Question

Suppose I have a JSF bean with @PostConstruct method.
I would like to know which entity referenced the current bean and caused its initialization.

@PostConstruct
public void init() {
  logger.info(... Who initialized me? ...);
}

Answer 1

This information is not available in the JSF context. If you’re using Mojarra, you’d need to run the debugger and put a breakpoint on ManagedBeanBuilder#bake() method.

Or if you need this information during runtime for some unobvious reason, then you’d need to let the caller set itself in the setter of the @ManagedProperty referencing the bean.

@ManagedBean
@RequestScoped
public class Parent {

    @ManagedProperty("#{child}")
    private Child child;

    public void setChild(Child child) {
        this.child = child;
        this.child.setParent(this);
    }

    // ...
}

then you can gather this information in the setParent() method.

public void setParent(Object parent) {
    logger.info(parent + " has initialized me");
}