How to load data during startup - design question?

[bobby]

I am new to tomcat and spring, so thanks in advance for being polite.

I will have to parse a fairly large XML file and store it in memory as a HashMap so other spring web apps have access to this class.

How would I go about doing this? Can this HashMap be treated as a DAO and I can ask other spring objects to ingest it in their app?

How can I force tomcat to load this HashMap during start time, so the file is populated and loaded only once?

Thanks,
Bob

[karldmoore]

Have you looked at the Lifecycle interfaces?
http://static.springframework.org/sp...tory-lifecycle

[djo.mos]

Hi.
Unless I am mistaken, you can do this by simply declaring your bean (the one who loads the XML and store it in a map) as a Spring bean, with the defaut scope, i.e. Singleton. The XML loading and the Map populating goes in an init-method (can be configured via xml or via JSR 250 annotation @PostConstruct).
This bean can then be injected into any other bean needing him.

Regards.