Limitation when expanding properties for subclasses

Hello,

I recently discovered Vaadin, and I must admit it is a great framework. However, like in most Java web application frameworks, there is one widget that is missing for me: a property grid like in .NET (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa302326.aspx). Some frameworks offer a bean editor, but most of the time this is rather primitive.

So I decided to develop my own widget, and hopefully some day I can add it to the Directory for the community. The BeanItem has an extendproperty method that fits my needs, but I also need to drill down (to show the nested properties X levels deep). Vaadin 7 offers Nested properties, but this new functionality has a limitation (see below) that I cannot get around. So I opened a ticket 8 weeks ago and I included a patch, but until now nobody responded to it. Probably I did something wrong when registering the ticket, so hopefully someone can help me out reviewing it.

http://dev.vaadin.com/ticket/8457

To summarize the problem from the ticket: suppose I have following two classes:

public class ClassA {
private boolean fieldOfClassA;
}

public class ClassB extends ClassA {
private boolean fieldOfClassB;
}

These are used to type a field in another class:

public class ClassC {
private ClassA fieldOfClassC = new ClassB();
}

When I expand an instance of ClassC (after wrapping it in a BeanItem) in my property grid, I see following fields:

- fieldOfClassC
+----fieldOfClassA

However, I expected to see also the fields of the subclass B:

- fieldOfClassC
+----fieldOfClassA
+----fieldOfClassB

So the field of subclass B isn't expanded, since Vaadin is looking at the type of the reference variable (which is ClassA), while it should look at the referenced value (which is ClassB ) if not null.

I have added a patch in my ticket, and it seems to work fine in my local Vaadin version. However, I might have forgotten something...
Thanks in advance for helping me out !

Bart Butenaers

Could you include the link to the ticket. It would be easier to find.

Hey Johannes, thank you for responding to my thread. I have included the links in my original post above, a couple of days ago. Don't hesitate to contact me for further information about the patch I added to ticket 8457.

I still have lot of work developing my property-grid widget, but it is becoming more and more mature. And I think it would be an added value for quite a lot of developers. But I really need my patch to be implemented in Vaadin 7, otherwise I can redirect my property-grid widget straight to the recycle bin :-(

Hope to hear from you guys soon!
Greetings from Belgium,
Bart