I wanted to crank out a prototype of something and
didn't want to make all of the setter/getter methods
so I modified PropertyUtils to handle java.util.Map.
I posted some source, but other people have cleaner OO
implementation ideas that they have posted. Something
along this idea is scheduled in the Struts 1.1 To Do
list.
The thread is:
"PropertyUtils Enhancement Source Code"
The line blurs a little with web pages because
everything you get from the client are strings, but
setters/getters provide type checking and a standard
way to access methods. Struts does do basic type
conversions for you so you can have boolean, int,
double, etc. types set and it will convert the string
from the request object. So for checkboxes and radio
buttons I would use boolean and int because I know the
user can't enter bad data on the form. For a text
field that requires an int for input the field should
be a String in case they enter something that isn't an
int so you can return the value to the web form with
an error message. Someone else may give a better
explanation, but I hope this helps some.
David
--- Jonas_Bj�rnerstedt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Having just switched from Perl to Java web
> development, perhaps I am missing
> something fundamental. Being new to the forum, I
> also don't know if this
> issue has been discussed before.
>
> It strikes me as odd that in beans in general and
> ActionForm beans in
> particular that properties are set by setXxx and
> getXxx methods.
> Spontaneously you would think that a bean should
> have a get("name") and a
> set("name", "value") to retreive or save attributes
> in a Hashtable in the
> bean.
>
> Reusability is one of the nice things about beans.
> With the current design
> however, if I want to retreive the properties set in
> a bean in a reusable
> way, I have to go the roundabout way of using
> reflection. My question is: In
> what sense is a bean more than than a Hashtable?
>
> Here is a simple illustration of the problem. A
> common task I have is to
> generate an SQL insert statement to save the
> properties of a bean. I could
> for each different form have an Action class that
> goes through all the
> getter methods to generate the SQL string. To make
> life simple, I derive all
> my beans from a class that uses reflection to
> examine what fields the
> derived class has, creating the SQL string in the
> toString method. From what
> I understand, I could have used PropertyUtils
> instead.
>
> Given that beans work the way they do, this is a
> reasonable method. But why
> do things the hard way? Why not let ActionForm
> implement an interface with
> only a get(), a set() and an getPropertyNames()
> method? With a Hashtable,
> you could also allow the set method to add a
> property to the bean, something
> I would find very useful.
>
> Perhaps I have spent too much time with Perl, but to
> me it seems like there
> is too much structure here. In looking through the
> literature, I have not
> found any discussion of this question.
>
> Jonas
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