases.

best regards,
christian!

At least I can explain what is happening here.

When setProperty() is invoked with a list (or array) for the new property value, it does the following:
- First it obtains the current values of the affected property (as a list).
- It then iterates over both the list with the new values and the list with the current values. - As long as both lists have elements, the current elements are overridden by the new ones. - If at the end of the iteration the list with the current values has still more values (i.e. the list with the new values had fewer elements than the current values), the remaining elements are removed. - Otherwise, if the list with the new values has more elements, the additional values are added by calling addProperty().

It is the last step that causes the problems you see. If an XPathExpressionEngine is used, addProperty() uses a special format for the properties keys: a path to an existing node (to which new data is to be added), followed by whitespace, followed by the name(s) of the new node(s) to be added. This is because we only can interpret XPath expressions on an existing nodes structure.

Now, in your test program when you try to add a new element, addProperty() is called behind the scenes, but cannot interpret the passed in key.

I agree that this is inconsistent, but unfortunately I don't know how to fix this. We might be able to work around the problem in some cases (e.g. if the property to be set has already some values, adding new elements can be performed directly on the nodes structure). But when setProperty() is used for adding a new property, I cannot see an easy solution.

Oliver

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