No access to nested property in managed bean within p:columns

Question

I have following two simple POJOs:

class Person {
   String name
   Address address;
   //and of course the getter/setter for the attributes
}

class Address         


        

Answer 1

Nested bean properties in a brace notation string expression like #{person['address.city']} is by default not supported. You basically need a #{person['address']['city']}.

You need a custom ELResolver here. Easiest is to extend the existing BeanELResolver.

Here's a kickoff example:

public class ExtendedBeanELResolver extends BeanELResolver {

    @Override
    public Object getValue(ELContext context, Object base, Object property)
        throws NullPointerException, PropertyNotFoundException, ELException
    {
        if (property == null || base == null || base instanceof ResourceBundle || base instanceof Map || base instanceof Collection) {
            return null;
        }

        String propertyString = property.toString();

        if (propertyString.contains(".")) {
            Object value = base;

            for (String propertyPart : propertyString.split("\\.")) {
                value = super.getValue(context, value, propertyPart);
            }

            return value;
        }
        else {
            return super.getValue(context, base, property);
        }
    }

}

To get it to run, register it as follows in faces-config.xml:

    com.example.ExtendedBeanELResolver