Getting an application context

Question

Is there a way to get an ApplicationContext from contexts in the file system and the class path all at once? rather than using FileSystemXmlApplicationContext and then ClassPathXmlApplicationContext and passing the fileSystemApplicationContext as the parent?

Answer 1

I suggest you have a look at the org.springframework.context.support.GenericApplicationContext. Together with an org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader it shoudl give you the flexibility you want. There is an example of code on the GenericApplicationContext's javadoc

Your code would look like:

GenericApplicationContext ctx = new GenericApplicationContext();
XmlBeanDefinitionReader xmlReader = new XmlBeanDefinitionReader(ctx);
xmlReader.loadBeanDefinitions(new ClassPathResource("classpathContext.xml"));
xmlReader.loadBeanDefinitions(new FileSystemResource("fileSystemContext.xml"));

Note the XmlBeanDefinitionReader also has a method loadBeanDefinitions(String) which will then use org.springframework.core.io.ResourceLoader to handle the appropriate resource. In which case your code would look like:

GenericApplicationContext ctx = new GenericApplicationContext();
XmlBeanDefinitionReader xmlReader = new XmlBeanDefinitionReader(ctx);
xmlReader.loadBeanDefinitions("classpath:classpathContext.xml"));
xmlReader.loadBeanDefinitions("file:fileSystemContext.xml"));