Programmatically create SessionFactory in Spring

Question

Suppose I programmatically create a AnnotationSessionFactoryBean and set the various properties correctly. How can I then extract the Hibernate SessionFactory, since all methods that pertain to creating the SessionFactory are protected?

AnnotationSessionFactoryBean sessionFactoryBean = new AnnotationSessionFactoryBean();
SessionFactory sessionFactory = sessionFactoryBean.newSessionFactory(); // Protected!!

Answer 1

Use getObject(), after calling afterPropertiesSet():

sessionFactoryBean.afterPropertiesSet();
SessionFactory sessionFactory = sessionFactoryBean.getObject();

(AnnotationSessionFactoryBean implements FactoryBean<SessionFactory>)

Be careful, though: by doing this, it becomes your responsibility to make sure the SessionFactory is closed when you're finished with it.