How to get spring bean from context in freemarker macros?

Question

I need to get spring bean from WebApplicationContext in macros. My attempt is to do the following:

<#macro categoryName category>
    <#assign context=springMacroRequestContext.webApplicationContext>
    <#assign lb=context.getBean("localizationBean")/>
    <#assign pp=context.getBean("phraseProvider")/>
    <#assign categoryName=pp.getPhrase(lb.getCategoryMnemo(category))/>
    ${categoryName}
</#macro>

But this is failing. First of all if I provide a bean name which is a string to getBean it returns an Object which I have to cast somehow, I've also tried to provide fully qualified class name but freemarker didn't like it. So how to do it ?

Answer 1

My solution to this problem was to pass a bean from controller and use it in a macros then.

Also I would suggest if you have for example User entity in your domain to create a related macros file like user-macroses.ftl where all user related macroses are placed.

And if in some of the macroses you need to call some spring bean method you should create a bean like UserFtlMacroses where you put user related logic, so when on the view you call some macros <@user.doSomething/> the macros doSomething will call a method from UserFtlMacroses.