Is it possible to read the bean definitions without initializing the context?

[hseoane]

Hi everyone,

I need to read the bean definitions of a set of Spring configuration files without instantiating the beans.
The purpose of this is to go through the bean definitions and detect which beans contain properties whose values came from a placeholder.

My initial attempt was this, which loads the context in the first line:

AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext ctx = new FileSystemXmlApplicationContext("c:\\tmp\\ctx.xml");
DefaultListableBeanFactory bf = (DefaultListableBeanFactory) ctx.getBeanFactory();

However, I can't initialize the context since there are beans that have a constructor argument that require having a valid value upon instantiation, and the placeholder's format makes that validation fail.

My second attempt was this, which lazily loads the context:

AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(new String[] {"ctx.xml"}, false);
DefaultListableBeanFactory bf = (DefaultListableBeanFactory) ctx.getBeanFactory();

But that code causes this exception:
java.lang.IllegalStateException: BeanFactory not initialized or already closed - call 'refresh' before accessing beans via the ApplicationContext
at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractRefres hableApplicationContext.getBeanFactory(AbstractRef reshableApplicationContext.java:171)

Is there a way to read the context configuration without the initialization of the context?

Thanks a lot in advance,
Hernan

[hseoane]

I solved this issue by extending the FileSystemXmlApplicationContext and overriding the refresh() method to call only refreshBeanFactory();
This allows me to do the following:

AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext ctx= new FileSystemXmlApplicationContext(new String[] {"ctx.xml"}, false) {
@Override
public void refresh() throws BeansException, IllegalStateException {
refreshBeanFactory();
}
};
ctx.refresh();
DefaultListableBeanFactory beanFactory = (DefaultListableBeanFactory) ctx.getBeanFactory();

This way the context loads the bean factory, and doesn't instantiate the beans, allowing me to read the bean factory definitions.

Thanks,
Hernan