Question

When I call getBean(name) on a BeanFactory, I get back an instance of the bean defined in the application context. However, when I call getBean(name) again (with the same name,) I get the same instance of the bean back. I understand how this would be desirable in some (many?) cases, but how do I tell the BeanFactory to give me a new instance?

Example Spring configuration (tersely…I’ve left out some verbosity, but this should get the point across):

<beans>    <bean id='beanA' class='misc.BeanClass'/> </beans> 

Example Java:

for(int i = 0;i++;i<=1) {     ApplicationContext context = ClassPathXmlApplicationContext('context.xml');     Object o = context.getBean('beanA');      System.out.println(o.toString());  // Note: misc.BeanA does not implement                                         // toString(), so this will display the OOID                                        // so that we can tell if it's the same                                        // instance } 

When I run this, I get something like:

misc.BeanClass@139894 misc.BeanClass@139894 

Note that both have the same OOID…so these are the same instances…but I wanted different instances.

Answer 1

You need to tell spring that you want a prototype bean rather than a singleton bean

<bean id='beanA' class='misc.BeanClass' scope='prototype'/> 

This will get you a new instance with each request.