OpenEJB 3.1 and later users should refer to the Spring page.

Bootstrapping OpenEJB in Spring

If you wish to use OpenEJB inside Spring you can do so pretty easily. Include OpenEJB and its dependencies in your classpath as you would in a plain embedded scenario then add a custom factory like the following:

public class OpenEjbFactoryBean implements org.springframework.beans.factory.FactoryBean {

    private Properties properties = new Properties();

    public OpenEjbFactoryBean() {
        properties.put(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY, "org.apache.openejb.client.LocalInitialContextFactory");
    }

    public Properties getJndiEnvironment() {
        return properties;
    }

    public void setJndiEnvironment(Properties properties) {
        this.properties.putAll(properties);
    }

    public Object getObject() {
        try {
            return new InitialContext(properties);
        } catch (NamingException e) {
            throw new RuntimeException(e);
        }
    }

    public Class getObjectType(){
        return Context.class;
    }

    boolean isSingleton() {
        return true;
    }
}

And include that at the top of your spring xml file as follows:

<bean id="OpenEjbContext" class="org.acme.OpenEjbFactoryBean">
  <property name="jndiEnvironment">
    <props>
      <prop key="myDs">new://Resource?type=DataSource</prop>
      <prop key="myDs.JdbcDriver">com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</prop>
      <prop key="myDs.JdbcUrl">jdbc:mysql://localhost/midastest?createDatabaseIfNotExist=true</prop>
      <prop key="myDs.UserName">root</prop>
      <prop key="myDs.Password"></prop>
    </props>
  </property>
</bean>

The value of is meant to be illustrative of the kinds of properties you can pass into OpenEJB. It’s possible to create any number of datasources, topics, queues, containers and more this way.

Just as with Unit Testing, OpenEJB will find and automatically deploy all the EJB beans it [finds in the classpath|Application discovery via the classpath]. You can then expose any of these things to other Spring components with custom factory beans.

Injecting OpenEJB-created resources into Spring components

If you want to have any of the Topics, Queues, DataSources, EntityManagers or more that OpenEJB creates injected into components that Spring creates, here’s one technique….

Let’s say you have a persistence unit called "OrangeUnit" declared in a persistence.xml file. One way to get the related EntityManager created by OpenEJB is to do as follows. Create an @Stateless bean with an @PersistenceContext ref in it, then use a factory bean to look it up, pull the EntityManager out and return it

OrangeUnitBean.java

/*
 * OpenEJB will automatically find this bean.  Just put it in the same jar
 * that your META-INF/persistence.xml file is located in and make sure that
 * that same jar file also has a META-INF/ejb-jar.xml file.  The ejb-jar.xml
 * need only contain the text "<ejb-jar/>" at minimum.
 */
@Stateless
public class OrangeUnitBean implements OrangeUnitLocal {

    @PersistenceContext(unitName="OrangeUnit")
    private EntityManager entityManager;

    public EntityManager getEntityManager() {
        return entityManager;
    }
}

OrangeUnitLocal.java

/**
 * The local interface for the OrangeUnitBean
 */
public interface OrangeUnitLocal {
   public EntityManager getEntityManager();
}

OrangeUnitFactoryBean.java

/**
 * This factory bean will lookup the OrangeUnitBean using the javax.naming.Context
 * that is created via the OpenEjbFactoryBean above.  It will simply grab the EntityManager
 * from that bean and hand it over to Spring.  Anyone in Spring-land can then easily get
 * a reference to the EntityManager by simply referencing this factory bean.
 */
public class OrangeUnitFactoryBean implements org.springframework.beans.factory.FactoryBean {
    private Context context;

    public Context getContext() {
        return context;
    }

    public void setContext(Context context) {
        this.context = context;
    }

    public Object getObject() {
        try {
            ResourceLocal bean = (ResourceLocal) context.lookup("OrangeUnitBeanLocal");
            return bean.getEntityManager();
        } catch (NamingException e) {
            throw new RuntimeException(e);
        }
    }

    public Class getObjectType(){
        return EntityManager.class;
    }

    boolean isSingleton() {
        return true;
    }
}

The factory bean would then be declared in your spring xml file as follows:

<bean id="OrangeUnit" class="org.acme.OrangeUnitFactoryBean">
  <property name="context" ref="OpenEjbContext">
</bean>

The EntityManager can then easily be consumed by a spring bean.

public class SomePojo {

    private EntityManager entityManager;

    public void setEntityManager(EntityManager entityManager) {
        this.entityManager = entityManager;
    }

    ...
}

In the spring xml

<bean id="SomePojo" class="org.acme.SomePojo">
  <property name="entityManager" ref="OrangeUnit">
</bean>

Here’s what all three declarations would look like together in your spring xml:

Spring bean definitions combined

<bean id="OpenEjbContext" class="org.acme.OpenEjbFactoryBean">
  <property name="jndiEnvironment">
    <props>
      <prop key="myDs">new://Resource?type=DataSource</prop>
      <prop key="myDs.JdbcDriver">com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</prop>
      <prop key="myDs.JdbcUrl">jdbc:mysql://localhost/midastest?createDatabaseIfNotExist=true</prop>
      <prop key="myDs.UserName">root</prop>
      <prop key="myDs.Password"></prop>
    </props>
  </property>
</bean>

<bean id="OrangeUnit" class="org.acme.OrangeUnitFactoryBean">
  <property name="context" ref="OpenEjbContext">
</bean>

<bean id="SomePojo" class="org.acme.SomePojo">
  <property name="entityManager" ref="OrangeUnit">
</bean>

Here is a bunch of links suggested by a user. If anybody has time to go through them and write a doc, that would be great. These links explain how to make available spring components to openejb.

Spring and OpenEJB 3.0

Bootstrapping OpenEJB in Spring

Injecting OpenEJB-created resources into Spring components