java - How to retrieve spring data repository instance for given domain class?

Question

Given the list of all spring data repositories in some class Bar:

@Autowired
private List<Repository> repositories;

How can I find the repository for an existing domain class Foo in the above list?

Assuming that the following exists:

@Entity
public class Foo {
  ...
}

and

public interface FooRepository extends JpaRepository<Foo, String> {}

Answer 1

Spring Data Commons contains a class Repositories that takes a ListableBeanFactory to find all repository beans defined in it and exposes an API to obtain these instances by domain class (through ….getRepository(Class<?> type)).

This class should be used with care. As there's some serious proxy generation going on for the repository instances you have to make sure the Repositories instance is created as late as possible during the ApplicationContext creation. The preferred way is to implement ApplicationListener and create the instance by listening to the ContextRefreshedEvent.

In case you're writing a web application, the safest way to use Repositories is by bootstrapping the repositories in the ApplicationContext created by the ContextLoaderListener and place the Repositories (see the reference documentation of Spring MVC for details.