Question

Using Spring mvc-3. I am writing a custom Converter which needs access to other Converters registered to a ConversionService.

How can I accomplish this? I tried writing my custom converter as:

  class CustomConverter<X, Y>{
     @Autowired ConversionService service;
     //+getter & setters of service

     public Y convert(X input){
          // I need access to service to lookup simple conversions such as
          // String array to Long array etc..

     }

  }

And I registered my custom converter via applicationContext.xml

  <bean id="conversionService" class="org.springframework.context.support.ConversionServiceFactoryBean">
     <property name = "converters">
         <list>
            <bean class="CustomConverter"/>
         </list>
     </property>
  </bean>

However, spring refuses to inject service into my CustomConverter(its always null). How can I accomplish this?

Thank you!

Answer 1

I have used something like this recently to solve this problem.
Use a custom factory :

public class MyConversionServiceFactoryBean extends ConversionServiceFactoryBean {

    @Override
    public void afterPropertiesSet() {
        super.afterPropertiesSet();
        ConversionService conversionService = getObject();
        ConverterRegistry registry = (ConverterRegistry) conversionService;
        // register converters that need a nested conversion service
        registry.addConverter(new MyCustomConverter(conversionService));
    }
}

which is declared like this :

<bean id="conversionService"
    class="com.company.MyConversionServiceFactoryBean">
    <property name="converters">
        <list>
            ... declare standard converters here ...
        </list>
    </property>
</bean>