autowire limitation?

[chrlon]

We are upgrading our application from "xml based injection" to annotations and ran into the following problem. We want to replace the following injections with autowire.

<!-- implements Generator interface -->
<bean id="aGenerator" class="AGenerator">
<bean id="bGenrator" class="BGenerator">

<bean id="firstController" class="CommonController">
	<property name="generator">
		<ref bean="aGenerator" />
	</property>
</bean>
<bean id="secondController" class="CommonController">
	<property name="generator">
		<ref bean="bGenerator" />
	</property>    
</bean>

The old controller:

public class CommonController extends WebApplicationObjectSupport extends Controller {
        // DataTableGenerator implements Generator interface
	private DataTableGenerator generator;

	// Spring Injection:
	public void setGenerator(DataTableGenerator generator) {
		this.generator = generator;
	}

	// @Override
	public ModelAndView handleRequest(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
		DataSourceHelper.executeDataSourceServletFlow(request, response, generator, false);
		return null;
	}

}

With the following mapping we were able to define different genrator beans depending on the request url

<prop key="/firstController.htm">firstController</prop>
<prop key="/secondController.htm">secondController</prop>

We want to define the controller beans with the @Controller annotation and autoinject the generator beans respectivly depending on the request url. Is that possible or is it simply a limitiation with the autowire annotation?

[Enrico Pizzi]

I simply wouldn't split the one controller to 2 different urls. I would instead call commonController.htm?generator=A and commonController.htm?generator=B, then inject both generators inside the controller and use the request parameter to determine which one to use.

I also recommend, since you are into annotations, not to map your requests to controllers with xml but to use the @RequestMapping annotation directly on your @Controllers instead:

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/commonController.htm")
public class CommonController { //no extends
        
	private DataTableGeneratorA generatorA;
        private DataTableGeneratorB generatorB;

	public void setGeneratorA(DataTableGeneratorA generatorA) {
		this.generatorA = generatorA;
	}

	public void setGeneratorB(DataTableGeneratorB generatorB) {
		this.generatorB = generatorB;
	}

        @RequestMapping(method=RequestMethod.GET)
	public void doTheJob (@RequestParam("generator") String generator)  {
		DataSourceHelper.executeDataSourceServletFlow(request, response, "A".equals(generator) ? generatorA : generatorB, false);
	}

}