Spring JSF integration: how to inject a Spring component/service in JSF managed bean?

@ManagedBean vs @Controller

First of all, you should choose one framework to manage your beans. You should choose either JSF or Spring (or CDI) to manage your beans. Whilst the following works, it is fundamentally wrong:

@ManagedBean // JSF-managed.
@Controller // Spring-managed.
public class BadBean {}

You end up with two completely separate instances of the very same managed bean class, one managed by JSF and another one managed by Spring. It's not directly clear which one would actually be used in EL when you reference it as #{someBean}. If you have the SpringBeanFacesELResolver registered in faces-config.xml, then it would be the Spring-managed one, not the JSF-managed one. If you don't have that, then it would be the JSF-managed one.

Also, when you declare a JSF managed bean specific scope, such as @RequestScoped, @ViewScoped, @SessionScoped or @ApplicationScoped from javax.faces.* package, it will only be recognized and used by @ManagedBean. It won't be understood by @Controller as it expects its own @Scope annotation. This defaults to singleton (application scope) when absent. 

@ManagedBean // JSF-managed.
@ViewScoped // JSF-managed scope.
@Controller // Spring-managed (without own scope, so actually becomes a singleton).
public class BadBean {}

When you reference the above bean via #{someBean}, it would return the Spring-managed application scoped bean, not the JSF-managed view scoped bean.

@ManagedProperty vs @Autowired

The JSF-specific @ManagedProperty works only in JSF-managed beans, i.e. when you're using @ManagedBean. The Spring-specific @Autowired works only in Spring-managed beans, i.e. when you're using @Controller. Below approaches are less or more equivalent and cannot be mixed:

@ManagedBean // JSF-managed.
@RequestScoped // JSF-managed scope.
public class GoodBean {

    @ManagedProperty("#{springBeanName}")
    private SpringBeanClass springBeanName; // Setter required.
}

@Component // Spring-managed.
@Scope("request") // Spring-managed scope.
public class GoodBean {

    @Autowired
    private SpringBeanClass springBeanName; // No setter required.
}

Do note that when you have the SpringBeanFacesELResolver registered in faces-config.xml as per the javadoc,

<application>
    ...
    <el-resolver>org.springframework.web.jsf.el.SpringBeanFacesELResolver</el-resolver>
</application>

and thus you can reference Spring managed beans in EL via #{springBeanName}, then you can just reference them in @ManagedProperty too, as it basically sets the evaluated result of the given EL expression. The other way round, injecting a JSF managed bean via @Autowired, is in no way supported. You can however use @Autowired in a JSF managed bean when you extend your bean from SpringBeanAutowiringSupport. This will automatically register the JSF managed bean instance in Spring autowirable context during constructor invocation, which means that everything @Autowired will be available in @PostConstruct and later.

@ManagedBean // JSF-managed.
@ViewScoped // JSF-managed scope.
public class GoodBean extends SpringBeanAutowiringSupport implements Serializable {

    @Autowired
    private SpringBeanClass springBeanName; // No setter required.

    @PostConstruct
    private void init() {
        // springBeanName is now available.
    }
}

Or when your architecture doesn't allow extending beans from a different base class, then you can always manually register the JSF managed bean instance in Spring autowirable context as below. See also How to integrate JSF 2 and Spring 3 (or Spring 4) nicely for the trick.

@ManagedBean // JSF-managed.
@ViewScoped // JSF-managed scope.
public class GoodBean implements Serializable {

    @Autowired
    private SpringBeanClass springBeanName; // No setter required.

    @PostConstruct
    private void init() {
        FacesContextUtils
            .getRequiredWebApplicationContext(FacesContext.getCurrentInstance())
            .getAutowireCapableBeanFactory().autowireBean(this);

        // springBeanName is now available.
    }
}

@XxxScoped vs @Scope

Spring's @Scope has limited support for JSF scopes. There's no equivalent for JSF's @ViewScoped. You'd basically either homegrow your own scopes, or stick to manually registering the JSF managed bean instance in Spring autowirable context as shown above.

And, from the other side on, Spring WebFlow was taken over in JSF 2.2 via new @FlowScoped annotation. So if you happen to be on JSF 2.2 already, then you don't necessarily need to use Spring WebFlow if you solely want the flow scope.

CDI - trying to unify it all

Since Java EE 6, CDI is offered as standard alternative to Spring DI. It has respectively @Named and @Inject annotations for this and also its own set of scopes. I'm not sure how it interacts with Spring as I don't use Spring, but @Inject works inside a @ManagedBean, and @ManagedProperty inside a @ManagedBean can reference a @Named bean. On the other hand, @ManagedProperty doesn't work inside a @Named bean.

The purpose of CDI is to unify all different bean management frameworks into only one specification/inteface. Spring could have been a full CDI implementation, but they choosed to only partially implement it (only JSR-330 javax.inject.* is supported, but JSR-299 javax.enterprise.context.* not). See also Will Spring support CDI? and this tutorial.

JSF will be moving to CDI for bean management and deprecate @ManagedBean and friends in a future version.

@Named // CDI-managed.
@ViewScoped // CDI-managed scope.
public class BetterBean implements Serializable {

    @Inject
    private SpringBeanClass springBeanName; // No setter required.

    @PostConstruct
    private void init() {
        // springBeanName is now available.
    }
}

See also:

  • When is it necessary or convenient to use Spring or EJB3 or all of them together?
  • JSF Service Layer
  • Backing beans (@ManagedBean) or CDI Beans (@Named)?
  • Using JSF as view technology of Spring MVC
  • How to install and use CDI on Tomcat?

There is another way to use Spring-managed beans in JSF-managed beans by simply extending your JSF bean from SpringBeanAutowiringSupport and Spring will handle the dependency injection.

@ManagedBean // JSF-managed.
@ViewScoped // JSF-managed scope.
public class GoodBean extends SpringBeanAutowiringSupport {

    @Autowired
    private SpringBeanClass springBeanName; // No setter required.

    // springBeanName is now available.
}

Tags:

Dependency Injection

Spring

Jsf

Managed Bean

Integration

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