Question

Velocity DisplayTool has a useful method:

$display.list($list) 

That will format a collection or array into the form ‘A, B and C’.

The problem is lets say I have an ArrayList of objects, how do I output a specific object field instead of the whole object? For example the regular loop would look like this:

#foreach($obj in $list)    ${obj.title} #end 

For now I just made obj.toString() to return obj.title, but what if I will need another field?

Thanks.

UPDATE Ended up implementing this method myself and committing it to DisplayTools. So it is a part of Tools 2.0 now.

Answer 1

You might consider extending the DisplayTool to support this. Take a look at the SortTool, it allows you to sort on properties. Copying code from there should give you a good start toward adding this to DisplayTool. And if you do this and feel like sharing, let us know over on the [e-mail] list. Heck, if i’m bored some day, i might do this myself.