I suppose the most obvious question to ask is, if you add a constructor to objectB, does it work? In my opinion, all CFCs that can be instantiated should have a constructor (init() method) and unless I'm mistaken, ColdSpring makes this assumption as well.

Re-read the post and noticed the line about trying to add an init method. The other reason may be because I think ColdSpring actually looks at object metadata when trying to decide what to autowire, and I'm not sure the inherited method can be found there (in the subclass's metadata).

Ah, so going on what you're saying, PERHAPS if I move the property tag to my object B instead of object A in the coldspring, it may very well go ahead and autowire it (assuming the 'setThisURL' method is visible to Coldspring looking at the metadata of object B...)! Of course, if that DOES work it undermines my goal here: to have one place to change that URL if I need to ever change it. Hmmm. More input welcome. :D

Are you saying that you expected ColdSpring to know that B extends A, and so it should set that property in B as well?

Or, Are you thinking that by having object A and object B (object, as opposed to component), anything done to A will affect B? (Sorry, it's not quite clear what is expected in that regard)

I'm ruling out order of instantiation issues, since you mentioned you were calling a method on obj c, that should alleviate any of those fears.

My best bet is that you were expecting ColdSpring to know that B extends A, and thus perform anything on B that it would perform on A. And I'm guessing it wasn't written so that it would do that (of course, it may have value but been unanticipated as well), but I could be wrong.

Do I understand correctly?

Hi Sammy.
I was thinking that by telling Coldspring that object A should have the 'thisURL' property injected into it (via the 'setThisURL' method), that Coldspring would do that for me. By my object B extending object A, in my mind then object A would inherit the previously set 'thisURL' property as well. Make sense?

Hey Doug, it looks like you are getting a bit confused by composition vs inheritance. In your xml you have defined 3 instance of 3 beans, objectA, objectB, objectC. This snippet here:

<bean id="objectA" class="model.objectA" >
  <property name="thisURL">
  <value>http://my.testserver.com/myWS.cfc?wsdl</value>
 </property>
</bean>

Defines that an instance of objectA, which is retrieved by the identifier 'objectA' should have it's property 'thisURL' set to the value of 'http://my.testserver.com/myWS.cfc?wsdl', before it is created.

Now, the fact that object's class definition says it extends objectA has nothing to do with instances of objectA. This new instance inherits the definition for objectA, but as you have defined it, it is created without the thisURL property being set.

If you wanted objectB to contain an instance of objectA, you would need to use composition, objectA would be a property of objectB, and internally you could call getThisURL() on that to get the value. Then you would define objectB thusly:

<bean id="objectB" class="model.objectB" >
 <property name="objectA">
  <ref bean="objectA">
 </property>
</bean>

Make sense? BTW, this text box is too damn small!

Hey, thanks for the input Scott, much appreciated. I understand exactly what you're saying...but I don't think the solution fits my particular need here. I have a set of methods that I want to be in my base class A. I will have multiple other classes that should all inherit base class A. One of the properties of base class A is the URL to a web service, and I want to have one place where I go to change that value in the future. It made sense to me that I should use Coldspring.xml as the one location I go to for property value maintenance, which is why I was trying to set that property value via the XML file. My thought was that, because I defined my base class A bean as having that property, that when an instance of the class B (which extends base class A) is requested, Coldspring would have already set the value of base class A's 'thisURL' property for me. When it didn't work that way, that's when my head scratching began.
I now understand that since I never explicitly asked CS for the bean known as "objectA", that CS didn't bother performing the property value injection. Since I asked for the bean known as "objectB", which extended base class A, and since my bean definition for objectB didn't specify setting a value for that property, the value never got set.
As an experiment, I have now re-defined the bean for "objectB" to set the 'thisURL' property, and even though the "setThisURL" method really exists in base class A, Coldspring was able to successfully set the value for me. Lesson learned!

Another way to help the multiple places to edit your URL is to use an XML entity:

[http://my.testserver.com/myWS.cfc?wsdl">]>

Then whenever you set this as a property into Object B, or other objects needing thisURL:

&thisURL;

Hmmm. My post lost its code.

Define an XML entity:

&lgt;!DOCTYPE beans SYSTEM "coldspring.dtd"
[http://my.testserver.com/myWS.cfc?wsdl">]>

Then whenever you set this as a property into Object B, or other objects needing thisURL:
&thisURL;

If this post didn't work, see this blog entry for the same idea.
http://mattw.mxdj.com/controlling_the_mach_ii_or_model_glue_xml_file_size.htm

Here's a thought... Why don't you reboot your machine, it solves most computer related issues ;)

Not sure if you ever figured it out, but the answer here is that the setup for this is incorrect. If objectB extends objectA, and objectB gets passed into objectC as a property, then you *do not* create a bean definition for objectA. Just create one for objectB and inject "thisURL" into objectB as a property. As long as setThisURL() is public in objectA, ColdSpring will correctly find the setter in the parent and use it when you create objectB.