Package org.apache.commons.beanutils2

Class FluentPropertyBeanIntrospector

java.lang.Object
org.apache.commons.beanutils2.FluentPropertyBeanIntrospector
All Implemented Interfaces:
BeanIntrospector
public class FluentPropertyBeanIntrospector extends Object implements BeanIntrospector

An implementation of the BeanIntrospector interface which can detect write methods for properties used in fluent API scenario.

A fluent API allows setting multiple properties using a single statement by supporting so-called method chaining: Methods for setting a property value do not return void, but an object which can be called for setting another property. An example of such a fluent API could look as follows: 

 public class FooBuilder {
     public FooBuilder setFooProperty1(String value) {
        ...
        return this;
    }

     public FooBuilder setFooProperty2(int value) {
        ...
        return this;
    }
 }

Per default, PropertyUtils does not detect methods like this because, having a non-void return type, they violate the Java Beans specification.

This class is more tolerant with regards to the return type of a set method. It basically iterates over all methods of a class and filters them for a configurable prefix (the default prefix is set). It then generates corresponding PropertyDescriptor objects for the methods found which use these methods as write methods.

An instance of this class is intended to collaborate with a DefaultBeanIntrospector object. So best results are achieved by adding this instance as custom BeanIntrospector after the DefaultBeanIntrospector object. Then default introspection finds read-only properties because it does not detect the write methods with a non-void return type. FluentPropertyBeanIntrospector completes the descriptors for these properties by setting the correct write method.

Since:
1.9