PropertyUtils.getProperty: Invoking Java Reflection

I needed a way to automatically call the getters and setters of a class. I knew, this is possible with Java Reflection but how, I did not know. Here is a simple example which shows how we will be able to invoke the generic property getter and setter operations on Java objects.

The example uses a class (Employye.java) and calls the employee.getName() method through reflection using PropertyUtils.getProperty(object, propertyName) and PropertyUtils.getProperty(object, propertyName, propertyValue) methods.

This example depends on the following three jars.

commons-beanutils.jar (http://commons.apache.org/beanutils/download_beanutils.cgi),

commons-collections.jar (http://commons.apache.org/collections/download_collections.cgi)

and

commons-logging.jar (http://commons.apache.org/logging/download_logging.cgi)

Please download trhe jars and add them to your project path.

1. Employee Class:

Make the employee class as.

public class Employee {

private String name;

public String getName() {

            return name;

}

public void setName(String name) {

            this.name = name;

}

}

2. Main Class

import org.apache.commons.beanutils.PropertyUtils;

public class PropertyUtilsExample {

            public static void main(String[] args) {

                        Employee e=new Employee();

                        e.setName("John");

                        try{

                        String s=(String)PropertyUtils.getProperty(e,"name");

                        System.out.println(s);

                        PropertyUtils.setProperty(e, "name","Mark");

                        s=(String)PropertyUtils.getProperty(e, "name");

                        System.out.println(s);

                        }catch(Exception ee){

                                   

                        }

            }

}

3. Output:

Output of the program is

John

Mark  

Hope it helps someone, cheers.