Special Edition Using Java 2 Standard Edition

Introspection: Creating and Using BeanInfo Classes

You've already seen in the preceding sections and in the two Beans you designed how to use design patterns to facilitate automatic introspection. You also saw that the automatic introspection mechanism isn't perfect. If you look back at Figure 29.2, you'll see an example of this. Introspection is probably the most important aspect of JavaBeans because without it a container can't do anything with a Bean other than display it. As you become proficient at designing your own Beans, you'll find that you sometimes need to provide additional introspection information for the users of your Beans. In the case of your Beans, this is to hide the parent class's properties to clear up ambiguities.

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