[[beans-factory-method-injection]]
= Method Injection

In most application scenarios, most beans in the container are
xref:core/beans/factory-scopes.adoc#beans-factory-scopes-singleton[singletons]. When a singleton bean needs to
collaborate with another singleton bean or a non-singleton bean needs to collaborate
with another non-singleton bean, you typically handle the dependency by defining one
bean as a property of the other. A problem arises when the bean lifecycles are
different. Suppose singleton bean A needs to use non-singleton (prototype) bean B,
perhaps on each method invocation on A. The container creates the singleton bean A only
once, and thus only gets one opportunity to set the properties. The container cannot
provide bean A with a new instance of bean B every time one is needed.

A solution is to forego some inversion of control. You can xref:core/beans/factory-nature.adoc#beans-factory-aware[make bean A aware of the container]
 by implementing the `ApplicationContextAware` interface,
and by xref:core/beans/basics.adoc#beans-factory-client[making a `getBean("B")` call to the container] ask for (a
typically new) bean B instance every time bean A needs it. The following example
shows this approach:

[tabs]
======
Java::
+
[source,java,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes",role="primary",chomp="-packages",fold="none"]
----
	package fiona.apple;

	// Spring-API imports
	import org.springframework.beans.BeansException;
	import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
	import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextAware;

	/**
	 * A class that uses a stateful Command-style class to perform
	 * some processing.
	 */
	public class CommandManager implements ApplicationContextAware {

		private ApplicationContext applicationContext;

		public Object process(Map commandState) {
			// grab a new instance of the appropriate Command
			Command command = createCommand();
			// set the state on the (hopefully brand new) Command instance
			command.setState(commandState);
			return command.execute();
		}

		protected Command createCommand() {
			// notice the Spring API dependency!
			return this.applicationContext.getBean("command", Command.class);
		}

		public void setApplicationContext(
				ApplicationContext applicationContext) throws BeansException {
			this.applicationContext = applicationContext;
		}
	}
----

Kotlin::
+
[source,kotlin,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes",role="secondary",chomp="-packages",fold="none"]
----
	package fiona.apple

	// Spring-API imports
	import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext
	import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextAware

	// A class that uses a stateful Command-style class to perform
	// some processing.
	class CommandManager : ApplicationContextAware {

		private lateinit var applicationContext: ApplicationContext

		fun process(commandState: Map<*, *>): Any {
			// grab a new instance of the appropriate Command
			val command = createCommand()
			// set the state on the (hopefully brand new) Command instance
			command.state = commandState
			return command.execute()
		}

		// notice the Spring API dependency!
		protected fun createCommand() =
				applicationContext.getBean("command", Command::class.java)

		override fun setApplicationContext(applicationContext: ApplicationContext) {
			this.applicationContext = applicationContext
		}
	}
----
======

The preceding is not desirable, because the business code is aware of and coupled to the
Spring Framework. Method Injection, a somewhat advanced feature of the Spring IoC
container, lets you handle this use case cleanly.

****
You can read more about the motivation for Method Injection in
{spring-site-blog}/2004/08/06/method-injection/[this blog entry].
****



[[beans-factory-lookup-method-injection]]
== Lookup Method Injection

Lookup method injection is the ability of the container to override methods on
container-managed beans and return the lookup result for another named bean in the
container. The lookup typically involves a prototype bean, as in the scenario described
in xref:core/beans/dependencies/factory-method-injection.adoc[the preceding section]. The Spring Framework
implements this method injection by using bytecode generation from the CGLIB library to
dynamically generate a subclass that overrides the method.

[NOTE]
====
* For this dynamic subclassing to work, the class that the Spring bean container
  subclasses cannot be `final`, and the method to be overridden cannot be `final`, either.
* Unit-testing a class that has an `abstract` method requires you to subclass the class
  yourself and to supply a stub implementation of the `abstract` method.
* Concrete methods are also necessary for component scanning, which requires concrete
  classes to pick up.
* A further key limitation is that lookup methods do not work with factory methods and
  in particular not with `@Bean` methods in configuration classes, since, in that case,
  the container is not in charge of creating the instance and therefore cannot create
  a runtime-generated subclass on the fly.
====

In the case of the `CommandManager` class in the previous code snippet, the
Spring container dynamically overrides the implementation of the `createCommand()`
method. The `CommandManager` class does not have any Spring dependencies, as
the reworked example shows:

[tabs]
======
Java::
+
[source,java,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes",role="primary",chomp="-packages",fold="none"]
----
	package fiona.apple;

	// no more Spring imports!

	public abstract class CommandManager {

		public Object process(Object commandState) {
			// grab a new instance of the appropriate Command interface
			Command command = createCommand();
			// set the state on the (hopefully brand new) Command instance
			command.setState(commandState);
			return command.execute();
		}

		// okay... but where is the implementation of this method?
		protected abstract Command createCommand();
	}
----

Kotlin::
+
[source,kotlin,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes",role="secondary",chomp="-packages",fold="none"]
----
	package fiona.apple

	// no more Spring imports!

	abstract class CommandManager {

		fun process(commandState: Any): Any {
			// grab a new instance of the appropriate Command interface
			val command = createCommand()
			// set the state on the (hopefully brand new) Command instance
			command.state = commandState
			return command.execute()
		}

		// okay... but where is the implementation of this method?
		protected abstract fun createCommand(): Command
	}
----
======

In the client class that contains the method to be injected (the `CommandManager` in this
case), the method to be injected requires a signature of the following form:

[source,xml,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes"]
----
	<public|protected> [abstract] <return-type> theMethodName(no-arguments);
----

If the method is `abstract`, the dynamically-generated subclass implements the method.
Otherwise, the dynamically-generated subclass overrides the concrete method defined in
the original class. Consider the following example:

[source,xml,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes"]
----
	<!-- a stateful bean deployed as a prototype (non-singleton) -->
	<bean id="myCommand" class="fiona.apple.AsyncCommand" scope="prototype">
		<!-- inject dependencies here as required -->
	</bean>

	<!-- commandProcessor uses statefulCommandHelper -->
	<bean id="commandManager" class="fiona.apple.CommandManager">
		<lookup-method name="createCommand" bean="myCommand"/>
	</bean>
----

The bean identified as `commandManager` calls its own `createCommand()` method
whenever it needs a new instance of the `myCommand` bean. You must be careful to deploy
the `myCommand` bean as a prototype if that is actually what is needed. If it is
a xref:core/beans/factory-scopes.adoc#beans-factory-scopes-singleton[singleton], the same instance of the `myCommand`
bean is returned each time.

Alternatively, within the annotation-based component model, you can declare a lookup
method through the `@Lookup` annotation, as the following example shows:

[tabs]
======
Java::
+
[source,java,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes",role="primary"]
----
	public abstract class CommandManager {

		public Object process(Object commandState) {
			Command command = createCommand();
			command.setState(commandState);
			return command.execute();
		}

		@Lookup("myCommand")
		protected abstract Command createCommand();
	}
----

Kotlin::
+
[source,kotlin,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes",role="secondary"]
----
	abstract class CommandManager {

		fun process(commandState: Any): Any {
			val command = createCommand()
			command.state = commandState
			return command.execute()
		}

		@Lookup("myCommand")
		protected abstract fun createCommand(): Command
	}
----
======

Or, more idiomatically, you can rely on the target bean getting resolved against the
declared return type of the lookup method:

[tabs]
======
Java::
+
[source,java,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes",role="primary"]
----
	public abstract class CommandManager {

		public Object process(Object commandState) {
			Command command = createCommand();
			command.setState(commandState);
			return command.execute();
		}

		@Lookup
		protected abstract Command createCommand();
	}
----

Kotlin::
+
[source,kotlin,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes",role="secondary"]
----
	abstract class CommandManager {

		fun process(commandState: Any): Any {
			val command = createCommand()
			command.state = commandState
			return command.execute()
		}

		@Lookup
		protected abstract fun createCommand(): Command
	}
----
======

Note that you should typically declare such annotated lookup methods with a concrete
stub implementation, in order for them to be compatible with Spring's component
scanning rules where abstract classes get ignored by default. This limitation does not
apply to explicitly registered or explicitly imported bean classes.

[TIP]
====
Another way of accessing differently scoped target beans is an `ObjectFactory`/
`Provider` injection point. See xref:core/beans/factory-scopes.adoc#beans-factory-scopes-other-injection[Scoped Beans as Dependencies].

You may also find the `ServiceLocatorFactoryBean` (in the
`org.springframework.beans.factory.config` package) to be useful.
====



[[beans-factory-arbitrary-method-replacement]]
== Arbitrary Method Replacement

A less useful form of method injection than lookup method injection is the ability to
replace arbitrary methods in a managed bean with another method implementation. You
can safely skip the rest of this section until you actually need this functionality.

With XML-based configuration metadata, you can use the `replaced-method` element to
replace an existing method implementation with another, for a deployed bean. Consider
the following class, which has a method called `computeValue` that we want to override:

[tabs]
======
Java::
+
[source,java,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes",role="primary"]
----
	public class MyValueCalculator {

		public String computeValue(String input) {
			// some real code...
		}

		// some other methods...
	}
----

Kotlin::
+
[source,kotlin,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes",role="secondary"]
----
	class MyValueCalculator {

		fun computeValue(input: String): String {
			// some real code...
		}

		// some other methods...
	}
----
======

A class that implements the `org.springframework.beans.factory.support.MethodReplacer`
interface provides the new method definition, as the following example shows:

[tabs]
======
Java::
+
[source,java,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes",role="primary"]
----
	/**
	 * meant to be used to override the existing computeValue(String)
	 * implementation in MyValueCalculator
	 */
	public class ReplacementComputeValue implements MethodReplacer {

		public Object reimplement(Object o, Method m, Object[] args) throws Throwable {
			// get the input value, work with it, and return a computed result
			String input = (String) args[0];
			...
			return ...;
		}
	}
----

Kotlin::
+
[source,kotlin,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes",role="secondary"]
----
	/**
	 * meant to be used to override the existing computeValue(String)
	 * implementation in MyValueCalculator
	 */
	class ReplacementComputeValue : MethodReplacer {

		override fun reimplement(obj: Any, method: Method, args: Array<out Any>): Any {
			// get the input value, work with it, and return a computed result
			val input = args[0] as String;
			...
			return ...;
		}
	}
----
======



The bean definition to deploy the original class and specify the method override would
resemble the following example:

[source,xml,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes"]
----
	<bean id="myValueCalculator" class="x.y.z.MyValueCalculator">
		<!-- arbitrary method replacement -->
		<replaced-method name="computeValue" replacer="replacementComputeValue">
			<arg-type>String</arg-type>
		</replaced-method>
	</bean>

	<bean id="replacementComputeValue" class="a.b.c.ReplacementComputeValue"/>
----

You can use one or more `<arg-type/>` elements within the `<replaced-method/>`
element to indicate the method signature of the method being overridden. The signature
for the arguments is necessary only if the method is overloaded and multiple variants
exist within the class. For convenience, the type string for an argument may be a
substring of the fully qualified type name. For example, the following all match
`java.lang.String`:

[source,java,indent=0,subs="verbatim,quotes"]
----
	java.lang.String
	String
	Str
----

Because the number of arguments is often enough to distinguish between each possible
choice, this shortcut can save a lot of typing, by letting you type only the
shortest string that matches an argument type.



