How to find out status of JMS Connection ( connected or closed )

Question

Is there a way to find out the status ( connected or closed ) of JMS Connection at any point of time . JMS Connection interface doesn't seem to have any isAlive( ) sort of method ?
I'm using a shared instance JMS Connection and if someone calls connection.close() on this instance the code starts flunking.

Answer 1

Crap isn't it! Would also be useful for creating a JMS connection pool, or for testing connections that stay open for time time and may be closed by network problems etc.
I can think of a couple of options (haven't tested them so may be flawed)
1. Extend your vendors QueueConnectionFactory object to return a decorated Connection, which adds an isAlive() method and records internally whether someone has called .close(); This could be tricky if you use JNDI to retrieve the QCF - you'll have to bind your custom QCF and remove the old one. Much easier if you use a bean factory like Spring.
2. You may be able to do this with the underlying vendor's API. If you choose this option put all the vendor specific code in a separate class and abstract it behind an interface. In future if you change to a JMS provider that does not support this feature, you can always change your isAlive() method return true no matter what;
3. Wrap the JMS sender / receiver in an Adapter class. The adapter delegates send / receive methods to the wrapped class, but if it receives a JMS exception will reconnect and try again. A second JMS Exceptions should be thrown back to the client. All your client code sees is a single send / receive method as if it was using a normal JMS sender / receiver.