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Save Spring XML Configuration

Forgive me if this has been answered before ...
I want to load a spring configuration xml file from disk, have the user modify settings, then save the modifications back to the xml file, for initialization during a subsequent run of the application.
For instance, say a class has a collection of classes, each with their own bean configurations. Through the UI, the user may reconfigure any of the sub-classes and/or add/remove any sub-classes from the collection.
Example application-context.xml:
<beans>
<bean id="mainClass" class="...">
<property name="subClassList">
<list>
<ref bean="subClassA" />
<ref bean="subClassB" />
</list>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="subClassA" class="...">
<property name="var1" value="1" />
</bean>
<bean id="subClassB" class="...">
<property name="var2" value="100" />
</bean>
</beans>
So, not only do I want to allow the user to modify var1 & var2 in the application and save the configuration, but the user could remove subClassB from the list or add subClassC to the list, within the application, then save the configuration.
Also, the application is a desktop app, not web-based. In addition, "mainClass" is not the class that contains the application entry point, "main()". Think of "mainClass" as a container, with a collection of other classes, each of which has a "process()". So, the parent class, mainClass, iterates through each subClass, runs process(), then evaluates what the overall result will be. Adding subclasses and modifying subClass parameters, then saving the configuration is the goal.
Thanks in advance,
Eric

saveorupdate call in Junit test case throws no transaction in progress error

Premise
I have a Spring 5.1.5 project with Hibernate 5.4.1
The compilation goes through fine but while running test cases for a particular package I see multiple tests failing. All with the same error:
javax.persistence.TransactionRequiredException: no transaction is in progress at com.project.server.package.dao.impl.SomeDAOImplTest.someTest(SomeDAOImplTest.java:54)
The Problem
Now I know that Hibernate 5 enforces the check for a transaction and it doesn't find one here and throws an exception. My question is why does it do that given I have transactions initialized via spring context.
My test case:
#ContextConfiguration({ "classpath:/spring/applicationContext-package-dao--test.xml" })
public class SomeDAOImplTest extends AbstractDAOTest {
#Autowired
private SomeDAO someDAO;
private className obj;
#Before
public void setUp() {
obj = new ClassName();
obj.setId(3);
someDAO.saveOrUpdate(obj);
}
My applicationContext-package-dao--test.xml:
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">
<import resource="classpath:/spring/applicationContext-persistence-datasource-test.xml" />
<import resource="classpath:/spring/applicationContext-package-dao.xml" />
</beans>
The imported context applicationContext-persistence-datasource-test.xml has a bean txProxyTemplate as below:
<beans>
.
.//other beans
.
<bean id="txProxyTemplate" abstract="true" class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="transactionManager" ref="transactionManager" />
</bean>
<bean id="transactionManager" class="com.desktone.transaction.DtResourcelessTransactionManager" />
<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="transactionManager" proxy-target-class="true" />
.
.//other beans
.
</beans>
The other applicationContext-package-dao.xml has the bean definition for SomeDAO which has txProxyTemplate as it's parent.
<bean id="SomeDAO" parent="txProxyTemplate">
<property name="target">
<bean class="com.project.server.package.dao.impl.SomeDAOImpl">
<property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory" />
</bean>
</property>
<property name="transactionAttributes">
<props>
<prop key="saveOrUpdate">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
<prop key="delete">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
<prop key="*">PROPAGATION_SUPPORTS,readOnly</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
The saveorupdate call from SomeDAOImplTest calls SomeDAOImpl whose spring context config is applicationContext-package-dao.xml and has the Hibernate saveorupdate() call.
Things I have Tried:
Manually adding #Transactional tag to SomeDAOImplTest. (still throws no tx error)
Experimenting with PROPAGATION.REQUIRES_NEW (still throws no tx error) & PROPAGATION.MANDATORY(says marked mandatory but no tx).
Made sure the autowire is initialzing the bean.
Primary Suspicion
I suspect somehow the someDAO bean is initialized but txProxyTemplate bean isn't, so no transactionManager is in place. However, I have found no clues to coroborate this.

For me, this was happening because of a very fundamental issue. I'll explain the issue and the fix will be intuitive to everyone afterward.
When a Spring application runs all the beans are loaded in a single/global context. So even if some spring bean configuration depends on a transaction bean(for me it was txProxyTemplate) which isn't present in the same package at runtime it will be able to access it.
However, that's not true for a test case. My tests were reporting no transaction in progress since they couldn't load the txProxyTemplate and actually start a transaction. So my tests never ran in a transaction and I didn't know any better until I upgraded to Hibernate 5 and they put a hard constraint on this.
As you might have guessed defining the txProxyTemplate in the same spring config helped me work past this issue.
Good learning.

Switch LDAP connection at runtime in Spring

I am new to spring. Admins of my spring based web app want to configure settings from the web interface, so users can authenticate against LDAP server with their company username and password.
Change in LDAP settings should be possible without restarting the application. This might happen during a 'migration' or whatever reason. I have a couple beans, which need to be refreshed after the admin saves new settings for the LDAP server:
<bean id="ldapServer" class="org.springframework.security.ldap.DefaultSpringSecurityContextSource">
<constructor-arg>
<list>
<value>${ldap.url1}</value>
...
</list>
</constructor-arg>
<constructor-arg value="${ldap.basedn}"</constructor-arg>
<property name="referral" value="${ldap.referral}" />
<property name="baseEnvironmentProperties">...</property>
<property name="userDn" value="${ldap.username}" />
<property name="password" value="${ldap.password}" />
</bean>
I am using Springframework 3.1.2. The problem is, there are constructor arguments, which I want to change and not affect other running jobs. I tried playing with Scoped proxy, but not to much success yet:
<bean id="ldapServer" scope="prototype" ...>
<aop:scoped-proxy/>
I was successful though to get ldapServer to reinstantiate, when using prototype scope by running this piece of code:
#Controller
public class LDAPSettingsController implements ApplicationContextAware {
public ModelAndView handleRequest(...) {
DefaultSpringSecurityContextSource ldap;
ldap = context.getParentBeanFactor().getBean("ldapServer");
System.out.println(ldap.hashCode());
return new ModelAndView(new RedirectView('login.jsp'));
}
...
}
Are scopes and proxies here the way to go, or is the another mechanism in Spring to reflect configuration changes into a running program instance?
UPDATE: Clear up the question.
UPDATE: The root problem with the AOP proxies was following root exception:
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Superclass has no null constructors but no arguments were given

What worked was adding proxy-target-class="false" attribute to the <aop:scoped-proxy/> tag. I created a new scope, which works better than prototype - It destroys beans on settings update. Now I have this in my beans.xml:
<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.CustomScopeConfigurer">
<property name="scopes">
<map>
<entry key="ldap">
<ref bean="ldapScope" />
</entry>
</map>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="ldapScope" class="com.myapp.SettingsScope" />
<bean id="ldapServer" scope="ldap" ...>
<aop:scoped-proxy proxy-target-class="false"/>
<constructor-args>
<list><value>${ldap.url1}</value> .. </list>
</constructor-args>
...
</bean>
I also have a controller for LDAP settings into which I inject ldapScope and I call a method which destroys current life-cycle objects and starts a new life-cycle every time, user presses the apply button.
PS: Not sure if I handle the life-cycle "re-start" in the right way - people my way to look for auto-start beans and start them after such event happens (i.e.: Setting -> Apply)

Conditional initialization of classes in spring

I have a service which refers to a single source.
<bean id="XYZService" class="com.services.impl.DataService1">
<constructor-arg ref="DataSource1" />
</bean>
<bean id="DataSource1" class="com.source.impl.DataSource1">
<constructor-arg ref="DBDataSource"/>
<constructor-arg value="xyz"/>
</bean>
<bean id="DataSource2" class="com.source.impl.DataSource2">
<constructor-arg ref="MsgDataSource"/>
<constructor-arg value="xyz"/>
</bean>
Now if i want to perform a conditional check and my service should be able listen to particular source based on a input variable something like below.
<bean id="XYZService" class="com.services.impl.DataService1">
<constructor-arg ref=" $VARIABLE == true ? DataSource1 : DataSource2" />
</bean>
I did tried SPEL however no luck. I am beginner in spring. Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks.

There are many solutions. Here are two: You can use profiles for this. Define two profiles, define the DataSource beans with the same name but different profiles. (docs)
Alternatively, you can use a single bean and a static factory method (docs).
<bean id="DataSource" class="com.source.impl.DataSourceFactory"
factory-method="createInstance"/>
Inside of DataSourceFactory.createInstance(), you can check the flag and then create the correct data source in plain Java.
The latter is a bit easier to understand, IMO. Using profiles allows you to keep everything in XML (but you should really consider switching to the Java Configuration). The drawback with profiles is that you must not forget to activate at least one of the bean won't be defined.
A third option is to use three XML files and then modify the list of XML files that should be parsed when you pass it to the ApplicationContext. But that only works if you have control over this part of the code.

Assuming you are using Spring 3.1 or later, Spring Profiles may be the best solution.
Using the example of Production and Dev/QA environments, common bean declarations go in a shared file
<beans>
<bean id="XYZService" class="com.services.impl.DataService1">
<constructor-arg ref="DataSource" />
</bean>
</beans>
A separate configuration contains production references
<beans profiles="prod">
<bean id="DataSource" class="com.source.impl.DataSource1">
<constructor-arg ref="DBDataSource"/>
<constructor-arg value="xyz"/>
</bean>
</beans>
Another contains dev references
<beans profile="dev">
<bean id="DataSource" class="com.source.impl.DataSource2">
<constructor-arg ref="MsgDataSource"/>
<constructor-arg value="xyz"/>
</bean>
</beans>
To activate the given profile add -Dspring.profiles.active=prod to your JVM arguments
You can find more info here
Another approach uses factory methods.
<bean id="DataSource" class="com.source.impl.DataSourceFactory" factory-method="getInstance">
<constructor-arg value="#{VARIABLE}" />
</bean>
The above fragment assumes that you want your factory method to explcitly invoke the constructor of each of your services. If you dead set on using Spring to create the instances you can pass each datasource implementation as constructor arguments and use the constructor method as a simple dispatcher.

You need something like this:
<constructor-arg
ref="#{systemProperties.variable == 'true' ? 'DataSource1' : 'DataSource2'}" />
where "variable" is set like -Dvariable=true.

Java and Spring implement transactional function

I'm using java 1.6 and spring 3.0.4, I want to realize a java functionality that
calculate new data values
update one-by-one the existing values on the database
If in any of this step there's an error I want to rollback the whole transaction and come back to the previous state.
I already realized all this pieces of code, I just want to put them together. How I can manage this with the existing spring values that are working with #Entity and #Column annotations?
Thanks!

Short answer: as you're using Spring, the easiest would be to use the transaction management, creating a service that represents this transaction unit and annotate the method with #Transactional
In practice, you need to configure a PlatformTransactionManager in your application. As you seem to use JPA, the JpaTransationManager seems like an obvious choice. To enable the processing of the #Transactional annotation, you can either use #EnableTransactionManagement or the <tx:annotation-driven/> namespace. Both are explained in the Javadoc of #EnableTransactionManagement
By default, a runtime exception thrown from that annotated method will manage a transaction rollback. If your code is using checked exceptions, you'll have to configure the rollbackFor attribute of the annotation.
There are more details and examples available in the documentation

For people that need the same configuration, here you can find how I solved this problem, integrating Hibernate with Spring.
<!-- session factory activate the transaction modules for the specified classes -->
<bean id="sessionFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.annotation.AnnotationSessionFactoryBean">
<property name="dataSource">
<ref bean="dataSource" />
</property>
<property name="configLocation" value="classpath:config-hibernate.xml" />
<property name="packagesToScan">
<list>
<!-- Additional packages required to be added if entities located elsewhere -->
<value>com.some.package.dao</value>
<value>com.some.package.model</value>
<value>com.some.package.SpecificClass</value>
</list>
</property>
<property name="mappingResources" ref="mappingResources"/>
<bean id="mappingResources" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.ListFactoryBean">
<property name="sourceList">
<list>
<!-- here you can add your hibernate mapping query that you want to use on transaction -->
<value>config-hibernate-mapping.xml</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
<!-- This will activate transactional annotation -->
<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="transactionManager" />
#Service
#Transactional
public class SpecificClass {
// write your method, everyone of them will be transactional
// and there will be a commit in case of success or rollback in case of exception
}