Java Utility Functions

This library is a collection of utility functions that I've written over the years. It exists because I found myself rewriting the same classes for each company that I worked with. At present I don't use Java much, so updates are few and far between.

The library currently supports Java 8 and higher. If you are using an earlier Java version, you can use version 1.x of the library, but it will not receive updates.

Usage

Include the following dependency in your project (variants for other build tools and the latest version number is available from Maven Central):

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.kdgregory.util</groupId>
  <artifactId>kdgcommons</artifactId>
  <version>LATEST_VERSION</version>
</dependency>

Decide what classes are useful to you.

Profit!

Structure

The top-level package is com.kdgregory.kdgcommons. Under that you'll find the following packages:

Name	Purpose
bean	An introspection library for bean-style data classes that lets you manage the cache (so you don't end up with strong references to things you thought you unloaded).
buffer	Abstractions over java.nio.ByteBuffer. See my article for detailed information on ByteBuffers.
codec	Classes that convert byte arrays to and from another format (currently, Base64 and Hex).
collections	Operations for building and using Java collections.
io	Streams and utilities for working with them. A lot of overlap with Apache Commons IO (including one class that ended up living there, albeit transformed beyond recognition).
lang	Tools for working with core Java objects, especially strings and classes.
sql	At present, only JDBCUtil, which executes JDBC operations within a try-catch. This may be removed in the next addition.
test	Helpers for JUnit tests, including a range of asserts and mocks. Supports JUnit versions from 3.8.2 up.
tuple	At present, just supports 2-tuples.
util	A catch-all for everything else. Looking at it as I write this README, most of what it contains should be elsewhere.

JavaDoc is available here.

Versions

I use the standard major.minor.patch format:

• major is currently (and expected to stay) 2
• minor is updated whenever I add new classes or packages (in practice, it's updated with every release other than a bugfix, since I accumulate changes).
• patch is updated for bugfixes or minor additions to existing classes.

The API will remain backwards-compatible for all 2.x releases, although I may choose to deprecate functionality.

Migrating from version 1.x

I decided to make a clean break with the earlier version, so that transitive dependencies (for example, from practicalxml) would not be affected:

• A new Maven group ID: com.kdgregory.util versus net.sf.kdgcommons.
• New package names: com.kdgregory.kdgcommons versus net.sf.kdgcommons

The easiest way to upgrade is start by using the latest 1.x release, 1.0.19. This release deprecated all functionality that was removed in 2.x (mostly operations that are better implemented using Java8 lambdas). Run a test compile to find any deprecations, fix them, and look at the changelog to see if you'll be affected by any of the minor changes.

After that, using the new version should be a simple change of Maven dependencies and imports.