Question

I have some code along the lines of this:

@EJB
protected SomeService service;

// Somewhere in a method
service.getClass().getSimpleName();

What I was looking for was the name of the EJB class, which in this case should have been something along the lines of SomeServiceBean. What I get instead, however, is for example $Proxy2128.

Is there a way I can get the name of the actual EJB class that I implemented, instead of the proxy class?

Think we’re using ejb 3.0 with geronimo or something like that.

Answer 1

It’s probably not a good idea to do this. I suspect you are better off doing something like adding a method to the bean which returns a type string that is under your control. The simplest such implementation

public String getSimpleClassName() {
    return getClass().getSimpleName();
}

That is safe in the face proxying. It is not safe in the face of dynamic subclassing, but i don’t know of any EJB implementations that do that (although there are certainly JPA implementations which do that).

A slightly more complicated, but fundamentally more straightforward, implementation would be to define:

public abstract String getSimpleClassName();

in a base class (or interface), and then writing:

public String getSimpleClassName() {
    return SomeService.class.getSimpleName();
}

In SomeService. That is cast-iron guaranteed to work.

Alternatively, if you are working with no-interface views, and don’t mind reflection, and the risk of your system bursting into flames at any moment, then in the calling code, you can do:

private String findBeanClassName(Object beanRef) {
    return findBeanClass(beanRef).getSimpleName();
}

private Class<?> findBeanClass(Object beanRef) {
    return findAncestorWithAnnotation(beanRef.getClass(), Stateless.class);
}

private Class<?> findAncestorWithAnnotation(Class<?> cl, Class<? extends Annotation> annotation) {
    while ((cl != null) && !cl.isAnnotationPresent(annotation)) {
        cl = cl.getSuperclass();
    }
    return cl;
}

That ought to work. Obviously, you’d need to use a different annotation class if you are using a stateful bean.