The Beans Binding 1.0 release was made public on the beginning of this past month. This had immediate repercussion on several blogs about properties support as a language feature. Rémi Forax's blog entry - Mixing property language support and bean bindings - has some interesting comments on the way the Beans Binding and Properties mix.

I admit I was confused with the code. I don't understand how this is better (for GUI design)than using getters and setters, do you really have that many places where you need to bind a propriety in such a way as Rémi's code shows:

    LangProperty<MyBean,String> labelProperty =
        LangProperty.create(MyBean#label);
    
    JLabel label = new JLabel("Label:");
    JTextField field = new JTextField(20);
    Bindings.createAutoBinding(READ_WRITE, 
        bean, labelProperty,
        field, BeanProperty.create("text")).bind();
    
    JLabel anotherLabel = new JLabel("Another label:");
    JTextField anotherField = new JTextField(20);
    Bindings.createAutoBinding(READ_WRITE, 
        bean, labelProperty,
        anotherField, BeanProperty.create("text")).bind();

Here you have two labels binded to the labelProperty property, that uses MyBean, to change it's value:

 public static class MyBean extends AbstractBean {
    property String label bound;
    
    private <B,T> void propertyChanged(java.lang.Property<B,T> property,Object oldValue,Object newValue) {
      firePropertyChange(property,oldValue,newValue);
    }
    
    @Override
    public String toString() {
      return "label "+label;
    }
  }

This is an example of how to do something that is much simpler by using setters and getters. Anyway, that is not the point, since this is simply a proof of concept example. Then I read Stephen Colebourne's - Java 7 - Update on Properties - this helped understand the role of properties a little better. Moreover, I can see how this could be useful for GUI data-driven components like data tables (JTable).

But, other than that (no small achievement), I can't see a point where properties will make swing component management easier, i mean that's a lot of syntax sugar to change a couple of labels... do you?

binder.bind(myBean.myProperty, myTextField);

private String name;
 
public void setName(String name) {
    String old = this.name;
    this.name = name;
    firePropertyChange("name", old, name);
}
 
public final String getName() {
    return name;
}

public bound property String name;

private String name;
 
public void setName(String name) {
    this.name = name;
}
 
public String getName() {
    return name;
}

public bound property String name;