What is an appropriate name for a class which can store some object in an xml-file and read it back?

Question

I have a class which is called TestPlan (to put it simple, let's assume that it's a usual java bean).

I need to store TestPlan instances in xml-files (1 instance per file). The most appropriate way to do it which I can see is using another class which should do only xml-related work.

It'll have methods like:

public TestPlan parseTestPlanXml(InputStream xmlFile) {
    TestPlan testPlan = new TestPlan();
    //parse xmlFile and set testPlan fields via setters
    return testPlan;
}

public OutputStream writeTestPlanXml(TestPlan testPlan) {
    //the actual implementation just copies the original xmlFile, 
    //makes necessary modifications 
    //and writes it to ByteArrayOutputStream
    ...
}

Which name would you suggest for this class? (btw, if you can also suggest better names for these 2 methods then don't hesitate to do that).

Thanks!

Answer 1

TestPlanXMLStreamer

Answer 2

Personally I don't believe in artifically shortening names of my classes, so you may find this suggestion to be to long.

TestPlanToXMLFileProcessor

I considered Writer instead of Processor but would want to avoid potential confusion with the likes of FileWriter etc.

Ideally your class would be more generic and could used for some Objects other than a TestPlan Object, then you could reuse it in other projects, but we all know thats not always possible or even sensible.

Answer 3

If the class is only responsible for loading/saving TestPlan objects, and it has no other similar methods to load/save objects of other classes, it could be

class TestPlanXmlMarshaller {
    public TestPlan load(InputStream xmlFile) {
        ...
    }

    public OutputStream save(TestPlan testPlan) {
        ...
    }
}

This way, in accordance with the DRY principle, TestPlan and XML are not repeated unnecessarily in the method names.

However, if the class is dealing with multiple types, the load methods need to have distinct names since a method can't be overloaded on the return type only. save would be fine to overload with different type parameters, but for consistency the same naming convention should be used for both.

Answer 4

That looks very much like a serializer to me, so TestPlanSerializer or TestPlanXmlSerializer if you want to be specific.

Answer 5

How about TestPlan2XmlConverter?

I would also recommend a slight change in design: Your two methods could read from and write to XML strings; this would make them a little more generic and flexible. And then you could have two more corresponding methods:

• one to read an XML file into an XML string and then call parseTestPlanXml on that string
• the other to call writeTestPlanXml and then write the resulting XML string to an XML file

Answer 6

Two classes: TestPlanXMLReader and TestPlanXMLWriter