Converters transform business objects to Strings (formatting) and Strings to business objects (unformatting).
A converter can have conversion parameters when converting the type to or from String. For example, a converter for Date type can have pattern parameter, which defines the format of a date String in ‘YYYY-MM-DD' or ‘MM-DD-YYYY' or other formats.
A technical developer does not need to implement a converter from scratch. UDTT provides com.ibm.btt.base.types.impl.BaseConverter as superclass of all converter implementations. A technical developer can extend the class and override the format and the unformat methods. The format method:
public abstract String format(K value, T params, String convType, Locale locale) throws DSETypeException;
The unformat method:
public abstract K unformat(String value, T params, String convType, Locale locale) throws DSETypeException;
Shown below is simple code of implementing the two methods:
public String format(TimeZone value, com.ibm.btt.base.types.impl.BaseConverter.FormatParamBeam params, String convType, Locale locale) throws DSETypeException { // TODO Auto-generated method stub //in the formate of: GMT Sign TwoDigitHours : Minutes return value.getID(); }