How to customize ModelMapper

Question

I want to use ModelMapper to convert entity to DTO and back. Mostly it works, but how do I customize it. It has has so many options that it\'s hard to figure out where to st

Answer 1

I've been using it from last 6 months, I'm going to explain some of my thoughts about that:

First of all, it is recommended to use it as an unique instance (singleton, spring bean,...), that's explained in the manual, and I think all agree with that.

ModelMapper is a great mapping library and wide flexible. Due to its flexibility, there are many ways to get the same result, and that's why it should be in the manual of best practices of when to use one or other way to do the same thing.

Starting with ModelMapper is a little bit difficult, it has a very tight learning curve and sometimes it is not easy to understand the best ways to do something, or how to do some other thing. So, to start it is required to read and understand the manual precisely.

You can configure your mapping as you want using the next settings:

Access level
Field matching
Naming convention
Name transformer
Name tokenizer 
Matching strategy

The default configuration is simply the best (http://modelmapper.org/user-manual/configuration/), but if you want to customise it you are able to do it.

Just one thing related to the Matching Strategy configuration, I think this is the most important configuration and is need to be careful with it. I would use the Strict or Standard but never the Loose, why?

• Due Loose is the most flexible and intelligent mapper it could be map some properties you can not expect. So, definitively, be careful with it. I think is better to create your own PropertyMap and use Converters if it is needed instead of configuring it as Loose.

Otherwise, it is important to validate all property matches, you verify all it works, and with ModelMapper it's more need due with intelligent mapping it is done via reflection so you will not have the compiler help, it will continue compiling but the mapping will fail without realising it. That's one of the things I least like, but it needs to avoid boilerplate and manual mapping.

Finally, if you are sure to use ModelMapper in your project you should use it using the way it proposes, don't mix it with manual mappings (for example), just use ModelMapper, if you don't know how to do something be sure is possible (investigate,...). Sometimes is hard to do it with model mapper (I also don't like it) as doing by hand but is the price you should pay to avoid boilerplate mappings in other POJOs.