bean definition profiles issue

[Dino Trump]

I´m using beans definition profiles through xml configuration, here is my code:

<beans profile="production">
	<bean id="myBean"  class="..." />
</beans>


<beans profile="dev">
	<bean id="myBean"  class="..." />
</beans>

If I put the beans elements at the end of the configuration file everything is OK, but when I put another bean definition after the beans elements I always get this error:

Caused by: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: cvc-complex-type.2.4.a: Invalid content was found starting with element 'bean'. One of '{"http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans":beans}' is expected.
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.createSAXParseException(ErrorHandlerWrapper.java:195)
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.error(ErrorHandlerWrapper.java:131)
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(XMLErrorReporter.java:384)
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(XMLErrorReporter.java:318)
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.xs.XMLSchemaValidator$XSIErrorReporter.reportError(XMLSchemaValidator.java:410)
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.xs.XMLSchemaValidator.reportSchemaError(XMLSchemaValidator.java:3165)
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.xs.XMLSchemaValidator.handleStartElement(XMLSchemaValidator.java:1777)
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.xs.XMLSchemaValidator.emptyElement(XMLSchemaValidator.java:705)
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl.scanStartElement(XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl.java:377)
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl$FragmentContentDriver.next(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:2740)
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentScannerImpl.next(XMLDocumentScannerImpl.java:647)
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl.next(XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl.java:140)
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:508)
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:807)
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:737)
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XMLParser.parse(XMLParser.java:107)
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.DOMParser.parse(DOMParser.java:225)
	at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.DocumentBuilderImpl.parse(DocumentBuilderImpl.java:283)
	at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.DefaultDocumentLoader.loadDocument(DefaultDocumentLoader.java:75)
	at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader.doLoadBeanDefinitions(XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java:388)
	... 28 more

Is this behavior expected ? Why the beans element must be the last one in te configuration file?

Thanks

[Marten Deinum]

Because that is the way the xsd wants it... The order is determined in there.

[wgorder]

To expand on what Marten already said

see this blog post http://blog.springsource.com/2011/02...1-m1-released/

spring-beans-3.1.xsd has been updated to allow this nesting, but constrained to allow such elements only as the last ones in the file. This should help provide flexibility without incurring clutter in the XML files. While this enhancement was developed in service of bean definition profiles, nested <beans/> elements are useful in general. Imagine you have a subset of beans in a given file that should be marked lazy-init="true". Rather than marking each bean, you could instead declare a nested <beans default-lazy-init="true"/> element, and all beans within will inherit that default. Beans defined elsewhere in the file will maintain the normal default of lazy-init="false". This applies for all the default-* attributes of the <beans/> element, such as default-lazy-init, default-init-method, default-destroy-method, and so on.