How can I call a method named get() from EL?

[Pat Farrell]

The Google Guava library has a nice addition, a wrapper class named Optional. You can use it as a return argument type when you might be returning a null value. Something llke:

Optional<Integer> possible = Optional.of(5);
possible.isPresent(); // returns true
possible.get(); // returns 5

The problem is that in the world of EL, a method that returns a value, has an implicit "get" prefix to the name, so you would take Java such as:

int tmp = foo.getValue();

and use

${foo.value}

What do I use when there is only the word "get", so there is no word "value" for EL to imply?

[Bear Bibeault]

It doesn't follow the JavaBeans conventions (silly google), so it's not accessible to the EL.

[Bear Bibeault]

P.S. The most modern version of the EL (Tomcat 7) allows general method calls I believe, but I haven't tested that myself.

[Tim Holloway]

Bear Bibeault wrote:P.S. The most modern version of the EL (Tomcat 7) allows general method calls I believe, but I haven't tested that myself.

Yep. It may even be in JSF2 on Tomcat6. While I frequently and vocally discourage putting logic on View definitions, rules are made to be broken - providing you know what you're doing and the rules won't let you do it within the rules.

The normal EL POJO access is "#{bean.propname}" or "${bean.propname}" which will delegate to the BeanUtils getPropname(). But if you code "#{bean.get()}" it should invoke the bean's method that has the signature "public typename get()" or "public void get()" when rendering the View. You will have to have a way for "typename" to be automatically converted to a String via BeanUtils, though.