Factory pattern with CDI depending on runtime parameter - cdi

Question

I wanted to implement the factory pattern with CDI. Here we have the business case example:
A client provides a string representing a type. Depending on this type the factory returns an implementation of an interface.
I know that there are a lot of questions flying around concerning factory pattern and CDI. The difference I have here is that I resolve the implementation returned by the factory based on a runtime parameter.
I was thinking of using a producer method but then I can not think of how to inject the resolved implementation into the bean where the implementation is needed since this is a runtime parameter which is not necessarily known at contruction time.
So I thought of the pretty straight forward way of using the Instance class.
Here is the basic implementation :
// the interface. Instances of this class are returned from the factory
public interface Product {
}
// one implementation may be returned by the factory
#ProductType("default")
public class DefaultProduct implements Product {
}
// another implementation may be returned by the factory
#ProductType("myProduct")
public class MyProduct implements Product {
}
// the qualifier annotation
#Qualifier
#Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
#Target({ElementType.FIELD, ElementType.TYPE})
public #interface ProductType {
String value();
}
// the Annotation implementation to select
// the correct implementation in the factory
public class ProductTypeLiteral extends AnnotationLiteral<ProductType>
implements ProductType {
private String type;
public ProductTypeLiteral(String type) {
this.type = type;
}
#Override
public String value() {
return type;
}
}
// the factory itself. It is annotated with #Singleton because the
// factory is only needed once
#Singleton
public class Factory {
#Inject
#Any
private Instance<Product> products;
public Product getProduct(String type) {
ProductTypeLiteral literal = new ProductTypeLiteral(type);
Instance<Product> typeProducts = products.select(literal);
return typeProducts.get();
}
}
In my opinion using Instance is very sophisticated.
But this has one major drawback:
Everytime you cal the Instance.get() method you retrieve a new Instance of Product. This may be fine but the Instance instance keeps a reference of the returned instance internally. So as long as the Factory lives and each time the Instance.get() is called the more instances of Product will exist in the memory and never get garbage collected because a reference is still hold in Instance.
I thought of not making the Factory a singleton but that just shifts the problem and does not solve it. And of course it is against the factory pattern.
Another solution I tried was to iterate through the Instance instead of selecting an implementation with the help of the annotation:
#Singleton
public class Factory {
#Inject
#Any
private Instance<Product> products;
public Product getProduct(String type) {
Product product = null;
for(Product eachProduct : products) {
ProductType productType = eachProduct.getClass().
getAnnotation(ProductType.class)
if(productType.value().equals(type) {
product = eachProduct;
break;
}
}
return product;
}
}
Basically this is working. Now each time depending on the given type I retrieve the same instance of Product. That way the memory is not consumed.
But I don't like it to iterate over a collection when I have the possibility to resolve the correct implementations more elegantly.
Do you have any ideas which may solve the problem? Otherwise I may have to keep the iteration solution.

Answer 1

Herein lies your problem. Instance keeps reference to instances you obtain from it using get() because it is responsible for reclaiming them when they go out of scope (i.e. when the injected Instance goes out of scope. But because you made your factory a singleton, it will never go out of scope. So, make your factory a short-lived scope, like #RequestScoped or even #Dependent, that way all the returned instances will be reclaimed properly.

Answer 2

Maybe it can help you:
Create qualifiers:
#Qualifier
#Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
#Target({ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.FIELD, ElementType.PARAMETER, ElementType.TYPE})
public #interface MyProduct{
}
#Qualifier
#Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
#Target({ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.FIELD, ElementType.PARAMETER, ElementType.TYPE})
public #interface DefaultProduct{
}
In Factory class:
#Singleton
public class Factory {
public Product getProduct(#MyProduct MyProduct product, #DefaultProduct DefaultProduct defaultProduct) {
//What you wanna do
}
}