I probably didn't explain myself very well, apologies. The values in the
map are still cayenne objects... I just want a map of them, instead of a
list of them. :)
For instance...
Given a users table, a user_preferences table, and a one-to-many
relationship between users and user_preferences, you would wind up with
a set of objects that look something like:
_User.java:
public List getUserPreferences() {...}
public void addToUserPreferences(UserPreference pref) {...}
_UserPreference.java
public void setUser(User u){...}
Now suppose I want to grab a user's preferred layout.
I /could/ do (bleh... inefficient):
public UserPreference getPreferredLayout() {
for(UserPreference pref : this.getPreferences()) {
if (pref.getName().equals("preferred_layout")) {
return pref;
}
}
//do some default behavior, like return a default preference for
layout, or throw an exception, or whatever.
}
Or, I could do:
public UserPreference getPreferredLayout() {
SelectQuery query = new SelectQuery(UserPreference.class);
Expression e =
ExpressionFactory.matchExp(UserPreference.USER_PROPERTY,this);
e =
e.andExp(ExpressionFactory.matchExp(UserPreference.NAME_PROPERTY,"preferred_layout"));
query.setQualifier(e);
List ret = this.getDataContext().performQuery(query);
if (ret.isEmpty()) {
//default behavior
} else {
return (UserPreference) ret.get(0);
}
}
which is ok... but gets tedious if you have many of these sorts of
map-type properties...
What I'd /like/ is for cayenne to provide this sort of behavior out of
the box. Instead of modeling a to-many as a list, which is faulted on
first access, have the relationship be a map. Just like the current
List-based implementation, the map would be empty until a property (eg:
size) is accessed; then cayenne would partially resolve the map: the
object key and the objectid would be fetched. Cayenne would subsequently
fault individual objects as they are accessed... basically, what happens
now with the List-based implementation, but providing the convenience of
being able to easily (for the developer :) access a particular object
based on the (developer-defined) key property.
In that scenario, my helper method would be:
public UserPreference getPreferredLayout() {
return getPreference("preferred_layout");
}
Granted, I could write wrapper/helper methods to stick the list into a
map. But then I have to worry about holding onto references to stale
objects, etc. It would be much nicer if cayenne could manage that sort
of thing.
Robert
Peter Schröder wrote:
> hi robert,
>
> what do you need a name for?
> you get cayenne-objects from that relationship whom you can access via getters and setters?!
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Robert Zeigler [mailto:robert..uregumption.com]
> Gesendet: Dienstag, 16. Januar 2007 05:14
> An: cayenne-use..ncubator.apache.org
> Betreff: "map" properties?
>
> Currently (to the best of my knowledge), cayenne always represents a
> to-many relationship as a java.util.List. However, I was thinking it
> would be nifty if cayenne supported map-representations of to-many
> relationships. For instance, you could model a relationship between
> Users and UserPreferences as a map, and specify the "name" property of
> the UserPreferences table as the map key. Does that make sense? Am I
> the only one who thinks that would be incredibly useful? :) Is something
> like this already planned for 3.0?
> If other people would find it useful, then I'd be happy to submit a
> feature request and also work up a patch.
>
> Robert
>
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