Map backed ActionForm, and jstl expression language

[John Martin]

Hi all,

Any help on the following problem would be most appreciated.

What i am trying to do is produce a report of data in tabular form with filters that 
will reduce the report set. There can be 100's of different reports but by passing in 
a report id to a database the query, filters, columns and row values can be determined.

So i use a map backed action form for the filter property and there values, this 
contains the methods

  public void setValue(String key, Object value) {
        values.put(key, value);
    }

    public Object getValue(String key) {
        return values.get(key);
    }

For example, i want the first filter to have a value of 1, so i 
setValue("filter1","1") and the second filter to be value 2 (setValue("filter1","1")).

Now i populate another bean with the filter labels and values, that gets stored in the 
request. These are filter lists are stored as array lists in a hashmap with the the 
key, being the filter property, in this case "filter1" and "filter2". 

So in the jsp i write
      <c:forEach items="${dao.hmOfLists}" var="list">
       <c:set var="props" value="${list.key}"/>
       <c:set var="values" value="${list.value}"/>
      <html-el:select property="${props}" value="">
        <html:options collection="values" property="value" labelProperty="label"/>
      </html-el:select>
      </c:forEach>

this gets me the all the filters that have been stored in the hashmap from the object 
"dao" via the property hmOfLists, with the key in the hashmap being the filter 
property. However, i want to set the defaults on the filters via the map backed action 
form, but if i write <html-el:select property="${props}" >, i get an error of "No 
getter method available for property filter2......etc". So i try an access the value, 
in the html-el:select using the expression value="${testForm.props}", but this 
shouldn't (and doesn't work) as label is actually the variable props from the hashmap, 
not the property props from the testForm. How i can i make it use the var props 
instead of the string literal, in order to determine the property to retrieve from the 
map based action form ?

Thanks,

John