Android not supported: change java.beans to open source

[btseytlinTCP]

Hello! Trying to integrate into my Android app a library which uses Thymeleaf.

Android is unable import java.beans in the class OGNLShortcutExpression

import java.beans.BeanInfo;
import java.beans.IntrospectionException;
import java.beans.Introspector;
import java.beans.PropertyDescriptor;

Android didn't implement java.beans and so open source java beans seems to be the recommendation

So to support Android use cases, changing to an open source variant should allow for me to include that in my android project and for dependencies to resolve: https://storage.googleapis.com/google-code-archive-downloads/v2/code.google.com/openbeans/openbeans-1.0.jar

Thanks

[danielfernandez]

Uses of classes from the java.beans package are many and deep, not only in OGNLShortcutExpression but also, for instance, in JavaScript serialization code.

Also, Google Code's openbeans has seen 12 years without an update, is only published in Maven Central by an apparently-non-related individual, and is only available elsewhere in a Red Hat maven repo.

Unfortunately also, java.beans.PropertyEditor class is a hard dependency of Spring's form binding status code (e.g. org.springframework.web.servlet.support.BindStatus) which is very used by Thymeleaf. So changes involving a package name could neve be done to the Spring-related packages, only to the core.

I'm therefore leaving this in the future list as a reminder of the possibility to make Thymeleaf Android SDK-compatible (which is not a project's target). Version 4.0 will include a new expression language, but it's not totally clear whether, even with such a change, compatibility would be possible.