Dozer custom converter - passing the whole object as field 'A'

Question

I'd like to map a CustomConverter in dozer but I'd like to pass the whole current object as the source. All of the examples in the dozer CustomConverter documentation pass a field of the input object as the source and not the whole object.

I'd like to do something like this:

<mapping>
   <class-a>foo.bar.InputObject</class-a>
   <class-b>foo.bar.OutputObject</class-b>    
   <field custom-converter="foo.bar.MyConverter">
      <a>this</a> <!-- how do I access the whole value and not just a field? -->
      <b>custom</b>
   </field>
   <field>
      <a>anotherField</a>
      <b>anotherField</b>
   </field>
</mapping>

And

public class MyConverter extends DozerConverter<InputObject, String> {
    ...
    public String convertTo(InputObject input, String custom) {
       // do some transformation
    }
}

CustomConverter docs here: http://dozer.sourceforge.net/documentation/customconverter.html

Answer 1

Try implementing the CustomConverter instead of DozerConverter and try passing it as:

<field custom-converter="my.custom.converter">
    <a>this</a>
    <b>myfield</b>
</field>

Answer 2

If you use the field mapping you want to identify the attribute by using "key":

<field custom-converter="de.xyz.custom.MyConverter">
    <a key="variablename">this</a>
    <b>targetvariablename</b>
</field>

You can then proceed to implement the converter. You will be given the Object containing the field "variablename" as source. If for example you do not have a setter for a list value (like I had for whatever reason...) you are now able to manipulate the source object the way you need to.