Creating an MBean (Method 3)

The last way of creating an MBean relies on the instantiate method of the MBean server. In addition, we use a nondefault constructor to instantiate the class with a different behavior.

Example 8–4 Creating an MBean (Method 3)

CommunicatorServer rmiConnector = null;
Object[] params = {new Integer(8086)};
String[] signature = {new String("int")};
try {
    String RmiConnectorClassName = "com.sun.jdmk.comm.RmiConnectorServer";
    // specify the RMI port number to use as a parameter to the constructor
    rmiConnector = (CommunicatorServer)myMBeanServer.instantiate(
                       RmiConnectorClassName, params, signature);
} catch(Exception e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
    System.exit(0);
}

try {
    // Let the RMI connector server provides its default name
    ObjectInstance rmiConnectorInstance =
        myMBeanServer.registerMBean(rmiConnector, null);
    
    // Confirm the class and default object name
    echo("CLASS NAME  = " + rmiConnectorInstance.getClassName());
    echo("OBJECT NAME = 
	   " + rmiConnectorInstance.getObjectName().toString());
} catch(Exception e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
    System.exit(0);
}

// Now we explicitly start the RMI connector server
rmiConnector.start();

// waiting to leave starting state...
while (rmiConnector.getState() == CommunicatorServer.STARTING) {
    sleep(1000);
}
echo("STATE = " + rmiConnector.getStateString());

// Check that the RMI connector server is started
if (rmiConnector.getState() != CommunicatorServer.ONLINE) {
    echo("Cannot start the RMI connector server");
    System.exit(0);
}
[...]

As in Example 8–2, we instantiate and register the MBean in separate steps. First, we instantiate the class using the instantiate method of the MBean server. This method lets you specify the constructor you want use when instantiating. Note that we could also have specified a constructor to the createMBean method in the previous example.

To specify a constructor, you must give an array of objects for the parameters and an array of strings that defines the signature. If these arrays are empty or null, the MBean server will try to use the default no-parameter constructor. If the class does not have a public no-parameter constructor, you must specify the parameters and signature of a valid public constructor.

In our case, we specify an integer parameter to set the port through one of the constructors of the RmiConnectorServer class. Then, we register the MBean with the registerMBean method of the MBean server, as in Example 8–2.

One advantage of this creation method is that the instantiate method of the MBean server also supports class loaders. If any are registered in the MBean server, they will automatically be used if the class is not available locally. See Chapter 14, M-Let Class Loader for more information on class loading.

Because we do not take advantage of the class loaders here, we could have just called the class's constructor directly. The main advantage is that, like the first method of MBean creation, we retain a direct reference to the new object. The direct reference again enables us to use the MBean's shortcut methods explicitly.

There are other combinations of instantiating and registering MBeans for achieving the same result. For example, we could use the default constructor and then set the port attribute of the MBean before starting it. Other combinations are left as an exercise to the reader.