Support for javax.naming.Reference is missing

[GoogleCodeExporter]

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Create converter which returns a javax.naming.Reference populated with the 
correct class and factory class (implementing ObjectFactory).
2. Retrieve Reference

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
a. expected result: a class built by the factory class using the ObjectFactory 
interface
b. actual result: just the Reference object

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
11.4.1 on Linux

Please provide any additional information below.
if I use the standard Java RefFSContextFactory as JNDI provider, this
works well:
1. Create Reference
2. bind()
3. lookup() returns specific object, here WSMQConnectionFactory

Also, the Glassfish custom resource are implemented that way.

In summary, I see two issues here:

1. References should be returned as actual objects
2. simple-jndi should provide a default converter for the Reference object:

public class SimpleJndiObjectFactoryConverter implements Converter {

    private static final String OBJECT_FACTORY_NAME = "objectFactoryName";

    /* (non-Javadoc)
     * @see org.osjava.sj.loader.convert.Converter#convert(java.util.Properties, java.lang.String)
     */
    public Object convert( final Properties properties, final String type ) {

        final String factoryName = ( String ) properties.get( OBJECT_FACTORY_NAME );
        final Reference ref = new Reference( type, factoryName, null );

        for ( final Entry <Object, Object> entry : properties.entrySet() ) {
            final String key = (String) entry.getKey();
            if ( OBJECT_FACTORY_NAME.equals( key ) ) {
                continue;
            }
            ref.add( new StringRefAddr( key, (String) entry.getValue() ) );
        }
        return ref;
    }

}

Thanks, Jörg

Original issue reported on code.google.com by jfaram...@gmail.com on 25 May 2012 at 12:30

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Instead of "return ref" I would use:

        try {
            final Class<?> factoryClass = Class.forName( factoryName );
            final ObjectFactory of = (ObjectFactory) factoryClass.newInstance();
            return of.getObjectInstance( ref, null, null, null );
        } catch ( Exception e ) {
            return null;
        }

The Issue (1) is solved here. But IMHO this should work in general.

And: Is "Class.forName()" correct here? Should we use the thread-context 
classloader instead?

Cheers, Jörg

Original comment by jfaram...@gmail.com on 25 May 2012 at 2:59