Chapter 12. OSGi Services

For example, you could export an instance of the SavingsAccountImpl class under the org.fusesource.example.Account interface name using the Blueprint configuration code shown in Example 12.1, “Sample Service Export with a Single Interface”.

<blueprint xmlns="http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0">

  <bean id="savings" class="org.fusesource.example.SavingsAccountImpl"/>

  <service ref="savings" interface="org.fusesource.example.Account"/>

</blueprint>

Where the ref attribute specifies the ID of the corresponding bean instance and the interface attribute specifies the name of the public Java interface under which the service is registered in the OSGi service registry. The classes and interfaces used in this example are shown in Example 12.2, “Sample Account Classes and Interfaces”

package org.fusesource.example

public interface Account { ... }

public interface SavingsAccount { ... }

public interface CheckingAccount { ... }

public class SavingsAccountImpl implements SavingsAccount
{
    ...
}

public class CheckingAccountImpl implements CheckingAccount
{
    ...
}

For example, you could export an instance of the SavingsAccountImpl class under the list of public Java interfaces, org.fusesource.example.Account and org.fusesource.example.SavingsAccount, using the following Blueprint configuration code:

<blueprint xmlns="http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0">
  <bean id="savings" class="org.fusesource.example.SavingsAccountImpl"/>
  <service ref="savings">
    <interfaces>
      <value>org.fusesource.example.Account</value>
      <value>org.fusesource.example.SavingsAccount</value>
    </interfaces>
  </service>
  ...
</blueprint>

For example, to export an instance of the SavingsAccountImpl class under all of its implemented public interfaces, use the following Blueprint configuration code:

<blueprint xmlns="http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0">
  <bean id="savings" class="org.fusesource.example.SavingsAccountImpl"/>
  <service ref="savings" auto-export="interfaces"/>
  ...
</blueprint>

Where the interfaces value of the auto-export attribute indicates that Blueprint should register all of the public interfaces implemented by SavingsAccountImpl. The auto-export attribute can have the following valid values:

For example, to associate the bank.name string property with a savings account service, you could use the following Blueprint configuration:

<blueprint xmlns="http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0"
           xmlns:beans="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
           ...>
  ...
  <service ref="savings" auto-export="interfaces">
    <service-properties>
      <beans:entry key="bank.name" value="HighStreetBank"/>
    </service-properties>
  </service>
  ...
</blueprint>

Where the bank.name string property has the value, HighStreetBank. It is possible to define service properties of type other than string: that is, primitive types, arrays, and collections are also supported. For details of how to define these types, see Controlling the Set of Advertised Properties. in the Spring Reference Guide.

<service ref="savings" interface="org.fusesource.example.Account" ranking="10"/>

For example, the following Blueprint configuration defines a listener bean, listenerBean, which is referenced by a registration-listener element, so that the listener bean receives callbacks whenever an Account service is registered or unregistered:

<blueprint xmlns="http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0" ...>
  ...
  <bean id="listenerBean" class="org.fusesource.example.Listener"/>

  <service ref="savings" auto-export="interfaces">
    <registration-listener
        ref="listenerBean"
        registration-method="register"
        unregistration-method="unregister"/>
  </service>
  ...
</blueprint>

Where the registration-listener element’s ref attribute references the id of the listener bean, the registration-method attribute specifies the name of the listener method that receives the registration callback, and unregistration-method attribute specifies the name of the listener method that receives the unregistration callback.

The following Java code shows a sample definition of the Listener class that receives notifications of registration and unregistration events:

package org.fusesource.example;

public class Listener
{
    public void register(Account service, java.util.Map serviceProperties) {
        ...
    }

    public void unregister(Account service, java.util.Map serviceProperties) {
        ...
    }
}

The method names, register and unregister, are specified by the registration-method and unregistration-method attributes respectively. The signatures of these methods must conform to the following syntax:

Figure 12.1. Reference to Stateless Service

Beans in the client Blueprint container get injected with a proxy object (the provided object), which is backed by a service object (the backing service) from the OSGi service registry. This model explicitly takes advantage of the fact that stateless services are interchangeable, in the following ways:

The contract between the client and the backing service is thus stateless, and the client must not assume that it is always talking to the same service instance. If no matching service instances are available, the proxy will wait for a certain length of time before throwing the ServiceUnavailable exception. The length of the timeout is configurable by setting the timeout attribute on the reference element.

Figure 12.2. List of References to Stateful Services

Beans in the client Blueprint container get injected with a java.util.List object (the provided object), which contains a list of proxy objects. Each proxy is backed by a unique service instance in the OSGi service registry. Unlike the stateless model, backing services are not considered to be interchangeable here. In fact, the lifecycle of each proxy in the list is tightly linked to the lifecycle of the corresponding backing service: when a service gets registered in the OSGi registry, a corresponding proxy is synchronously created and added to the proxy list; and when a service gets unregistered from the OSGi registry, the corresponding proxy is synchronously removed from the proxy list.

The contract between a proxy and its backing service is thus stateful, and the client may assume when it invokes methods on a particular proxy, that it is always communicating with the same backing service. It could happen, however, that the backing service becomes unavailable, in which case the proxy becomes stale. Any attempt to invoke a method on a stale proxy will generate the ServiceUnavailable exception.

For example, to reference a stateless SavingsAccount service (see Example 12.1, “Sample Service Export with a Single Interface”), define a reference element as follows:

<blueprint xmlns="http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0">

  <reference id="savingsRef"
             interface="org.fusesource.example.SavingsAccount"/>

  <bean id="client" class="org.fusesource.example.client.Client">
    <property name="savingsAccount" ref="savingsRef"/>
  </bean>

</blueprint>

Where the reference element creates a reference manager bean with the ID, savingsRef. To use the referenced service, inject the savingsRef bean into one of your client classes, as shown.

The bean property injected into the client class can be any type that is assignable from SavingsAccount. For example, you could define the Client class as follows:

package org.fusesource.example.client;

import org.fusesource.example.SavingsAccount;

public class Client {
    SavingsAccount savingsAccount;

    // Bean properties
    public SavingsAccount getSavingsAccount() {
        return savingsAccount;
    }

    public void setSavingsAccount(SavingsAccount savingsAccount) {
        this.savingsAccount = savingsAccount;
    }
    ...
}

For example, to reference a stateful SavingsAccount service (see Example 12.1, “Sample Service Export with a Single Interface”), define a reference-list element as follows:

<blueprint xmlns="http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0">

  <reference-list id="savingsListRef"
                  interface="org.fusesource.example.SavingsAccount"/>

  <bean id="client" class="org.fusesource.example.client.Client">
    <property name="savingsAccountList" ref="savingsListRef"/>
  </bean>

</blueprint>

Where the reference-list element creates a reference list manager bean with the ID, savingsListRef. To use the referenced service list, inject the savingsListRef bean reference into one of your client classes, as shown.

By default, the savingsAccountList bean property is a list of service objects (for example, java.util.List<SavingsAccount>). You could define the client class as follows:

package org.fusesource.example.client;

import org.fusesource.example.SavingsAccount;

public class Client {
    java.util.List<SavingsAccount> accountList;

    // Bean properties
    public java.util.List<SavingsAccount> getSavingsAccountList() {
        return accountList;
    }

    public void setSavingsAccountList(
                    java.util.List<SavingsAccount> accountList
    ) {
        this.accountList = accountList;
    }
    ...
}

<reference id="savingsRef"
           interface="org.fusesource.example.SavingsAccount"
           component-name="savings"/>

To match both the interface and the component name (bean ID) of a stateful service, specify both the interface attribute and the component-name attribute on the reference-list element, as follows:

<reference-list id="savingsRef"
           interface="org.fusesource.example.SavingsAccount"
           component-name="savings"/>

(bank.name=HighStreetBank)

To match two service property values, you can use & conjunction, which combines expressions with a logical and.For example, to require that the foo property is equal to FooValue and the bar property is equal to BarValue, you could use the following LDAP filter expression:

(&(foo=FooValue)(bar=BarValue))

For the complete syntax of LDAP filter expressions, see section 3.2.7 of the OSGi Core Specification.

Filters can also be combined with the interface and component-name settings, in which case all of the specified conditions are required to match.

For example, to match a stateless service of SavingsAccount type, with a bank.name service property equal to HighStreetBank, you could define a reference element as follows:

<reference id="savingsRef"
           interface="org.fusesource.example.SavingsAccount"
           filter="(bank.name=HighStreetBank)"/>

To match a stateful service of SavingsAccount type, with a bank.name service property equal to HighStreetBank, you could define a reference-list element as follows:

<reference-list id="savingsRef"
           interface="org.fusesource.example.SavingsAccount"
           filter="(bank.name=HighStreetBank)"/>

There are two possible values of the availability attribute:

The following example of a reference element shows how to declare explicitly that the reference is a mandatory dependency:

<reference id="savingsRef"
           interface="org.fusesource.example.SavingsAccount"
           availability="mandatory"/>

For example, the following Blueprint configuration shows how to define a reference listener as a child of the reference manager with the ID, savingsRef:

<blueprint xmlns="http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0">

  <reference id="savingsRef"
             interface="org.fusesource.example.SavingsAccount"
             >
    <reference-listener bind-method="onBind" unbind-method="onUnbind">
      <bean class="org.fusesource.example.client.Listener"/>
    </reference-listener>
  </reference>

  <bean id="client" class="org.fusesource.example.client.Client">
    <property name="savingsAcc" ref="savingsRef"/>
  </bean>

</blueprint>

The preceding configuration registers an instance of org.fusesource.example.client.Listener type as a callback that listens for bind and unbind events. Events are generated whenever the savingsRef reference manager’s backing service binds or unbinds.

The following example shows a sample implementation of the Listener class:

package org.fusesource.example.client;

import org.osgi.framework.ServiceReference;

public class Listener {

    public void onBind(ServiceReference ref) {
        System.out.println("Bound service: " + ref);
    }

    public void onUnbind(ServiceReference ref) {
        System.out.println("Unbound service: " + ref);
    }

}

The method names, onBind and onUnbind, are specified by the bind-method and unbind-method attributes respectively. Both of these callback methods take an org.osgi.framework.ServiceReference argument.