Is there any way to specify creation of a bean using a factory via annotations?

[umakemyheadhurt]

Consider a singleton factory FooFactory, which has a getFoo method that takes a single String paramter and creates a Foo object. The Foo object gets autowired as a attribute into FooClient. All very simple and normal:

<context:annotation-config/>

<bean name="fooFactory" class="factorytest.FooFactory"/>

<bean name="myFoo" factory-bean="fooFactory" factory-method="getFoo">
	<constructor-arg index="0" value="some meaningful string" />
</bean>
	
<bean name="fooClient" class="factorytest.FooClient"/>

The bean myFoo contains @Autowired, @PostConstruct, and @PreDestory methods. This all works fine using the XML above and the lifecycle methods get called.

The question is, how can one do ALL this with annotations? Such that the XML file looks like this:

<context:component-scan base-package="factorytest" />

Spring of course has no problem autodiscovering FooFactory and FooClient with @Component annotations... How do you replace:

<bean name="myFoo" factory-bean="fooFactory" factory-method="getFoo">
	<constructor-arg index="0" value="myFoo" />
</bean>

So that you can still have

@Resource(name = "myFoo")
private Foo myFoo;

inside FooClient but without the XML definition? And still have myFoo treated as a singleton with lifecycle callbacks?

I would essentially like to "hook into" the getBean process of BeanFactory, such that when I see a request for an instance of a Foo with the bean name "myFoo", can I create it on the fly and let the contain manage it.

I have tried marking Foo @Scope("prototype"), but then it does not get treated as a singleton and receive @PreDestory. I've also tried making FooFactory a FactoryBean, but getObject on factory bean does not take any parameters. (Any hack to pass a parameter to getObject on a FactoryBean?) I've also tried BeanFactoryPostProcessor, BeanPostProcessor, and even extending AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory... Nothing seems clean.

So in short, is there any way to specify creation of a bean using a factory via annotations?

Thanks
Paul

[umakemyheadhurt]

Well I found that this works in Spring 3.0, but would still like a way to do it using Spring 2.5.

   @Autowired
   @Value("#{fooFactory.getFoo('myFoo')}")
   private Foo myFoo;

[umakemyheadhurt]

Well I found that this works in Spring 3.0, but would still like a way to do it using Spring 2.5.

   @Autowired
   @Value("#{fooFactory.getFoo('myFoo')}")
   private Foo myFoo;

Hmm correction, doing it this way, Foo does not get it's annotations handled, so no @Autowired or @PostConstruct works inside Foo.

[vineeth]

Have you tried @Bean?