Property name syntax that UIComponent is bound to

Question

Hi,
I am wondering if there are any restrictions on the name of the variable (property) that I bind my UIComponent to?
In particular, I ran into problems when I wanted that variable name to start with capital letter. That is, I have a Java been with the following code, and try to bind <outputText binding=#{MyBean.MyVariable} /> with appropriate entry in the faces-config.xml.
private HtmlTextOutput MyVariable = new HtmlTextOutput();
public void setMyVariable(HtmlTextOuput text)
MyVariable = text;
public HtmlTextOutput getMyVariable()
return MyVariable;
As a result, I got an error that JSF cannot find property MyVariable in the java class com.vadim.MyBean.
However, if I change variable name to start with lower case, e.g. myVariable, things work just fine.
I wonder if this is known limitation, or weather I am hitting some sort of a bug...
Thanks in advance,
Vadim.

Answer 1

I believe this is just part of the JavaBeans spec. JSTL and JSF expression languages look for property methods that start with "get" and "set". The Java naming convention states that you should name your methods with a lower case letter , capitalizing the first letter of new words in the method name. so:
Say you have a field, String name;
the getter for it would be getName()
JSF and JSTL expressions languages expect you to follow the naming convention and do their own internal capitalizing of the method names to find them. By not sticking to the spec, you're throwing off this mechanism and an method not found error is coming back.
John