Using Spring's Java Config, I need to acquire/instantiate a prototype-scoped bean with constructor arguments that are only obtainable at runtime. Consider the following code example (simplified for brevity):
@Autowired
private ApplicationContext appCtx;
public void onRequest(Request request) {
//request is already validated
String name = request.getParameter("name");
Thing thing = appCtx.getBean(Thing.class, name);
//System.out.println(thing.getName()); //prints name
}
where the Thing class is defined as follows:
public class Thing {
private final String name;
@Autowired
private SomeComponent someComponent;
@Autowired
private AnotherComponent anotherComponent;
public Thing(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
public String getName() {
return this.name;
}
}
Notice name
is final
: it can only be supplied via a constructor, and guarantees immutability. The other dependencies are implementation-specific dependencies of the Thing
class, and shouldn't be known to (tightly coupled to) the request handler implementation.
This code works perfectly well with Spring XML config, for example:
<bean id="thing", class="com.whatever.Thing" scope="prototype">
<!-- other post-instantiation properties omitted -->
</bean>
How do I achieve the same thing with Java config? The following does not work using Spring 3.x:
@Bean
@Scope("prototype")
public Thing thing(String name) {
return new Thing(name);
}
Now, I could create a Factory, e.g.:
public interface ThingFactory {
public Thing createThing(String name);
}
But that defeats the entire point of using Spring to replace the ServiceLocator and Factory design pattern, which would be ideal for this use case.
If Spring Java Config could do this, I would be able to avoid:
- defining a Factory interface
- defining a Factory implementation
- writing tests for the Factory implementation
That's a ton of work (relatively speaking) for something so trivial that Spring already supports via XML config.
Best Answer
In a
@Configuration
class, a@Bean
method like sois used to register a bean definition and provide the factory for creating the bean. The bean that it defines is only instantiated upon request using arguments that are determined either directly or through scanning that
ApplicationContext
.In the case of a
prototype
bean, a new object is created every time and therefore the corresponding@Bean
method is also executed.You can retrieve a bean from the
ApplicationContext
through itsBeanFactory#getBean(String name, Object... args)
method which statesIn other words, for this
prototype
scoped bean, you are providing the arguments that will be used, not in the constructor of the bean class, but in the@Bean
method invocation. (This method has very weak type guarantees since it uses a name lookup for the bean.)Alternatively, you can use the typed
BeanFactory#getBean(Class requiredType, Object... args)
method which looks up the bean by type.This is at least true for Spring versions 4+.
Note that, if you don't want to start with the
ApplicationContext
orBeanFactory
for your bean retrieval, you can inject anObjectProvider
(since Spring 4.3).and use its
getObject(Object... args)
methodFor example,