Question

I have a bunch of third-party Java classes that use different property names for what are essentially the same property:

public class Foo {
   public String getReferenceID();
   public void setReferenceID(String id);
   public String getFilename();
   public void setFilename(String fileName);
}

public class Bar {
   public String getRefID();
   public void setRefID(String id);
   public String getFileName();
   public void setFileName(String fileName);
}

I’d like to be able to address these in a canonicalized form, so that I can treat them polymorphically, and so that I can do stuff with Apache BeanUtils like:

PropertyUtils.copyProperties(object1,object2);

Clearly it would be trivial to write an Adapter for each class …

public class CanonicalizedBar implements CanonicalizedBazBean {
    public String getReferenceID() {
        return this.delegate.getRefID();
    }
    // etc.
}

But I wonder is there something out there more generalized and dynamic? Something that would take a one-to-many map of property name equivalences, and a delegate class, and produce the Adapter?

Answer 1

I’ve never used it, but I think you’re looking for Dozer:

Dozer is a Java Bean to Java Bean mapper that recursively copies data
from one object to another. Typically, these Java Beans will be of
different complex types.

Dozer supports simple property mapping, complex type mapping,
bi-directional mapping, implicit-explicit mapping, as well as
recursive mapping. This includes mapping collection attributes that
also need mapping at the element level.

Dozer not only supports mapping between attribute names, but also
automatically converting between types. Most conversion scenarios are
supported out of the box, but Dozer also allows you to specify custom
conversions via XML.