Thaks Rick. This will give me an instance of the parent bean OR the child bean.
What I need is a child bean pre populated with data from the parent bean. Note that we cannot get an instance of the parent bean and downcast it to an instance of a child bean like - child bean = ((child bean)(instance of parent bean)); Since java does not allow such downcasting. Would appreciate anything to help me move along ! -----Original Message----- From: Rick Reumann [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 5:57 PM To: Struts Users Mailing List Subject: Re: Inheritance within form beans On 10/1/07, Kothari, Kailash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > What I also need is that, when a child form bean is instantiated by > Struts, I want Struts to check if there is an instance of the parent > form bean in the session and if so, pre populate that data from the > parent to the child form bean. Assuming Struts 1.x... I can't recall the exact syntax of how the forms are stored in the session but I know it invovles the ActionMapping name in the StrutsConfig, so you could try: (YourForm)session.getAttribute(yourActionMappingName); (remember you could have different session scoped instances of the same type of ActionForm in the session - the key is the action mapping name they are tied to.) -----Original Message----- From: Kothari, Kailash [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 5:31 PM To: user@struts.apache.org Subject: Inheritance within form beans Hello, I have an interesting Struts design requirement and Im a little lost, would really appreciate help ! I have multiple form beans in my application and a lot of them share data. Instead of duplicating the common attributes in each form bean, I am opting for an more elegant approach, i.e. encapsulating the common data in a parent form bean and then building child form beans that extend the form. So that's fine. What I also need is that, when a child form bean is instantiated by Struts, I want Struts to check if there is an instance of the parent form bean in the session and if so, pre populate that data from the parent to the child form bean. Of course I could copy that data manually, but the parent form bean is a legacy class and has grown beyond proportion - hundreds of attributes and contained objects. Thanks ! Kailash. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]