For some projects, you need a more flexible business object structure. For example, different companies may have different requirements for Product bean properties. Without a proper framework, you may end up spending long hours customizing your data structures for every new customer, soon finding yourself with parallel software versions. This article lays a foundation for a simple framework to build truly adaptive systems, saving you hours of routine programming. As a bonus, you get a refresher on JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) and JSPs (JavaServer Pages), and you'll also learn how to use XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language for Transformations) to generate Java source code. (4,800 words; February 1, 2002)
2. Generate JavaBean classes dynamically with XSLT
For some projects, you need a more flexible business object structure. For example, different companies may have different requirements for Product bean properties. Without a proper framework, you may end up spending long hours customizing your data structures for every new customer, soon finding yourself with parallel software versions. This article lays a foundation for a simple framework to build truly adaptive systems, saving you hours of routine programming. As a bonus, you get a refresher on JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) and JSPs (JavaServer Pages), and you'll also learn how to use XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language for Transformations) to generate Java source code. (4,800 words; February 1, 2002)
In last month's cover story -- part one of a three-part series -- columnist Mark Johnson discussed XML, the eXtensible Markup Language, which some say will soon replace HTML for many applications. He also developed a class for creating a running, configured JavaBean from the contents of an XML file. This month in Part 2 of "XML JavaBeans", Mark goes the other way: he develops a class that writes JavaBeans as XML files, using the same XML "dialect". (4,200 words)
The buzziest of buzz words these days is XML, the acronym for the Extensible Markup Language. But it's more than buzz. This rapidly developing technology is well-suited for use with JavaBeans -- and nicely complements Java, whose write-once, run-anywhere philosophy has given the world unprecedented network mobility. This article, the first of a two-part series, describes just one possible application for XML: making JavaBeans mobile and interoperable by representing them as XML documents. Follow along as columnist Mark Johnson describes XML, defines his own custom markup language, and creates a class that converts XML files to JavaBeans running in memory. (4,200 words)
The two previous JavaBeans columns presented the XMLBeans package that reads and writes JavaBeans objects to and from XML documents. This month's article extends and completes the XMLBeanReader and XMLBeanWriter classes. Mark Johnson improves both classes, extending and generalizing how they do their jobs. Mark also shows you how to give programmers complete control of the XML that is written for any JavaBean, simplify the JavaBean file format, and integrate XMLBeans with the java.beans package by creating a new type of property descriptor. (6,700 words)
