Object instantiation with JSTL and JSP

Have you ever wanted to instantiate an object and use them in your JSTL expressions? In my case, I wanted to surround an object with a wrapper class that provided extra functionality to the objected being wrapped, and be able to access the wrapped object from within JSTL expressions.

To do this I used a combination of JSP and JSTL. I used JSP tags to instantiate the wrapper class and JSTL to assign the object being wrapped as follows:

                <jsp:useBean id="strainWrapper" class="au.edu.apf.phenomebank.strain.StrainHelperWrapper" />                    
                <c:set target="${strainWrapper}" property="strain" value="${mouse.strain}" />
                
                ${strainWrapper.genotypingAssays}

public class StrainHelperWrapper {

    private Strain strain; 
    
    public StrainHelperWrapper() {}
    
    public StrainHelperWrapper(Strain strain) {
        this.strain = strain;
    }
    
    public Strain getStrain() {
        return strain;
    }
    public void setStrain(Strain strain) {
        this.strain = strain;
    }

    
    
    /**
     * Returns a list of Amplifluor requirements for the Genotyping Assays
     * @return
     */
    public String getAmplifluors() {
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        
        if (strain != null) {
            List<Genotype> genotyping = strain.getGenotypes();
            if (genotyping != null) {
                int counter = 0;
                for (Genotype genotype: genotyping) {
                    if (counter > 0)
                        sb.append(", ");
                    String yesNo = genotype.getAmplifluor() ? "Yes" : "No";
                    sb.append(yesNo);
                    counter++;
                }                
            }
        }
        return sb.toString();
        
        
    }

Hibernate: Deleting element from a Collection doesn't get deleted in database

In Hibernate we are able to remove an element from a java.util.Collection by invoking Iterator.remove() on the Iterator object. When the collection is saved, Hibernate will automatically delete the element that was removed from the database. Below is an example of removing the element from the Collection:

            for (Iterator<StoragePosition> it = mouse.getPositions().iterator(); it.hasNext() ;) {
                StoragePosition sp = it.next();
                
                if (! Util.isValid(sp.getPosition())) {        
                    it.remove();
                }
            }

The "cascade" attribute configured in the Hibernate configuration file (hbm.xml) plays an important role in how it will behave when handling elements that have been removed from a Collection. In order for this to work the cascade attribute should have the following value: all-delete-orphan. A cascade value of save-update will not work. Below is a segment of the configuration file:

    <set name="positions" inverse="true" table="mouse_storage_positions" cascade="all-delete-orphan" lazy="true" batch-size="8">
             <key column="mouse_id" />                      
             <one-to-many class="au.edu.apf.phenomebank.inventory.StoragePosition" />     
         </set>