[Simple-support] Flattening a hierarchy

[Owen M. <ow...@bi...>]

Hi there...

I'm trying to parse some XML that is flattened and I want to construct an
object with sub-elements. Here's what I'm talking about. If the XML looks
like this:

<person name="Bob">
   <address>
      <line1>111 11th Street Unit 1A</line1>
      <city>New York</city>
      <state>NY</state>
      <zip>12345</zip>
   </address>
   <phone>123 456 7890</phone>
</person>

Then I can use the following classes:

public class PersonInfo {



    @Attribute

    private String name;



    @Element(required=false)

    private Address address;



    @Element(name="phone")

    private String phoneNumber;



    //implementation


}


But if the XML looks like this:

<person name="Bob">
   <line1>111 11th Street Unit 1A</line1>
   <city>New York</city>
   <state>NY</state>
   <zip>12345</zip>
   <phone>123 456 7890</phone>
</person>

Then I would have to create a PersonInfo class with the address fields
(line1, etc.) as siblings of the phone field. For reasons required by my
project, I must be able to parse the above flattened XML but serialize and
deserialize the PersonInfo object as it's coded, with an Address object as a
field.

I've looked into using a Visitor to intercept those fields that should
belong to the Address object, but the parser is complaining. Here's the code
I have so far (these are members of the PersonInfo class; I realize it's an
incomplete implementation; just trying to get it to parse for starters).

    public static void readFlat() throws Exception {

        Serializer s = new Persister(new VisitorStrategy(newPersonVisitor()));

        PersonInfo p = s.read(PersonInfo.class, new StringReader(PERSONFLAT
));

        System.out.println(p);

    }



    private static class PersonVisitor implements Visitor {



        private Address address;



        public void read(Type type, NodeMap<InputNode> node) {

            if (node.getName().equals("line1")) {

                address = new Address();

                node.put("test", "testvalue");

                try {

                    address.setLine1(node.getNode().getValue());

                } catch (Exception e) {

                    address.setLine1("Unable to set line 1 of address");

                }

            } else if (node.getName().equals("city")) {

                try {

                    address.setCity(node.getNode().getValue());

                } catch (Exception e) {

                    address.setCity("Unable to set city of address");

                }

            } else if (node.getName().equals("state")) {

                try {

                    address.setState(node.getNode().getValue());

                } catch (Exception e) {

                    address.setState("Unable to set state of address");

                }

            } else if (node.getName().equals("zip")) {

                try {

                    address.setZip(node.getNode().getValue());

                } catch (Exception e) {

                    address.setZip("Unable to set zip of address");

                }

            }

            //System.out.println("Hi " + node.getName());

        }



        public void write(Type type, NodeMap<OutputNode> node) {



        }

    }


Here's what I get from the console as a result:


Exception in thread "main" org.simpleframework.xml.core.ElementException:
Element 'line1' does not have a match in class PersonInfo at line 1

at org.simpleframework.xml.core.Composite.readElement(Composite.java:580)

at org.simpleframework.xml.core.Composite.readElements(Composite.java:502)

at org.simpleframework.xml.core.Composite.readSection(Composite.java:388)

at org.simpleframework.xml.core.Composite.read(Composite.java:368)

at org.simpleframework.xml.core.Composite.readDefault(Composite.java:262)

at org.simpleframework.xml.core.Composite.read(Composite.java:232)

at org.simpleframework.xml.core.Composite.read(Composite.java:202)

at org.simpleframework.xml.core.Composite.read(Composite.java:150)

at org.simpleframework.xml.core.Traverser.read(Traverser.java:92)

at org.simpleframework.xml.core.Persister.read(Persister.java:632)

at org.simpleframework.xml.core.Persister.read(Persister.java:613)

at org.simpleframework.xml.core.Persister.read(Persister.java:591)

at org.simpleframework.xml.core.Persister.read(Persister.java:569)

at org.simpleframework.xml.core.Persister.read(Persister.java:469)

at PersonInfo.readFlat(PersonInfo.java:70)

at PersonInfo.main(PersonInfo.java:115)


I have a feeling I'm using the wrong strategy; that using a Visitor will not
work for my problem. I understand the message above: it's saying that if a
<line1> element exists in the XML, it has to be declared in the PersonInfo
class. I've only just gotten into SimpleXML and so I'm a little unsure of
how I'm going to get it to work properly.


Do you have an idea of how I can make this work?