How my EntityBean knows about its primary key?

Question

Well, i found a dubious place in my EntityBean.
I wrote an ItemBean with some simple getter and setter methods.
It has 3 instance variables:
- String id, (primary key)
- String productId,
- String name
Here is the code of my application client:
Context init = new InitialContext();
Object ref = init.lookup("java:comp/env/ejb/ItemBean");
ItemRemoteHome home = (ItemRemoteHome)PortableRemoteObject.narrow(
    ref,ItemRemoteHome.class);
ItemRemote remote = home.create("x","y","z");
String key = remote.getPrimaryKey();
System.out.println(key);The code works well, but i dont know how my EntityBean knows its primary key when
i call the remote.getPrimaryKey() method.
i traced the method invoking and checked the server log.
// when calling home.create()
the bean's constructor is called to create a bean
setEntityContext() is called. but now the primary key in the entity context is null
ejbCreate() and ejbPostCreate() is called
( i inserted a row to the DB in the ejbCreate() method)
ejbStore() is called
// when calling remote.getPrimaryKey();
ejbLoad() is called, so all the bean's instance variables are refreshed
but non of the getter or setter methods are called
I think that the primary key is taken from the entity context instead of the bean.
but when did the entity context get the primary key?
I never tell the bean that its primary key is its id.
Stange, isnt it?

Answer 1

I never tell the bean that its primary key is its id.You should be returning the primary key from the ejbCreate method. The container picks that up and pops it into the EJB context.