org.directwebremoting.extend.Property Maven / Gradle / Ivy
package org.directwebremoting.extend;
import java.beans.PropertyDescriptor;
import java.lang.reflect.Member;
import org.directwebremoting.ConversionException;
/**
* Describes some way to get or set a bit of data on an object.
* There are obvious Properties for a getter/setter pair
* {@link PropertyDescriptorProperty}, for a field {@link FieldProperty} and
* also for a constructor parameter {@link ConstructorProperty}. There is a
* {@link PlainProperty} for when we have a collection of Properties of a bean,
* but need to augment it in some way and {@link NestedProperty} which is used
* when we're digging into nested generic type info.
* It would be nice if {@link PropertyDescriptor}, and the various reflection
* types like {@link Member} had a common supertype, but they don't. In a way
* this is it.
* @author Joe Walker [joe at getahead dot ltd dot uk]
*/
public interface Property
{
/**
* Gets the name of this property
* @return The property name
*/
String getName();
/**
* What type does this property
* @return The type of object that will be returned by {@link #getValue(Object)}
*/
Class getPropertyType();
/**
* Get the value of this property of the passed in java bean
* @param bean The bean to introspect
* @return The value assigned to this property of the passed in bean
* @throws ConversionException If the reflection access fails
*/
Object getValue(Object bean) throws ConversionException;
/**
* Set the value of this property of the passed in java bean
* @param bean The bean to introspect
* @param value The value assigned to this property of the passed in bean
* @throws ConversionException If the reflection access fails
*/
void setValue(Object bean, Object value) throws ConversionException;
/**
* Properties may have children where we have nested generic type info.
* For example with {@code setFoo(List> x)} we can
* find type information about the nested bits of generic data.
*
* If calling this method then you almost certainly want to check for an
* overridden property as defined by the {@link ConverterManager} by calling
* {@link ConverterManager#checkOverride(Property)}
* @param index Generally the parameter offset.
* @return A Property to describe the nested bit of data
*/
Property createChild(int index) throws ConversionException;
}