Injection of a stateless session bean (SLSB) into another SL

[trickyvail]

I've set up a SLSB as follows:

@Stateless
@Name("simpleBean")
public class SimpleBean implements Simple
{
 public String getName()
 {
 return "simple";
 }
}

The "simpleBean" bean can be accessed from a EL expression on a facelets page without any trouble.

I have another SLSB like this:

@Stateless
@Name("containerBean")
public class ContainerBean implements Container
{
 @In
 SimpleBean simpleBean;

 public String getName()
 {
 return simpleBean.getName();
 }
}

However, when I try to access the getName method of "containerBean" I run into the following error:

Caused by: org.jboss.seam.RequiredException: In attribute requires non-null value: containerBean.simpleBean
 at org.jboss.seam.Component.getValueToInject(Component.java:1919)

If I change "simpleBean" into a JavaBean provided and annotate "containerBean" with In(create=true) the injection works as expected, but if I create a similar annotation without changing "simpleBean" to a JavaBean I get an error like this:

... 95 more
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Could not set field value by reflection: ContainerBean.simpleBean on: com.somedomain.stateless.ContainerBean with value: class org.javassist.tmp.java.lang.Object_$$_javassist_3
 at org.jboss.seam.util.Reflections.set(Reflections.java:77)
 at org.jboss.seam.Component.setFieldValue(Component.java:1555)
 ... 117 more
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException
 at sun.reflect.UnsafeObjectFieldAccessorImpl.set(UnsafeObjectFieldAccessorImpl.java:63)

The seam documentation makes it clear that SLSB's live in the stateless context which is not included in the context search. Is this why my "simpleBean" can not be found for injection into my "containerBean"? I'm not familiar with how seam and the ejb3 container interact during instantiation of these SLSB objects into pools - perhaps the beans are being created out of order? Perhaps I'm trying to do something way beyond the intention of the EJB3 SLSB specification. I'm pretty much resolved that what I'm trying to do here is not a great idea. Is there a different way to dynamically assign a reference to a SLSB to a different SLSB when a method is called? I would be very interested to hear other peoples insight and wisdom on the subject. Thanks in advance and kind regards.

[knaas]

Did you try

@In(create=true)
 SimpleBean simpleBean;

[trickyvail]

Yes I have tried to annotate with In(create=true) and receive the second exception and stack trace.

[matt.drees]

I think you're supposed to do something like

public class ContainerBean implements Container
{
 @In
 Simple simpleBean;

[trickyvail]

Yes that worked! Thank you to both Matt and Knass.

My classes look like this:

@Local
public interface Simple
{
 public abstract String getName();
}

@Stateless
@Name("simpleBean")
public class SimpleBean implements Simple
{
 private String name = "simple";

 public String getName()
 {
 return name;
 }
}

@Local
public interface Container
{
 public abstract String getName();
}

@Stateless
@Name("containerBean")
public class ContainerBean implements Container
{
 @In(create=true)
 Simple simpleBean;

 public String getName()
 {
 return simpleBean.getName();
 }
}

I'm still left wondering about the implementation details within the EJB container. I suspect that the ContainerBean is issued a proxy stub to which it maintains a reference. This would allow different pooled SimpleBeans to service the getName() method call from the ContainerBean. In this scenario I think things should work as planned. Any further insights appreciated...