Before we move on, a quick note on the build: we built 2.4 using Maven 2 and Java 1.4. We also tested that the Ant build passed the tests -successfully under Java 1.3, and that the classes compiled under Java 1.2. As it's been so long, we stopped building a Java 1.1-compatible jar. Most importantly, it should be a drop in replacement for Lang 2.3, but we recommend testing first, of course. Now... moving on. +successfully under Java 1.3, and that the classes compiled under Java 1.2. As it's been so long, we stopped building a Java 1.1-compatible jar. Most importantly, it should be a drop in replacement for Lang 2.3, but we recommend testing first, of course. Also, for those of you who work within an OSGi framework, the jar should be ready for OSGi. Now... time to move on.
There were 58 new methods added to existing Commons Lang classes. Going through each one, one at a time would be dull, and fortunately there are some nice groupings that we can discuss instead:
-CharSet getInstance(String[]) adds an additional builder method by which you can build a CharSet from multiple sets of characters at the same time. If you weren't aware of the CharSet class, it holds a set of characters created by a simple pattern language allowing constructs such as "a-z" and "^a" (everything but 'a'). It's most used by the CharSetUtils class, and came out of CharSetUtils.translate, a simple variant of the UNIX tr command.
ClassUtils canonical name methods are akin to the non 'Canonical' methods, except they work with the more human readable int[] type names rather than the JVM versions of [I. This makes them useful for parsing input from developer's configuration files.
ClassUtils toClass(String[]) is very easy to explain - it calls toClass on each Object in the array and returns an array of Class objects.
ClassUtils wrapper->primitive conversions are the reflection of the pre-existing primitiveToWrapper methods. Again easy to explain, they turn an array of Integer into an array of int[].
ObjectUtils identityToString(StringBuffer, Object) is the StringBuffer variant of the pre-existing identityToString method. In case you've not met that before, it produces the toString that would have been produced by an Object if it hadn't been overridden.
StringEscapeUtils CSV methods are a new addition to our range of simple parser/printers. These, quite as expected, parse and unparse CSV text as per RFC-4180.
-StringUtils has a host of new methods, as always, and we'll leave these for later.
-WordUtils abbreviate finds the first space after the lower limit and abbreviates the text.
-math.IntRange/LongRange.toArray turn the range into an array of primitive int/longs contained in the range.
text.StrMatch.isMatch(char[], int) is a helper method for checking whether there was a match with the StrMatcher objects.
-time.DateFormatUtils format(Calendar, ...) provide Calendar variants for the pre-existing format methods. If these are new to you, they are helper methods to formatting a date.
-time.DateUtils getFragment* methods are used to splice the time element out of Date. If you have 2008/12/13 14:57, then these could, for example, pull out the 13.
time.DateUtils setXxx methods round off our walk through the methods - the setXxx variant of the existing addXxx helper methods.
+CharSet getInstance(String[]) adds an additional builder method by which you can build a CharSet from multiple sets of characters at the same time. If you weren't aware of the CharSet class, it holds a set of characters created by a simple pattern language allowing constructs such as "a-z" and "^a" (everything but 'a'). It's most used by the CharSetUtils class, and came out of CharSetUtils.translate, a simple variant of the UNIX tr command.
ClassUtils canonical name methods are akin to the non 'Canonical' methods, except they work with the more human readable int[] type names rather than the JVM versions of [I. This makes them useful for parsing input from developer's configuration files.
ClassUtils toClass(String[]) is very easy to explain - it calls toClass on each Object in the array and returns an array of Class objects.
ClassUtils wrapper->primitive conversions are the reflection of the pre-existing primitiveToWrapper methods. Again easy to explain, they turn an array of Integer into an array of int[].
ObjectUtils identityToString(StringBuffer, Object) is the StringBuffer variant of the pre-existing identityToString method. In case you've not met that before, it produces the toString that would have been produced by an Object if it hadn't been overridden.
StringEscapeUtils CSV methods are a new addition to our range of simple parser/printers. These, quite as expected, parse and unparse CSV text as per RFC-4180.
+StringUtils has a host of new methods, as always, and we'll leave these for later.
+WordUtils abbreviate finds the first space after the lower limit and abbreviates the text.
+math.IntRange/LongRange.toArray turn the range into an array of primitive int/longs contained in the range.
text.StrMatch.isMatch(char[], int) is a helper method for checking whether there was a match with the StrMatcher objects.
+time.DateFormatUtils format(Calendar, ...) provide Calendar variants for the pre-existing format methods. If these are new to you, they are helper methods to formatting a date.
+time.DateUtils getFragment* methods are used to splice the time element out of Date. If you have 2008/12/13 14:57, then these could, for example, pull out the 13.
time.DateUtils setXxx methods round off our walk through the methods - the setXxx variant of the existing addXxx helper methods.
In addition to new things, there are the bugfixes. As you can tell from the release notes, there are a good few - 24 in fact according to JIRA. Here are some of the interesting ones:
+Hopefully that was of interest. Don't forget to download Lang 2.4, or, for the Maven repository users, upgrade your <version> tag to 2.4. Please feel free to raise any questions you might have on the mailing lists, and report bugs or enhancements in the issue tracker.
+Hopefully that was all of interest. Don't forget to download Lang 2.4, or, for the Maven repository users, upgrade your <version> tag to 2.4. Please feel free to raise any questions you might have on the mailing lists, and report bugs or enhancements in the issue tracker.