Apple

Kieran Kelleher wrote:

As we know this EOAttribute.validateValue(...) gets called before custom eo validate<AttributeName> methods and it uses the class description to validate and/or do basic conversion. What are the alternatives to find an elegant way to call my custom validate first or is there none?

Why do I want to do this? I am importing text data from CSV files and pushing the text values into attributes in an efficient way, however I can easily handle conversion of YES/NO, T/F, Y/N, Y/null or TRUE/FALSE strings to Boolean in my custom validate<BooleanAttribute> methods, but of course EOF gets a shot at it first when I iterate through the imported values calling eo.validateTakeValueForKeyPath(aValue, aKey);

I have an alternative in mind, but just wanted to check with the smart folks first .... any suggestions?

I would personally avoid such solution: it breaks the normal EOF validation process, and you can potentially have to write lot of repetitive "validate<Attribute>" methods...

A more generic and reusable solution would be to write CSVReader that takes a file reference, an array of key paths and an array of formatters to read CSV column strings, convert them if needed (with formatter) and set it (with key path and Key Value Coding). I've done this kind of thing in the past, and it's very handy. You can even create custom formatters to convert strings to special data (i.e. BooleanFormat, InetAddressFormat, etc.).

References:
	>EOAttribute.validateValue question (From: Kieran Kelleher <email@hidden>)