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How to Inject all subclasses of a specific class with no common interface?

Question:
In order to Inject all subclasses of a superclass with no common interface, I created an interface tightly-coupled to said superclass, that every "properly" written subclass is supposed to implement.
This works, but seems insane. Was there a better way?
A simple cast do not work, as the Instance holds only a proxy that do not resolves to any real subclass of the interface when called. This results in a ClassCastException.
Some context:
I was recently tasked to provide framework code for an application. In this application, several data transfer objects are mapping from and to service level POJOs, but their mappings are not always trivial. Dozer is used to do most of the work and to avoid boilerplate code.
In the specific cases requiring explicit mapping instructions, the current recommendation with Dozer is to use the API driven mapping. All the BeanMappingBuilder subclasses, defining the mappings, should be added to the Dozer mapper upon initialisation.
In order to keep all the work needed to add a new BeanMappingBuilder in one place, I came with a convoluted use of dependancy injection that will automatically add it to the Dozer mapper, despite it having no common interface, only a common superclass with the others.
Some code:
The interface:
#Local
public interface DtoBeanMappingBuilder {
BeanMappingBuilder get();
}
Subclass example:
#Stateless
public class SomeDtoMappingBuilder extends BeanMappingBuilder implements DtoBeanMappingBuilder {
#Override
public BeanMappingBuilder get() {
return this;
}
#Override
protected void configure() {
mapping(
// Some mapping...
);
}
}
Mapper with injection point:
#Singleton
#Startup
public class DtoBeanMapper {
private DozerBeanMapper innerMapper;
#Inject
#Any
private Instance<DtoBeanMappingBuilder> mappingBuilders;
public <D> D map(Object source, Class<D> destinationClass) {
return innerMapper.map(source, destinationClass);
}
#PostConstruct
private void init() {
innerMapper = new DozerBeanMapper();
mappingBuilders.forEach(mb -> innerMapper.addMapping(mb.get()));
}
}

Dynamically injecting generic objects with guice

My current situation:
I want to inject the following class into my application:
public interface IConfigAccessor<T extends IConfig> {
...
}
ConfigAccessors are a proxy-objects, created dynamically at runtime. The creation of these object works as follows:
public class ConfigFactory implements IConfigFactory {
private final IConfigUpdater updater;
#Inject
public ConfigFactory(IConfigUpdater updater) {
this.updater = updater;
}
#Override
public <T extends IConfig> IConfigAccessor<T> register(final String configKey, final Class<T> configClass) {
ConfigCache<T> configCache = new ConfigCache<>(new SomeOtherThings(), configKey, configClass);
updater.register(configCache);
return new ConfigAccessor<>(configCache, configKey, configClass);
}
}
As you can see, to create these objects, I need to inject the ConfigUpdater and other depdencies. This means, that guice needs to be fully configured already.
To get the instance out of Guice, I use the following code:
IConfigFactory configClient = injector.getInstance(IConfigFactory.class);
IConfigAccessor<ConcreteConfig> accessor = configClient.register("key", ConcreteConfig.class)
How I want to inject them via Guice:
Currently, I can get the requried objects, but I have to manually pass them around in my application.
Instead, what I want to have is the following:
public class SomeClass {
#Inject
public SomeClass(#Config(configKey="key") IConfigAccessor<ConcreteConfig> accessor) {
// hurray!
}
}
What's the correct approach/technology to get this working?
After a lot of research, I'm feeling a bit lost on how to approach this topic. There are a lot of different things Guice offers, including simple Providers, custom Listeners which scan classes and identify custom annotations, FactoryModuleBuilders and more.
My problem is quite specific, and I'm not sure which of these things to use and how to get it working. I'm not even sure if this is even possible with Guice?
Edit: What I have so far
I have the following annotation which I want to use inside constructor paramters:
#Target({ ElementType.FIELD, ElementType.PARAMETER })
#Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public #interface InjectConfig {
String configKey();
}
Inside the module, I can bind a provider to IConfigAccessor (with the above annotation) as such:
bind(IConfigAccessor.class).annotatedWith(InjectConfig.class)
.toProvider(new ConfigProvider<>());
However, there are two problems whith this:
The provider cannot provide IConfigAccessor. To create such an instance, the provider would need an IConfigUpdater, but since I use 'new' for the provider, I can't inject it.
Inside the provider, there is no way to find out about the configKey used in the Annotation.
Second approach:
Let's assume that I already know all configurations and configKeys I want to inject during startup. In this case, I could loop over all possible configKeys and have the following binding:
String configKey = "some key";
final Class<? extends IConfig> configClass =...;
bind(IConfigAccessor.class).annotatedWith(Names.named(configKey))
.toProvider(new ConfigProvider<>(configKey, configClass));
However, problem (1) still resides: The provider cannot get an IConfigUpdater instance.

The main problem here is that you cannot use the value of the annotation in the injection. There is another question which covers this part:
Guice inject based on annotation value
Instead of binding a provider instance, you should bind the provider class, and get the class by injecting a typeliteral.
That way, your config factory can look like that:
public class ConfigFactory<T extends IConfig> implements IConfigFactory {
#Inject private final IConfigUpdater updater;
#Inject private TypeLiteral<T> type;
#Override
public IConfigAccessor<T> register(final String configKey) {
Class<T> configClass = (Class<T>)type.getRawType();
ConfigCache<T> configCache = new ConfigCache<>(new SomeOtherThings(), configKey, configClass);
updater.register(configCache);
return new ConfigAccessor<>(configCache, configKey, configClass);
}
}
And then SomeClass:
public class SomeClass {
#Inject
public SomeClass(ConfigFactory<ConcreteConfig> accessor) {
ConcreteConfig config = accessor.register("key");
}
}
Since SomeClass needs to know "key" anyway, this is not too much a change information-wise. The downside is that the SomeClass API now gets a factory instead of the concrete config.
[EDIT]
And here is someone who actually did inject annotated values using custom injection.

How do I inject fields at runtime using Dagger 2?

I need to inject fields of an instance of one of my classes on-demand i.e., at runtime because I'm instantiating them on-the-fly.
I used to use Guice for this where I would call MembersInjector#injectMembers or Injector#injectMembers. How can I have something like this in Dagger 2?

Dagger 2 Components are the counterpart to Guice Injectors so the way to do this in Dagger 2 would be to specify the object whose field you want to inject at runtime as an injection site and request injection from the component.
Let's say you have a CoffeeShop with fields you want to inject:
class CoffeeShop {
#Inject CoffeeMaker coffeeMaker;
CoffeeShop() {
//we're not using constructor injection here
//although we probably should be :/
}
}
You can specify CoffeeShop as an injection site inside a component and request injection from it:
#Component(modules = { CoffeeModule.class })
interface CoffeeComponent {
void inject(CoffeeShop coffeeShop);
}
So inside another class you can do something like this:
private CoffeeComponent coffeeComponent;
void initComponent() {
coffeeComponent = DaggerCoffeeComponent
.builder()
.coffeeModule(new CoffeeModule())
.build();
}
void makeCoffee() {
CoffeeShop coffeeShop = new CoffeeShop();
coffeeComponent.inject(coffeeShop); //inject members of coffeeShop
coffeeShop.makeCoffee();
}
Alternatively, you can define provision methods inside your Dagger 2 Components which will allow you to resolve instances of a class ad hoc.
If you look at Jeff Bowman's example in the linked question, you can see there is a Component like this:
#Component(modules = {/* ... */})
public interface CoffeeShopComponent {
CoffeeShop getCoffeeShop();
void inject(CoffeeService serviceToInject); // to be discussed below
}
Say you then have a CoffeeService. You can now call getCoffeeShop() to obtain arbitrary instances of CoffeeShop:
class CoffeeService extends SomeFrameworkService {
private CoffeeComponent coffeeComponent;
void initComponent() {
coffeeComponent = DaggerCoffeeComponent
.builder()
.coffeeModule(new CoffeeModule());
.build();
}
public CoffeeShop createCoffeeShop() {
return coffeeComponent.getCoffeeShop(); //equivalent to Injector.getInstance();
}
}

I don't know that Dagger2 supported #BindsInstance in #Subcomponent.Factory or #Component.Factory at the time when this question was posted but anyway for now, the best approach to inject an instance in runtime seems to be using those.
In Dagger2 tutorial, there is an example(https://dagger.dev/tutorial/10-deposit-after-login) to create a subcomponent receiving an instance.

Why Guice prevents from binding to Provider?

Recently, when I played around with Google Guice I was trying to do something like this:
#Override
protected void configure() {
...
bind(Provider.class).to(ViewFactory.class);
...
}
Where ViewFactory was:
public class ViewFactory implements Provider<SomeType> {...}
Of course, Guice didn't let me do that returing error:
1) Binding to Provider is not allowed.
{stacktrace}
What is the reason why it is not possible to bind to provider?

I guess it is because Provider interface is very special to Guice. In fact, all its internal machinery is implemented in term of providers.
Moreover, this could create ambiguities. If bindings to providers were possible:
bind(SomeClass.class).to(SomeClassImpl1.class);
bind(new TypeLiteral<Provider<SomeClass>>() {}).to(() -> new SomeClassImpl2());
then what should Guice inject here?
#Inject
OtherClass(Provider<SomeClass> someClassProvider) { ... }
Should it be a provider which returns SomeClassImpl1 (because of the first binding; remember, direct injections and provider injections are interchangeable in Guice) or should it be a provider which returns SomeClassImpl2 (because of the second binding)?
It really is redundant. Because you can inject SomeClass or Provider<SomeClass> regardless of the actual binding, you can bind the class itself to its provider:
bind(SomeClass.class).toProvider(() -> new SomeClassImpl());
// Either of the following will work
#Inject
OtherClass1(Provider<SomeClass> someClassProvider) { ... }
#Inject
OtherClass2(SomeClass someClass) { ... }

Provider is a special case. Guice does a lot of things behind the scenes with Provider, so they just ban binding to the Provider class entirely. One example is with scoping: your custom Provider might call new every single time, but if you create the provider in the Singleton scope, that should not happen. So Guice doesn't actually inject your provider, it injects a wrapped version. Things like that is why they ban binding to Provider.class directly. Here's a code example:
import com.google.inject.*;
import com.google.inject.name.*;
public class ProviderBindExample {
public static class ProvModule extends AbstractModule {
#Override
protected void configure() {
bind(Foo.class).toProvider(FooProvider.class);
bind(Foo.class).annotatedWith(Names.named("singleton"))
.toProvider(FooProvider.class)
.in(Singleton.class);
}
}
public static interface Foo { }
public static class FooProvider implements Provider<Foo> {
#Override
public Foo get() {
return new Foo() {};
}
}
public static class SomeClass {
#Inject public Provider<Foo> provider;
#Inject #Named("singleton") public Provider<Foo> singletonProvider;
}
public static void main(String... args) {
Injector inj = Guice.createInjector(new ProvModule());
SomeClass s = inj.getInstance(SomeClass.class);
System.out.println("Provider class = " + s.provider.getClass());
System.out.println("Singleton provider class = " + s.singletonProvider.getClass());
Foo first = s.provider.get();
Foo second = s.provider.get();
System.out.printf("regular scope: objects are %s%n", first == second ? "the same" : "different");
first = s.singletonProvider.get();
second = s.singletonProvider.get();
System.out.printf("singleton scope: objects are %s%n", first == second ? "the same" : "different");
}
}
Output:
Provider class = class com.google.inject.internal.InjectorImpl$4
Singleton provider class = class com.google.inject.internal.InjectorImpl$4
regular scope: objects are different
singleton scope: objects are the same

Inheritance (Late Binding) via Dependency Injection in Java

I am using Spring DI to wire my components and I came across this issue.
I have a BaseService class which has multiple implementations. And the layer above it, has a builder which calls the service to get data to populate POJOs. Service implementation I need to call (ServiceA,ServiceB) changes according to the type of POJO I need to build.
In such case, how can I autowire the service, as it requires late binding the service. How can I tackle this kind of scenario? (Example in Spring DI would really help)
I read similar questions but could not find the answer. And I read that SOA patterns such as Service Host provide different solutions to exact use case.
Please help.
Thanks

How about using a FactoryBean:
public class BuilderFactory implements FactoryBean<Builder> {
#Autowired
private ApplicationContext appContext;
...
#Override
public Builder getObject() {
Builder builder = new Builder();
switch(something()) {
case "foo":
builder.service = new ServiceA();
break;
case "bar":
builder.service= new ServiceB();
break;
...
default:
//handle cases where it's unclear which type to create
}
return builder;
}
}
where Builder instances have a public/package-private field BaseService service that gets called in their getData(), buildPojos() and wherever other methods.
(you could also use static factory methods to instantiate Builder if you want this field to be private)

You can use ServiceLocatorFactoryBean. In your case you would do something like this:
public interface BaseServiceLocator {
BaseService lookup(String qualifier); //use whatever qualifier type makes sense here
}
<bean id="serviceLocatorFactoryBean"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.ServiceLocatorFactoryBean">
<property name="serviceLocatorInterface"
value="your.package.BaseServiceLocator" />
</bean>
Then your builder would look something like this:
public class Builder {
#Autowired
private BaseServiceLocator baseServiceLocator;
#Override
public YourReturnType businessMethod() {
SomeData data = getData();
BaseService baseService = baseServiceLocator(data.getType()); //here I am assuming that getType() is a String
//whatever
}

I had the same requirement in one of my projects. I used reflection to get the services according to the pojo requirement. This way there will be no static values even if you define new pojo and service in future you wont have to change any implementation.
I had named my pojos and Services similarly. ie
POJO Name:Pond5DownloadStrategy and ServiceName: Pond5DownloadStrategyService.
I defined all the services in spring. I had a DownloadStrategyFactory which had a single method
getService(Object obj). which is also instantiated as spring bean.
what getService method did is.
I get the POJO name as string using obj.getClass().getSimpleName() and then I append Service at the end. ex.
If I pass Pond5DownloadStrategy then I do AppContext.getBean("Pond5DownloadStrategyService");

Please look at my answer here.
Although is under spring batch topic it’s actually related to your question and the Strategy Design pattern.
StrategyA StrategyB are your ServiceA,ServiceB etc.
You need to use the StrategyLocator in your Builder class (in the original answer it’s equivalent is MyTaskelt). The look-up will be based on your pojo type.
strategy = strategyLocator.lookup(POJOs.class);
In the answer I suggested a PlugableStrategyMapper, but if you predefine all Servcies you can place them in a Map in the application-context.xml

For example, for manual binding:
public class Builder {
#Autowired
private Map<String, Service> services;
// Bind pojo classes to bean names.
private Map<Class<?>, String> binding;
public Service getService(Object object) {
return services.get(binding.get(object.getClass()));
}
public Map<Class<?>, String> getBinding() {
return binding;
}
public void setBinding(Map<Class<?>, String> binding) {
this.binding = binding;
}
}
However, manual binding could be repetitive so if you don't really need his flexibility, you could use a naming convention (#AmitChotaliya answer) or enforce the binding via Service method.
public interface Service {
Class<?> getTargetType();
}
public class Builder {
#Autowired
private Set<Service> services;
// Bind pojo classes to Services.
private Map<Class<?>, Service> binding = new ConcurrentHashMap<Class<?>, Service>();
#PostConstruct
public void init() {
for (Service service : services) {
binding.put(service.getTargetType(), service);
}
}
public Service getService(Object object) {
return binding.get(object.getClass());
}
}