Raible Designs

ChainedExceptions and BeanUtils.copyProperties

I am wondering about a few things, so thought I'd try and get some help from the best source I know - the java.blogs community. First, an update on last night. I experienced some difficulty with Hibernate (persisting child objects) and Struts (nightly build doesn't quite work right with Tiles and Modules) and gave up at 2:00 a.m. Luckily, my head cleared up this morning after a deep 4 hours of sleep and I figured out Hibernate and it appears that a fix for the Tiles/Modules problem was checked into CVS by Cedric.

Now I'm wondering if it's possible to use declared exceptions in Struts to grab all your Exceptions from the bottom up. I can do this in an Action (or even a filter) using the following:

// caught exception e
ActionErrors errors = new ActionErrors();
errors.add(ActionErrors.GLOBAL_ERROR,
           new ActionError("errors.general"));

while (e != null) {
    errors.add(ActionErrors.GLOBAL_ERROR,
               new ActionError("errors.detail", e.getMessage()));
    e = (Exception) e.getCause();
}

request.setAttribute(Globals.ERROR_KEY, errors);

Can I do this with declared exceptions? Man that would be sweet if I could - I wouldn't have to have any exception handling in my Actions. Maybe that's the easy way out, but it also makes for rapid development - and you can always add them in when you really want them. Two other things I need to do.

• I have a java.util.Set on my User (Hibernate) object. This refers to a collection of Resume objects. When I generate my StrutsForms, I need to do something in my XDoclet template to turn a java.util.Set into a java.util.ArrayList. I don't know that I have to do this, but I've always used ArrayLists or Vectors on ActionForms for child objects.
• I am using BeanUtils.copyProperties in a Business Delegate to transfer properties from my User object to a UserForm object. When I do this, the child objects come through as Resume objects - where I really want them to come through as ResumeForms. Is this possible using BeanUtils, or do I have to do this manually?

I should probably do some research now to try and figure this stuff out on my own - but hopefully an answer will come through while I'm doing that ;-). I'll post to the proper mailing lists if I can't figure it out by COB. BTW, if you're using Hibernate, the FAQ is awesome. I wish more OSS (or closed-source software) had documentation this good.