Loading multiple Spring beans configuration files example

This Spring tutorial guides you how to configure Spring to use multiple XML beans configuration files.

For large and complex Spring-based applications, it’s very common to break Spring’s application context file into multiple files in order to modularize the application’s configuration (beans definitions) into smaller pieces for easy maintenance. Spring allows this by providing the <import> element. Here’s a quick example:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
	http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd">

	<import resource="daoBeans.xml" />
	<import resource="businessBeans.xml" />
	<import resource="servicesBeans.xml" />

</beans>

This Spring’s application context configuration file includes three resources: daoBeans.xml, businessBeans.xml and servicesBeans.xml with each must be a complete, fully valid XML Spring’s beans definition file (including the root element <beans> and its xmlns attributes). Following are example code of each imported file above:

daoBeans.xml:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
	http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd">
	
	<bean id="myDaoBean" class="net.codejava.spring.MyDao" />
	
</beans>

businessBeans.xml:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
	http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd">
	
	<bean id="myBusinessBean" class="net.codejava.spring.MyBusiness">
		<property name="daoBean" ref="myDaoBean" />
	</bean>
	
</beans>

servicesBeans.xml:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
	http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd">

	<bean id="myServicesBean" class="net.codejava.spring.MyServices">
		<property name="businessBean" ref="myBusinessBean" />
	</bean>

</beans>

Spring container will load all the imported files and merge them to produce a final application configuration, so beans in one file can refer to other beans declared in other files. For example, in the above example, the myServiceBean (declared in servicesBeans.xml file) refers to the myBusinessBean which is declared in the businessBeans.xml file, and the myBusinessBean refers to the bean myDaoBean which is declared in the daoBeans.xml file. The imported files are considered to be relative to the parent file. The following screenshot shows how these XML files are place in an Eclipse project:

Of course the imported file can import another file also, as shown in the following modified version of servicesBeans.xml file:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
	http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd">
	
	<bean id="myServicesBean" class="net.codejava.spring.MyServices">
		<property name="businessBean" ref="myBusinessBean" />
		<property name="productServiceBean" ref="productServicesBean" />
	</bean>
	
	<import resource="productServices.xml" />
		
</beans>

And the Spring container will throw a BeanDefinitionStoreException if it could not find a specified imported file.

You can download a sample Spring MVC application (in Eclipse project) that demonstrates using multiple beans configuration files, in the attachments section below.

Related Spring Tutorials:

• Understand the core of Spring framework
• Understand Spring MVC
• Spring MVC beginner tutorial with Spring Tool Suite IDE
• Spring MVC Form Handling Tutorial
• Spring MVC Form Validation Tutorial
• Spring MVC with JdbcTemplate Example
• Spring MVC + Spring Data JPA + Hibernate - CRUD Example
• 14 Tips for Writing Spring MVC Controller
• Spring and Hibernate Integration Tutorial Part (XML Configuration)

About the Author:

Nam Ha Minh is certified Java programmer (SCJP and SCWCD). He began programming with Java back in the days of Java 1.4 and has been passionate about it ever since. You can connect with him on Facebook and watch his Java videos on YouTube.

Attachments:

SpringMultipleConfigs.zip

[Eclipse project]

3447 kB