<spring:bind> and relative paths
At the moment <spring:bind> only allows absolute paths to objects registered in the model. <spring:nestedPath> allows only an abbreviation of this path. I wonder why it is not possible to set something like a relative path. This would enable "real" iterating over collections as you would no longer need to rely on indices. So it would also enable iterating over non-indexed collections like maps.
Code:
<c:forEach items="${collection}" var="collEntry">
<!-- @newPath refers to @var in c:forEach -->
<!-- @var contains the name to refer to this context,
might be superfluous -->
<spring:newPath var="localName" newPath="collEntry">
<tr>
<td>
<spring:bind path="localName.key">${status.value}</spring:bind>
</td>
<td>
<spring:bind path="localName.value">${status.value}</spring:bind>
</td>
</tr>
</spring:newPath>
</c:forEach>
This would be ways cleaner than the code I found in SPR-52 or in the thread "Error while accessing collections". Of course it introduces issues like identifying the elements and refinding the same one. But I wonder if those would not be solvable.
It would enable the usage of <c:forEach> as it was supposed to be used and it would match similar concepts in XSLT (XML/XPath).
Jörg