Extend @Table with attributes to enable automatic numbering of rows and columns

[janschaefer]

Suggestion:

@Table( rowIndex = true, colIndex = true )

[janschaefer]

What about the title for these index columns/rows, should that be configurable or would be the default # enough?

[nikowitt]

I think it makes sense to be able to configure the title in these cases while using "#" as default.

[janschaefer]

What do you think about the following:

@Table( rowIndex = true )

Add an index to each row with header #.

@Table( rowIndexCol = "Counter" )

Adds an index to each row with header Counter.

[nikowitt]

That'll be great!

[nikowitt]

Hi,
I'm just curious regarding your implementation:

Is there any specific reason you decided to implement the default header with a blank value and then to e.g. implement

if( dataTable.hasVerticalHeader() ) {
                String header = "#";
                if( !tableAnnotation.numberedColumnsHeader().equals( "" ) ) {
                    header = tableAnnotation.numberedColumnsHeader();
                }
                row.add( header );
            }

instead of just providing the default value "#" in the annotation itself and then just to use

if( dataTable.hasVerticalHeader() ) {
                    header = tableAnnotation.numberedColumnsHeader();
row.add( header );
}

It's less verbose and you could directly see in the annotation what default value is used?

Regards Niko

[janschaefer]

Cool that you review my code! :-)

But there actually is a reason, but a subtle one. The problem is that I have to distinguish whether a user has explicitly set a column header or not. In Java, I cannot set the default value to null which would be the obvious value for absent. So while your above code would work with your suggestion, the code that decides whether or not to add numbered columns would not work. The problem is when a user actually uses the default like this:

@Table( numberedColumnsHeader = "#" )

Then I do not know any more whether the user explictly wanted the default, or whether the value was the default. The same happens with my solution when a user writes

@Table( numberedColumnsHeader = "" )

Which I assume is unlikely.

[janschaefer]

Thinking a bit more about this, it might not be that unlikely that a user explicitly wants an empty header. So maybe I should change the default to something like "__NOT_SET"

[nikowitt]

Well, I'm a curious guy ;)

Ah, OK, i didn't see that there is the requirement to be able to distinguish between set or not that (I was just aware of the code change and then concluded that e.g. hasVerticalHeader() property was enough to determine whether something is set or not without knowing how it is actually calculated.

The reason I'm pointing that out is that I've actually expected the "#" to also be included in the @table JavaDoc somewhere to know that this is used as a default value even though the annotation property default value is something different.

[janschaefer]

Yes, you are right. I improved the JavaDoc and also changed the default so that you can now even specify @Table( numberedRowsHeader = "").