Check the state validity of a Spring proxied bean without try-catch - spring

Question

I have a bean being created by a service with the following class:
#Configuration
public class AccessManager {
#Bean(name="access", destroyMethod="destroy")
#Scope(value="session", proxyMode=ScopedProxyMode.TARGET_CLASS)
#Autowired
public Access create(HttpServletRequest request) {
System.out.println(request.getRemoteAddr());
return new Access();
}
}
Everything works as expected, except that when the application is starting, this method is being called, probably because I have some other singleton beans that use the Access bean. At the start up there is no request bound to the Thread, and it's expected to get a java.lang.IllegalStateException when trying to access any property of the request parameter.
No problem. The question is, is it possible to check if the underlying HttpServletRequest of the proxy request is null before calling a property that raises the exception?

Answer 1

You probably want to take a look at RequestContextHolder#getRequestAttributes(). That will return null if you're not currently in a context where request scope could be used.
#Configuration
public class AccessManager {
#Bean(name="access", destroyMethod="destroy")
#Scope(value="session", proxyMode=ScopedProxyMode.TARGET_CLASS)
#Autowired
public Access create(HttpServletRequest request) {
if (RequestContextHolder.getRequestAttributes() != null) {
System.out.println(request.getRemoteAddr());
}
return new Access();
}
}

Answer 2

I think the issue here is with separation of concerns. Usually your service layer should not have any dependency on the servlet classes. This is very much a controller/UI concern.
Your service class should be provided with the properties which it needs to do its job. In this case a String. This service method should be called from a controller method which is injected with the servlet request.
Something like the following:
#Controller
public class MyController {
#Autowired
private AccessManager accessManager;
#RequestMapping
public void handleRequest(HttpServletRequest request) {
accessManager.create(request.getRemoteAddr());
}
}
and your service would then look like this:
#Service
public class AccessManager {
public Access create(String remoteAddress) {
return new Access();
}
}
To sum up, anything annotated as #Service shouldn't have access to the Request.