de.innovationgate.utils

Class ObjectComparator

java.lang.Object

de.innovationgate.utils.ObjectComparator

All Implemented Interfaces:

java.util.Comparator

public class ObjectComparator
extends java.lang.Object
implements java.util.Comparator

A generic Comparator for any object type. The comparator compares by the following rules:

• A null value is always larger than a non-null-value
• If both values are Strings they are compared by the collator given as constructor parameter
• If both values are Comparable they are compared based on this
• If they are neither strings nor comparables they are compared based on their Object.toString() strings using the collator
• If both objects are collections it compares the collection items value by value in iteration order
• If only one object is a collection the other object is converted to a collection with the object as single value
• If the collections are of unequal size and no difference could be found by the item positions that both have in common, the collection with larger size is returned as the bigger one

Constructor Summary

Constructors

Constructor and Description
ObjectComparator(java.text.Collator collator) Constructor.

Method Summary

Methods

Modifier and Type	Method and Description
int	compare(java.lang.Object arg0, java.lang.Object arg1)

Methods inherited from class java.lang.Object

equals, getClass, hashCode, notify, notifyAll, toString, wait, wait, wait

Methods inherited from interface java.util.Comparator

equals

Constructor Detail

ObjectComparator

public ObjectComparator(java.text.Collator collator)

Constructor. Takes a collator object for native language string comparison.

Parameters:

collator -

Method Detail

compare

public int compare(java.lang.Object arg0,
          java.lang.Object arg1)

Specified by:

compare in interface java.util.Comparator

See Also:

Comparator.compare(Object, Object)