Develop Reference

Sorting rest get request results by field passed as a parameter

I am currently working on a Rest API, in a get method which suppose to return an Array of objects in json format I now have the requirement to sort the result by a field passed as a parameter to the method. Consider for example the object to be
public class ExampleType {
int firstField ;
String secondField ;
}
Now according to the requirements the Rest API user should be able to pass as a parameter among other things either "firstField" or "secondField" and I should be sorting the array containing the result objects using this field.
Apparently my model is not so simplistic as the example, I do have more than 15 fields which could potentially be the one that I need to sort by, so an else if statement is not a choice at this point. My question is does anybody had a similar requirement for a rest api and if so how did you tackle it ? Or any recommendation on what could potentially by an elegant solution to my problem would be greatly appreciated.

You should create a Comparator and then use this to sort your data.
The comparators could be stored in a static map to avoid a switch/case if/else:
map.put("fieldName", Comparator.comparing(ExampleType::getFirstField));
You can combine two or more comparators using the thenComparing method.
The only other option is to create the appropriate comparators using reflection.
Note: requirements of API consumers often are not requirements that should be implemented in the API itself. You may also consider that sorting output is in fact a display problem and not something that an API needs to be concerned with.
It depends on the situation though, if data needs to be paginated then you may have no option other than to sort at the API level.

Handling null in Freemarker

Situation:
Old java project using freemarker has many finished templates working great.
Every template is using data form Transaction object.
This transaction object is very large, because wraps all data about transaction.
In templates is a lot of expression like this:
get("object1").getNestedObject2().getNestedObject3().getValue();
Problem:
New requirements appear: All templates have to be process for preview with no real data. All numbers should be Zero and all string should be ---.
Unsatisfactory solutions:
Remake all templates to check null values. (Lot of work and not safe)
Create Transaction object that contains all default value. (Lot of work)
Well my question is: Can I say to Freemarker, that if he finds null or finds null along the way, that he should use 0 instead if he was expecting number or --- if he was expecting String.
Or do you see any better solution?

If you need to show a dummy data model to the templates, your best bet is probably a custom ObjectWrapper (see Configuration.setObjectWrapper). Everything that reads the data model runs through the TemplateModel-s, and the root TemplateModel is made by the ObjectWrapper, thus it can control what values the templates get for what names. But the question is, when you have to return a dummy value for a name, how can you tell what its type will be? It's not just about finding out if it will be a string or a number, but also if it will be a method (like getNestedObject2) or a hash (something that can be followed by .). What can help there is that FreeMarker allows a value to have multiple types, so you can return a value that can be used as a method and as a hash and as a string, for example. Depending on the application that hack is might be good enough, except, you still have to decide if the value is a string or a number, because ${} will print the numerical value if the value both a string and a number.

4 Key Value HashMap? Array? Best Approach?

I've got loads of the following to implement.
validateParameter(field_name, field_type, field_validationMessage, visibleBoolean);
Instead of having 50-60 of these in a row, is there some form of nested hashmap/4d array I can use to build it up and loop through them?
Whats the best approach for doing something like that?
Thanks!
EDIT: Was 4 items.

What you could do is create a new Class that holds three values. (The type, the boolean, and name, or the fourth value (you didn't list it)). Then, when creating the HashMap, all you have to do is call the method to get your three values. It may seem like more work, but all you would have to do is create a simple loop to go through all of the values you need. Since I don't know exactly what it is that you're trying to do, all I can do is provide an example of what I'm trying to do. Hope it applies to your problem.
Anyways, creating the Class to hold the three(or four) values you need.
For example,
Class Fields{
String field_name;
Integer field_type;
Boolean validationMessageVisible;
Fields(String name, Integer type, Boolean mv) {
// this.field_name = name;
this.field_type = type;
this.validationMessageVisible = mv;
}
Then put them in a HashMap somewhat like this:
HashMap map = new HashMap<String, Triple>();
map.put(LOCAL STRING FOR NAME OF FIELD, new Field(new Integer(YOUR INTEGER),new Boolean(YOUR BOOLEAN)));
NOTE: This is only going to work as long as these three or four values can all be stored together. For example if you need all of the values to be stored separately for whatever reason it may be, then this won't work. Only if they can be grouped together without it affecting the function of the program, that this will work.
This was a quick brainstorm. Not sure if it will work, but think along these lines and I believe it should work out for you.
You may have to make a few edits, but this should get you in the right direction
P.S. Sorry for it being so wordy, just tried to get as many details out as possible.

The other answer is close but you don't need a key in this case.
Just define a class to contain your three fields. Create a List or array of that class. Loop over the list or array calling the method for each combination.

The approach I'd use is to create a POJO (or some POJOs) to store the values as attributes and validate attribute by attribute.
Since many times you're going to have the same validation per attribute type (e.g. dates and numbers can be validated by range, strings can be validated to ensure they´re not null or empty, etc), you could just iterate on these attributes using reflection (or even better, using annotations).
If you need to validate on the POJO level, you can still reuse these attribute-level validators via composition, while you add more specific validations are you´re going up in the abstraction level (going up means basic attributes -> pojos -> pojos that contain other pojos -> etc).
Passing several basic types as parameters of the same method is not good because the parameters themselves don't tell much and you can easily exchange two parameters of the same type by accident in the method call.

Ordering post in list by atribute java

Is possible to order elements in List indirectly (in Java 7)? Assume having elements of list which are post which have atributs (atributs of type Post) id, text, timestamp (millisec from 1970 - just number type long).
The posts are stored in database (MySQL) and they came as result of different SELECTs. It's because posts is something tweets on twitter - posts which added user, posts of users which user follows and maybe some others. The idea is do some SELECTSs, each get result as list and these lists will be added to one list, which I want to order by atribute (timestamp). Is any easy way to sort it indirectly (from higher to lower - to have newest to oldest posts) by this atribute (timestamp)? I know that List have attribute sort and I should probably do something with that.

You probably want to use a Set, and more specifically a SortedSet (the basic implementation of it being a TreeSet), instead of a List. This will require that your post class implement Comparable of itself, however.
Of course, there is always the option to ORDER BY at the database level. This way you can use a classical List.

You can query the database using Order By clause to get the result in order of timestamp, then you won't have to do sorting at java side.

There are two ways to do it. You can do it from query by using ORDER BY column or use comparable and comparator to sort objects. link =
http://www.mkyong.com/java/java-object-sorting-example-comparable-and-comparator/

Empty list in App Engine Datastore: Java vs Python

I have the following java model class in App Engine:
public class Xyz ... {
#Persistent
private Set<Long> uvw;
}
When saving an object Xyz with an empty set uvw in Java, I get a "null" field (as listed in the appengine datastore viewer).
When I try to load the same object in Python (through remote_api), as defined by the following python model class:
class Xyz(db.Model):
uvw = db.ListProperty(int)
I get a "BadValueError: Property uvw is required".
When saving another object of the same class in Python with an empty uvw list, the Datastore viewer prints a "missing" field.
Apparently empty lists storage handling differs between Java and Python and lead to "incompatible" objects.
Thus my question: Is there a way to, either:
force Java to store an empty list as a "missing" field,
force Python to gracefully accept a "null" list as an empty list when loading the object?
Or any other suggestion on how to handle empty list field in both languages.
Thanks for your answers!

It should work if you assign a default value to your Python property:
uvw = db.ListProperty(int, default=[])

I use the low-level java api, so perhaps what I am doing would be different. But before I save a collection-type data structure to the datastore, I convert it into something that the datastore naturally handles. This would include mainly Strings and ByteArrays.
It sounds like java app engine is interpreting the empty set as a null value. And python is not reading this null value correctly. You might try saving an empty set as the String value "empty set". And then have python check to see if the datastore holds that string value. If it does, it could allocate a new empty set, if not, it could read the property as a set.

The Java Set behavior is because Java's Collections are reference types, which default to being null.
To actually create an empty Set, declare it like this:
#Persistent
private Set<Long> uvw = new HashSet<Long>();
or using some other implementation of Set on the right side. HashSet is the most commonly used Set type, though. Other interesting set types are the two thread-safe Sets CopyOnWriteArraySet and ConcurrentSkipListSet; also the Ordered Set type LinkedHashSet and the Sorted Set type TreeSet.

It may work to you
uvw = db.ListProperty(int, default=[])
Its the most comment way to short it out...