Transformer Invoker: For a collection of beans, collect a property

How many times have you had to collect a property from a list of beans, statically or dynamically? I use this little method a lot. For-loops are nice, but because this uses reflection to get the value, you can cook up a factory to get the data.

The code:

package com;
import java.util.*;
import org.apache.commons.collections.*;
public class TransformerExample
{
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    List list = Arrays.asList(new DTO("Bob"), new DTO("Larry"), new DTO("Mo"), new DTO("Joe"));
    Collection<String> names = CollectionUtils.collect(list, TransformerUtils.invokerTransformer("getName"));
    for (String name : names)
    {
      System.out.println("name = " + name);
    }
  }
  public static class DTO
  {
    private String name;
    public DTO(String name)
    {
      this.name = name;
    }
    public String getName()
    {
      return name;
    }
    public void setName(String name)
    {
      this.name = name;
    }
  }
}

The results:

name = Bob
name = Larry
name = Mo
name = Joe

Author: Philip A Senger