We are using Spring's custom XML configuration handling, which has been working great for most of our use cases, however I'm not quite sure how to implement the following.

We have a bean, A, that can take a list of Z beans. The definitions for Z, within A, may either be a complete definition or a reference to a Z bean defined in a broader scope. For example:

Code:
<a id="foo">
  <z id="bar" />
  <z ref="baz" />
</a>
In my custom bean definition parser, either for A or Z, how would I handle the reference? It's possible, though unlikely, that the bean definition for the referent has not been created yet, so I don't think I can use a lookup in the BeanRegistry. Should I instead use org.springframework.beans.factory.config.RuntimeBe anReference? I was concerned that this wouldn't do what I wanted because it wasn't a BeanDefinition.