interface property predicaments

[Paul Benedict]

I have two interfaces: Article and Person. My problem is with my Article implementation:

public interface Article {
  public Person getPerson();
}

public class ArticleImpl extends Article {
  private Person person;
  public Person getPerson() {
    return person;
  }
  public void setPerson(Person person) {
    this.person = person;
  }
  // required for ibatis object construction
  public void setPerson(PersonImpl person) {
    this.person = person;
  }
}

I am using ibatis to construct it as follows:

<resultMap id="articleMap" class="Article">
    <result property="person.id" column="person_id" />
</resultMap>

I get that annoying "cannot find WRITABLE property id in Person" message because it is looks at Article.getPerson() which returns the interface not implementation. But why should that matter? This is wrong behavior, imo. I know ibatis constructs the inner object first. It will create a PersonImpl, set property "id" from column "person_id", and then call the setter on Article.

Otherwise, I am left believing ibatis cannot work with classes which need to implement a read-only interface..... or someone can recommend the solution, which I might be unable to find?

Paul

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