alternate representations of collections in XMLBeans??

[Tim Parker <tp...@paperthin.com>]

The XMLBeans representation of a collection (for something with a
maxOccurs GT 1) is a bit limiting... I'm looking to extend it to look
more like a Map interface... and I'm hitting some brick walls...
 
For discussion sake, I'll use a structure with three fields:
 
struct foo
{
    int ID;
    String name;
    HashMap metadata;
}
 
The 'metadata' field contains arbitrary name/value pairs - for
simplicity we'll say 'name' and 'value' fields in the hashmap are always
strings...
 
The obvious (to me, at least) schema for this is something like:
 
 <xs:complexType name="NVP">
  <xs:sequence>
   <xs:element name="Value" type="xs:string"/>
  </xs:sequence>
  <xs:attribute name="Name" type="xs:string"/>
 </xs:complexType>
 
 <xs:complexType name="NVPCollection">
  <xs:sequence>
   <xs:element name="Entry" type="my:NVP" minOccurs="0"
maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
  </xs:sequence>
 </xs:complexType>
 
<xs:complexType name="testCase">
  <xs:sequence>
    <xs:element name="ID" type="xs:int"/>
    <xs:element name="name" type="xs:string"/>
    <xs:element name="metadata" type="my:NVPCollection"/>
  </xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>

====
 
I could build another layer on top of this, but this could get ugly -
What I really need is a way to extend NVPCollection so I can address
items by name (like in a HashMap) rather than by position...  
 
The ideal would be something like (assuming that we have a mechanism to
bind the 'name' field to the map key and the 'value' field to be the one
of interest)...
 
NVPCollection thisCollection;
 
// some magic here to get the collection populated...
 
someValue = thisCollection.GetByMap("someArbitraryName");
 
.... Or we could save some binding complexity by doing
...GetByMap("someArbitraryName","value"), saying "get the field 'value'
from the collection member whose key field contains 'someArbitraryName'"
(The presumption is that the binding to the key field 'name' would need
to be established earlier so the map can be maintained)
 
====
 
As I read the documentation, I could build an extension like this, but
I'm hosed if I want to do anything more sophisticated than a linear
search through the collection on each 'get' call - Unless I'm missing
something, I need a place to put an instance-specific HashMap object to
maintain mapping between the key field ('name') and the array index...
more than a little difficult with the 'static method' requirement for
the extension  (Not to mention the population problem for the HashMap
object itself, but a preSet or postSet implementation would work as long
as I never try to delete anything)..
 
Presumably I could also build an 'extendedNVPCollection' class, based on
the NVPCollection class generated by XMLBeans, but how would I wire that
back into my (XMLBeans-generated) 'testCase' class?  I don't want to get
into creating wrapper classes for every layer...
 
I tried ignoring the "don't touch - generated code" warnings and added
some stuff directly to the generated classes for the NVPCollection
object, but things started breaking - I'm not sure if the problem is a
flaw in my hacking or a fundamental problem I won't solve, so I'm
seeking advice - am I tilting at windmills here?
 
Does anyone have ideas as to better ways to do this?

======================================================= 

Tim Parker 
Senior Developer 
PaperThin, Inc. 
617-471-4440 x 203 
tparker@paperthin.com 
www.paperthin.com 

=================== 

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