Injecting a property set into an application

[mtudor]

Hi,

Here's the problem I am facing. I have a set of properties (in a proprietary xml format) which I want to make available to all controllers in my web application. The strategy I would like to use is the following:

1. Define a bean which is responsible for reading the xml file and transforming it into a set of properties (propertySetBean)
2. Have all of my controller classes extend a base class which exposes a property to set this property set bean (BaseControllerClass)
3. Inject the propertySetBean into each controller I am defining

I see two problems with this approach:

1. If all of my controllers have to extend from this base class I won't be able to use any of the predefined controllers Spring comes with
2. I don't like the idea of repeatedly injecting the property set into each controller I am defining. I would like to inject it once and be done with it.

Any other ideas? I am pretty new to spring, I may have missed some obvious features, so anything is welcome.
Thanks

[cmgharris]

If all of my controllers have to extend from this base class I won't be able to use any of the predefined controllers Spring comes with

You can extend one of Spring's controllers, e.g. SimpleFormController, as you suggest, and extend that for individual purposes.

I don't like the idea of repeatedly injecting the property set into each controller I am defining. I would like to inject it once and be done with it.

You can set up a template:

<bean id="myTemplate">
    <property name="myProperties" ref="myPropertiesBean">
</bean>

and use this as a parent for your controllers:

<bean id="myFirstController" class="xxx.yyy.zzz" parent="myTemplate">
    . . . all the properties unique to this controller . . .
</bean>

HTH