How to access an object's public fields from a Velocity template

Question

Here is my object class:

public class Address
{
    public final String line1;
    public final String town;
    public final String postcode;

    public Address(final String line1, final String town, final String postcode)
    {
        this.line1 = line1;
        this.town = town;
        this.postcode = postcode;
    }
}

I add it to the velocity context like this:

Address theAddress = new Address("123 Fake St", "Springfield", "SP123");
context.put("TheAddress", theAddress);

However, when writing the template, the following will not render the address fields (however, it works fine when I add getters to the Address class)

<Address>
    <Line1>${TheAddress.line1}</Line1>
    <Town>${TheAddress.town}</Town>
    <Postcode>${TheAddress.postcode}</Postcode>
</Address>

Is it possible to access public fields on objects from Velocity without adding getters?

Solution 1

Not by default. You need to configure a different Uberspect implementation.

Solution 2

The Velocity user guide suggests it's not possible. Quote:

[Velocity] tries out different alternatives based on several established naming conventions. The exact lookup sequence depends on whether or not the property name starts with an upper-case letter. For lower-case names, such as $customer.address, the sequence is

1. getaddress()
2. getAddress()
3. get("address")
4. isAddress()

For upper-case property names like $customer.Address, it is slightly different:

1. getAddress()
2. getaddress()
3. get("Address")
4. isAddress()

Comments

[Alex Spurling]

Could you add any details such as link to documentation on how to do this or on why this is neccessary?

[Scott]

It's necessary because Velocity doesn't support public fields. Try this out: maven-doccheck.sourceforge.net/samples/ShinobuDemo/apidocs/o‌​rg/…

[evanmcdonnal]

It's brilliant that they implement their framework according to convention rather than actual language rules...