Dynamic Attribute

As we all know that any attribute we define in item type will have a tag called persistent type.

  1. persistent type=”property”
persistent type=”property”

In this case,
Corresponding column will be created in the database and hence the values will be stored in the DB. So it’s called persistent attribute.

  1. persistent type=”dynamic”
persistent type=”dynamic”

In this case,
There will be no column created in the database and hence values will not be stored in the database.
So it’s called Non persistent or dynamic attribute.

For every dynamic attribute we define, we need to mention the attribute handler otherwise Bean Id will be generated automatically and we have to use the same bean id while defining Spring bean in XML.

Attribute handler is implemented using Spring.

So we need to mention the spring bean id for the attribute handler.

Then we need to define the class for that spring bean id which provides the custom logic for the dynamic attribute.

Note:

It is possible that one item type can have any number of dynamic attributes.

Requirement:
Identify how old the customer is in our site so that we can give some discount to those customers who are 3 years old.

How to achieve it?

We need to get the customer’s registration date which we store as creation_time in DB and we need to get current time from Java Date API.

We need to do current_time – creation_time to know how old the customer is.

We can add a new attribute called “customer_site_age” as dynamic attribute.

Let’s see the steps for the same.

Step 1:

Define a new attribute in the items.xml for Customer item type and make it as dynamic attribute.

  1. <itemtype code="Customer" autocreate="false" generate="false">
  2.                  <description>Extending Customer type with additional attributes.</description>
  3.       <attributes>
  4.             <attribute autocreate="true" qualifier="customer_site_age" type="java.lang.Integer">
  5.                             <modifiers read=”true” write="true"/>
  6.                             <persistence type="dynamic"/>
  7.                      <description>Dynamic attribute for customer site age</description>
  8.             </attribute>
  9.       </attributes>
  10. </itemtype>
<itemtype code="Customer" autocreate="false" generate="false">
                 <description>Extending Customer type with additional attributes.</description>
      <attributes>
            <attribute autocreate="true" qualifier="customer_site_age" type="java.lang.Integer">
                            <modifiers read=”true” write="true"/>
                            <persistence type="dynamic"/>
                     <description>Dynamic attribute for customer site age</description>
            </attribute>
      </attributes>
</itemtype>

Here we have defined the persistent type as dynamic.

Step 2:

Define the Attributehandler which should be the bean id of the class which implements DynamicAttributeHandler.

  1. <itemtype code="Customer" autocreate="false" generate="false">
  2.                    <description>Extending Customer type with additional attributes.</description>
  3.       <attributes>
  4.             <attribute autocreate="true" qualifier="customer_site_age" type="java.lang.Integer">
  5.                        <modifiers write="false"/>
  6.                       <persistence type="dynamic" attributeHandler="customerSiteAge"/>
  7.                       <description>Dynamic attribute for customer site age</description>
  8.             </attribute>
  9.       </attributes>
  10. </itemtype>
<itemtype code="Customer" autocreate="false" generate="false">
                   <description>Extending Customer type with additional attributes.</description>
      <attributes>
            <attribute autocreate="true" qualifier="customer_site_age" type="java.lang.Integer">
                       <modifiers write="false"/>
                      <persistence type="dynamic" attributeHandler="customerSiteAge"/>
                      <description>Dynamic attribute for customer site age</description>
            </attribute>
      </attributes>
</itemtype>

We have added attributeHandler=”CustomerSiteAge” in the persistent tag.

Step 3:

Define the class with custom logic

We can define the new class either by extending AbstractDynamicAttributeHandler or by implementing DynamicAttributeHandler

Define it in the trainingcore(your custom core) extension in org.training.core.attributes package

  1. public class CustomerSiteAgeHandler extends
  2. AbstractDynamicAttributeHandler<Integer, CustomerModel>
  3. {
  4.   @Override
  5.       public Integer get(final CustomerModel model)
  6.       {
  7.             int customerSiteAge = 0;
  8.             try
  9.             {
  10.                   final Date customerRegisteredDate = model.getCreationtime();
  11.                   final Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
  12.                   cal.setTime(customerRegisteredDate);
  13.                   final int registeredYear = cal.get(Calendar.YEAR);
  14.                   final int currentYear = Calendar.getInstance().get(Calendar.YEAR);
  15.                   customerSiteAge = currentYear - registeredYear;
  16.             }
  17.             catch (final Exception e)
  18.             {
  19.                   e.printStackTrace();
  20.             }
  21.             return customerSiteAge;
  22.       }
  23. }
public class CustomerSiteAgeHandler extends
AbstractDynamicAttributeHandler<Integer, CustomerModel>
{
  @Override
      public Integer get(final CustomerModel model)
      {
            int customerSiteAge = 0;
            try
            {
                  final Date customerRegisteredDate = model.getCreationtime();
                  final Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
                  cal.setTime(customerRegisteredDate);
                  final int registeredYear = cal.get(Calendar.YEAR);
                  final int currentYear = Calendar.getInstance().get(Calendar.YEAR);
                  customerSiteAge = currentYear - registeredYear;
            }
            catch (final Exception e)
            {
                  e.printStackTrace();
            }
            return customerSiteAge;
      }
}


Step 4:

Associate the attribute handler specified in items.xml with spring bean id in trainingcore-spring.xml(your_custom_core-spring.xml)

  1. <bean id="customerSiteAge"
  2. class="org.training.core.attributes.CustomerSiteAgeHandler"/>
<bean id="customerSiteAge"
class="org.training.core.attributes.CustomerSiteAgeHandler"/>

Note:
customerSiteAge mentioned as spring bean id above should be same as attributeHandler mentioned in items.xml.

Step 5:

Build and then update the system either using HAC or using ant command

Now whenever we access customer Model, we can also access the customerSiteAgeattribute from customer model,
we will get the result of our custom logic in that attribute.

We can display it in any UI page by setting its value in appropriate controller and model attribute.

Advantages of Dynamic attribute

Data will not be saved in DB as its dynamic

The custom logic is written once and used all the time wherever that attribute is required.

When we should go for Dynamic attribute?


We should choose dynamic attribute whenever we want to get some derived data based on existing values.

So instead of saving one more column, we can make it as dynamic and compute its value based on the current values.

Dynamic in Enum?

Dynamic in enum is completely different from Dynamic attributes.

If an Enumtype is non-dynamic (by default, dynamic=”false”) we are not allowed to add new values at runtime.

If we add any non-dynamic enumtype without values,build will fail as it does not have any effect.

So if you want to add new values at runtime we have to make dynamic=”true” for an enum.

We can change the flag anytime but enforces a system update.

If dynamic=”false” the servicelayer generates real java enums (having a fixed set of values).

If dynamic=”true” it generates hybris enums which can be used without fixed values(means we can add run time values).

About the Author

Raj
Founder of javainsimpleway.com
I love Java and open source technologies and very much passionate about software development.
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All the code posted on my blog is developed,compiled and tested in my development environment.
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