c:forEach throws javax.el.PropertyNotFoundException: Property 'foo' not found on type java.lang.String

Question

My project is using hibernate 3.4.0 GA to access database, and Spring MVC 2.5.6 to handle web request and jsp(jstl) to render view(web page).

I get an entity list from database, by hibernate, and add it as model into modelmap for jsp.When jsp rendering my webpage, it throws a "javax.el.PropertyNotFoundException".

javax.el.PropertyNotFoundException: Property 'timestamp' not found on type java.lang.String

and the exception comes from:

<c:forEach var="statusHistory" items="statusHistoryList">
    ${statusHistory.timestamp}
</c:forEach>

It seems like that "statusHistory" is considered as a String, but not an object.

The "StatusHistory" class has "timestamp" property and the getter method:

public Class StatusHistory{
    ...
    private Date timestamp;
    public Date getTimestamp(){...}
    ...
}

I have searched on google for one whole day. Some post says that the getter method is not following the convention. But it seems it's not my case.
can some one please help me?

Thanks in advance Andrew

Answer 1

Here,

<c:forEach var="statusHistory" items="statusHistoryList">

You're supplying the items attribute of <c:forEach> with a plain vanilla String with a value of "statusHistoryList" which in turn indeed doesn't have a getTimestamp() method.

You need to reference it using an EL expression ${...} instead.

<c:forEach var="statusHistory" items="${statusHistoryList}">
    ${statusHistory.timestamp}
</c:forEach>