public static <T> T doLookup(String name) throws NamingException {
return (T) (new InitialContext()).lookup(name);
}
Doesn't InitialContext.doLookup() bring resource leak?
TweetPosted on Thursday Feb 12, 2015 at 12:00PM in Technology
There’s a convenient static method called InitialContext.doLookup() which introduced at Java6. it uses Generics so we don’t need to cast returned object by hand. implementation is very simple as follows:
I think it’s bad because there’s no way to invoke InitialContext#close() because doLookup() doesn’t save the reference to InitialContext instance anywhere. if it acquired some resource such as TCP socket it may brings resource leak.
Personally I will avoid use of doLookup() because of this reason while there are many opinion that it doesn’t need to close explicitly at most of environments. I guess I’m too sensitive about it but I have a history of strugging with leak of JDBC resources (Connection, Statement and ResultSet) so I’m very curious about this kind of problem.
Sometimes handling of InitialContext is annoying because it should be keep opened during use of returned instance on some environments or implementations. also I wonder why InitialContext doesn’t implemented AutoCloseable while it’s a perfect candidate for it.
For Servlets you could write as follows:
public class TestServlet extends HttpServlet {
private Context context;
private DataSource dataSource;
@Override
public void init() throws ServletException {
try {
context = new InitialContext();
dataSource = (DataSource) context.lookup("java:comp/env/jdbc/derby");
} catch (NamingException e) {
throw new ServletException(e);
}
}
@Override
protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp) throws ServletException, IOException {
try (Connection cn = dataSource.getConnection()) {
// database operations
} catch (SQLException e) {
throw new ServletException(e);
}
}
@Override
public void destroy() {
if (context != null) {
try {
context.close();
} catch (NamingException e) {
// no-op
}
}
}
}
In jberetweb, I wrote an interface named JobOperatorWork and a method intended to use with it called doWorkWithJobOperator() for ease of handling of InitialContext closing.
In Java EE environment, you could simply use @Resource or @EJB for avoiding annoying procedure of closing.
Tags: javaee
