access bean id programatically

[Stu Johns]

Is it possible to access the id of a bean declared in the applicationContext.xml (I suspect not)
I have defined a bean like this:

   
    <bean id="testBean" class="com.stu.TestBean">
       <property name="test" value="question2"/>
    </bean>
 

I would like to access the id 'testBean' programmatically.

[Mark Secrist]

Hi Stu,
If you look in the JavaDocs, there are a number of different ways to get the bean by its bean ID. The key is to get hold of the ApplicationContext, which is the way to access the beans.

The most direct way is as follows:

  
ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("applicationContext.xml");
Bean myBean = ctx.getBean("testBean");

I use this approach in a lot of my unit tests.

Another way I've done this is in web applications where I'm hooking Spring components into an existing web application. In this case, I use the ContextLoaderListener to configure the beans when the web application context is loaded. Then, I can use the following snippet:

 
 ApplicationContext ctx = ContextLoader.getCurrentWebApplicationContext();
ctx.getBean("testBean");

I hope this helps,

Mark

[Stu Johns]

sorry, the question was misunderstood, yes I can get the bean from the spring container by the id, once i have it is there any way to get the id of that bean, (I know in my example i already know it, but in reality I may not for example if it was part of a map.)

[Christophe Verré]

You can get the name of a bean when it is instantiated, by making it BeanNameAware. But check carefully the API for org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanNameAware. (And I don't see the point of using the bean name to keep it in a map)