[jdom-interest] Another suggestion for the Element class

[Patrick Dowler]

On Wed, 15 Nov 2000, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
> At 2:02 AM -0800 11/14/00, Jason Hunter wrote:
> >>  Having to use String.valueOf repeatedly can be tedious (although it is
> >>  certainly workable).  My recommendation would be to add some
> >>  convenience
> >>  methods to handle conversion of primitive types into Strings:
> >>
> >>      public Element setText(int iTextValue);
> >>      public Element setText(long lTextValue);
> >>      ...
> >>
> >>  The method bodies would follow this format:
> >>      public Element setText(int iTextValue) {
> >>          return setText(String.valueOf(iTextValue));
> >>      }
> >>
> >>  This would allow quick conversion of primitive types without requiring
> >>  the programmer to do the String conversions manually every time.
> >>  Comments?
> 
> I would prefer not to clutter the API with these extra methods. 
> Smaller APIs are more beautiful, IMHO. As you point out, doing 
> without them is trivial. If you really find you need them, then it's 
> straight-forward to write a subclass of Element that provides them 
> that you can use in your own code and the rest of us can be 
> blissfully ignorant of.

There are several options:

The static method in a utility class:

	JDOMUtil.addAttribute( e, "hi", i);

which is slightly worse than overloading:

	e.addAttribute( "hi", i );

and arguably no better than the direct:

	e.addAttribute( "hi", Integer.toString(i) );

or the direct but lazy:

	e.addAttribute( "hi", ""+i );         // only marginally unsightly :-)

It certainly doesn't warrant making the API larger. 

-- 

Patrick Dowler
Canadian Astronomy Data Centre