Hey Matt, ...as one of your loyal followers (isn't that scary?) I am wondering if you could offer advice on a design issue. Sometimes I find myself staring at my computer screen due to my lack of experience with layered architecture. Often times I have difficulty choosing what operation belongs in what layer.
I am designing a statement viewing inteface where the client can choose from various types of statements (various contract invoices, usage, etc) some of which are in more than one format (pdf, xls, txt, html). For the business/datalayer I have started with StatementFacade (or Manager or Delegate) FileSystemStatementDAO I choose "FileSystem" since these files are sitting in a hierarchial directory structure and I have to find them based on account number. Since there are several reports, each with a different directory/file pattern I figured I could have a method extractAccountDate to pull the account date from examples such as INVOICE_0035_JAN03.report usage_0035_jan3.txt wirelessbill_200310_0035.pdf As you can see the files all have different patterns and I am stuck with that reality. In my getStatements(custNo, type) I want to populate my Statement bean with various fields, one of which is accountDate. ...THE QUESTION: how should I parse the file to extract the account date for the various types of files. Should I use a switch statement? Should I have a method name for each type of file? How can I take advantage of inheritance? Can I put the parse in the constructor of the Statement bean (this seems like the most logical way) Statement | +- Invoice +- UsageReport +- WirelessBill each with a custom constructor? I am a bit stuck here, any advice would really help. I can't tell you the number of times while I work I just want to pick up the phone and ask someone how I should design my system. There is no question that I need to become more educated on the subject, but the sad part is, I am probably leaps and bounds ahead of the last guy...his code was shit. Dan -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Daniel Allen, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.mojavelinux.com/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you?" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials. Become an expert in LINUX or just sharpen your skills. Sign up for IBM's Free Linux Tutorials. Learn everything from the bash shell to sys admin. Click now! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1278&alloc_id=3371&op=click _______________________________________________ Struts-apps mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/struts-apps
