Neo4jConfiguration has circular references - spring-boot

Question

I'm using spring-data-neo4j in a spring-boot application. I did the configuration as recommended in spring.io guides and many other places by inheriting Neo4jConfiguration class. This works when the database location is hardcoded in the provided examples. However when I want to use a placeholder for retrieving the database location from a property file it's not retrieved and I get null. Here's the code
#Configuration
#EnableNeo4jRepositories(basePackageClasses = {MyRepository.class})
public class Neo4jConfig extends Neo4jConfiguration {
#Value("${neo4j.location}")
private String neo4jDatabaseLocation;
#Bean
public GraphDatabaseService graphDatabaseService() {
return new GraphDatabaseFactory()
.newEmbeddedDatabase(neo4jDatabaseLocation);
}
...
This normally works in any other config class but not in this one because of the Neo4jConfiguration class has some several methods marked with #Autowired. This causes circular reference and it's not initialized properly. This can be seen in the logs:
2014-09-06 20:59:45.168 DEBUG 4665 --- [ main] o.s.b.f.annotation.InjectionMetadata : Registered injected element on class [c.m.f.Neo4jConfig$$EnhancerBySpringCGLIB$$7165d752]: AutowiredFieldElement for private javax.validation.Validator org.springframework.data.neo4j.config.Neo4jConfiguration.validator
2014-09-06 20:59:45.169 DEBUG 4665 --- [ main] o.s.b.f.annotation.InjectionMetadata : Registered injected element on class [c.m.f.Neo4jConfig$$EnhancerBySpringCGLIB$$7165d752]: AutowiredMethodElement for public void org.springframework.data.neo4j.config.Neo4jConfiguration.setConversionService(org.springframework.core.convert.ConversionService)
2014-09-06 20:59:45.169 DEBUG 4665 --- [ main] o.s.b.f.annotation.InjectionMetadata : Registered injected element on class [c.m.f.Neo4jConfig$$EnhancerBySpringCGLIB$$7165d752]: AutowiredMethodElement for public void org.springframework.data.neo4j.config.Neo4jConfiguration.setGraphDatabaseService(org.neo4j.graphdb.GraphDatabaseService)
2014-09-06 20:59:45.169 DEBUG 4665 --- [ main] o.s.b.f.annotation.InjectionMetadata : Registered injected element on class [c.m.f.Neo4jConfig$$EnhancerBySpringCGLIB$$7165d752]: AutowiredFieldElement for private java.lang.String c.m.f.Neo4jConfig.neo4jDatabaseLocation
2014-09-06 20:59:45.169 DEBUG 4665 --- [ main] o.s.b.f.s.DefaultListableBeanFactory : Eagerly caching bean 'c.m.f.Neo4jConfig' to allow for resolving potential circular references
2014-09-06 20:59:45.171 DEBUG 4665 --- [ main] o.s.b.f.annotation.InjectionMetadata : Processing injected method of bean 'c.m.f.Neo4jConfig': AutowiredFieldElement for private javax.validation.Validator org.springframework.data.neo4j.config.Neo4jConfiguration.validator
2014-09-06 20:59:45.182 DEBUG 4665 --- [ main] o.s.b.f.annotation.InjectionMetadata : Processing injected method of bean 'c.m.f.Neo4jConfig': AutowiredMethodElement for public void org.springframework.data.neo4j.config.Neo4jConfiguration.setConversionService(org.springframework.core.convert.ConversionService)
2014-09-06 20:59:45.183 DEBUG 4665 --- [ main] o.s.b.f.annotation.InjectionMetadata : Processing injected method of bean 'c.m.f.Neo4jConfig': AutowiredMethodElement for public void org.springframework.data.neo4j.config.Neo4jConfiguration.setGraphDatabaseService(org.neo4j.graphdb.GraphDatabaseService)
2014-09-06 20:59:45.184 DEBUG 4665 --- [ main] o.s.b.f.s.DefaultListableBeanFactory : Creating shared instance of singleton bean 'graphDatabaseService'
2014-09-06 20:59:45.184 DEBUG 4665 --- [ main] o.s.b.f.s.DefaultListableBeanFactory : Creating instance of bean 'graphDatabaseService'
2014-09-06 20:59:45.185 DEBUG 4665 --- [ main] o.s.b.f.s.DefaultListableBeanFactory : Returning cached instance of singleton bean 'org.springframework.transaction.config.internalTransactionAdvisor'
2014-09-06 20:59:45.185 DEBUG 4665 --- [ main] o.s.b.f.s.DefaultListableBeanFactory : Returning cached instance of singleton bean 'org.springframework.transaction.config.internalTransactionAdvisor'
2014-09-06 20:59:45.188 DEBUG 4665 --- [ main] o.s.b.f.s.DefaultListableBeanFactory : Returning eagerly cached instance of singleton bean 'c.m.f.Neo4jConfig' that is not fully initialized yet - a consequence of a circular reference
As you can see what I'm trying to achieve here is not to hardcode the database location. Is there any workaround for this circular reference problem? Or maybe any other way of configuring it? As this is a spring-boot application, I don't have any Xml configuration and if it's possible I want to keep it that way.

Answer 1

Have you tried passing in the neo4jDatabaseLocation as a parameter:
#Configuration
#EnableNeo4jRepositories(basePackageClasses = {MyRepository.class})
public class Neo4jConfig extends Neo4jConfiguration {
#Bean
public GraphDatabaseService graphDatabaseService(#Value("${neo4j.location}") String neo4jDatabaseLocation) {
return new GraphDatabaseFactory()
.newEmbeddedDatabase(neo4jDatabaseLocation);
}
...
}

Answer 2

Proposed suggestions did not work for the spring framework version I am using. As a workaround, I defined the GraphDatabaseService bean in another configuration file which does not extend Neo4jConfiguration. Note that this Neo4jConfig class is needed regardless.