Is JNDI used only with webcontiner / J2EE applications

Question

Can we write standalone programs which use JNDI? I googled and it seems that JNDI can be used in conjunction with web-container i.e. to use JNDI, the JNDI support should come from a web-container?

Can we write a simple standalone program (with main() method) and uses JNDI to obtain the database connection? I searched a lot in google, however not sure if we can do this.

Any inputs highly appreciated.

Thanks

Already answered? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5861874/easy-way-to-start-a-standalone-jndi-server-and-register-some-resources — Romski, Jun 30 '14 at 08:23
@Romski it can be debated if a program requiring a separate server is stand alone. — Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen, Jun 30 '14 at 08:30

Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-24T05:06:19.170

2

The problem JNDI solves is to be able to retrieve an object present in the JVM but inaccessible to your code, and do so at runtime using a string key.

You just need an implementation of this technology in your stand alone applications to use it. I did it with https://code.google.com/p/osjava/wiki/SimpleJNDI many moons ago.

However, JNDI is hardly mentioned these days because it has evolved into Dependency Injection (CDI in Java EE) where the lookup mechanism is moved outside your own code. If you are writing a new stand alone application I would suggest you look into Dagger 2 instead of JNDI. Notice that the project has quite a steep learning curve - you may want to experiment with https://github.com/ravn/dagger2-hello-world while learning it.

See https://github.com/google/dagger

edited Jul 24 '17 at 05:06

answered Jun 30 '14 at 08:27

Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen

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So is answer YES that JNDI is used in conjunction with some container? – CuriousMind Jun 30 '14 at 11:38
Usually but not necessarily. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Jun 30 '14 at 13:34
@Thrbjorn: I am trying to understand as to how to do without some container, i.e. using standalone (with main() ) application to learn the concept. – CuriousMind Jun 30 '14 at 17:58
Use SimpleJNDI for that. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Jul 01 '14 at 07:37
For benefit of others, i got this amazing link which details the same, link is: http://penguindreams.org/blog/running-beans-that-use-application-server-datasources-locally/ – CuriousMind Jul 01 '14 at 09:52
This SimpleJNDI project is not under active development anymore. There is a GitHub clone with bug fixes and some new features maintained by me. See https://github.com/h-thurow/Simple-JNDI – Holger Thurow Jun 29 '17 at 06:00

Is JNDI used only with webcontiner / J2EE applications

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