Simon Kitching wrote:
> Just on a side-note, I am not sure that your XML design is entirely
> sound. To me,
>
> <foo>1</foo> means "here is a foo, with value 1".
> <foo/> means "here is a foo, with no value".
>
> You appear to want to pretend that <foo/> doesn't exist - which doesn't
> seem right to me. If <foo/> has no meaning, then why is it in the input
> at all?
Well, that's a good point. The only reason I would rather leave it in
the input is that I am using the XML file as a user-friendly means of
supplying data to my program. (Another alternative I had considered was
a Preferences or Properties file, but I wanted to try Digester after
hearing how good it is -- and it *is* good.)
Ideally I'd just give my users an empty XML file and say "go ahead and
fill out the values that apply, but leave the ones that don't alone".
> Regardless of the above digression, I think implementing a custom Rule
> object should solve your problem.
Thanks Simon, I will investigate the Rule classes.
Erik
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