ecologylab.xml
Annotation Type ElementState.xml_collection

@Retention(value=RUNTIME)
@Target(value=FIELD)
@Inherited
public static @interface ElementState.xml_collection

Metalanguage declaration that tells ecologylab.xml translators that each Field it is applied to as an annotation is of type Collection. An argument may be passed to declare the tag name of the child elements. The XML may define any number of child elements with this tag. In this case, the class of the elements will be dervied from the instantiated generic type declaration of the children. For example, @xml_collection("item") ArrayList<Item> items;

For that formulation, the type of the children may be a subclass of ElementState, for full nested elements, or it may be a ScalarType, for leaf nodes.

Without the tag name declaration, the tag name will be derived from the class name of the children, and in translate from XML, the class name will be derived from the tag name, and then resolved in the TranslationSpace.

Alternatively, to achieve polymorphism, for children subclassed from ElementState only, this declaration can be combined with @xml_classes. In such cases, items of the various classes will be collected together in the declared Collection. Then, the tag names for these elements will be derived from their class declarations.

Author:

andruid

Optional Element Summary

java.lang.String

value

value

public abstract java.lang.String value

Default:

""