Question

I have a problem with my Spring Classes. I need to get all Beans of a type inside a Configuration class to give them to a another class.

The Problem now is, that I cant do that unless I startup a ApplicationContext but that doesn’t work, because the Config class I call up uses the config class I’m calling from, so I get a endless loop…

as example:

@Configuration
@Import(Calling.class)
public class MyConfig{
@Bean
public ExampleClass aBean(){
...
return aObject;
}
}

---

@Configuration
@Import(MyConfig.class)
public class Calling{

@Bean
public Foo anotherBean(){
ConfigurableApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(myConfig.class);
ctx.getBeansOfType(ExampleClass.class);
return aObject;
}
}

Is there any functionality or pattern I can use to get these Beans?

Answer 1

With @Configuration, you need to be very careful not to “pull” beans from the context, since you often get these infinite loops.

Try this instead:

@Configuration
@Import(Calling.class)
public class MyConfig {
   @Bean
   public ExampleClass aBean() {
      ...
      return aObject;
   }
}

---

@Configuration
public class Calling {

   private @Autowired List<ExampleClass> exampleBeans;

   @Bean
   public Foo anotherBean() {
      return aObject;
   }
}

This declarative approach should hopefully get around the infinite loop problem.

Note also, you should avoid cyclic @Import. Do it in one direction only, as in the above example.