Mock Dates

The next example shows how to create and use a collection of mock dates. A collection, named dates, is created with a range whose start value is 01/02/2003 04:05:06. Its step is 0/1/0 0:1:0, which causes each value to increment by 1 month and 1 minute. 

    
    System.out.println ("Dates2");
    Dates dates = new Dates ("[01/02/2003 04:05:06]0/1/0 0:1:0");
    DatamixerIterator iter = dates.getDatamixerIterator ();
    iter.setFormatPattern ("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss");

    // run
    try
    {
	for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
	{
	    Value value = iter.getNextValue ();
	    System.out.println (value.toString ());
	}
    }
    catch (DatamixerException e)
    {
	System.err.println (e.getMessage ());
    }

An iterator named iter is created against the collection. Its format pattern is set, with the position of day and year fields reversed from where they are in the range. Next, 5 values are printed. Note that getNextValue(), which returns a Value, is called on the iterator. A Value overrides java.lang.toString() to print its value, applying formatting if available.

The result is: 

    
    2003/02/01 04:05:06
    2003/03/01 04:06:06
    2003/04/01 04:07:06
    2003/05/01 04:08:06
    2003/06/01 04:09:06

Equivalent code, using XML configuration, is: 

    
    <dm:dates range="[01/02/2003 04:05:06]0/1/0 0:0:0">
      <dm:iterator id="iter0" format="yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss"/>
    </dm:dates>

The Java code to load and run this XML looks like the code in the next example. The exact code is in the file examples/java/Config.java, in inner class DatesRunner. 

    
    DatamixerContext context = root.getContext ();
    DatamixerIterator iter = context.getDatamixerIterator ("iter0");
    for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
	System.out.println (iter.getNextValue ());