@Service/@Component Bean autodetection with custom init/constructor methods?

[benze]

Hi,

I've run into a configuration situation and was hoping for some insights as to a best-practice way of doing things.

Had my bean been a POJO, I would have put a bunch of code in the constructor and been happy with it. However, my constructor would need access to injected members, so I realize that I cannot use a constructor. So that means I need to create an init method.

The problem is how to configure the bean. Under normal circumstances, I would have just been able to annotate it with @Service or @Component and have it autodetected. With the need for an init method, I find myself in the need of defining the bean configuration:

	  @Bean(initMethod="init")
	  public XLSExporter xlsExporter() {
	      return new XLSExporterImpl();
	  }

According to the docs, the @Bean annotation is allowed in any @Component. So I tried to add this within my @Component annotated XLSExporterImpl class, but then autowire complained about having two beans of type XLSExporter: XLSExportImpl (detected from the @Component annotation) and xlsExporter (from the @Bean annotation). If I override the bean name and call it

	  @Bean(initMethod="init", name="XLSExportImpl")

then spring doesn't call the init method.

So it would seem that my only chance is to create a separate @Configurable class with my @Bean annotation to define my bean and specify my init method, and remove the @Component annotation from my class.

This seems like a lot of overkill (and extra maintenance) when all I wanted was something like:

@Component( initMethod="init")

Unfortunately that doesn't exist.


Is using a separate Configurable class or XML defn file really the only way possible to accomplish this? What is the best-practice method?

Thanks,

Eric

[Marten Deinum]

Not sure but why not simply annotate your init method with @PostConstruct or let your bean implement InitializingBean (I would go for @PostConstruct)... If all that you want is an init method called after constructing and injection that is all you need to do...

[benze]

Didn't do that mostly because I didn't realize that the @PostConstruct annotation existed. But after rereading Section 3 of the manual, I noticed it.

Looks exactly like what I needed.

Thanks!

Eric