I'm writing a tool to fill an arbitrary Java value object with arbitrary values, output the content in JSON, and output a list of assertions that can be pasted into a unit test.
At the core of this is:
final Method getter = object.getClass().getMethod(getterName, new Class<?>[0] );
System.out.println("assertEquals("
+ getter.invoke(object)
+ ", actual."
+ getter.getName() +
"());");
This outputs lines like:
assertEquals(42, actual.getIntegerValue());
assertEquals(foo, actual.getStringValue());
assertEquals([B#5ae80842, actual.getByteArrayValue());
Note that the string value is not properly quoted, and the byte array is not a Java byte array literal. I can improve this with a method to format the object depending on its type:
... + formatAsLiteral(getter.invoke(object)) ...
static String formatAsLiteral(Object obj) {
if(obj instanceof String) {
return "\"" + obj + "\"";
} else {
return obj.toString();
}
}
But I want to support as many standard types as is practical - including arrays and possibly collections.
Is there a better way, than to add an if() for every type I can think of?
Is there a better way, than to add an if() for every type I can think of?
Here are a few alternatives:
A dispatch table
A callback system works by storing event handlers in an array. When the underlying event is detected the dispatch system loops through the array calling the callback functions in turn.
A lexical scanner
The Lexer class, below, streamlines the task of matching of regular-expression against the input, as well as that of producing Token objects that precisely describe the matched string and its location within the input stream.
A parser generator
The framework generates tree-walker classes using an extended version of the visitor design pattern which enables the implementation of actions on the nodes of the abstract syntax tree using inheritance.
References
Understanding Dean Edwards' addevent JavaScript
A simple lexical scanner in Java
Open Source Parser Generators in Java
Related
Using Vavr's types, I have created a pair of Somes:
var input = Tuple(Some(1), Some(2));
I'd like to get at the integers 1 and 2 using Vavr's match expression; this is how I currently do it:
import static io.vavr.API.*;
import static io.vavr.Patterns.$Some;
import static io.vavr.Patterns.$Tuple2;
var output = Match(input).of(
Case($Tuple2($Some($()), $Some($())),
(fst, snd) -> fst.get() + "/" + snd.get()),
Case($(), "No match")
);
This works and returns "1/2" but has me worried since I call the unsafe get methods on the two Somes.
I'd rather have the match expression decompose input to the the point where it extracts the innermost integers.
This note in Vavr's user guide makes me doubt whether that's possible:
⚡ A first prototype of Vavr’s Match API allowed to extract a user-defined selection of objects from a match pattern. Without proper compiler support this isn’t practicable because the number of generated methods exploded exponentially. The current API makes the compromise that all patterns are matched but only the root patterns are decomposed.
Yet I'm still curious whether there's a more elegant, type-safe way to decompose the nested value input.
I would use Tuple.apply(*) combined with API.For(*) in the following way:
var output = input.apply(API::For)
.yield((i1, i2) -> i1 + "/" + i2)
.getOrElse("No match");
(*): links are provided to the two argument overloads to conform to your example
I'm looking for a flexible/generic way to build up conditions using metadata stored in a Database and then validate incoming requests at runtime
against the conditions and concatenate value(s) if the condition is met.
My use case looks something like this:
1) A business user selects an operation from a UI i.e. (IF condition from a dropdown), then selects an appropraite field to evaluate i.e. ("language")
then selects a value for the condition i.e. "Java" followed by some values to concatenate i.e "Java 9" and "is coming soon!"
2) This metaData will get stored in a Database (lets say as a List for the moment) i.e ["language","Java","Java 9","is coming soon"]
When my application starts I want to build the appropriate concatenation conditions:
private String concatenateString(String condition, String conditionValue, String concatValue1, String concatValue2){
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
if (condition.equals(conditionValue)){
sb.append(concatValue1);
sb.append(concatValue2);
}
return sb.toString();
}
3) so at runtime when I receieve a request, i want to compare the values on my incoming request to the various conditions that got built at start up:
if language == "Java" then the output would look like => "Java 9 is coming soon"
While the above might work for 2 String concatenations, how can achieve the same for a variable number of conditions and concatenation values.
So you want user to create a program by selecting options from a GUI which will be stored in a DB. When the options are read back from the DB you want to parse this into a compileable program and run it?
Use StringBuilder to build a string of the code from the data gotten back from the DB, something like this:
"if (language == '"Java"') { doSomething() }" (you'll need to take care to escape strings inside your string if you are storing strings in the DB.
You can then use Compiler class to compile the string to a program which yo can run (all in runtime, google dynamically compiling c# at runtime).
However, you'll probably want to question why you are thinking of going down that route... I've been there before, dynamic compilation has a very narrow use case.
You could, for instance, create a Dictionary which maps selected languages to some output string and simply use this to get your output like:
Dictionary<string, string> langaugeOutputMap = new Dictionary<string, string>();
languageOutputMap.Put("Java", "Java9 is coming soon");
private string concatString(string: userChosenString) {
if (languageOutputMap.containsKey(userChosenString) {
return languageOutputMap.getValue(userChosenString);
}
return string.Empty()
}
If you then want to manage multiple conditions, you could have multiple Dictionaries for each condition type and enumerate them in a collection, iterate over them when given a variable sized set of conditions and make sure that all the conditions evaluate through the use of containsKey().
Also, you can use params to specify variable length function arguments like so:
public string manyArgs(params string[] stringArgs) {
}
Also, look at PredicateBuilder:
http://www.albahari.com/nutshell/predicatebuilder.aspx
I'm writing a MUD (text based game) at the moment using java. One of the major aspects of a MUD is formatting strings and sending it back to the user. How would this best be accomplished?
Say I wanted to send the following string:
You say to Someone "Hello!" - where "Someone", "say" and "Hello!" are all variables. Which would be best performance wise?
"You " + verb + " to " + user + " \"" + text + "\""
or
String.format("You %1$s to %2$s \"%3$s\"", verb, user, text)
or some other option?
I'm not sure which is going to be easier to use in the end (which is important because it'll be everywhere), but I'm thinking about it at this point because concatenating with +'s is getting a bit confusing with some of the bigger lines. I feel that using StringBuilder in this case will simply make it even less readable.
Any suggestion here?
If the strings are built using a single concatenation expression; e.g.
String s = "You " + verb + " to " + user + " \"" + text + "\"";
then this is more or less equivalent to the more long winded:
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.append("You");
sb.append(verb);
sb.append(" to ");
sb.append(user);
sb.append(" \"");
sb.append(text );
sb.append('"');
String s = sb.toString();
In fact, a classic Java compiler will compile the former into the latter ... almost. In Java 9, they implemented JEP 280 which replaces the sequence of constructor and method calls in the bytecodes with a single invokedynamic bytecode. The runtime system then optimizes this1.
The efficiency issues arise when you start creating intermediate strings, or building strings using += and so on. At that point, StringBuilder becomes more efficient because you reduce the number of intermediate strings that get created and then thrown away.
Now when you use String.format(), it should be using a StringBuilder under the hood. However, format also has to parse the format String each time you make the call, and that is an overhead you don't have if you do the string building optimally.
Having said this, My Advice would be to write the code in the way that is most readable. Only worry about the most efficient way to build strings if profiling tells you that this is a real performance concern. (Right now, you are spending time thinking about ways to address a performance issue that may turn out to be insignificant or irrelevant.)
Another answer mentions that using a format string may simplify support for multiple languages. This is true, though there are limits as to what you can do with respect to such things as plurals, genders, and so on.
1 - As a consequence, hand optimization as per the example above might actually have negative consequences, for Java 9 or later. But this is a risk you take whenever you micro-optimize.
I think that concatenation with + is more readable than using String.format.
String.format is good when you need to format number and dates.
Concateneting with plus, the compilet can transforms the code in performatic way. With string format i don t know.
I prefer cocatenation with plus, i think that is easer to undersand.
The key to keeping it simple is to never look at it. Here is what I mean:
Joiner join = Joiner.on(" ");
public void constructMessage(StringBuilder sb, Iterable<String> words) {
join.appendTo(sb, words);
}
I'm using the Guava Joiner class to make readability a non-issue. What could be clearer than "join"? All the nasty bits regarding concatenation are nicely hidden away. By using Iterable, I can use this method with all sorts of data structures, Lists being the most obvious.
Here is an example of a call using a Guava ImmutableList (which is more efficient than a regular list, since any methods that modify the list just throw exceptions, and correctly represents the fact that constructMessage() cannot change the list of words, just consume it):
StringBuilder outputMessage = new StringBuilder();
constructMessage(outputMessage,
new ImmutableList.Builder<String>()
.add("You", verb, "to", user, "\"", text, "\"")
.build());
I will be honest and suggest that you take the first one if you want less typing, or the latter one if you are looking for a more C-style way of doing it.
I sat here for a minute or two pondering the idea of what could be a problem, but I think it comes down to how much you want to type.
Anyone else have an idea?
Assuming you are going to reuse base strings often Store your templates like
String mystring = "You $1 to $2 \"$3\""
Then just get a copy and do a replace $X with what you want.
This would work really well for a resource file too.
I think String.format looks cleaner.
However you can use StringBuilder and use append function to create the string you want
The best, performance-wise, would probably be to use a StringBuffer.
In my project there are some code snippets which uses StringBuffer objects, and the small part of it is as follows
StringBuffer str = new StringBuffer();
str.append("new " + "String()");
so i was confused with the use of append method and the + operator.
ie the following code could be written as
str.append("new ").append("String()");
So are the two lines above same?(functionally yes but) Or is there any particular usage of them? ie performance or readability or ???
thanks.
In that case it's more efficient to use the first form - because the compiler will convert it to:
StringBuffer str = new StringBuffer();
str.append("new String()");
because it concatenates constants.
A few more general points though:
If either of those expressions wasn't a constant, you'd be better off (performance-wise) with the two calls to append, to avoid creating an intermediate string for no reason
If you're using a recent version of Java, StringBuilder is generally preferred
If you're immediately going to append a string (and you know what it is at construction time), you can pass it to the constructor
Actually the bytecode compiler will replace all string concatenation which involve non constants in a Java program with invocations of StringBuffer. That is
int userCount = 2;
System.out.println("You are the " + userCount + " user");
will be rewritten as
int userCount = 2;
System.out.println(new StringBuffer().append("You are the ").append(userCount).append(" user").toString());
That is at least what is observable when decompiling java class files compiled with JDK 5 or 6. See this post.
The second form is most efficient in terms of performance because there is only one string object that is created and is appended to the stringbuffer.
The first form creates three string objects 1) for "new" 2)for "new String" 3) for the concatenated result of 1) and 2). and this third string object is concatenated to the string buffer.
Unless you are working with concurrent systems, use StringBuilder instead of StringBuffer. Its faster but not thread-safe :)
It also shares the same API so its more or less a straight find/replace-
This question already has answers here:
How to format strings in Java
(10 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
Is there a more elegant way of doing this in Java?
String value1 = "Testing";
String test = "text goes here " + value1 + " more text";
Is it possible to put the variable directly in the string and have its value evaluated?
String test = String.format("test goes here %s more text", "Testing");
is the closest thing that you could write in Java
A more elegant way might be:
String value = "Testing";
String template = "text goes here %s more text";
String result = String.format(template, value);
Or alternatively using MessageFormat:
String template = "text goes here {0} more text";
String result = MessageFormat.format(template, value);
Note, if you're doing this for logging, then you can avoid the cost of performing this when the log line would be below the threshold. For example with SLFJ:
The following two lines will yield the exact same output. However, the second form will outperform the first form by a factor of at least 30, in case of a disabled logging statement.
logger.debug("The new entry is "+entry+".");
logger.debug("The new entry is {}.", entry);
Rythm a java template engine now released with an new feature called String interpolation mode which allows you do something like:
String result = Rythm.render("Hello #who!", "world");
The above case shows you can pass argument to template by position. Rythm also allows you to pass arguments by name:
Map<String, Object> args = new HashMap<String, Object>();
args.put("title", "Mr.");
args.put("name", "John");
String result = Rythm.render("Hello #title #name", args);
Links:
Check the full featured demonstration
read a brief introduction to Rythm
download the latest package or
fork it
It may be done by some template-libaries. But beware, Strings are immutable in Java. So in every case at some low level the concatenation will be done.
You'll always have to use some form of concatenation for this (assuming value1 isn't a constant like you show here).
The way you've written it will implicitly construct a StringBuilder and use it to concatenate the strings. Another method is String.format(String, Object...)1, which is analogous to sprintf from C. But even with format(), you can't avoid concatenation.
1 Yes, I know the anchor link is broken.
What you want is called String interpolation. It is not possible in Java, although JRuby, Groovy and probably other JVM languages do that.
Edit: as for elegance, you can use a StringBuffer or check the other poster's solution. But at the low level, this will always be concatenation, as the other posters said.
You can use this free library. It gives you sprintf like functionality. Or use String.format static method provided you use Java 5 or newer.
Why do you think string concatenation isn't elegant?
If all you are doing is simple concatenation, I'd argue that code readability is more important and I'd leave it like you have it. It's more readable than using a StringBuilder.
Performance won't be the problem that most people think it is.
Read this from CodingHorror
I would use a StringBuffer.. it's a common practise when you are dealing with strings. It may seem a bit when you see it for the first time, but you'll get quickly used to it..
String test = new StringBuffer("text goes here ").append(value1).append(" more text").toString();
Strings are immutable thus a new instance is created after every concatenation. This can cause performance issues when used in loops.
StringBuffer is mutable version of String - that means you can create one, modify it as you want and you have still only one instance. When desired you can get a String representation of the StringBuffer by calling it's toString() method.
The problem is not if this is an elegant way or not. The idea behind using a template system may be that you put your template in a normal text file and don't have to change java code if you change your message (or think about i18ln).