Ignore properties for nested fields of spring BeanUtils is not working

Question

How to define ignore properties for nested properties to spring BeanUtils?

BeanUtils.copyProperties(source, target, ignorePropertiesName);

I have class Contact with nested class Name and their two propeties 'firstName' and 'lastname'.

I tried three different patterns to pass the nested filed name to ignore list, but none of them worked.

"contact.name.lastName"
"name.lastName"
"lastName"

Below is the complete unit test with class definition, I am using spring-beans-4.3.9.RELEASE version with java 8.

import org.junit.Assert;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.springframework.beans.BeanUtils;

public class NestedCopyPropertiesTest {

// @Test
public void CopyProperties() {
    String firstName = "Andy";
    String lastName = "Murray";
    Contact source = new Contact(new Name(firstName, lastName));
    Contact target = new Contact(new Name(null, null));

    BeanUtils.copyProperties(source, target);

    String targetFirstName = target.getName().getFirstName();
    String targetLastName = target.getName().getLastName();
    log("targetFirstName: " + targetFirstName);
    log("targetLastName: " + targetLastName);

    Assert.assertTrue("Failed to copy nested properties.", firstName.equals(targetFirstName));
    Assert.assertTrue("Failed to copy nested properties.", lastName.equals(targetLastName));
}

@Test
public void CopyPropertiesWithIgnoreProperties() {
    String firstName = "Andy";
    String lastName = "Murray";
    Contact source = new Contact(new Name(firstName, lastName));
    Contact target = new Contact(new Name(null, null));

    // -------------NOT WORKING?
    // BeanUtils.copyProperties(source, target, "contact.name.lastName");
    // -------------NOT WORKING?
    // BeanUtils.copyProperties(source, target, "name.lastName");
    // -------------NOT WORKING?
    BeanUtils.copyProperties(source, target, "lastName");

    String targetFirstName = target.getName().getFirstName();
    String targetLastName = target.getName().getLastName();
    log("targetFirstName: " + targetFirstName);
    log("targetLastName: " + targetLastName);

    Assert.assertTrue("Failed to copy nested properties.", firstName.equals(targetFirstName));
    Assert.assertTrue("Failed to copy nested properties with ignore property.", !lastName.equals(targetLastName));
}

public void log(String string) {
    System.out.println(string);
}

public class Contact {
    private Name name;

    public Contact(Name name) {
        super();
        this.name = name;
    }

    public Name getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(Name name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
}

public class Name {
    private String firstName;
    private String lastName;

    public Name(String firstName, String lastName) {
        super();
        this.firstName = firstName;
        this.lastName = lastName;
    }

    public String getFirstName() {
        return firstName;
    }

    public void setFirstName(String firstName) {
        this.firstName = firstName;
    }

    public String getLastName() {
        return lastName;
    }

    public void setLastName(String lastName) {
        this.lastName = lastName;
    }
}

}

I looked into the java documentation, it's so generic that it doesn't give any clue how to work with nested fields. I wonder the API writer consider adding example when they create it otherwise everyone just wonder how to use it! sad

Ignore properties for nested fields of spring BeanUtils is not working

0 Answers0