Datatable outputext parameter

Question

I have a t:datatable that shows severalfields of a pojo. There's a requirement to show additional data from that bean in a 'flattened' way:
The pojo has a Set of other objects, say, a Person has a Set of Pets and every Person in the system has at least a cat and a dog for pet.
The datatable needs to show the name of the person, cat and dog in single row.
<h:column headerClass="columnHeader" footerClass="columnFooter">
  <f:facet name="header">
    <h:outputText value="Cat's name" />
  </f:facet>
  <h:column>
    <h:outputText value="#{person.pets('Cat').name}" />
  </h:column>
</h:column>I've tried to above, which doesn't work because JSF doesn't accept parameters that way. And I can't use an attribute because I don't know how to solve the binding issue. Is there an alternative next to polluting the pojo (adding explicit get methods).
dave

Answer 1

You can abuse a map for this purpose. If you make pets a Map (which might mean you need a nasty ORM query or manual translation of a collection type) you could pose your EL like:
<h:outputText value="#{person.pets['Cat'].name}" />But since you apparently hardwire the key in the view, you could just as easily create specialized getter methods to retrieve the name of known objects.
public void getNameOfCat(){
  // code to lookup the cat object and return its name
}I don't see why you call that "polluting", it makes the code clean and simple IMO.