Achieving early binding

Question

There have been some messages here about the problem of getting early binding for packaged beans.
I have found a way to achieve that for an individual bean. The solution is to include an explicit BeanInfo class, and not to rely on automatic bean info being obtained by reflection.
I included a BeanInfo class with the following method:
public MethodDescriptor[] getMethodDescriptors()
    Method[] classMethods = beanClass.getMethods();
    Vector publicMethods = new Vector();
    for (int i = 0; i < classMethods.length; i++)
        int modifiers = classMethods.getModifiers();
if (Modifier.isPublic(modifiers))
publicMethods.add(new MethodDescriptor(classMethods[i]));
int count = publicMethods.size();
MethodDescriptor[] methods = new MethodDescriptor[count];
publicMethods.copyInto(methods);
return methods;
Package the bean, making sure the BeanInfo class is in the jar file with the bean.
Install and register the dll.
In VB, add the dll to the project references.
Now you can instantiate the bean with the standard
Set beaninstance = New BeanLib.BeanClassand have early binding for the beans methods.
Regards,
Maarten

Answer 1

I would love to help you get it to work properly, however while trying to build a more complete example today, it seems that it stopped working on my machine.
Even my previous project, which has early binding working, now refuses to run.
I must say that finding this method was more of a side-effect of creating a larger-scale Java-com integration.
My final solution does not rely on the bridge to provide early binding. Instead it automatically generates VB classes that wrap all exported java classes. These classes are compiled into a DLL which then provides early binding to VB projects, including strongly typed object return types. Internally the wrapper classes use late binding.
Unfortunately I am unable to provide the wrapper generator, as it is owned by my current employer. If anybody is interested in writing one, I suggest using a javadoc Doclet as the base technology. That will take care of all the parsing and referencing of the java classes, and unlike reflection, it lets you use the actual parameter names in your wrappers.
If I ever find a consistenly working way to achieve early binding with just the sun bridge, I'll be sure to let you guys know.
Kind regards,
Maarten