[spring] How to add a hook to the application context initialization event?

For a regular Servlet, I guess you could declare a context listener, but for Spring MVC would Spring make this any easier?

Furthermore, if I define a context listener and then would need to access the beans defined in my servlet.xml or applicationContext.xml, how would I get access to them?

Please follow below step to do some processing after Application Context get loaded i.e application is ready to serve.

1. Create below annotation i.e

   @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME) @Target(value= {ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.TYPE}) public @interface AfterApplicationReady {}

2.Create Below Class which is a listener which get call on application ready state.

    @Component
    public class PostApplicationReadyListener implements ApplicationListener<ApplicationReadyEvent> {

    public static final Logger LOGGER = LoggerFactory.getLogger(PostApplicationReadyListener.class);
    public static final String MODULE = PostApplicationReadyListener.class.getSimpleName();

    @Override
    public void onApplicationEvent(ApplicationReadyEvent event) {
        try {
            ApplicationContext context = event.getApplicationContext();
            String[] beans = context.getBeanNamesForAnnotation(AfterAppStarted.class);

            LOGGER.info("bean found with AfterAppStarted annotation are : {}", Arrays.toString(beans));

            for (String beanName : beans) {
                Object bean = context.getBean(beanName);
                Class<?> targetClass = AopUtils.getTargetClass(bean);
                Method[] methods = targetClass.getMethods();
                for (Method method : methods) {
                    if (method.isAnnotationPresent(AfterAppStartedComplete.class)) {

                        LOGGER.info("Method:[{} of Bean:{}] found with AfterAppStartedComplete Annotation.", method.getName(), beanName);

                        Method currentMethod = bean.getClass().getMethod(method.getName(), method.getParameterTypes());

                        LOGGER.info("Going to invoke method:{} of bean:{}", method.getName(), beanName);

                        currentMethod.invoke(bean);

                        LOGGER.info("Invocation compeleted method:{} of bean:{}", method.getName(), beanName);
                    }
                }
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            LOGGER.warn("Exception occured : ", e);
        }
    }
}

Finally when you start your Spring application just before log stating application started your listener will be called.

Since Spring 4.2 you can use @EventListener (documentation)

@Component
class MyClassWithEventListeners {

    @EventListener({ContextRefreshedEvent.class})
    void contextRefreshedEvent() {
        System.out.println("a context refreshed event happened");
    }
}

I had a single page application on entering URL it was creating a HashMap (used by my webpage) which contained data from multiple databases. I did following things to load everything during server start time-

1- Created ContextListenerClass

public class MyAppContextListener implements ServletContextListener
    @Autowired

    private  MyDataProviderBean myDataProviderBean; 

    public MyDataProviderBean getMyDataProviderBean() {

        return MyDataProviderBean;

    }

    public void setMyDataProviderBean(MyDataProviderBean MyDataProviderBean) {

        this.myDataProviderBean = MyDataProviderBean;

    }

    @Override
    public void contextDestroyed(ServletContextEvent arg0) {

        System.out.println("ServletContextListener destroyed");

    }


    @Override

    public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent context) {

        System.out.println("ServletContextListener started");

        ServletContext sc = context.getServletContext();

        WebApplicationContext springContext = WebApplicationContextUtils.getWebApplicationContext(sc);

        MyDataProviderBean MyDataProviderBean = (MyDataProviderBean)springContext.getBean("myDataProviderBean");

        Map<String, Object> myDataMap = MyDataProviderBean.getDataMap();

        sc.setAttribute("myMap", myDataMap);

    }

2- Added below entry in web.xml

<listener>
    <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener> 
<listener>
    <listener-class>com.context.listener.MyAppContextListener</listener-class>
</listener>

3- In my Controller Class updated code to first check for Map in servletContext

    @RequestMapping(value = "/index", method = RequestMethod.GET)
        public String index(@ModelAttribute("model") ModelMap model) {

            Map<String, Object> myDataMap = new HashMap<String, Object>();
            if (context != null && context.getAttribute("myMap")!=null)
            {

                myDataMap=(Map<String, Object>)context.getAttribute("myMap");
            }

            else
            {

                myDataMap = myDataProviderBean.getDataMap();
            }

            for (String key : myDataMap.keySet())
            {
                model.addAttribute(key, myDataMap.get(key));
            }
            return "myWebPage";

        }

With this much change when I start my tomcat it loads dataMap during startTime and puts everything in servletContext which is then used by Controller Class to get results from already populated servletContext .

Create your annotation

  @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
    public @interface AfterSpringLoadComplete {
    }

Create class

    public class PostProxyInvokerContextListener implements ApplicationListener<ContextRefreshedEvent> {

    @Autowired
    ConfigurableListableBeanFactory factory;

    @Override
    public void onApplicationEvent(ContextRefreshedEvent event) {
        ApplicationContext context = event.getApplicationContext();
        String[] names = context.getBeanDefinitionNames();
        for (String name : names) {
            try {
                BeanDefinition definition = factory.getBeanDefinition(name);
                String originalClassName = definition.getBeanClassName();
                Class<?> originalClass = Class.forName(originalClassName);
                Method[] methods = originalClass.getMethods();
                for (Method method : methods) {
                    if (method.isAnnotationPresent(AfterSpringLoadComplete.class)){
                        Object bean = context.getBean(name);
                        Method currentMethod = bean.getClass().getMethod(method.getName(), method.getParameterTypes());
                        currentMethod.invoke(bean);
                    }
                }
            } catch (Exception ignored) {
            }
        }
    }
}

Register this class by @Component annotation or in xml

<bean class="ua.adeptius.PostProxyInvokerContextListener"/>

and use annotation where you wan on any method that you want to run after context initialized, like:

   @AfterSpringLoadComplete
    public void init() {}