Bootstrap Spring in a J2ee Application.

I have seen documented a nice declarative approach to bootstap Spring (load the application context xml) in a web-app through the web.xml like so:

<context-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/daoContext.xml /WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml</param-value>
</context-param>

<listener>
<listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoade rListener</listener-class>
</listener>

I have a enterprise app deployed as an ear file but with no web-app element. Is there any declarative way to bootstap Spring in such an application? Can anyone suggest a nice clean way to bootstrap Spring in an enterprise app.

Any suggestions are most welcome.

Is the question then how to integrate Spring with EJBs? In that case see here.

If I missed the point, please post some more details about your requirements.

Regards,
Andreas

Sorry, I'm finding it quite difficult to express my problem.

We have a thin layer of EJB SLSB. Behind these we want to use Spring DAO and Hibernate. I have configured everything nicely in my applicationContext.xml but wan to have the bean factory initialised when my ear file is deployed or on server startup. I wanted advise on the best way to do this in a j2ee app that has no web-app (war).

Because i am new to spring it is difficult for me to express the problem i am having.

I know i need to run some code like so:

ClassPathXmlApplicationContext appContext = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(
new String[] {"applicationContext.xml", "applicationContext-part2.xml"});
// of course, an ApplicationContext is just a BeanFactory
BeanFactory factory = (BeanFactory) appContext;

But where should i put this code to ensure once the ear is deployed everything is initialised at startup???

Ok, I see. The problem is, that in the JEE context only the Servlet spec specifies such initialization hooks.

Anyway, there is nothing wrong in providing a WAR file with web.xml specifying a ContextLoaderListener. From that you can specify an application context which contains your initialization beans.
Even though you have no web application, that approach is perfectly fine and portable as well. I have done this before and know of others which did so as well.

Regards,
Andreas

Ok, then that is what I shall do.

Thank you for the help.