JavaEE CDI in Weld: Generic Events? - events

Question

I have an idea for a specific event handling based on generics, but seems like Weld can't handle them. I asked google but couldn't find an alternative CDI extension for this.
Question: is there a CDI extension, that can handle event propagation of generic-typed events?
In the following the explicit problem I have.
I have three general events, EntityCreated, EntityChanged and EntityDeleted. The base class for them is defined like this:
public abstract class DatabaseEvent<TargetType> {
public TargetType target;
public DatabaseEvent(TargetType target) {
this.target = target;
}
}
The events then are simple inherited classes:
public class EntityCreatedEvent<TargetType> extends DatabaseEvent<TargetType> {
public EntityCreatedEvent(TargetType target) {
super(target);
}
}
I fire them like this:
public abstract class MyHome<EntityType> {
private EntityType entity;
#Inject
Event<EntityCreatedEvent<EntityType>> entityCreatedEvent;
public void fireCreatedEvent() {
EntityCreatedEvent<EntityType> payload = new EntityCreatedEvent<EntityType>(entity);
entityCreatedEvent.fire(payload);
}
}
I want to observe them like this:
public void handleProjectCreated(#Observes EntityCreatedEvent<Project> event) { ... }
When launching the server Weld tells me it can't handle generic-typed events. The CDI-way of doing things would be to use additional qualifiers instead of the generics to distiguish them, e.g.:
public void handleProjectCreated(#Observes #ProjectEvent EntityCreatedEvent event) { ... }
However, I fire the events from that MyHome base class, where I can't just fire with the #ProjectEvent: it might not be a project but another type.
My solution up to now is to skip that typing altogether and handle them like this:
public void handleProjectCreated(#Observes EntityCreatedEvent event) {
if(event.target instanceof Project) { ... }
}
This solution is okay, but not perfect.

Answer 1

I guess you can do this with dinamically binding qualifier members. This is what your code would look like:
public abstract class MyHome {
private EntityType entity;
#Inject
Event<EntityCreatedEvent> entityCreatedEvent;
public void fireCreatedEvent() {
entityCreatedEvent.select(getTypeBinding()).fire(new EntityCreatedEvent(entity));
}
private TypeBinding getTypeBinding() {
return new TypeBinding() {
public Class<? extends EntityType> value() {return entity.getClass();}
};
}
#Qualifier
#Target({ PARAMETER, FIELD })
#Retention(RUNTIME)
public #interface EntityTypeQualifier {
Class<? extends EntityType> value();
}
public abstract class TypeBinding extends AnnotationLiteral<EntityTypeQualifier> implements EntityTypeQualifier {}
//Observers
public void handleEntityType1Created(#Observes #EntityTypeQualifier(EntityType1.class) EntityCreatedEvent event) {}
public void handleEntityType2Created(#Observes #EntityTypeQualifier(EntityType2.class) EntityCreatedEvent event) {}

Answer 2

As this CDI issue points it is not possible to fire an without having the type of T at runtime.
But, if you have the type of T (i.e. you have an instance) you can use the Event as an Instance, and select the event to be fired using a dynamic type literal.