If you are using Maven, simply copy-paste this dependency to your project.
<dependency>
<groupId>net.sf.dozer</groupId>
<artifactId>dozer</artifactId>
<version>5.4.0</version>
</dependency>
Apache Ivy users can copy-paste the following line instead.
<dependency org="net.sf.dozer" name="dozer" rev="5.4.0"/>
For your first mapping lets assume that the two data objects share all common attribute names.
Mapper mapper = new DozerBeanMapper();
DestinationObject destObject =
mapper.map(sourceObject, DestinationObject.class);
After performing the Dozer mapping, the result will be a new instance of the destination object that contains values for all fields that have the same field name as the source object. If any of the mapped attributes are of different data types, the Dozer mapping engine will automatically perform data type conversion. At this point you have completed your first Dozer mapping. Later sections will go over how to specify custom mappings via custom xml files.
IMPORTANT: For real-world applications it is NOT recommended to create a new instance of the Mapper each time you map objects. Typically a system will only have one DozerBeanMapper instance per VM. If you are not using an IOC framework where you can define the Mapper Instance as singleton="true". If needed, a DozerBeanMapperSingletonWrapper convenience class has been provided in the Dozer jar.
If the two different types of data objects that you are mapping contain any fields that don't share a common property name, you will need to add a class mapping entry to your custom mapping xml file. These mappings xml files are used at runtime by the Dozer mapping engine.
Dozer automatically performs any type conversion when copying the source field data to the destination field. The Dozer mapping engine is bi-directional, so if you wanted to map the destination object to the source object, you do not need to add another class mapping to the xml file.
IMPORTANT: Fields that are of the same name do not need to be specified in the mapping xml file. Dozer automatically maps all fields with the same property name from the source object into the destination object.
<mapping>
<class-a>yourpackage.yourSourceClassName</class-a>
<class-b>yourpackage.yourDestinationClassName</class-b>
<field>
<a>yourSourceFieldName</a>
<b>yourDestinationFieldName</b>
</field>
</mapping>
The complete Dozer mapping xml file would look like the following. The Custom Mappings section contains more information on mapping options that are available to you for more complex use cases.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mappings xmlns="http://dozer.sourceforge.net"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://dozer.sourceforge.net
http://dozer.sourceforge.net/schema/beanmapping.xsd">
<configuration>
<stop-on-errors>true</stop-on-errors>
<date-format>MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm</date-format>
<wildcard>true</wildcard>
</configuration>
<mapping>
<class-a>yourpackage.yourSourceClassName</class-a>
<class-b>yourpackage.yourDestinationClassName</class-b>
<field>
<A>yourSourceFieldName</A>
<B>yourDestinationFieldName</B>
</field>
</mapping>
other custom class mappings would go here.......
</mappings>
Dozer is not dependant of any existing Dependency Injection framework (DI). However the general aim is to support the most typical use cases with ready-to-use Wrappers. Check Spring Integration manual for option of initializing Dozer in context of Spring DI framework.