X-editable plugin and Spring MVC - best way to update Entity

Question

Stack searched but did not find the answer. I have subpages with several textfield's and when I editing the data field a plugin sends a reply to my controller:

@RequestMapping(value = "/myAcc", method = RequestMethod.POST)
    public String getValues(@ModelAttribute XEditableForm form){
        userService.update(form.getPk(), form.getValue());
        return "myAcc";
    }

where userService make a user update in db

@Transactional
public void update(long id, String firstName){
    User user= userRepository.findOne(id);
    user.setFirstName(firstName);
    userRepository.save(user);
}

The problem is that every time in this method I would check what was returned from xeditable plugin and update specific user field i.e. surname etc. In my opinion this is not the best solution.

XEditableForm returns:

pk - primary key of record to be updated (ID in db) 
name - name of field to be updated (column in db) 
value - new value

Question for you. How can I do this better?

Answer 1

I will answer for himself. In this situation we could use

org.springframework.utilClass ReflectionUtils

Exmaple of use:

User user = userRepository.findOne(id);  
Field name = ReflectionUtils.findField(User.class, "name"); 
ReflectionUtils.makeAccessible(true);  
name.set(user, "Admin");

In this way, you can edit the fields in the class knowing their names . And that's what I mean.