Automatically Populate Objects from HTTPRequest

Question

I have started developing my own web framework which has been coming along quite nicely. It simplifies and cators for all my specific needs. I have tried many frameworks like struts, struts 2, tapestry, spring and the list goes on. There are 2 big problems I find in all of these frameworks.

1. The ability to work with specific business logic/rules.
2. I am a bit of a perfectionist and the entire layout of these frameworks force you to scatter you validation, DAO logic and your form actions. I like to keep things grouped together and not do validation in my Hibernate Objects, Action classes and a separate XML files which causes a load unnecessary processing.

Ok back to my question. Does any one know of possible solutions to populating Objects from a HTTPRequest? I started looking into introspection and reflection, but I would like to see if there might be a better solution for something like this. Example: Object Student has 3 fields eg String Name, Integer age and Calendar DOB. What are the options in populating this object or any other Object from a HTTPrequest?

Answer 1

You could use a similar system to the way objects are sent in json by adding a __type__field that gets sent with each object. That way you know which object to create and introspect.