What is the best way to compare several javabean properties?

Question

I need to compare dozens of fields in two objects (instances of the same class), and do some logging and updating in case there are differences. Meta code could look somethi

Answer 1

You say you presently have getters and setters for all these fields? Okay, then change the underlying data from a bunch of individual fields to an array. Change all the getters and setters to access the array. I'd create constant tags for the indexes rather than using numbers for long-term maintainability. Also create a parallel array of flags indicating which fields should be processed. Then create a generic getter/setter pair that use an index, as well as a getter for the compare flag. Something like this:

public class SomeClass
{
  final static int NUM_VALUES=3;
  final static int FOO=0, BAR=1, PLUGH=2;
  String[] values=new String[NUM_VALUES];
  static boolean[] wantCompared={true, false, true};

  public String getFoo()
  {
    return values[FOO];
  }
  public void setFoo(String foo)
  {
    values[FOO]=foo;
  }
  ... etc ...
  public int getValueCount()
  {
    return NUM_VALUES;
  }
  public String getValue(int x)
  {
    return values[x];
  }
  public void setValue(int x, String value)
  {
    values[x]=value;
  }
  public boolean getWantCompared(int x)
  {
    return wantCompared[x];
  }
}
public class CompareClass
{
  public void compare(SomeClass sc1, SomeClass sc2)
  {
    int z=sc1.getValueCount();
    for (int x=0;x

I just wrote this off the top of my head, I haven't tested it, so their may be bugs in the code, but I think the concept should work.

As you already have getters and setters, any other code using this class should continue to work unchanged. If there is no other code using this class, then throw away the existing getters and setters and just do everything with the array.