Hi,

In certain cases my HTML form controls need to map to second level
Java object properties. For example a form for inputing a person's
name, position, and contact info may have HTML text boxes name,
address and phone number, but these may map to POJO in backend as
person.name, person.contact.address and person.contact.phone.  Ideally
I want my HTML input controls to have ids like "name",
"contact.address" and "contact.phone" and let DWR's getValues() method
construct JSON object
{
        name : "John Smith",
        contact {  address : "1234 Hollywood Ave" , phone "88774542" }
}

and send that to server to invoke Java method
   createPerson(Person p)

So I patched util.js to make setValues() , getValues() aware of the
special dot notation for input ids.  Here is the diff for
dwr-1.1.beta3 source. Please note this patch works for my app but is
not thourought tested yet.

504,507c504
< DWRUtil.setValues = function(map, prefix) {
<   if (prefix == null) {
<      prefix = "";
<   }
---
> DWRUtil.setValues = function(map) {
512,517c509
<       // for nonprimitive fields, recursively call setValues on it, assume
<       if (typeof(value) == 'object') {
<         DWRUtil.setValues(value, prefix + property + ".");
<       } else {
<         DWRUtil.setValue(prefix + property, value);
<       }
---
>       DWRUtil.setValue(property, value);
527c519
< DWRUtil.getValues = function(data, prefix) {
---
> DWRUtil.getValues = function(data) {
529,531d520
<   if (prefix == null) {
<      prefix = "";
<   }
551,567c540,542
<       var value = data[property];
<       if (typeof (value) == 'object' && value != null)   {
<          // ignore arrays
<          if (value.length == null)
<          // recursively read from html values into subobject
<          DWRUtil.getValues(value, property + ".");
<       } else {
<
<       var fieldPath = prefix + property;
<       var ele = $(fieldPath);
<       var nodes = [];
<       if (ele == null) {
<          nodes = document.getElementsByName(fieldPath);
<       }
<       if (nodes.length >= 1 || ele != null) {
<          data[property] = DWRUtil.getValue(fieldPath);
<       }
---
>       var ele = $(property);
>       if (ele != null) {
>         data[property] = DWRUtil.getValue(property);