Introducing Spring Framework

Chapter 3
Applying Different Configurations
The Spring Framework supports different ways to configure its container and this chapter will cover the XML
configuration used previously. Also, you are going to learn how can you accomplish the same configuration
using different mechanisms, such as Spring annotations, Java bean configuration class, and the new
GroovyBeanDefinitionReader class.
In the previous chapter, you defined your Spring application, My Documents, and you saw how to use a XML
configuration file to inject your implementation of the SearchEngine interface. In this chapter, you will be using
the same XML configuration and you will see what you need to do in order to use all of these new different ways of
configuration.
My Documents XML Configuration
Let’s start by reviewing your current XML configuration (from the My Documents application) context and examine
it (see Listing 3-1).
Listing 3-1. mydocuments-context.xml
Listing 3-1 shows how the Spring container needs to know something about the classes and its dependencies.
As you saw in the previous chapter, you need to tell it through an XML configuration file. In this XML configuration file,
you are telling the Spring container that your implementation of the SearchEngine will be the MySearchEngine bean
with an id of “engine”. In other words, you are assigning an identifier to your bean definition. Also, you are creating a
new instance of the class Type, creating the "documentType" bean.
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