No way to register Formatter instances by field on DataBinder [SPR-6069]

[spring-projects-issues]

Keith Donald opened SPR-6069 and commented

On DataBinder, I see you can call getFormatterRegistry().add(...). However, there is no specific binder.registerFormatter(String, Formatter<?>) callback that allows you to register a Formatter for a specific field, as an alternative to binder.registerCustomEditor(Class, String, PropertyEditor).

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Affects: 3.0 M4

Issue Links:

• "Registering field-specific Formatters" section is not in sync with the codebase [SPR-6171] #10839 "Registering field-specific Formatters" section is not in sync with the codebase
• Add Formatter support to DataBinder [SPR-6015] #10684 Add Formatter support to DataBinder
• Provide a formatter registry capability local to a controller [SPR-7773] #12429 Provide a formatter registry capability local to a controller

Referenced from: commits 02da2e8

9 votes, 10 watchers

[spring-projects-issues]

Oliver Drotbohm commented

This one seems to be a crucial thing for us to migrate to the new infrastructure as we thend to use domain objects in the controllers as well and do not want them to be polluted with UI specific annotations.

[spring-projects-issues]

Keith Donald commented

i get what you're after.
[3/16/11 4:14:19 PM] Keith Donald: my goal has been to have stateless formatters that are configured once and can be parameterized at format time (typically via @Format annotaiton metadata)
[3/16/11 4:14:43 PM] Keith Donald: in this way there's rarely the need for a user to register custom formatters themselves in @InitBinder
[3/16/11 4:14:49 PM] Keith Donald: and that's a nice simplificaiton.
[3/16/11 4:15:05 PM] Keith Donald: in your case though, you'd like to bind directly to a domain object and not couple that object with a specific format annotation.
[3/16/11 4:15:19 PM] Keith Donald: so you'd need an extenrnalized mechanism for expressing the same field formatting rule.

[spring-projects-issues]

Donnchadh O Donnabhain commented

Any further thoughts on this and #12429?

[spring-projects-issues]

Burkhard Graves commented

Yes, I wonder too. Moreover, this seems to be related to #10684 and #10839 - and both tasks are marked as 'solved'?! I don't get it...

[spring-projects-issues]

Donnchadh O Donnabhain commented

I think #10839 was fixed by removing the "Registering field-specific Formatters" section.
As you point out #10684 references DataBinder.getFormatterRegistry() which doesn't seem to exist.

[spring-projects-issues]

Burkhard Graves commented

Ah, ok, now I understand why #10839 was closed (by the way, I found http://static.springsource.org/spring/previews/ui-format.html#ui-format-registering-field-specific-Formatters - should be better removed by the spring team, I think ;-)).

But I still don't understand why #10684 was closed...

[spring-projects-issues]

Juergen Hoeller commented

I'm introducing addCustomFormatter(Formatter formatter, String... fields) and addCustomFormatter(Formatter formatter, Class... fieldTypes) to DataBinder, internally adapting the given Formatter to a PropertyEditor and registering that adapter with the underlying PropertyEditorRegistry, following the usual rules there. This is a quite simple and straighforward approach which should hopefully cover the typical use case here, without having to build an extra local ConversionService underneath the covers.

Juergen