Re: AspectJ: solution to Java's repetitiveness?

jhc0033@gmail.com wrote:


I also wrote a test program to try to address part of your toString() issue.

However, Java doesn't allow me to access non-public fields the way I
wanted. So it wasn't useful, as it would require even more boilerplate.

The failed test is below. There's a small formatting error, and there's
no attempt to deal with inheritance, because the one case I had failed
in such a way that I didn't see any way to proceed.

Maybe someone else can see what I'm attempting to do and suggest
improvements?

The values or ways I initialize the classes just give the classes random
values for the toString method to work on, btw. The field values are not
significant at all.

package tostringtest;

import java.lang.reflect.Field;

public class Main
{
     public static void main( String[] args )
     {
         System.out.println( new TestBase( 10, "Hello" ) );
         System.out.println( new TestChild( 11.11f, 'b' ) );
     }
}

class TestBase
{

     private int field1;
     private String myString;

     public TestBase( int field1, String myString )
     {
         this.field1 = field1;
         this.myString = myString;
     }

     @Override
     public String toString()
     {
         StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
         sb.append( '[' );
         sb.append( this.getClass().getSimpleName() );
         sb.append( ": " );
         for ( Field f : this.getClass().getDeclaredFields() )
         {
             sb.append( f.getName() );
             sb.append( ": " );
             try
             {
                 sb.append( f.get( this ).toString() );
             }
             catch ( IllegalArgumentException ex )
             {
                 sb.append( ex.toString() );
             }
             catch ( IllegalAccessException ex )
             {
                 sb.append( ex.toString() );
             }
             sb.append( ", " );
         }
         sb.append( ']' );
         return sb.toString();
     }
}

class TestChild extends TestBase
{
     private float ftest;
     private char ctest;

     public TestChild( float ftest, char ctest )
     {
         super( (int)ftest, Character.toString( ctest ) );
         this.ftest = ftest;
         this.ctest = ctest;
     }
}

This fails with an exception when trying to access the child classes
fields from the base class, of course.

run:
[TestBase: field1: 10, myString: Hello, ]
[TestChild: ftest: java.lang.IllegalAccessException: Class
tostringtest.TestBase can not access a member of class
tostringtest.TestChild with modifiers "private", ctest:
java.lang.IllegalAccessException: Class tostringtest.TestBase can not
access a member of class tostringtest.TestChild with modifiers "private", ]
BUILD SUCCESSFUL (total time: 0 seconds)