[jdom-interest] Re: Factories for Element creation

[Jason Hunter]

> Consider an app-specific element I want (so that, for example, I can
> navigate my elements and assign some :
> 
> public class CustomElement extends Element {
> 
> String extraData;
> 
> public void setExtraData( String data) {...}
> 
> }
> 
> 1) Custom class approach:
> 
> SAXBuilder myBuilder = new SAXBuilder();
> 
> myBuilder.setElementClass("com.bar.foo.CustomElement");
> 
> 2) Factory approach:
> 
> SAXBuilder myBuilder = new SAXBuilder();
> 
> myBuilder.setElementFactory( new MyElementFactory());
> 
> public class MyElementFactory implements JDOMElementFactory {
> 
> public Element createElement() { return new CustomElement() ...}
> 
> public Element createElement( arg1, arg2.) { ...}
> 
> ...
> 
> }
> 
> 
> 
> Has anyone thought about this approach? I think its a nice compromise
> between imposing a Factory style on JDOM (plus its a bit late now,
> anyway), and forcing users to "deal with it" by writing custom code
> for this case.

You can do this today, right?.  Write your own builder that creates your
own type of elements.  What you're wanting is SAXBuilder to provide
extra help with a setElementFactory() method.  I'd rather see SAXBuilder
have protected create methods that could be overridden, if such
functionality is needed at all.

-jh-