public abstract Class MXBeanMappingFactory

Defines how types are mapped for a given MXBean or set of MXBeans. An MXBeanMappingFactory can be specified either through the MXBeanMappingFactoryClass annotation, or through the JMX.MBeanOptions argument to a StandardMBean constructor or MXBean proxy.

An MXBeanMappingFactory must return an MXBeanMapping for any Java type that appears in the MXBeans that the factory is being used for. Usually it does that by handling any custom types, and forwarding everything else to the default mapping factory.

Consider the MyLinkedList example from the MXBeanMapping documentation. If we are unable to change the MyLinkedList class to add an MXBeanMappingClass annotation, we could achieve the same effect by defining MyLinkedListMappingFactory as follows:

public class MyLinkedListMappingFactory extends MXBeanMappingFactory {
    public MyLinkedListMappingFactory() {}

    public MXBeanMapping mappingForType(Type t, MXBeanMappingFactory f)
    throws OpenDataException {
        if (t == MyLinkedList.class)
            return new MyLinkedListMapping(t);
        else
            return MXBeanMappingFactory.DEFAULT.mappingForType(t, f);
    }
}

The mapping factory handles only the MyLinkedList class. Every other type is forwarded to the default mapping factory. This includes types such as MyLinkedList[] and List<MyLinkedList>; the default mapping factory will recursively invoke MyLinkedListMappingFactory to map the contained MyLinkedList type.

Once we have defined MyLinkedListMappingFactory, we can use it in an MXBean interface like this:

@MXBeanMappingFactoryClass(MyLinkedListMappingFactory.class)
public interface SomethingMXBean {
    public MyLinkedList getSomething();
}

Alternatively we can annotate the package that SomethingMXBean appears in, or we can supply the factory to a StandardMBean constructor or MXBean proxy.