Packages » Package util » File overview.txt

Package util, documentation file overview.txt

Util Package Overview

This package is a helper package and contains different utility classes and interfaces. They do not rely on other Freeform packages and can be used even in non-freeform applications.

Here is a brief description of the most important classes of this package:

  • interface Iterable
    This is a basic interface that represents a collection of items that can be iterated over. It declares two methods, hasMore() and getNext(), that are used to test if there are more items available and fetch next item and advance to the next item. Note that this interface has no connection to the SPL


  • interface PaginatedIterable
    This interface extends Iterable and provides additional methods to access the iterable's items trough pages. You will be dealing with instances of this interface when you obtain result sets form database query in the SQL package. The HTMLShowIterable and HTMLShowPagination tags from the HTML package utilize paginatedIterable's methods to automatically show repeated paginated content


  • Validator
    This is an abstract class with just one method, isValid(). The purpose of this class is to unify arbitrary values validation by applications that collect input and pass them over to other applications not knowing the nature of the data collected. For example, InputFields actively employ validators to check the validity of user-submitted data.


  • NoMoreElementsException, ConfigurationException
    These two exceptions are thrown when Iterable attempts to read past end of iterated over entity in its getNext() method and when certain package detects that it has not been properly configured.