Spring properties for <osgi:reference> backed by factory bean

[kierann]

I'm attempting to create a service factory which provides a new instance of a service to each client bundle, where the instanced service uses the service providers classloader. I'd also like the client bundles to be able to configure these individual services during creation (ideally by passing a parameter(s) to a factory-method like setup). As I understand section 3.3.2 of Spring OSGi Specification (v0.7), <osgi:reference> should support bean properties? Was this feature taken out? Or, even better, is there a better way of doing this?

Thank you.

[oleg.zhurakousky]

ServiceFactory is an interface defined by OSGi specification to allow for customizations around OSGi Service creation
http://www.osgi.org/javadoc/r4v41/org/osgi/framework/ServiceFactory.html
Here is the small example of its usage: http://www.knopflerfish.org/osgi_service_tutorial.html#what_isfactory
As for <osgi:reference> element and properties. . . You might want to read up on OSGi Services in general. In the nutshell OSGi Service could be registered not only with an interface(s), but with arbitrary properties allowing you to filter based on such properties when performing service lookup. So Spring does supports property elements nested inside of an <osgi:reference>.
You can get more information from the Spring-DM documentation as well:
http://static.springframework.org/osgi/docs/1.1.3/reference/html-single/#service-registry:refs

[kierann]

Thank you for the quick reply. Using filters does appear to be a much better way of doing this. I'll look more into it.