2.10. Configuring the Fixed-Length Reader Programmatically

  1. Use this code to configure the fixed-length reader to read a person record set, binding the record set into a list of person instances: 
    Smooks smooks = new Smooks();
 
smooks.setReaderConfig(new FixedLengthReaderConfigurator("firstname[10]?trim,lastname[10]?trim,gender[1],age[3]?trim,country[2]")
                  .setBinding(new FixedLengthBinding("people", Person.class, FixedLengthBindingType.LIST)));
 
JavaResult result = new JavaResult();
smooks.filterSource(new StreamSource(fixedLengthStream), result);
 
List<Person> people = (List<Person>) result.getBean("people");
    Configuring the Java binding is not mandatory. You can instead programmatically configure the Smooks instance to use other visitor implementations to carry out various forms of processing on the fixed-length record set.
  2. To bind fixed-length records directly to a list or map of a Java type that reflects the data in your fixed-length records, use either the FixedLengthListBinder or the FixedLengthMapBinder classes: 
    // Note: The binder instance should be cached and reused...
FixedLengthListBinder binder = new FixedLengthListBinder("firstname[10]?trim,lastname[10]?trim,gender[1],age[3]?trim,country[2]", Person.class);
 
List<Person> people = binder.bind(fixedLengthStream);

FixedLengthMapBinder:

// Note: The binder instance should be cached and reused...
FixedLengthMapBinder binder = new FixedLengthMapBinder("firstname[10]?trim,lastname[10]?trim,gender[1],age[3]?trim,country[2]", Person.class, "firstname");
 
Map<String, Person> people = binder.bind(fixedLengthStream);
    If you need more control over the binding process, revert back to the lower level APIs.