Question

I am using the WMD markdown editor in a project for a large number of fields that correspond to a large number of properties in a large number of Entity classes. Some classes may have multiple properties that require the markdown.

I am storing the markdown itself since this makes it easier to edit the fields later. However, I need to convert the properties to HTML for display later on. The question is: is there some pattern that I can use to avoid writing markdown conversion code in all my entity classes?

I created a utility class with a method that accepts a markdown string and returns the HTML. I am using markdownj and this works fine.

The problem is for each property of each class that stores markdown I may need another method that converts to HTML:

public class Course{       private String description;      .      .      .      public String getDescription(){           return description;      }       public String getDescriptionAsHTML(){           return MarkdownUtil.convert(getDescription());      }      .      .      .  } 

The problem there is that if the Course class has 2 more properties Tuition and Prerequisites say, that both need converters then I will have to write getTuitionAsHTML() and getPrerequisiteAsHTML().

I find that a bit ugly and would like a cleaner solution. The classes that require this are not part of a single inheritance hierarchy.

The other option I am considering is doing this in the controller rather than the model. What are your thoughts on this?

Thanks.

[EDIT]: New thoughts (Thanks Jasper). Since the project uses struts2 (I did not say this before) I could create a view component say that will convert the markdown for me. Then I use that wherever I need to display the value as HTML.

Answer 1

The classes that require this are not part of a single inheritance hierarchy.

They should at least implement a common interface, otherwise coming up with a clean generic solution is going to be cumbersome.

The other option I am considering is doing this in the controller rather than the model. What are your thoughts on this?

This clearly is a responsibility of the View. The #1 MVC rule is that the Model doesn’t care about its representation, the markdown in this case.

However, I feel that there is to little detail about your current architecture to give a meaningful answer to your question.