pulling my hair out:)

Ok I'm pulling my hair out trying to figure where I'm screwing up. Any
suggestions from anyone I'll take:)...

Here's the situation... I'm new to the bP framework but I'm giving it a
whirl. To start with all I'm trying to do is set up  a very simple
ItemRequestBean where a user can type in a text field "requestedBy."

I created an ItemRequestAct (extends BaseAct) that has a method

public String onSetupExec(ActEvent ae) 

My html form has 

<html:text property="requestedBy"/>

which of course ends up calling in my ItemRequestBean:

public String getRequestedBy() {
        return getValue("requestedBy");
    }

The problem is the HasMap _current is always null when it ends up being
checked from this form which causes the page to crap out. To prevent
_current from being null I tried this in my onSetupExec...

BaseBean itemRequest = new ItemRequestBean();
itemRequest.populate(null);
ae.setBean(itemRequest)..");  

Where populate(null) ends up calling my ItmeRequestDAO and I just
hardcoded in:

HashMap map = new HashMap();
map.put("requestedBy","Loser");
ArrayList list = new ArrayList(1);
list.add( map );
return list;

so _current ends up being set. I can test for the _current right before
the execute method of BaseAct returns and everything is fine (the debug
below will print "Loser")

BaseBean b = ae.getBean();
log.debug("b.getValue('requestedBy') = "+b.getValue("requestedBy") );
return mapping.findForward(forward);

So from the above it looks like it's leaving the Action correctly and
_current must be set fine or else the getValue("") wouldn't work.

I have some error logging code in the getValue() method and when it gets
to the jsp page and the property="requestedBy" triggers
getValue("requestedBy") to be called I see in the log file that 

_current is null so of course _current.get(a) will not work and
everything dies.

What along the way is setting the _current HashMap back to null?

Thanks so much for any insight. Maybe tomorrow it will jump out at me,
but for today it's driving me nuts.

-- 
Rick Reumann