How do you initialize an EJB3 Stateful Session Bean ?

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In EJB 3, we can obtain a reference to Stateful Session Bean either either by using @EJB annotation or performing JNDI look-up. Yet these 2 methods do not offer you a way to initialize a Stateful SB as EJB 2.1 Home interface’s createMETHODs do.

StatefulSB bean = home.create (arg0, arg1, arg2);

EJB3 defines @Init annotation as a replacement for EJB 2.1 createMETHOD. But it is intended for bean written to 2.1 client view (that means you will need to define an home interface and annotate the bean class with @RemoteHome or @LocalHome annotations)

So, how do you initialize an EJB3 Stateful Session Bean?

Here’s my solution:

Define an create (arg0, arg1, arg2) as a business method in the business interface. You can change the name to something more relevant (e.g. initialize)
Implement this method as you would do with any 2.1 ejbCreate method
Invoke this method before any business methods.

This way the Stateful SB is instantiated according to your requirement.

I found a slightly different solution at http://community.jboss.org/message/524703#524703 by Carlo de Wolf. Repost it here for easy comparison:

If you want you can even create a regular create method which mimicks the home interface:

interface MyRemote {
   MyRemote create(String state);
}
 
class MyBean implement MyRemote {
   MyRemote create(String state) {
      this.state = state;
      return ctx.getBusinessObject(MyRemote.class);
   }
}