Now that I think about it, annotations could provide a wholly new and
improved way of doing properties. They would be attached to the fields
directly instead of their getter. It could look like this:

@MasonProperty(order=1,
   displayName="Number of Youth",
   tooltip="Number of youth in the model. This reflects the blah blah
blah",
   min=1,
   max=500,
   uiType=Slider,
   disabledWhileRunning=true)
public int numYouth = 140;

There's a lot of power there. Food for thought.

Joey

On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 11:26 PM, Joey Harrison <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> This problem has irritated me for a long time and I finally thought of a
> solution using annotations. Working from this tutorial
> <http://www.mkyong.com/java/java-custom-annotations-example/> I created
> MasonProperty.java and modified SimpleProperties.java to use it. In your
> SimState, you'd do the following:
>
> public int numYouth = 140;
> @MasonProperty(order=1)
> public int getNumYouth() { return numYouth; }
> public void setNumYouth(int val) { numYouth = val; }
>
> public int classSize = 18;
> @MasonProperty(order=2)
> public int getClassSize() { return classSize; }
> public void setClassSize(int val) { classSize = val; }
>
> ...and so on. The annotation gets attached to the method that follows it
> and it needs to go with the get method, so make sure it's in the right
> place. If you don't include the annotation, the order will be the same as
> before. If you put the annotation on some of your properties but not on
> others, the non-annotated ones will come afterward (the default order
> number is Integer.MAX_VALUE).
>
> For Sean, here's what I did to SimpleProperties: In the loop where it goes
> through all the methods looking for valid getters and setters, I changed it
> so it just adds the method to getMethods but doesn't do the <other stuff>.
> (It does currently print out debug info.) Next, it sorts the methods in the
> getMethods list. Finally, it loops through the now-sorted getMethods list
> and does the rest of the <other stuff>. That's it.
>
> I haven't used annotations before, so it's possible I've done something
> wrong or unnecessary. Feedback is certainly welcome. That said, my initial
> tests looked great.
>
> Hope that helps,
> Joey
>
> On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 11:22 PM, Joey Harrison <[log in to unmask]
> > wrote:
>
>> This problem has irritated me for a long time and I finally thought of a
>> solution using annotations. Working from this tutorial
>> <http://www.mkyong.com/java/java-custom-annotations-example/> I created
>> MasonProperty.java and modified SimpleProperties.java to use it. In your
>> SimState, you'd do the following:
>>
>> public int numYouth = 140;
>> @MasonProperty(order=1)
>> public int getNumYouth() { return numYouth; }
>> public void setNumYouth(int val) { numYouth = val; }
>>
>> public int classSize = 18;
>> @MasonProperty(order=2)
>> public int getClassSize() { return classSize; }
>> public void setClassSize(int val) { classSize = val; }
>>
>> ...and so on. The annotation gets attached to the method that follows it
>> and it needs to go with the get method, so make sure it's in the right
>> place. If you don't include the annotation, the order will be the same as
>> before. If you put the annotation on some of your properties but not on
>> others, the non-annotated ones will come afterward (the default order
>> number is Integer.MAX_VALUE).
>>
>> For Sean, here's what I did to SimpleProperties: In the loop where it
>> goes through all the methods looking for valid getters and setters, I
>> changed it so it just adds the method to getMethods but doesn't do the
>> <other stuff>. (It does currently print out debug info.) Next, it sorts the
>> methods in the getMethods list. Finally, it loops through the now-sorted
>> getMethods list and does the rest of the <other stuff>. That's it.
>>
>> I haven't used annotations before, so it's possible I've done something
>> wrong or unnecessary. That said, my initial tests looked great.
>>
>> Hope that helps,
>> Joey
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 9:09 PM, Sean Luke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> On Jun 22, 2015, at 5:34 PM, Axel Kowald <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> > well the ordering in the model tab seems to be unrelated to the
>>> ordering in the source code.
>>>
>>> Again, it depends on the compiler.  :-(
>>>
>>> > The really weird thing is that the ordering changes arbitrarily with
>>> each program start.
>>>
>>> Now that *is* strange. Is this a Windows thing?  Definitely does not
>>> happen on the Mac.
>>>
>>> Sean
>>>
>>
>>
>