[xwiki-devs] [PROPOSAL] Use our own bean populate tool instead of BeanUtils

Hi devs, Currently we are using BeanUtils to convert and populate macros parameters and configuration. Problem is that BeanUtil has some limitations: - beanutils can't be configured to ignore case which is a pain for macro parameters - beanutils does not support enum or even base class so each enum converter has to be registered one by one - beanutils does not support public fields has bean properties - beanutils not not support any annotation based validation - we already have severall places in different components which use beauntil to load java bean and they can't share custom converters not provided by beauntil, a unique component will permit to add a bunch of converters when initializing it I propose to create our own component and api to deal with it. You can find a first proto on http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XWIKI-3171: * the entry point is PropertiesManager: it provide a populate method and cached beans descriptors * the populate method ignore case * the populate method validate the bean using JSR 303 (use hibernate-validator 4beta1 implementation) * if the bean implements RowProperties, the remaining property (the one non populated using setters of public fields) are given to it as custom properties * the populate method conversion use ConvertUtils so any registered Converter against ConvertUtils is supported * the populate method conversion also add support for: o any Enum conversion, no need to register each enum anymore o it also add support for Color conversion using "r,g,b" or "#xxxxxx" format * the populate method and the bean descriptor support public fields I would like to commit it in 1.9 or 2.0 branch (I would prefer 1.9 branch at least for the ignore case part and since it change some api used by macros it's better to commit it as soon as possible). Here is my +1 -- Thomas Mortagne