/* * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with * the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at * * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 * * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and * limitations under the License. */ /** * Provides highly reusable static utility methods, chiefly concerned with adding value to the {@link java.lang} classes. * Most of these classes are immutable and thus thread-safe. * However {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.CharSet} is not currently guaranteed thread-safe under all circumstances. * *

The top level package contains various Utils classes, whilst there are various subpackages including {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.math}, {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.concurrent} and {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.builder}. * Using the Utils classes is generally simplicity itself. * They are the equivalent of global functions in another language, a collection of stand-alone, thread-safe, static methods. * In contrast, subpackages may contain interfaces which may have to be implemented or classes which may need to be extended to get the full functionality from the code. * They may, however, contain more global-like functions.

* *

Lang 3.0 requires JDK 1.5+, since Lang 3.2 it requires JDK 6+; The legacy release 2.6 requires JDK 1.2+. * In both cases you can find features of later JDKs being maintained by us and likely to be removed or modified in favour of the JDK in the next major version. * Note that Lang 3.0 uses a different package than its predecessors, allowing it to be used at the same time as an earlier version.

* *

You will find deprecated methods as you stroll through the Lang documentation. These are removed in the next major version.

* *

All util classes contain empty public constructors with warnings not to use. * This may seem an odd thing to do, but it allows tools like Velocity to access the class as if it were a bean. * In other words, yes we know about private constructors and have chosen not to use them.

* *

String manipulation - StringUtils, StringEscapeUtils, RandomStringUtils

* *

Lang has a series of String utilities. * The first is {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils}, oodles and oodles of functions which tweak, transform, squeeze and cuddle {@link java.lang.String java.lang.Strings}. * In addition to StringUtils, there are a series of other String manipulating classes; {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.RandomStringUtils} and {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.StringEscapeUtils StringEscapeUtils}. * RandomStringUtils speaks for itself. * It's provides ways in which to generate pieces of text, such as might be used for default passwords. * StringEscapeUtils contains methods to escape and unescape Java, JavaScript, JSON, HTML and XML.

* *

These are ideal classes to start using if you're looking to get into Lang. * StringUtils' {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils#capitalize(String)}, {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils#substringBetween(String, String)}/{@link org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils#substringBefore(String, String) Before}/{@link org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils#substringAfter(String, String) After}, {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils#split(String)} and {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils#join(Object[])} are good methods to begin with.

* *

Character handling - CharSetUtils, CharSet, CharRange, CharUtils

* *

In addition to dealing with Strings, it's also important to deal with chars and Characters. * {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.CharUtils} exists for this purpose, while {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.CharSetUtils} exists for set-manipulation of Strings. * Be careful, although CharSetUtils takes an argument of type String, it is only as a set of characters. * For example, {@code CharSetUtils.delete("testtest", "tr")} will remove all t's and all r's from the String, not just the String "tr".

* *

{@link org.apache.commons.lang3.CharRange} and {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.CharSet} are both used internally by CharSetUtils, and will probably rarely be used.

* *

JVM interaction - SystemUtils, CharEncoding

* *

SystemUtils is a simple little class which makes it easy to find out information about which platform you are on. * For some, this is a necessary evil. It was never something I expected to use myself until I was trying to ensure that Commons Lang itself compiled under JDK 1.2. * Having pushed out a few JDK 1.3 bits that had slipped in ({@code Collections.EMPTY_MAP} is a classic offender), I then found that one of the Unit Tests was dying mysteriously under JDK 1.2, but ran fine under JDK 1.3. * There was no obvious solution and I needed to move onwards, so the simple solution was to wrap that particular test in a if (SystemUtils.isJavaVersionAtLeast(1.3f)) {, make a note and move on.

* *

The {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.CharEncoding} class is also used to interact with the Java environment and may be used to see which character encodings are supported in a particular environment.

* *

Serialization - SerializationUtils, SerializationException

* *

Serialization doesn't have to be that hard! * A simple util class can take away the pain, plus it provides a method to clone an object by unserializing and reserializing, an old Java trick.

* *

Assorted functions - ObjectUtils, ClassUtils, ArrayUtils, BooleanUtils

* *

Would you believe it, {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.ObjectUtils} contains handy functions for Objects, mainly null-safe implementations of the methods on {@link java.lang.Object}.

* *

{@link org.apache.commons.lang3.ClassUtils} is largely a set of helper methods for reflection. * Of special note are the comparators hidden away in ClassUtils, useful for sorting Class and Package objects by name; however they merely sort alphabetically and don't understand the common habit of sorting {@code java} and {@code javax} first.

* *

Next up, {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.ArrayUtils}. * This is a big one with many methods and many overloads of these methods so it is probably worth an in depth look here. * Before we begin, assume that every method mentioned is overloaded for all the primitives and for Object. * Also, the short-hand 'xxx' implies a generic primitive type, but usually also includes Object.

* * * *

Lastly, {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.ArrayUtils#toMap(Object[])} is worthy of special note. * It is not a heavily overloaded method for working with arrays, but a simple way to create Maps from literals.

* *

Using toMap

*
 * 
 * Map colorMap = ArrayUtils.toMap(new String[][] {{
 *   {"RED", "#FF0000"},
 *   {"GREEN", "#00FF00"},
 *   {"BLUE", "#0000FF"}
 * });
 * 
 * 
* *

Our final util class is {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.BooleanUtils}. * It contains various Boolean acting methods, probably of most interest is the {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.BooleanUtils#toBoolean(String)} method which turns various positive/negative Strings into a Boolean object, and not just true/false as with Boolean.valueOf.

* *

Flotsam - BitField, Validate

*

On reaching the end of our package, we are left with a couple of classes that haven't fit any of the topics so far.

*

The {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.BitField} class provides a wrapper class around the classic bitmask integer, whilst the {@link org.apache.commons.lang3.Validate} class may be used for assertions (remember, we support Java 1.2).

* * @since 1.0 */ package org.apache.commons.lang3;