Creating a Custom Converter

As explained in Conversion Model, if the standard converters included with JavaServer Faces technology don't perform the data conversion that you need, you can easily create a custom converter to perform this specialized conversion.

This section explains how to implement a Converter interface to perform a custom data conversion. To make this implementation available to the application, the application architect registers it with the application, as explained in Registering a Custom Converter. To use the implementation, the page author must register it on a component, as explained in Using a Custom Converter.

The Duke's Bookstore application uses a custom Converter implementation, called bookstore6/src/converters/CreditCardConverter, to convert the data entered in the Credit Card Number field on the bookcasheir.jsp page. It strips blanks and hyphens from the text string and formats it so that a blank space separates every four characters.

All custom converters must implement the Converter interface. This implementation, at a minimum, must define how to convert data both ways between the two views of the data described in Conversion Model.

To define how the data is converted from the presentation view to the model view, the Converter implementation must implement the getAsObject(FacesContext, UIComponent, String) method from the Converter interface. Here is the implementation of this method from CreditCardConverter:

public Object getAsObject(FacesContext context, 
  UIComponent component, String newValue) 
    throws ConverterException {

  String convertedValue = null;
  if ( newValue == null ) {
    return newValue;
  }
  // Since this is only a String to String conversion, 
  // this conversion does not throw ConverterException.
  
  convertedValue = newValue.trim();
  if ( ((convertedValue.indexOf("-")) != -1) || 
    ((convertedValue.indexOf(" ")) != -1)) {
    char[] input = convertedValue.toCharArray();
    StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer(50);
    for ( int i = 0; i < input.length; ++i ) {
      if ( input[i] == '-' || input[i] == ' '  ) {
        continue;
      } else {
        buffer.append(input[i]);
      }
    }
    convertedValue = buffer.toString();
  }
    return convertedValue;
}

During the apply request values phase, when the components' decode methods are processed, the JavaServer Faces implementation looks up the component's local value in the request and calls the getAsObject method. When calling this method, the JavaServer Faces implementation passes in the current FacesContext, the component whose data needs conversion, and the local value as a String. The method then writes the local value to a character array, trims the hyphens and blanks, adds the rest of the characters to a String, and returns the String.

To define how the data is converted from the model view to the presentation view, the Converter implementation must implement the getAsString(FacesContext, UIComponent, Object) method from the Converter interface. Here is the implementation of this method from CreditCardConverter:

public String getAsString(FacesContext context, 
  UIComponent component, Object value) 
  throws ConverterException {
  
  String inputVal = null;
  if ( value == null ) {
    return null;
  }
  // value must be of the type that can be cast to a String.
  try {
    inputVal = (String)value;
  } catch (ClassCastException ce) {
    FacesMessage errMsg = MessageFactory.getMessage(
    CONVERSION_ERROR_MESSAGE_ID, 
    (new Object[] { value, inputVal }));
    throw new ConverterException(errMsg.getSummary());
  }
  // insert spaces after every four characters for better 
  // readability if it doesn't already exist. 
  char[] input = inputVal.toCharArray(); 
  StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer(50);
  for ( int i = 0; i < input.length; ++i ) {
    if ( (i % 4) == 0 && i != 0) {
      if (input[i] != ' ' || input[i] != '-'){ 
        buffer.append(" "); 
        // if there are any "-"'s convert them to blanks. 
      } else if (input[i] == '-') {
        buffer.append(" "); 
      } 
    } 
    buffer.append(input[i]);
  } 
  String convertedValue = buffer.toString();
  return convertedValue;
}

During the render response phase, in which the components' encode methods are called, the JavaServer Faces implementation calls the getAsString method in order to generate the appropriate output. When the JavaServer Faces implementation calls this method, it passes in the current FacesContext, the UIComponent whose value needs to be converted, and the bean value to be converted. Because this converter does a String-to-String conversion, this method can cast the bean value to a String.

If the value cannot be converted to a String, the method throws an exception, passing the error message from the ResourceBundle, which is registered with the application. Registering Messages explains how to register the error messages with the application. Performing Localization explains more about working with localized messages.

If the value can be converted to a String, the method reads the String to a character array and loops through the array, adding a space after every four characters.