Q. What is the exact difference between decorator and translator?
Ans. The formal name of decorator is cellDecorator. As the name suggests, it can be used to decorate (e.g. append/prepend/trim some value) the value of an attribute before it is translated e.g. if you want to trim all trailing/leading zeros from the value of an attribute. Another example can be appending user's country name (e.g. _US or _UK) to the values of the uid attribute of an itemtype. It's like putting a marker/flag to an attribute for easily identifying and classifying the values.
As already mentioned above, the translation comes next to decoration (if any). A translator is used to translate the value of an attribute (which may have been decorated by using some decorator) to a new value e.g. encoding a password before storing it into the database.
Can I not simply use translator then?
Of course, you can i.e. whatever you accomplish using a decorator before the value is sent to a translator, can be done in the translator itself but having a decorator promotes reusability and gives you more control on processing the values e.g. you can plugin a decorator to a translator on a need basis. In presence of the decorator, first the decoration will happen and then the translation; while in absence of the decorator the translation will happen directly.
Q. Which is the best one to use in impex?
Ans. As mentioned above, they are not competing things; rather, they are the stages in the ImpEx process pipeline.
Check this chapter to learn more about them.
Bluesky
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