A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
When the type of a property is a generic collection type (like List<String>), the existing PropertyDescriptor.getPropertyType() method returns only the "raw" property type of "List". What is needed is a method like this:
Type getPropertyGenericType();
that would return the full generic type (List<String>) as obtained from
getReadMethod()..getGenericReturnType();
or
getWriteMethod().getGenericParameterTypes()[0];
The other "Descriptor" types should probably have the same enhancement. Eg, "BeanDescriptor" should have a new method:
Type getBeanGenericClass();
and so on.
JUSTIFICATION :
When generics were introduced, the "java.lang.reflect.Field" class added a "getGenericType()" type to compliment the existing "getType()" method.
This RFE would just be adding the same capability to the "PropertyDescriptor" class.
CUSTOMER SUBMITTED WORKAROUND :
The only work around is to access the same information through the "java.lang.reflect.*" classes, which defeats the purpose of having the java.beans package in the first place.