FactoryBeans and the annotation-based configuration in Spring 3.0

Question

Spring provides the FactoryBean interface to allow non-trivial initialisation of beans. The framework provides many implementations of factory beans and -- when

Answer 1

I think that this is best solved when you rely on auto-wiring. If you are using Java configuration for the beans, this would like:

@Bean
MyFactoryBean myFactory()
{ 
    // this is a spring FactoryBean for MyBean
    // i.e. something that implements FactoryBean
    return new MyFactoryBean();
}

@Bean
MyOtherBean myOther(final MyBean myBean)
{
    return new MyOtherBean(myBean);
}

So Spring will inject for us the MyBean instance returned by the myFactory().getObject() as it does with XML configuration.

This should also work if you are using @Inject/@Autowire in your @Component/@Service etc classes.