Configuration2

The Configuration interface make you have to handle the serializing an unserializing yourself, and also provide accessors for the properties. There is an extended interface called Configuration2 which handle all of this for you^[1]

The Configuration2 interface extends Configuration, so a class which implements Configuration2 is a Configuration

.

Basically the Configuration2 interface provide a framework to define your properties and their types, and handle getting and setting these properties, and the serializing and unserializing of the configuration.

Implementing the interface

You only need to implement the following methods:

• Configuration2.getPropertiesTypes(): return the map of properties keys and their types
• Configuration2.setPropertyValue(String, Object): set the value of a property
• Configuration2.getPropertyValue(String): return the value of a property

Supported property types

The supported property types are:

• char properties: Character or Character.TYPE
• int properties: Integer or Integer.TYPE
• float properties: Float or Float.TYPE
• long properties: Long or Long.TYPE
• boolean properties: Boolean
• String properties: String
• File and URL properties: File and URL

It is possible to handle other types of properties by implementing the following methods:

• Configuration2.getPrefValue(Preferences, String, Object, File) to unserialize the value for a property
• Configuration2.putPrefValue(Preferences, String, Object, File) to serialize the value for a property

Helper methods

Several getPropertyValueAsXXX(String) allow to get the value of a property in any of the default supported types.

Example with one int property

  public class MyConfiguration implements Configuration2 {
    public static final String MY_INT_PROPERTY = "MyIntProperty";
    private static final SortedMap<String, Class<?>> properties = new TreeMap<>();
    static {
      properties.put(MY_INT_PROPERTY, Integer.Type);
    }
    private int intPropValue = 0;

    public SortedMap<String, Class<?>> getPropertiesTypes() {
      return properties;
    }

    public void setPropertyValue(String key, Object value) {
      if (key.equals(MY_INT_PROPERTY) && value instanceof Integer) {
        intPropValue = (Integer)value;
      }
    }
    public Object getPropertyValue(String key) {
      if (key.equals(MY_INT_PROPERTY)) {
        return intPropValue;
      } else {
        return null;
      }
    }
  }

AbstractConfiguration2 class

The AbstractConfiguration2 class is a default implementation of the Configuration2 interface which stores the properties in a Map.

This class is abstract but it has no abstract methods.