Custom/Value Objects with Java Bean

Hey All,

this is actaully a commons beanutil question but hoping this forum is a good spot for it.

I have a problem with custom objects and java beans

e.g.

class MyCustomNumber
{
}

class MyJavaBean
{
private MyCustomNumber someProp;
//getter and setter
}

I am having allot of difficult in working with custom objects and binding them using commons bean.

PropertyUtils doesn't seem to have type conversion, so i looked into BeanUtils

However the problem I have, some of my properties are collections, but BeanUtils.getProperty() converts everything to a string ( very anoying )

I need to use BeanUtils.setProperty() so I can do the type conversion, but it just doesn't seem right to

set properties using BeanUtils.setProperty() and
get properties using PropertyUtils.getProperty() just so I can support custom value objects and collections as bean properties.

Can anyone give me some advice?