allow for lazy instantiation of components

In webwork, we create a new XWorkPicoContainer for each request to handle request scoped components. As most actions will only need 1 or 2 components, it would be nice for the container to only instantiate the components that are required.

Our ideal usage would be

Object getComponent(Class componentType)

where componentType can a registered or unregistered component. unregistered components would need to follow pico rules (only 1 constructor) and each argument in the constructor would need to be a registered pico component.

Here's the code we're using now to do this:

public Object createAction(Class componentType) {
Constructor constructor = componentType.getConstructors()[0];
Class[] parameters = constructor.getParameterTypes();
Object[] args = new Object[parameters.length];

try {
for (int i = 0; i < parameters.length; i++)

return makeComponentInstance(componentType, constructor, args);
} catch (PicoInvocationTargetInitailizationException e)

return null;
}