How to do Spring Lookup Method Injection with Annotations?

Question

Is there any way to use Lookup Method Injection using annotations?

Given the following class:

@Service public abstract class A {       protected abstract createB();  } 

In order to get it to work I have to declare in spring applicationContext.xml the following:

<bean id="b" class="com.xyz.B"> </bean>  <bean id="a" class="com.xyz.A">     <lookup-method name="createB" bean="b"/> </bean> 

Even though I am using <context:component-scan base> I have to declare it also in the XML. Not a good approach I think.

How to do it with annotations?

Answer 1

It is possible to use javax.inject.Provider. All thanks go to Phil Webb.

public class MySingleton {    @Autowired   private Provider<MyPrototype> myPrototype;    public void operation() {     MyPrototype instance = myPrototype.get();     // do something with the instance   }  } 

Answer 2

It is also possible with org.springframework.beans.factory.ObjectFactory if you want to keep up with Spring API

public class MySingleton {    @Autowired   private ObjectFactory<MyPrototype> myPrototypeFactory;    public void operation() {     MyPrototype instance = myPrototypeFactory.getObject();     // do something with the instance   } } 

you can read more in the documentation.