In Relation To

Today, Red Hat submitted the final draft of JSR-299[1], which now goes under the moniker CDI (Contexts and Dependency Injection), along with the Reference Implementation and TCK. Check out the spec[1] and Javadoc.

I just noticed that CDI makes it possible to write properties files in Java, instead of plain text. I'm not sure if this is useful, but it is cute.

I put a whole bunch of work into the Javadoc for CDI recently. You can see it here. There's a good overview of the spec in the package doc for javax.enterprise.inject.

In my previous little rant, I showed you how to use @Alternative and alternative stereotypes to easily change bean implementations based upon deployment scenario. But that's not the end of the story. There's two other things I would sometimes like to be able to change at deployment time:

Suppose we have an external resource, a database, let's say, that we want to be able to change depending upon the deployment environment. In CDI, we declare resources using a producer field declaration.

I'm trying really hard to emphasize to the community that CDI and Weld are not just a dependency injection solution. We did not come at this from the point of view of trying to solve dependency injection, or of trying to build a better Spring.

Dan Allen has been writing a series of articles covering ideas from Seam that made it into JSF2. The latest installment covers view parameters and creating bookmarkable links. Seam users should find this stuff extremely familiar.

CDI (JSR-299) and Weld 1.0 are almost a reality. We've got word from Sun that CDI and the rest of Java EE 6 will be submitted to the JCP on November 9. I've spent the last few days filling out the Javadoc for the CDI API and SPI packages and making some last-minute cleanups to the spec. Meanwhile, Pete and the others are fixing bugs in the RI and TCK. This process has taken more than 3 years, and an incredible amount of pain, but we're now looking at one of the most well-reviewed JCP specifications ever.

Steven Boscarine has written a nice short tutorial on getting up and running with Weld and JSF on Jetty, using Maven. Note that there's a bit more boilerplate here than there would be in a Java EE environment, since integration of Weld in Jetty requires explicit configuration. Nevertheless, I think Steven does a good job of demonstrating that it's easy to get up and running with this stuff.

Dan Allen and I are speaking at the New England JUG on Thursday, October 8, at 1 Network Way, Burlington. I've been doing a lot less public speaking lately, so I'm looking forward to it!