#140 Multiple columns for CsvBindByName annotation

[Mark Green]

Hello,

Would it be possible to change "column" from String to String[] in the CsvBindByName annotation?
During processing first matching column name from the list would bind to POJO field.

[Andrew Rucker Jones]

Without breaking backward compatibility, which we will not consider until 6.0? No. I don't think I see a way of doing this.

I would be interested in your use case, though. It's an odd request, and a bit intriguing.

[Mark Green]

To be honest I don't think it would break backward compatibility as you can define String[] as

column="value"
column={"value"} 
column={"value", "value2"}

For my use case I gather data from multiple CSV files with different header names. Currently I have to map them into multiple beans. The data has the same bussines meaning under different headers depending on source.

[Andrew Rucker Jones]

Then I will cogitate on it for a while.

[Andrew Rucker Jones]

What we both forgot about was writing. If we have a bean like this with multiple options for a header name and the user wants to write the bean out to a CSV file, which of the possible header names should opencsv choose?

[Mark Green]

I would use the first one for simplicity.

Another approach can be with repeating annotations(since Java 8 is minimum supported version) and adding something like profiles/strategies:

@CsvBindByName(column="column1", profile="profile1")
@CsvBindByName(column="column2", profile="profile2")
private String field;

and during building reader or writer user can tell which profile/strategy is used:

.withProfileName("profile1")

What do you think?

[Andrew Rucker Jones]

At first I hated your profile idea. Then I thought about it a few minutes, and now I'm in love with it. Profiles would be a wonderful feature. I suspect many users would find a use for them, and they're far more general than your original suggestion. I think we have a winner!

[Mark Green]

Yeah, they would allow different configurations for other goodies. I'm glad you like it :)

[Andrew Rucker Jones]

The profile feature will be released with the next version of opencsv.

[Andrew Rucker Jones]

5.4 was released a couple of days ago. Sorry to leave you hanging like that.