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<!DOCTYPE chapter PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.4//EN" 
"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.4/docbookx.dtd">

<chapter id="beaninfo">
  <title>Describing a Bean</title>

  <para>The BeanInfo provides a description of a POJO. This information allows
  the microcontainer to know what can be done with the bean.</para>

  <para>This is similar to the BeanInfo provided by the java.beans package but
  some java environments like J2ME do not include this package because it has
  dependencies on AWT.</para>

  <sect1 id="beaninfofactory-overview" revision="1">
    <title>BeanInfoFactory - retrieveing bean descriptions</title>

    <para>The <literal>BeanInfoFactory</literal> is used to create BeanInfos for a given class.
    <programlisting>BeanInfo getBeanInfo(String className)</programlisting>
    The default implementation is the IntrospectionBeanInfoFactory which uses
    reflection.</para>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="beaninfo-overview" revision="1">
    <title>BeanInfo - information about a bean</title>

    <para>The BeanInfo provides top level information and access to the more
    detailed information about the bean.</para>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="propertyinfo-overview" revision="1">
    <title>PropertyInfo - information about a property</title>

    <para>The PropertyInfo describes an property, i.e. something that
    follows the <programlisting>Type getX(); void setX(Type x)</programlisting>
    javabean pattern.</para>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="eventinfo-overview" revision="1">
    <title>EventInfo - information about an event</title>

    <para>The EventInfo describes an event.</para>
  </sect1>

</chapter>
