Register converters and converterFactories with annotations in Spring 3

Question

First of all ... Im relatively new in Spring, I use spring 3.x and I DONT LIKE SPRING\'S XML CONFIGURATION FILES ... I dont want for every refactoring I do, to run into XML

Answer 1

Spring does not have annotation support for Converters, but you can build your own.

All you need is an custom qualifier annotation (lets call it @AutoRegistered ) and some kind of Converter/Formatter Registrar (implements FormatterRegistrar) that registers all the Spring Beans with this @AutoRegistered annotation (and some xml to register this registration service).

Then you need to annotate your conveter with this annotation (and some other annotation to make it a spring bean) and that is all.

@AutoRegistered annotation:

@Target({ ElementType.FIELD, ElementType.PARAMETER, ElementType.TYPE })
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Qualifier
public @interface AutoRegistered {}

Registration service:

import java.util.List;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.core.convert.converter.Converter;
import org.springframework.format.FormatterRegistrar;
import org.springframework.format.FormatterRegistry;

public class AutoregisterFormatterRegistrar implements FormatterRegistrar {

    /**
     * All {@link Converter} Beans with {@link AutoRegistered} annotation.
     * If spring does not find any matching bean, then the List is {@code null}!.
     */
    @Autowired(required = false)
    @AutoRegistered
    private List<Converter<?, ?>> autoRegisteredConverters;


    @Override
    public void registerFormatters(final FormatterRegistry registry) {
        if (this.autoRegisteredConverters != null) {
            for (Converter<?, ?> converter : this.autoRegisteredConverters) {
                registry.addConverter(converter);
            }
        }
    }
}

XML configuration for the registrar:

<bean id="applicationConversionService"
    class="org.springframework.format.support.FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean">
    <property name="formatterRegistrars">
        <set>
            <bean
                class="AutoregisterFormatterRegistrar"
                autowire="byType" />
        </set>
    </property>
</bean>

BTW for your enum converter you do not need a ConversionFactory - a simple converter is enough:

@AutoRegistered
@Component
public class EnumConverter implements Converter<Enum<?>, String> {

    /** Use the same immutable value instead of creating an new array every time. */
    private static final Object[] NO_PARAM = new Object[0];

    /** The prefix of all message codes. */
    private static final String PREFIX = "label_";

    /** The separator in the message code, between different packages
        as well as between package can class. */
    private static final String PACKAGE_SEPARATOR = "_";

    /** The separator in the message code, between the class name
        and the enum case name. */
    private static final String ENUM_CASE_SEPARATOR = "_";

    /** The message source. */
    private MessageSource messageSource;

    @Autowired
    public EnumConverter(final MessageSource messageSource) {
        if (messageSource == null) {
            throw new RuntimeException("messageSource must not be null");
        }

        this.messageSource = messageSource;
    }

    @Override
    public String convert(final Enum<?> source) {
        if (source != null) {
            String enumValueName = source.name();
            String code = PREFIX + source.getClass().getName().toLowerCase().
                  replace(".", PACKAGE_SEPARATOR)
            + ENUM_CASE_SEPARATOR + enumValueName.toLowerCase();

            String message = messageSource.getMessage(code, NO_PARAM, enumValueName,
                                                  LocaleContextHolder.getLocale());

             return message;
         } else {
            return "";
         }
     }   
}