Using Guice without a main method

Question

I'm creating a library that will be included as a jar, so it won't contain a main method. I'm wondering what is the best practice for bootstrapping Guice in this case. I have one top level singleton.

public class TestManager
{
    private TestManager()
    {
    }

    public static TestManager getInstance()
    {
        // construct and return singleton
    }

    public void createSomeObjects()
    {
    }

}

Where should I bootstrap Guice? I was thinking that in the constructor that I could call Guice.createInjector(new Module()); but it wouldn't inject any of the objects created in createSomeObjects().

Is there a common way to do this when you don't have a main method()?

Cheers.

Answer 1

Much like logging configurations, if this is a true library then your options are pretty much this:

• Tell the library user that they are responsible for bootstrapping Guice themselves.
• Provide a library initialization method that takes care of bootstrapping Guice if they want to use your library

Trying to make the library super-smart to do self-configuration often ends up with somewhat inflexible, hard to test class hierarchies.