BeanFactory Return Class Rather Than Object

[Gregg Bolinger]

I asked this on the official Spring forums as well so if I get an answer there I will update this thread.

I am using Spring in a desktop application and I have the following class:

public class DataAccessContext<T extends Service> {
 
  private static BeanFactory factory = null;
  
  public static Object getBean(String bean) {
    if (factory == null) {
      factory = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("applicationContext.xml");
 
    }
    return factory.getBean(bean);
  }
}

To use this I do the following:

SomeService service = (SomeService)DataAccessContext.getBean("someService");

Is there anyway to genericize this so that I don't have to cast? Obviously casting is not a big deal. I'm just looking around for minor improvements to my code.

Thanks.

[Sergey Chunayev]

You can try to do a trick with templates in your DataAccessContext:

public static <E> E getBean(String bean) {
if (factory == null) {
factory = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("applicationContext.xml");
 
}
return (E)factory.getBean(bean);
}    

At least, with this solution you don't need casting when invoke this method.

[Gregg Bolinger]

Sergey,

Thanks. That is pretty slick. As you said, at least it saves me the cast. One less thing I have to type. Thanks again.