Adding a New Meta-Attribute
In some cases, you might need to add one or more custom attri-butes to handle a new type properly. Say, in the previous example, we wanted to build the ability to store the name of the base class (for the JDBC driver this would be java.sql.Driver) whose subclasses we want to select from. It would make the new control more generic. To implement it, we would need to add a new meta-attribute specific to this type, say, BASECLASS. To enable the framework to parse this new meta-attribute, you'd need to add a new regular expression pattern to the Parser class that matches the newly defined meta-attribute and then write the required processing so this data is passed to the constructor of the corresponding Parameter class.

Conclusion
Property files are frequently used in Java-based applications so their execution can be controlled externally. In this article we described the design and use of a lightweight framework for managing these property files. The framework is easily adoptable and allows for extensions. However, we believe it can be made even better. Java 1.5 supports the XML format for specifying properties. Enabling this framework support would ease the task of specifying documentation attributes (currently documentation need to be specified in a single line). We hope you enjoy working with this framework as much as we did developing it.

References

• http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/Properties.html - Read the documentation about the Properties class. It also specifies the format in which property file needs to be specified.
• http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/tabbedpane.html - Read the Java tutorial on how to use JTabbedPane.
• http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/table.html - Read the Java tutorial on how to use JTable.
• www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-tiget02254.html - A more comprehensive read about the property file XML format introduced in Tiger.
• www.javaworld.com/javaworld/javatips/jw-javatip135.html - This article discusses a layered approach so that a large property file can be split into manageable smaller ones. It also introduces a tool helpful in managing these layered property files.
• http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/extra/regex - Read the Java tutorial on how to work with regular expressions.