How to order fields in outgoing messages in QuickF

Question

Is there any way to order fields in outgoing messages without rebuilding QuickFIX/J? Or any configuration flag available which orders messages according to any validation file that we might set using some path flag?

Answer 1

See the QuickFIX/J User FAQ, topic "I altered my data dictionary. Should I regenerate/rebuild QF/J?". Specifically following excerpts:

If your DD changes aren't very extensive, maybe just a few field changes, then you don't really need to. If you added a whole new custom message type, then you probably should. If you changed field orders inside of repeating groups, then I recommend that you do, especially if those group changes are in outgoing messages.

And

OUTGOING MSGS: The DD xml file is irrelevant when you construct outgoing messages. You can pretty much add whatever fields you want to messages using the generic field setters (setString, setInt, etc) and QF will let you. The only trouble is with repeating groups. QF will write repeating group element ordering according to the DD that was used for code generation. If you altered any groups that are part of outgoing messages, you DEFINITELY need to rebuild.

From what I gather from this FAQ entry, you should not rebuild for outgoing messages unless the reordering is within repeating groups. In case you change field order in repeating groups you should rebuild.

In any case it's easy to test by shuffling fields around in a message in the dictionary, refer to it the custom dictionary in your configuration, then log the message generated by the QuikFIX/J engine.