configure properties of LocalSessionFactoryBean in grails

Question

I have grails project using my existing Java domain classes of a spring project and I need to configure typeDefinitions. In the spring project it is possible to configure this property of the LocalSessionFactoryBean - but how do you do that in a grails project?

Answer 1

The Grails version of LocalSessionFactoryBean is a subclass, org.codehaus.groovy.grails.orm.hibernate.ConfigurableLocalSessionFactoryBean. It's registered as a Spring bean in org.codehaus.groovy.grails.plugins.orm.hibernate.HibernatePluginSupport as

sessionFactory(ConfigurableLocalSessionFactoryBean) {
   ...
}

so you have a couple of options. One is to redefine the bean in resources.groovy, maintaining what Grails configures plus your changes, i.e.

sessionFactory(MyCustomConfigurableLocalSessionFactoryBean) {
   ...
   typeDefinitions = ...
}

or if possible you can reference the bean and modify it in BootStrap:

class BootStrap {

   def sessionFactory

   def init = { servletContext ->
      sessionFactory.foo = bar
   }

   def destroy = {}
}

It looks like typeDefinitions need to be configured early, while the factory bean is building the SessionFactory, so option 1 is probably your best bet.

Answer 2

another option is to use spring's life-cycle callbacks, e.g. implementing a BeanPostProcessor

public class CustomBeanPostProcessor implements BeanPostProcessor {

// simply return the instantiated bean as-is
public Object postProcessBeforeInitialization(Object bean, String beanName) throws BeansException {
    return bean; // we could potentially return any object reference here...
}

public Object postProcessAfterInitialization(Object bean, String beanName) throws BeansException {
    if ("sessionFactory".equals(beanName) && bean instanceof ConfigurableLocalSessionFactoryBean)  {
        ConfigurableLocalSessionFactoryBean sessionFactory = (ConfigurableLocalSessionFactoryBean) bean;
        sessionFactory.setTypeDefinitions(...);
    }
    return bean;
}

}

and throw it to your resources.groovy

customProcessor(CustomBeanPostProcessor)

this way you don't have to redefine the sessionFactory bean thats already wired into GORM dynamic finders et.al.