Child bean definition has neither 'id' nor 'name' error

[jonmor]

I want to use Spring to populate a list which will be used in a JSP. I don't want to store references to the individual beans (with id, etc), and fortunately I don't have to, the following works just fine, with merely the class being specified, and then the properties for each bean being assigned.

<property name="optionList">
<list>
<bean class="testing.web.ListViewSelectOption">
<property name="name">
<value>id</value>
</property>
<property name="textLength">
<value>5</value>
</property>
etc...

Where it comes unstuck is that I want to be able to specify a parent bean, containing some default properties so all the properties don't have to be specified each time. Thus I modify the above so I have:

<bean id="basicOption" class="sailingnetworks.web.ListViewSelectOption"/>
[default properties set]

and for each bean:

<bean parent="baseOption">

Now, though, when it is inheriting from a parent, I get the following error:
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanDefinitionSt oreException: Error registering bean with name '' defined in file [/opt/projects/testing/listViewApplicationContext.xml]: Child bean definition has neither 'id' nor 'name'

So it only objects to not having an id or name when it is inheriting from a parent bean, which seems odd. I don't know whether this is a bug, or something I'm doing. It's with Spring 1.1.1.

[Colin Sampaleanu]

You should try 1.1.3. If this was indeed happening in 1.1.1, it doesn't happen in 1.1.3. There's no problem having an inner bean in 1.1.3 which derives from a parent, and doesn't specify any name or id.

[jonmor]

You should try 1.1.3. If this was indeed happening in 1.1.1, it doesn't happen in 1.1.3. There's no problem having an inner bean in 1.1.3 which derives from a parent, and doesn't specify any name or id.

You're absolutely right, 1.1.3 fixes this. Wonderful, thanks!