CDI 1.1 Public Review Draft surfaces

The innovative Java EE specification that simplified web-application development is showing steady progress
JSR 299, Contexts and Dependency
Injection for the Java EE platform,
was undoubtedly a gamechanger, enriching enterprise applications
with new services.
The team behind the
introduction of CDI features recognised its
importance to the entire Java canon, in a
world moving ever closer to the web. Designed as the bridge between
EJB in the backend and JavaServer Faces in the front, CDI quickly
became the most talked about part of
Java EE 6 in 2009.
Work extending CDI beyond 1.0 started in April 2011, and this
past week we saw a Public Review
draft appear through the JCP, in line with their
target of Java EE 7 next year.
Spec Lead Pete Muir told further of the progress
on his
blog, stating that CDI 1.1 wouldn’t add “any major
new features” and would focus on “honing 1.0”. Muir lists a number
of improvements such as:
-
The CDI class, Which provides programmatic access to CDI facilities from outside a managed bean
-
Ability to veto beans declaratively using @ vetoed
-
Conversations in servlet requests
-
Application lifecycle events in Java EE
-
Injection of Bean metadata into bean instances
-
Programmatic access to a container provided Producer Injection target AnnotatedType
-
Ability to override attributes of a Bean via BeanAttributes
-
Ability to process modules via ProcessModule
-
Ability to wrap the Injection Point
-
Honor WEB-INF/classes/META-INF/beans.xml to activate WEB-INF/classes in a bean archive
-
Global ordering and enablement of interceptors and decorators
-
Global selection of alternative
-
New @ deprecated
-
Clarify interceptors and decorators must be implemented using proxying
-
Allow multiple types annotated with Java class
-
Allow extensions to specify the annotations that they are interested in
The team behind CDI 1.1 are encouraging developers to
offer feedback on the Public Draft, but also areas which need to be
discussed in CDI 2.0. This includes topics such as bean visibility,
startup events and CDI scanning, which Muir details further
in the
blogpost.
The Public Review Ballot on the specifics of JSR 346 begins
on 4th December, so there’s not much time
to get your opinion heard. Head over the mailing list to express
your views on how CDI 1.1 is shaping up.
Whilst there’s nothing as revolutionary as its initial
splash, CDI 1.1 is a sensible refinement of the popular component
for the next major EE release.