Processing Map Messages

The MapMessage interface provides the methods shown in Table 2–22 for reading the body of a map message. Each access method takes a name string as an argument and returns the value to which that name is mapped: for instance, under the example shown in Composing Map Messages, the statement

int  meaningOfLife = inMsg.getInt("The Meaning of Life");

would set the variable meaningOfLife to the value 42.

Like stream messages, map messages provide an access method, getObject, that returns a value from the map in objectified form, as a Java object of the class corresponding to the value’s primitive data type: for instance, if the value is of type int, getObject returns an object of class Integer. The following statements are equivalent to the one shown above:

Integer  meaningObject = (Integer) inMsg.getObject("The Meaning of Life");
int      meaningOfLife = meaningObject.intValue();

The itemExists method returns a boolean value indicating whether the message map contains an association for a given name string:

if ( inMsg.itemExists("The Meaning of Life") )
  { /* Life is meaningful */
  }
else
  { /* Life is meaningless */
  }

The getMapNames method returns a Java enumeration object for iterating through all of the names defined in the map; you can then use getObject to retrieve the corresponding values, as shown in Example 2–6.

Example 2–6 Enumerating Map Message Values

Enumeration  mapNames = inMsg.getMapNames();
String       eachName;
Object       eachValue;

while ( mapNames.hasMoreElements() )
  { eachName  = mapNames.nextElement();
    eachValue = inMsg.getObject(eachName);
    /* Do something with the value */
  }