question regarding apache digester

[toolkit]

Hi there, just playing around with the apache digester.
If anyone can point me to a good tutorial on its usage, or can make suggestions on code changes for my small test program, I would appreciate it:
Say I have a simple class like:

import java.util.Date;
public class User {
    private String name;
    private Date dob;
    public String getName() { return name; }
    public Date getDOB() { return dob; }
    public void setName(String name) { this.name = name; }
    public void setDOB(Date dob) { this.dob = dob; }
    public String toString() {
        return "[Name: "+name+", DOB: "+dob+"]";
    }
}

I've created a small XML file like:

<users>
    <user dob="09-Jul-1971">
        <name>Neil</name>
    </user>
    <user dob="02-Feb-1972">
        <name>Jane</name>
    </user>
</users>

I have then created a small UserManager class:

import java.io.*;
import org.apache.commons.digester.Digester;
public class UserManager {
    public static void read(String file) throws Exception {
        Digester d = new Digester();
        d.setValidating(false);
        d.addObjectCreate("users/user", User.class);
        d.addBeanPropertySetter("users/user/@dob", "dob");
        d.addBeanPropertySetter("users/user/name", "name");
        Object o = d.parse(new FileInputStream(file));
        System.out.println(o.toString());
    }
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        read(args[0]);
    }
}

The resulting output is:

[Name: Jane, DOB: null]

A couple of questions:
[ul]
[li]I actually want to create a List of users. Do I have to create another class for this purpose, or can I configure the digester to wrap User objects in a list for me?[/li]
[li]Is the BeanPropertySetter string an XPath? The API doesn't give a clear indication of this? This might be why I am not getting dob set correctly. Or perhaps it is a date format issue. Any ideas?[/li]
[/ul]
Thanks for any advice. Neil

 

[toolkit]

Sussed it:

import java.io.*;
import java.text.*;
import java.util.*;
import org.apache.commons.digester.Digester;
public class UserManager {
    private static DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy");
    private List users = new ArrayList();
    public void read(String file) throws Exception {
        Digester d = new Digester();
        d.setValidating(false);
        d.push(this);
        d.addCallMethod("users/user", "add", 2);
        d.addCallParam("users/user/name", 0);
        d.addCallParam("users/user/date-of-birth", 1);
        d.parse(new FileInputStream(file));
        Iterator i = users.iterator();
        while (i.hasNext()) {
            System.out.println(i.next());
        }
    }
    public void add(String name, String dob) throws Exception {
        User u = new User();
        u.setName(name);
        u.setDOB(df.parse(dob));
        users.add(u);
    }
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        UserManager mgr = new UserManager();
        mgr.read(args[0]);
    }
}

Had to modify my XML so that the date of birth is now contained in a date-of-birth element, instead of a dob attribute. The idea to push the UserManager onto the digester stack came from:

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-10-2002/jw-1025-opensourceprofile.html

Cheers, Neil