Just took a look at this and there is some cool stuff going on there.
I've been working on a framework based on a similar idea of a generic CRUD back-end so you don't have to write new Hibernate DAOs, Spring business beans, or JSF backing beans for every new entity type. However, my end goal is really a generic *front* end analogous to Trails or Naked Objects, for rapid-prototyping basic CRUD UIs. I often find developing even a generic front-end JSP with the right syntactic validation etc. is more time-consuming than the back-end.
Putting the two ideas together, what would you think of new JSF components like these:
<r:inputObject> that would automatically create all of the right h:input* and h:select* fields based on reflection and Hibernate metadata. For example, Enumerations and many-to-one's could automatically map to a selectOneListbox with the right f:converter magic. Strings would become inputText with the size/maxlength from EJB3/Hibernate tags. You could customize formatting or conversion of specific fields via <f:facet>.
<r:outputObject> would be similar but for display details instead of input.
Enhanced <r:dataTable> would determine columns to display from the objects by reflection or Hibernate metadata. (This may not be nearly as useful because h:column is already pretty lightweight.)
-- Bill -- Bill Schneider Chief Architect Vecna Technologies 5004 Lehigh Rd. College Park, MD 20740 [EMAIL PROTECTED] t: 240-737-1640 f: 301-699-3180
