OSGi bundle config without managed service or factory - osgi

Question

Neil Bartlett's article http://njbartlett.name/2010/07/19/factory-components-in-ds.html shows the way to set config for bundles without using managed service or managed factory.
Search for examples of actually setting the config for this method either point to felix file install or to examples using managed service.
In answer to the question OSGi Declarative Services vs. ManagedService for configuring service? Neil Bartlett states "Note that DS never actually creates a ManagedService or ManagedServiceFactory for your component. It works by listening to Config Admin with a ConfigurationListener. However the internal details are unimportant... simply create configs with PID/factoryPID matching the component.name and it "just works"
I think the technique involves placing a pid entry in the config dictionary but I have no idea how this would be used with config admin.
A guide or simple example of how to set the configuration using this method would be very helpful.

Answer 1

I know it is some time since the question was asked, but I ran into the same problem when trying to create a ManagedServiceFactory-like Component with Declarative Services. So I want to share my solution. Maybe others find it useful. My problem was like this:
I have defined a component (annotated with #Component). On each configuration I add using felix file-install, I want an instance of that component created with the given configuration and activated immediately.
First I tried messing with the properties factory and configurationPid of #Component, but all that is not needed and even returns wrong results (felix annotation processor in the maven plugin seems to have a bug when handling configurationPid).
The solution I came up with:
package com.example.my;
#Component(
name = MyExampleComponent.FACTORY_PID,
configurationPolicy = ConfigurationPolicy.REQUIRE,
property = {"abc=", "exampleProp="}
)
public class MyExampleComponent {
public static final String FACTORY_PID = "com.example.my.component";
#Activate
protected void activate(BundleContext context, Map<String,Object> map) {
// ...
}
}
Then I created a config file for felix file-install named com.example.my.component-test1.cfg:
abc = Hello World
exampleProp = 123
When deployed this automatically creates a folder structure in the configuration folder like com/example/my/component containing the files:
factory.config
contents:
factory.pid="com.example.my.component"
factory.pidList=[ \
"com.example.my.component.525ca4fb-2d43-46f3-b912-8765f639c46f", \
]
.
525ca4fb-2d43-46f3-b912-8765f639c46f.config
contents:
abc="Hello World"
exampleProp="123"
felix.fileinstall.filename="file:/..._.cfg"
service.factoryPid="com.example.my.component"
service.pid="com.example.my.component.525ca4fb-2d43-46f3-b912-8765f639c46f"
The 525ca4fb-2d43-46f3-b912-8765f639c46f seems to be some randomly generated ID (possibly UUID).