View Javadoc

1   /*
2    * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
3    * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
4    * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
5    * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
6    * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
7    * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
8    * 
9    *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
10   * 
11   * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
12   * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
13   * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
14   * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
15   * limitations under the License.
16   */ 
17  
18  package org.apache.commons.codec;
19  
20  import java.util.Comparator;
21  
22  /**
23   * Strings are comparable, and this comparator allows 
24   * you to configure it with an instance of a class
25   * which implements StringEncoder.  This comparator
26   * is used to sort Strings by an encoding scheme such
27   * as Soundex, Metaphone, etc.  This class can come in
28   * handy if one need to sort Strings by an encoded
29   * form of a name such as Soundex.
30   *
31   * @author Apache Software Foundation
32   * @version $Id: StringEncoderComparator.java 582444 2007-10-06 04:10:48Z bayard $
33   */
34  public class StringEncoderComparator implements Comparator {
35  
36      /**
37       * Internal encoder instance.
38       */
39      private final StringEncoder stringEncoder;
40  
41      /**
42       * Constructs a new instance.
43       * @deprecated as creating without a StringEncoder will lead to a 
44       *             broken NullPointerException creating comparator.
45       */
46      public StringEncoderComparator() {
47          stringEncoder = null;   // Trying to use this will cause things to break
48      }
49  
50      /**
51       * Constructs a new instance with the given algorithm.
52       * @param stringEncoder the StringEncoder used for comparisons.
53       */
54      public StringEncoderComparator(StringEncoder stringEncoder) {
55          this.stringEncoder = stringEncoder;
56      }
57  
58      /**
59       * Compares two strings based not on the strings 
60       * themselves, but on an encoding of the two 
61       * strings using the StringEncoder this Comparator
62       * was created with.
63       * 
64       * If an {@link EncoderException} is encountered, return <code>0</code>.
65       * 
66       * @param o1 the object to compare
67       * @param o2 the object to compare to
68       * @return the Comparable.compareTo() return code or 0 if an encoding error was caught.
69       * @see Comparable
70       */
71      public int compare(Object o1, Object o2) {
72  
73          int compareCode = 0;
74  
75          try {
76              Comparable s1 = (Comparable) this.stringEncoder.encode(o1);
77              Comparable s2 = (Comparable) this.stringEncoder.encode(o2);
78              compareCode = s1.compareTo(s2);
79          } 
80          catch (EncoderException ee) {
81              compareCode = 0;
82          }
83          return compareCode;
84      }
85  
86  }