It has been mentioned already in a few other threads that there is some new stuff in the latest snapshot builds to support simpler configuration for Spring Social. Today, I'm soliciting feedback on that work as I push toward a 1.1.0.M1 release.

Background: Spring Social is not overly burdensome to configure, either in Java configuration or in XML. But it can be a bit confusing. The design decisions that led to the two separate connection repositories (UsersConnectionRepository and the request-scoped ConnectionRepository), while solid from a design standpoint, are not easily configured nor clearly understood. And it's easy to get them wrong simply by failing to scope them properly.

Moreover, the flexibility in configuring the ConnectionRepository bean such that it is not coupled to Spring Security (and thus allows you to use whatever security mechanism you want to determine who the current user is) makes that bean particularly tricky to configure in XML. That's why many of Spring Social's examples are configured using Spring's Java-based configuration.

Therefore, I sought out a way to abstract Spring Social configuration, as much as possible and necessary, to be simpler. The latest snapshot builds include that simpler configuration option and it is reflected in the latest Spring Social Showcase example for JavaConfig (https://github.com/SpringSource/spri...ocial-showcase) and for XML (https://github.com/SpringSource/spri...l-showcase-xml).

Please take a moment to look at those sample applications and provide feedback (on this thread). Note that while I consider feedback and some of my own thoughts, the configuration is subject to change. My aim is to have this new configuration style reasonably stable in time for 1.1.0.M1 (targeting Nov 19th, 2012) and concretely settled upon in time for 1.1.0.RC1 (date TBD).