Some time ago in one of my previous projects, we had to generate customer salutations in emails and SMS texts in various ways, like these example show:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Dear Mr. John Miller\", \"Dear Mrs. Dr. Miller\", \"Miller, John\"<\/pre>\n\n\n\nThe task was nasty because sometimes the user object had a first name or a title, but some fields were optional so that it could result in:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Dear Mr. null Miller\" (when firstname was null) or\n\"Miller, \" (when firstname as \"\")\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\nIt showed, that a utility class would be useful, that helps to generate the salutation strings and fill the gaps between \u201cfirstname\u201d, \u201clastname\u201d, \u201ctitle\u201d etc. only when the parts are not empty. A java implementation named \u201cSalutationUtil\u201d was implemented, consisting of a 230 line class \u201cSalutationParser\u201d, that parsed an expression string and a 140 line class \u201cSalutationUtil\u201d to present an API. We used a ResourceBundle to fill the \u201cDear\u201d and \u201cMr.\u201d parts according to the language to be used and the gender of the person to be addressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, in our current project, we had the same problem and I was thinking to reuse the java implementation. No problem, because although we are using Grails\/Groovy nowadays, the \u201cSalutationUtil\u201d would still be compatible. After some minutes of looking at the java code, I dropped it and replaced the whole \u201cSalutationUtil\u201d and the parser-class with a 40 line Groovy implementation \u201cSalutation.groovy\u201d, which shows a much simpler approach to the same problem using a Groovy closure to create the salutation string. Here is the code, may it be useful for the rest of the world:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[codesyntax lang=\"java\"]\n<pre>class Salutation {\n private StringBuilder buf = new StringBuilder()\n private boolean touched, said\n String defaultSalutation = ''\n \n static format(Closure builder, String defaultSalutation = '') {\n return new Salutation(defaultSalutation: defaultSalutation).salute(builder)\n }\n \n String salute(Closure builder) {\n with builder\n return toString()\n }\n \n String toString() {\n if (touched) {\n return buf.toString()\n } else {\n return defaultSalutation\n }\n }\n \n void add(def text) {\n if (text) {\n touched = true\n buf.append(text)\n said = true\n } else {\n said = false\n }\n }\n \n void gap(def text) {\n if (text && said) {\n touched = true\n buf.append(text)\n said = false\n }\n }\n}<\/pre>\n[\/codesyntax]<\/pre>\n\n\n\nIt helps to separate the optional properties (firstname, lastname, title, \u2026) with gaps to generate salutation strings. Here is an example how you can use the class (the \u2018person\u2019 Map is a placeholder for your<\/strong> User-Domain object)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[codesyntax lang=\"groovy\"]\n<pre>\/\/ Example 1\ndef person = [firstName: 'Peter', lastName: 'Miller', title: 'Dr', gender: 'male']\n \ndef salutation = Salutation.format({\n add(person.gender=='male':'Mr.' ?'Mrs.')\n add(person.title)\n gap(' ')\n add(person.firstName)\n gap(' ')\n add(person.lastName)\n }) \/\/ results in => \"Mr. Dr Peter Miller\"\n \n\/\/ Example 2\ndef person = [firstName: 'Peter', lastName: 'Miller']\n \ndef salutation = Salutation.format({\n add(person.title)\n gap(' ')\n add(person.lastName)\n gap(', ')\n add(person.firstName)\n }) \/\/ results in => \"Miller, Peter\"\n \n\/\/ Example 3\ndef person = [lastName: 'Miller']\n \ndef salutation = Salutation.format({\n add(person.title)\n gap(' ')\n add(person.lastName)\n gap(', ')\n add(person.firstName)\n }, \"customer\") \/\/ results in => \"Miller\"\n \n\/\/ Example 4\ndef person = [:]\n \ndef salutation = Salutation.format({\n add(person.title)\n gap(' ')\n add(person.lastName)\n gap(', ')\n add(person.firstName)\n }, \"customer\") \/\/ results in => \"customer\"<\/pre>\n[\/codesyntax]<\/pre>\n\n\n\nA salute to Groovy! To write this post took more time than to implement the code.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some time ago in one of my previous projects, we had to generate customer salutations in emails and SMS texts in various ways, like these example […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-code"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Simon Tiffert","author_link":"https:\/\/www.viaboxx.de\/en\/blog\/author\/simon-tiffertviaboxx-de\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Some time ago in one of my previous projects, we had to generate customer salutations in emails and SMS texts in various ways, like these example […]","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viaboxx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viaboxx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viaboxx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viaboxx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viaboxx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2260"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.viaboxx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7060,"href":"https:\/\/www.viaboxx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260\/revisions\/7060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viaboxx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viaboxx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viaboxx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}