BeanComparator.compare() doesn't can't handle null values returned by bean
properties
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Key: BEANUTILS-268
URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEANUTILS-268
Project: Commons BeanUtils
Issue Type: Bug
Components: Bean-Collections
Affects Versions: 1.7.0
Reporter: Jacob Kjome
I've got a bean that has properties that will, at times, return null values.
BeanComparator appears to fail with a NullPointerException. It's difficult to
tell exactly where because the exception thrown is a ClassCastException with a
message of e.toString(), so all I know is that a NullPointerException happened,
not where it happened.
I suspect that the exception happens inside the compare(Object, Object) method
with the call...
Object value1 = PropertyUtils.getProperty( o1, property );
Looking into PropertyUtils, and following the path, it seems like the
problematic code is in...
PropertyUtilsBean.getNestedProperty(Object, String)
That code is rather involved. If I get around to performing a minimal
testcase, I'll see if I can narrow down the exception to a particular piece of
code. In any case, there's no reason why a bean shouldn't be allowed to return
null for a given property.
My workaround is to add methods for respective properties that are guaranteed
to not return null. For instance, if I have a getter called getMyValue(), I
create a corresponding method called getMyValueNotNul(). I have to take care
with the value it returns, though. The position in a sort for a null value
would be different than a literal empty String. So, depending on the Object
type, I have to make up values which will either come before all other non-null
values or after all other non-null values (I don't recall what the natural
order of null values are; whether they come first or last. I know when
ordering on a SQLcolumn, null values show up last. Hopefully that behavior is
consistent here, but that's beside the point here).
I hope this can be fixed before 1.8.0 is released!
Jake
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