How to invoke JSF action on an anonymous class? EL cannot access it

Question

I want to have a generic menu in my JSF (MyFaces 1.2) application.

Answer 1

That's because anonymous classes are not accessible from outside the package containing the anonymous class.

Here's a demonstration what's happening behind the scenes:

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    Portal portal = new Portal();
    Object list = portal.getClass().getDeclaredMethod("getActionList", null).invoke(portal, null);
    Object action = list.getClass().getDeclaredMethod("get", new Class[] { int.class }).invoke(list, 0);
    action.getClass().getDeclaredMethod("action", null).invoke(action, null);
}

Try executing this in the same package as Portal class and then once again in another class outside the package. In the other package, the last line would then throw exactly the same exception. That's the problem EL is struggling with since it's based on reflection.

I don't see other ways to solve this nicely than just creating a public (inner) class. Reflection (and thus also EL) can access them from other packages.

public class Portal {

    private List<IAction> list = new ArrayList<IAction>();

    public Portal() {
        list.add(new IActionImpl());
    }

    public class IActionImpl implements IAction {
        public void action() {
            System.out.println("called action here");
        }
    }

    public List<IAction> getActionList() {
        return list;
    }

}

Answer 2

The question is quite old but I have met today the same issue but only because I have switch from Jetty 7 to Tomcat 7.

I solve the issue by replacing the Jasper EL library with the GlassFish EL library.