[Simple-support] Support for almost-primitive types, Converters in attributes and Arrays in attributes

[Raphael J. <rap...@gm...>]

Hello there,

I am using the Simple XML framework extensively for all my XML parsing /
generating tasks and I am very happy with it.
However, I would like to propose some enhancements that would enable me to
serialize / deserialize almost all my classes without the need of further
work, except for some annotations.

= Almost-primitive types

First, I would like to ask for the support of "almost-primitive" types.

In the Jersey REST Servlet (based on JAX-RS API), there is a convention that
states : Any class providing a "public Constructor(String)" or a static
method "static public fromString(String)" can be considered as a native type
and is parsed, serialized without having to write a custom Converter /
Mapper. The toString() method is using for serialization.

This is very handy, as writing a single static method for a class is less
work than writing a Converter and having to register it, or to annotate
every occurrence of attributes of its type.

= Only primitive types supported for attributes ?

Also, I have experienced that custom converters (either registered in a
strategy, or specified as annotations with the AnnotationStrategy) are not
supported for attributes.

It seems that attributes explicitly require the use of Java primitive types.
Therefore, I had to write custom getters / setters with Strings to overcome
this limitation.

= Unique annotation to parse Lists and Arrays, and new annotation to parse
arrays of attributes (with a separator)

I think that the distinction between ElementArray and ElementList is not
necessary, as it is semantically the same structure of objects ( a sequence
of objects) : The framework should handle transparently Arrays and List
without having to specify it in the annotation. let's have a unique
"ElementSequence" annotation.

Also, this is a very common situation to have several values wrapped into a
unique attributes, as comma separated values.
<task times="2 s, 3 h, 4m" >

I would like to be able to write something like

AttributeSequence(name="times", separator=",")
Duration[] durations;

Duration being a class that provides a static "fromString(String)" method,
to parse Strings.
With that, the framework should be able to serialize / parse this code
without the need of any other information / code.

What do you think about those requests ?
Some of them may be already supported : Please tell me if I missed
something.

Thanks again for your great work,
Best regards,

Raphael JOLIVET