DTO pattern: Best way to copy properties between two objects

Question

In my application\'s architecture I usually send the object or list of objects from the data access layer to the web layer via the service layer, in which these objects get

Answer 1

You can use Apache Commmons Beanutils. The API is

org.apache.commons.beanutils.PropertyUtilsBean.copyProperties(Object dest, Object orig).

It copies property values from the "origin" bean to the "destination" bean for all cases where the property names are the same.

Now I am going to off topic. Using DTO is mostly considered an anti-pattern in EJB3. If your DTO and your domain objects are very alike, there is really no need to duplicate codes. DTO still has merits, especially for saving network bandwidth when remote access is involved. I do not have details about your application architecture, but if the layers you talked about are logical layers and does not cross network, I do not see the need for DTO.

Answer 2

Wouldn't lambdaj's project function do what you are looking for?

It'll look something like this:

List<UserDTO> userNDtos = project(users, UserDTO.class, on(User.class).getUserName(), on(User.class).getFullName(), .....);

(Define the constructor for UserDTO accordingly...)

Also see here for examples...

Answer 3

You can use reflection to find all the get methods in your DAO objects and call the equivalent set method in the DTO. This will only work if all such methods exist. It should be easy to find example code for this.

Answer 4

You can have a look at dozer which is a

Java Bean to Java Bean mapper that recursively copies data from one object to another. Typically, these Java Beans will be of different complex types.

Another better link...

Answer 5

I had an application that I needed to convert from a JPA entity to DTO, and I thought about it and finally came up using org.springframework.beans.BeanUtils.copyProperties for copying simple properties and also extending and using org.springframework.binding.convert.service.DefaultConversionService for converting complex properties.

In detail my service was something like this:

@Service("seedingConverterService")
public class SeedingConverterService extends DefaultConversionService implements ISeedingConverterService  {
    @PostConstruct
    public void init(){
        Converter<Feature,FeatureDTO> featureConverter = new Converter<Feature, FeatureDTO>() {

            @Override
            public FeatureDTO convert(Feature f) {
                FeatureDTO dto = new FeatureDTO();
                //BeanUtils.copyProperties(f, dto,"configurationModel");
                BeanUtils.copyProperties(f, dto);
                dto.setConfigurationModelId(f.getConfigurationModel()==null?null:f.getConfigurationModel().getId());
                return dto;
            }
        };

        Converter<ConfigurationModel,ConfigurationModelDTO> configurationModelConverter = new Converter<ConfigurationModel,ConfigurationModelDTO>() {
            @Override
            public ConfigurationModelDTO convert(ConfigurationModel c) {
                ConfigurationModelDTO dto = new ConfigurationModelDTO();
                //BeanUtils.copyProperties(c, dto, "features");
                BeanUtils.copyProperties(c, dto);
                dto.setAlgorithmId(c.getAlgorithm()==null?null:c.getAlgorithm().getId());
                List<FeatureDTO> l = c.getFeatures().stream().map(f->featureConverter.convert(f)).collect(Collectors.toList());
                dto.setFeatures(l);
                return dto;
            }
        };
        addConverter(featureConverter);
        addConverter(configurationModelConverter);
    }
}

Answer 6

I suggest you should use one of the mappers' libraries: Mapstruct, ModelMapper, etc. With Mapstruct your mapper will look like:

@Mapper
public interface UserMapper {     
    UserMapper INSTANCE = Mappers.getMapper( UserMapper.class ); 

    UserDTO toDto(User user);
}

The real object with all getters and setters will be automatically generated from this interface. You can use it like:

UserDTO userDTO = UserMapper.INSTANCE.toDto(user);

You can also add some logic for your activeText filed using @AfterMapping annotation.