JDK7: JavaBean enhancements in Java 7

JavaBean is a way of building reusable components for Java applications. They are Java classes that follow certain naming conventions. There have been several JavaBean enhancements added in Java 7. Here we will focus on the java.beans.Expression class, which is useful in executing methods. The execute method has been added to facilitate this capability.

Getting ready
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To use the Expression class to execute a method:

1. Create an array of arguments for the method, if needed.
   
   
2. Create an instance of the Expression class specifying the object that the method is to be executed against, the method name, and any arguments needed.
   
   
3. Invoke the execute method against the expression.
   
   
4. Use the getValue method to obtain the results of the method execution, if necessary.
   

How to do it...
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1. Create a new console application. Create two classes: JavaBeanExample, which contains the main method and a Person class. The Person class contains a single field for a name along with constructors, a getter method, and a setter method:

2. In the main method of the JavaBeanExample class, we will create an instance of the Person class, and use the Expression class to execute its getName and setName methods:

3. Execute the application. Its output should appear as follows:

Name: Taman
Name: Mohamed
Name: Mohamed
getValue: Mohamed

How it works...
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The Person class used a single field, name. The getName and setName methods were used from the main method, where a Person instance was created. The Expression class' constructor has four arguments. The first argument was not used in this example, but can be used to define a return value for the method executed. The second argument was the object that the method would be executed against. The third argument is a string containing the name of the method, and the last argument was an array containing the parameters used by the method.

In the first sequence, the setName method was executed using an argument of Mohamed. The output of the application shows that the name was initially Taman, but was changed to Mohamed after the execute method was executed.

In the second sequence, the getName method was executed. The getValue method returns the results of the execution of the method. The output shows that the getName method returned Mohamed.

There's more...
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There have been other enhancements to the classes of the java.bean package. For example, the toString method has been overridden in the FeatureDescriptor and PropertyChangeEvent classes to provide a more meaningful description.

The Introspector class provides a way of learning about the properties, methods, and events of a Java Bean without using the Reflection API, which can be tedious. The class has added a getBeanInfo method, which uses the Inspector class' control flags to affect the BeanInfo object returned.

The Transient annotation has been added to control what is included. A true value for the attribute means that the annotated feature should be ignored.

A new constructor has been added to the XMLDecoder class that accepts an InputSource object. Also, the createHandler method has been added, which returns a DefaultHandler object. This handler is used to parse XML archives created by the XMLEncoder class.

A new constructor has been added to the XMLEncoder class. This permits writing out JavaBeans to an OutputStream using a specific charset with a specific indention.