Re: [Simple-support] How to get an empty string, instead of null when reading @Text from element

[Niall G. - Y. <Nia...@yi...>]

Unfortunately, StAX does not allow differentiation between <property/> and <property></property> so there is no real way to tell "" from null. I think the check you mentioned would work best here, unless you think of some other way.

From: Alexander Poulikakos [mailto:ale...@er...]
Sent: Wednesday, 30 January 2013 4:49 AM
To: sim...@li...
Subject: [Simple-support] How to get an empty string, instead of null when reading @Text from element

Hi

I have the following xml element:
<property name="my-prop"></property>

When I read it as in example below, the call to prop.getValue() returns null. How to change it to return empty string instead?

Sure, I can have a check in PropertyExample.getValue() method to check if the value is null then return ""; But was wondering if that is the recommended solution or if there is a better solution? Similar to @Text(empty="").

Rgards,
Alex

###################
package com.ericsson.commonlibrary.cf.xml.parser;

import java.io.File;

import org.simpleframework.xml.Serializer;
import org.simpleframework.xml.core.Persister;

public class Example {
        public static void main(String[] args) throws Throwable {
                File xml = new File("C:\\temp\\simple-xml\\property.xml"); // xml contains this text: <property name="my-prop"></property>
                Serializer s = new Persister();
                PropertyExample prop = s.read(PropertyExample.class, xml);
                System.out.println(prop.getValue());
        }
}
###################
package example;

import org.simpleframework.xml.Attribute;
import org.simpleframework.xml.Root;
import org.simpleframework.xml.Text;

@Root(name="property")
final class PropertyExample {
    @Attribute(name="name") private String name;
        @Text(required=false, empty="") private String value;

    PropertyExample(@Attribute(name="name") String name, @Text(required=false, empty="") String value) {
         this.name = name;
         this.value = value;
        }

        public String getName() {
                return name;
        }

        public String getValue() {
                return value;
        }
}
###################