Spring web app controller field scope - spring

I am experiencing some conceptional difficulty with the scope of some beans referenced in controllers. I have checked a lot of related questions in file and still not sure. Could someone please help me clarify it?
I am numbering the questions or statements as follows to make helper easier to address my problems.
Per my understanding from the the Spring doc, in spring web application,
1) for any controller, annotated with a #Controller, if there is a private field bean, with default bean scope, this field bean will be accessed as the singleton thus susceptible to thread issue;
2) If the field bean is marked as scope=""prototype, this field bean, within this controller, will still behave like a singleton, thus being not-thread safe.
3) To make such a field bean thread safe, we have to make the bean scoped with request or session right?
The following is a simplified example related to this question:
#Controller public Class ControllerA
#Autowired private DefinedBean db;
#RequestMapping("/testPath") public ModelAndView getPathPage(){
this.db.setTitle("abc");
this.db.readReportWithTitle();
....
return new ModelAndView();
}
So in this example,
4) if the DefinedBean is defined through xml configuration with or without explicit scope of prototype, this DefinedBean will have synchronization issue, right?
5) To ensure this DefinedBean to be thread safe, we have to define it explicitly with request or Session.
On the other hand,
6) if we mark the controller itself with a scope of prototype explicitly, will it get rid of the non-thread safe issue with the DefinedBean field? My thought is no, this won't.
7) To make the field thread safe, if we are going to control at the controller level, we need to mark the controller with Scope="Request" as well, right?
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. If you can comment with "Correct" Or "Incorrect" or elaborate further to those numbered (1~7) statements, Myself and possible those who come later will appreciate more.

I think you want to leave the controller be a singleton.
Here is the spring documentation that explains how to bind beans having different scopes.
This is how you would want to define the wired bean:
<bean id="db" class="DefinedBean" scope="request">
<aop:scoped-proxy/>
</bean>
I have looked up to see how the same can be done with annotations only and I have found this.
Basically, you annotate DefinedBean with :
#Scope(value = "session", proxyMode = ScopedProxyMode.INTERFACES)

Related

Kotlin instance variable is null when accessed by Spring proxied class

I have a service class that is being proxied by Spring, like so:
#Service
#Transactional
open class MyService { ... }
If I remove the open modifier, Spring complains that it needs to proxy the class to apply the #Transactional annotation tweaks.
However, this is causing issues when calling a function on the proxied service, which attempts to access a variable:
#Service
#Transactional
open class MyService {
protected val internalVariable = ...
fun doWork() {
internalVariable.execute() // NullPointerException
}
}
The internalVariable is assigned as part of its declaration, does not have any annotations (like #Autowired, etc.), and works fine when I remove the #Transactional annotation and the requirement for Spring to proxy the class.
Why is this variable null when Spring is proxying/subclassing my service class?
I hit a similar issue and the above comments by Rafal G & Craig Otis helped me-- so I'd like to propose that the following write up be accepted as an answer (or the comments above be changed to an answer and they be accepted).
The solution: open the method/field.
(I hit a similar case where it was a closed method that caused the problem. But whether it is a field/method the solution is the same, and I think the general cause is the same...)
Explanation:
Why this is the solution is more complicated and definitely has to do with Spring AOP, final fields/methods, CGLIB proxies, and how Spring+CGLIB attempts to deal with final methods (or fields).
Spring uses proxies to represent certain objects to handle certain concerns dealt with by Aspect Oriented Programming. This happens with services & controllers (especially when #Transactional or other advice is given that requires AOP solutions).
So a Proxy/Wrapper is needed with these beans, and Spring has 2 choices-- but only CGLIB is available when the parent class is not an interface.
When using CGLIB to proxy classes Spring will create a subclass called
something like myService$EnhancerByCGLIB. This enhanced class will
override some if not all of your business methods to apply
cross-cutting concerns around your actual code.
Here comes the real surprise. This extra subclass does not call super
methods of the base class. Instead it creates second instance of
myService and delegates to it. This means you have two objects now:
your real object and CGLIB enhanced object pointing to (wrapping) it.
From: spring singleton bean fields are not populated
Referenced By: Spring AOP CGLIB proxy's field is null
In Kotlin, classes & methods are final unless explicitly opened.
The magic of how Spring/CGLib when & how chooses to wrap a Bean in an EnhancerByCGLIB with a target delegate (so that it can use finalized methods/fields) I don't know. For my case, however the debugger showed me the 2 different structures. When the parent methods are open, it does not create a delegate (using subclassing instead) and works without NPE. However, when a particular methods is closed then for that closed method Spring/CGLIB uses a wrapped object with delegation to a properly initialized target delegate. For some reason, the actual invocation of the method is done with the context being the wrapper with its uninitialized field values (NULLs), causing NPE. (Had the method on the actual target/delegate been called, there should not have been a problem).
Craig was able to solve the problem by opening the property (not the method)-- which I suspect had a similar effect of allowing Spring/CGLib to either not use a delegate, or to somehow use the delegate correctly.

Custom annotation like #Value

I need to create a means to add a custom annotation like
#Value("${my.property}")
However, in my case I need to get the value from a database rather then a properties file.
Basically I would like to create a bean on container startup that reads in property name value pairs from a database and can then inject these into fields belonging to other beans.
Approach #1:
One way is to create an Aspect, with a point-cut expression that matches any method having this annotation.
Your aspect will then:
Read the property value in the annotation
Look up the required value an inject it into the class.
AOP Kickstart
Here's a guide to getting started with AOP in Spring
http://www.tutorialspoint.com/spring/aop_with_spring.htm
Joinpoint matching
Here's a reference that describes how to create a join-point that matches on annotations: http://eclipse.org/aspectj/doc/next/adk15notebook/annotations-pointcuts-and-advice.html
Approach #2:
Another way is to use a BeanFactoryPostProcessor - this is essentially how a PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer works.
It will look at your bean definitions, and fetch the underlying class.
It will then check for the annotation in the class, using reflection.
It will update the bean definition to include injecting the property as per the value in the annotation.
. . actually I think approach #2 sounds more like what you want - all of the processing happens on "start-up". . . (In actual fact your modifying the bean recipes even before startup). . whereas if you used AOP, you'd be intercepting method invocations, which might be too late for you?
Namespace Handler
If you wanted you could even create your own Spring namespace handler to turn on your post processor in a terse way. Eg:
<myApp:injectFromDb />
as an alternative to:
<bean class="MyDatabaseLookupProcessorImpl etc, etc. />
Update: Approach #3
As of Spring 3.1 there's also the PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer, that will provide most of the plumbing for you, so you can achieve this with less code.
Alternatively you should be able to configure kind of properties repository bean and then use it in SpEL directly in #Value annotation.
Let's say you'd have bean called propertiesRepository in your context that implements following interface:
interface PropertiesRepository {
String getProperty(String propertyName);
}
then on bean where you want to inject values you can use following expression
#Value("#{propertiesRepository.getProperty('my.property')}")
String myProperty;
You can use #Value annotation by injecting database configuration in application environment itself.
I know this is an old question but I didn't find an exact solution. So documenting it here.
I have already answered the same on different forum.
Please refer to this answer for exact solution to your problem.

Constructors in Bean

I have one small issue with creating a new bean. Basically as per request, I get some parameters, which needs to be passed to a bean. Below I am instantiating ControllerService for each request. Rather I would like it to be a bean with scope=protype. So that I get a fresh object for every request.
But then how do i set the 2 properties (kpiName, kpiInput) that I am sending via constructors in the bean??
#Autowired
#Qualifier("serviceManager")
Cleanser serviceManager;
#RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST)
public #ResponseBody
String getKPIResult(#RequestParam("kpiName") String kpiName,
#RequestParam("kpiInput") String kpiInput) {
return serviceManager.checkAndExecute(new ControllerService(kpiName, kpiInput));
}
In situations like this where you're going against the grain of Spring, I'd suggest that perhaps you're doing something in a way that's not considered best practice. Without more context it's hard to see though.
Spring Social uses a request scope bean to embody a repository for a specific user. I've now idea why as it's a horribly inefficient way of doing things, and much less understandable IMHO.
<bean id="connectionRepository" factory-method="createConnectionRepository"
factory-bean="usersConnectionRepository" scope="request">
<constructor-arg
value="#{T(org.springframework.security.core.context.SecurityContextHolder).getContext().getAuthentication().getPrincipal()}" />
<aop:scoped-proxy proxy-target-class="false" />
</bean>
You can see here the use of factory-bean and factory-method to declare a class/method to call when wanting an instance of your class. The constructor argument is passed using SpEL. I'm not quite sure how you'd achieve this with Spring MVC responding to web requests, but I'm fairly sure you could use Spring Integration to pass a message and use SpEL to grab headers/payload form that message to pass to the constructor.
Again though, I'd really question your design pattern here - a more usual SOA idiom is to create services on startup, and have them as stateless as possible from there-on in, rather than create an instance with specific state for each request. Best of luck!
Don't. The Controller as it's intended in Spring MVC is largely derived from the old Java servlet, which should be stateless by specification.
In fact, Controller-objects are hard-cached inside the handler mapping framework and not fetched from the bean context on each request. Setting scope to "prototype" would, effectively, do nothing as the handler (controller) is really only gotten once.

Why is there a need to specify the class in both the xml file and in the getBean() method in Spring

This might be an obvious but I'm having a hard time understanding why we need to define the class of a bean in two places....
From the spring reference manual...
...
<bean id="petStore"
class="org.springframework.samples.jpetstore.services.PetStoreServiceImpl">
<property name="accountDao" ref="accountDao"/>
<property name="itemDao" ref="itemDao"/>
<!-- additional collaborators and configuration for this bean go here -->
</bean>
// retrieve configured instance
PetStoreServiceImpl service = context.getBean("petStore", PetStoreServiceImpl.class);
Shouldn't the xml fine be enough for the container to know the class of petStore?
You can use the following method:
context.getBean("petStore")
However, as this returns a java.lang.Object, you'd still need to have a cast:
PetStoreServiceImpl petstore = (PetStoreServiceImpl)context.getBean("petStore");
However, this could lead to problems if your "petStore" bean is not actually a PetStoreServiceImpl, and to avoid casts (which since the advent of Generics are being seen as a bit dirty), you can use the above method to infer the type (and let's spring check whether the bean you're expecting is really of the right class, so hence you've got:
PetStoreServiceImpl service = context.getBean("petStore", PetStoreServiceImpl.class);
Hope that helps.
EDIT:
Personally, I would avoid calling context.getBean() to lookup methods as it goes against the idea of dependency injection. Really, the component that uses the petstore bean should have a property, which can then be injected with the correct component.
private PetStoreService petStoreService;
// setter omitted for brevity
public void someotherMethod() {
// no need for calling getBean()
petStoreService.somePetstoreMethod();
}
Then you can hook up the beans in the application context:
You could also do away with the configuration via XML and use annotation to wire up your beans:
#Autowired
private PetStoreService petStoreService;
As long as you've got
in your spring context, the "petStore" bean defined in your application context will automatically be injected. If you've got more than one bean with the type "PetStoreService", then you'd need to add a qualifier:
#Autowired
#Qualifier("petStore")
private PetStoreService petStoreService;
There's no requirement to specify the class in the getBean() method. It's just a question of safety. Note there's also a getBean() that takes only a class so that you can just look up beans by type instead of needing to know the name.

How to alter the state of spring session/request scoped beans?

I really like to use spring stereotype annotated beans in spring MVC apps and would like to use Spring scope annotations to the full extend. No more need to fiddle around in HttpServletRequest or it' s session.
One thing isn' t really clear to me though and maybe someone could provide me with some insight or explanation on how to handle this. I have a cache implemented a singleton spring bean. It caches several object of a certain type "Foo". Foo is defined as a session scoped bean through annotations. The intended behavior is that each new session has it' s own "Foo" instance. How do I move the state of one of the cahced "foo" instances to the session scoped Foo (copy, clone or simple assignment)? I would like to achieve the same behavior of storing a Foo instance from the cache into the session available in a HttpSession, but this through the Spring session scoped objects. Goal is to remove all boilerplate code of moving to a HttpSession and retrieving from a HttpSession.
Example of how I define Foo:
#Component
#Scope(value="session",proxyMode=ScopedProxyMode.TARGET_CLASS)
public class Foo extends BaseEntity {
//Some stuff done here
private Long id;
}
Ok, so I solved this by declaring a session bean in which I stored the element selected from the cache... . This was actually easy solved.

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