Dozer: Mapping of class with no default constructor

Question

Lets say I want to map the following two classes:

public class A {

    String member;

    public void setMember(String member) { this.member = member }
    public String getMember() { return member }
}

public class B {

    String member;

    public B(String member) { this.member = member }

    public String getMember() { return member }
}

Now when I want Dozer to do the following conversion: dozerBeanMapper.map( a, B.class ); I get an error because of the missing default constructor of class B.

What's the best way to solve that problem? Use a custom converter?

Answer 1

If class B is not your API and you have no control over it and you intend to map member property anyway, you can get away with a custom bean factory that can perhaps pass a default value to the costructor:

<mapping>
  <class-a>com.example.A</class-a>
  <class-b bean-factory="com.example.factories.BFactory">
    com.example.B
  </class-b>
</mapping>

Your factory will implement org.dozer.BeanFactory interface:

public interface BeanFactory {
  public Object createBean(Object source, Class sourceClass, String targetBeanId);
}