Is there a way to configure managed properties on a superclass?

Question

Hi,
I'm looking for a way to set a managed property on a superclass of a managed bean rather than setting it on every single managed bean extending that superclass.
Here's a simple scenario. I've got an application scoped managed bean called "configuration" which holds (what a surprise) some configuration. It is configured like this:
     <managed-bean>
          <managed-bean-name>configuration</managed-bean-name>
          <managed-bean-class>myapp.model.ConfigurationModel</managed-bean-class>
          <managed-bean-scope>application</managed-bean-scope>
     </managed-bean>
Now I want to use this bean from within some other request scoped managed beans (Let's say bean1 .. beanN). Of course I could inject the configuration bean into every single bean like this:
     <managed-bean>
          <managed-bean-name>bean1</managed-bean-name>
          <managed-bean-class>myapp.model.Bean1</managed-bean-class>
          <managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>
          <managed-property>
               <property-name>configuration</property-name>
               <property-class>myapp.model.Configuration</property-class>
               <value>#{configuration}</value>
          </managed-property>
     </managed-bean>
     <managed-bean>
          <managed-bean-name>beanN</managed-bean-name>
          <managed-bean-class>myapp.model.BeanN</managed-bean-class>
          <managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>
          <managed-property>
               <property-name>configuration</property-name>
               <property-class>myapp.model.Configuration</property-class>
               <value>#{configuration}</value>
          </managed-property>
     </managed-bean>
The Java code of each bean would look like this:
     public class Bean1 {
          protected Configuration configuration;
          public void setConfiguration(Configuration aConfiguration) {
               configuration = aConfiguration;
     public class BeanN {
          protected Configuration configuration;
          public void setConfiguration(Configuration aConfiguration) {
               configuration = aConfiguration;
One enhancement of this approach obviously is to define a super class for the beans which holds the configuration variable and its setter to prevent duplicate code. This would look like this:
     public class SuperBean {
          protected Configuration configuration;
          public void setConfiguration(Configuration aConfiguration) {
               configuration = aConfiguration;
     public class Bean1 extends SuperBean {}
     public class BeanN extends SuperBean {}
And now for the real problem. I'd like to use the advantage of using a superclass in the Java code on the faces configuration aswell. That means, I'd like to define the dependency injection only once for all beans extending SuperBean and not for every single bean. Probably like this:
     <managed-bean>
          <managed-bean-class>myapp.model.SuperBean</managed-bean-class>
          <managed-property>
               <property-name>configuration</property-name>
               <property-class>myapp.model.Configuration</property-class>
               <value>#{configuration}</value>
          </managed-property>
     </managed-bean>
     <managed-bean>
          <managed-bean-name>bean1</managed-bean-name>
          <managed-bean-class>myapp.model.Bean1</managed-bean-class>
          <managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>
     </managed-bean>
     <managed-bean>
          <managed-bean-name>beanN</managed-bean-name>
          <managed-bean-class>myapp.model.BeanN</managed-bean-class>
          <managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>
     </managed-bean>
Of course this doesn't work because JSF does not lookup superclasses automatically. But I would be grateful if anyone has a solution or an idea for achieving this, because it would notably simplify the faces configuration.
These are the directions my own investigations took me so far:
- Using an "extends" attribute: <managed-bean extends="superbean">
This would be nice, but it would mean to use my own JSF implementation. I often use "extends" attributes on XML configurations, because it brings the pattern of inheritance with all its advantages to XML.
- Right now I'm checking if a custom PropertyResolver could do the trick.
Looking forward to your suggestions.
Regards
Frank

Answer 1

There is no way in the default JSF implementation.
You may consider to replace the getter by the outcome of FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getApplicationMap().get("configuration"); This will return the application scoped managed bean instance with the managed bean name "configuration".