How to prevent NPE when accessing a nested/indexed property of a bean

Question

Is there any way to prevent NPE when accessing a nested bean using commons-beanutils? Here is my code:

new BeanUtilsBean().getProperty(human, "parent.name");

In this case I want getProperty() to either return empty string ("") when human.getParent() == null or handle it in a way other that throwing an NPE.

Answer 1

They were thinking of adding language features to JDK7, but ultimately they weren't added

For now you'll have to manually check. You can just hack it and create a function like

public static void propertyHack(Object bean, String property, String nullreplace){
  try{
    return new BeanUtilsBean().getProperty(bean, property);
  }
  Catch(NullpointerException ne){
    return nullreplace;
  }
}

Kind of sucks, but it will work.

Answer 2

commons-beanutil is open source software. If you want to know exactly what features it has, and you don't believe what other people are telling you here, you should read the source.