Java WAR - Load Spring beans from an external JAR

问题:

I would like to load inside my Spring MVC Web Application (packaged as WAR) some Spring framework beans annotated with @Service from an external jar, which is in charge of accessing a database and located in the classpath under /WEB-INF/lib. If possible, it would be desirable to load them automatically using the @Autowired annotation.

I have followed successfully the solution in this link1:

this.ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("services-context.xml");
this.myAService = ctx.getBean("myAService");

However, this solution uses Spring API function getBean which is considered a bad practice (see link2).

I also tried, without luck two more things to load the external jar´s applicationContext:

• WAR´s appContext.xml:

  <import resource="classpath*:/WEB-INF/lib/pathToExternalJar/applicationContext.xml">
  

• WAR´s web xml -> load the jar´s appContext as described here (link3). (e.g. *applicationContext.xml):

      <context-param>
          <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
          <param-value>
              classpath:localSpringContext.xml
              classpath:*applicationContext.xml
          </param-value>
      </context-param>
  

What is the best approach to load those beans properly and how should it be done?

回答1:

WAR´s appContext.xml and WAR´s web xml are both feasible. If you need to run integration tests based on both localSpringContext.xml and external jar's applicationContext.xml frequently, I recommend the WAR´s appContext.xml approach.

Updated1:

WAR´s appContext.xml:

<import resource="classpath:{classpath}/applicationContext.xml"/>

WAR´s web xml:

<context-param>
    <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
    <param-value>
        classpath:localSpringContext.xml
        classpath:{classpath}/applicationContext.xml
</param-value>
</context-param>

For example, if your applicationContext.xml is under package :com/gmail/hippoom

you can get it by classpath:com/gmail/hippoom/applicationContext.xml or classpath*:applicationContext.xml with wildcard.