Eric,

Thanks for writing. I found the BeanUtils classes extremely
interesting. Comments inline below:

[...]

Worked well-really well, with one exception. When inheriting a class,
that class wasn't copied over. All properties that had matching
counterparts did, which is 1/2 the fight, really. I haven't tried
bringing the super class in with composition yet.

I got out of the docs for copyProperties that it would create a copy
of all attributes. I'll test whether this applies to a class brought
in with composition. It would be best if all was copied.

Will apprise after more testing.

Thanks!

Bogus Exception

Eric,

Thanks again for writing. I figured out what I was doing wrong. The
inherited class had to have getters/setters like the derived classes
in order for the copyProperties() to work.

The following is a complete example using copyProperties():

The base class:

package test;

public class CommonClass {
        private String sInherited;
        //
        public String getSInherited() {
            return sInherited;
        }
        public void setSInherited(String inherited) {
            sInherited = inherited;
        }
}

Class A, which is one of 2 classes that extend CommonClass. It has
both unique and common property names:

package test;

public class A extends CommonClass {
   private int iA; // a uniquely named attribute
   private String sName; // a commonly named attribute
   //
    public A(){
   }
   //
    public int getIA() {
        return iA;
    }
    public void setIA(int ia) {
        iA = ia;
    }
    public String getSName() {
        return sName;
    }
    public void setSName(String name) {
        sName = name;
    }
}

Class B:

package test;

public class B extends CommonClass {
   private int iB; // a uniquely named attribute
   private String sName; // a commonly named attribute
   //
   public B(){
   }
   //
    public int getIB() {
        return iB;
    }
    public void setIB(int ib) {
        iB = ib;
    }
   public String getSName() {
        return sName;
    }
    public void setSName(String name) {
        sName = name;
    }
}

Now the test class that will load up A, then copy it to B:

package test;

import org.apache.commons.beanutils.*;

public class TestClass {
    /**
    * @param args
    */
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Begin...");
        BeanUtilsBean bub = new BeanUtilsBean();
        A a = new A();
        B b = new B();
        //
        a.setIA(1);
        a.setSName("Testing...");
        a.setSInherited("inherited from A");
        //
        try {
            bub.copyProperties(b, a); //(dest, orig)

            System.out.println("-----");
            System.out.println("a.getIA(): " + a.getIA());
            System.out.println("a.getSName(): " + a.getSName());
            System.out.println("a.getSInherited(): " + a.getSInherited());
            System.out.println("b.getIB: " + b.getIB());
            System.out.println("b.getSName(): " + b.getSName());
            System.out.println("b.getSInherited(): " + b.getSInherited());
            System.out.println("-----");
        } catch (Exception ex){
            System.out.println("Exception here: " + ex.toString());
        }
        System.out.println("End...");
    }
}

Output:

Begin...
-----
a.getIA(): 1
a.getSName(): Testing...
a.getSInherited(): inherited from A
b.getIB: 0
b.getSName(): Testing...
b.getSInherited(): inherited from A
-----
End...

Since iB had no counterpart in class A, it was not copied, and assumed
the Java default for ints.

This is exactly the behavior I was hoping for. Thanks for the tip!

Bogus Exception