How to convert Attributes to String?

Question

I want to convert Attributes to String so that I can trim and get a substring of the attribute value.

Here is my code:

Attribute attrs = match.getAttributes();

NamingEnumeration e = attrs.getAll();
System.out.println(attrs.get("cn"));
System.out.print(attrs.get("uniqueMember"));

unique_members[i] = attrs.get("uniqueMember");

I am facing an error in the last line where I want to store the value of uniqueMember to the unique_members array. Error:

Type mismatch: cannot convert from Attribute to String

I have tried the following so far:

unique_members[i] = (String)attrs.get("uniqueMember");

It doesn't solve the issue and I am getting error:

Cannot cast attribute to String.

Answer 1

Use unique_members[i] = attrs.get("uniqueMember").toString() to convert the attribute value to a string.

For more informationens see the javadoc of BasicAttribute or javax.naming.directory.Attribute

Answer 2

Have a look at the Javadoc of Attributes class. You can use getValue(String) to retrieve the value of a specific attribute.

Answer 3

I suggest to use null-safe Objects.toString() for getting string representation--it won't throw exception if attrs.get() returns null, which may happen if attribute is not found:

unique_members[i] = Objects.toString(attrs.get("uniqueMember"));

Answer 4

If you came here searching for how to convert any Object with its attributes to a string, you can consider using ReflectionToStringBuilder:

ReflectionToStringBuilder.toString(anyObject);