Can I replace a Spring bean definition at runtime? - java

Consider the following scenario. I have a Spring application context with a bean whose properties should be configurable, think DataSource or MailSender. The mutable application configuration is managed by a separate bean, let's call it configuration.
An administrator can now change the configuration values, like email address or database URL, and I would like to re-initialize the configured bean at runtime.
Assume that I can't just simply modify the property of the configurable bean above (e.g. created by FactoryBean or constructor injection) but have to recreate the bean itself.
Any thoughts on how to achieve this? I'd be glad to receive advice on how to organize the whole configuration thing as well. Nothing is fixed. :-)
EDIT
To clarify things a bit: I am not asking how to update the configuration or how to inject static configuration values. I'll try an example:
<beans>
<util:map id="configuration">
<!-- initial configuration -->
</util:map>
<bean id="constructorInjectedBean" class="Foo">
<constructor-arg value="#{configuration['foobar']}" />
</bean>
<bean id="configurationService" class="ConfigurationService">
<property name="configuration" ref="configuration" />
</bean>
</beans>
So there's a bean constructorInjectedBean that uses constructor injection. Imagine the construction of the bean is very expensive so using a prototype scope or a factory proxy is not an option, think DataSource.
What I want to do is that every time the configuration is being updated (via configurationService the bean constructorInjectedBean is being recreated and re-injected into the application context and dependent beans.
We can safely assume that constructorInjectedBean is using an interface so proxy magic is indeed an option.
I hope to have made the question a little bit clearer.

Here is how I have done it in the past: running services which depend on configuration which can be changed on the fly implement a lifecycle interface: IRefreshable:
public interface IRefreshable {
// Refresh the service having it apply its new values.
public void refresh(String filter);
// The service must decide if it wants a cache refresh based on the refresh message filter.
public boolean requiresRefresh(String filter);
}
Controllers (or services) which can modify a piece of configuration broadcast to a JMS topic that the configuration has changed (supplying the name of the configuration object). A message driven bean then invokes the IRefreshable interface contract on all beans which implement IRefreshable.
The nice thing with spring is that you can automatically detect any service in your application context that needs to be refreshed, removing the need to explicitly configure them:
public class MyCacheSynchService implements InitializingBean, ApplicationContextAware {
public void afterPropertiesSet() throws Exception {
Map<String, ?> refreshableServices = m_appCtx.getBeansOfType(IRefreshable.class);
for (Map.Entry<String, ?> entry : refreshableServices.entrySet() ) {
Object beanRef = entry.getValue();
if (beanRef instanceof IRefreshable) {
m_refreshableServices.add((IRefreshable)beanRef);
}
}
}
}
This approach works particularly well in a clustered application where one of many app servers might change the configuration, which all then need to be aware of. If you want to use JMX as the mechanism for triggering the changes, your JMX bean can then broadcast to the JMS topic when any of its attributes are changed.

I can think of a 'holder bean' approach (essentially a decorator), where the holder bean delegates to holdee, and it's the holder bean which is injected as a dependency into other beans. Nobody else has a reference to holdee but the holder. Now, when the holder bean's config is changed, it recreates the holdee with this new config and starts delegating to it.

You should have a look at JMX. Spring also provides support for this.
Spring 2.0.x
Spring 2.5.x
Spring 3.0.x

Further updated answer to cover scripted bean
Another approach supported by spring 2.5.x+ is that of the scripted bean. You can use a variety of languages for your script - BeanShell is probably the most intuitive given that it has the same syntax as Java, but it does require some external dependencies. However, the examples are in Groovy.
Section 24.3.1.2 of the Spring Documentation covers how to configure this, but here are some salient excerpts illustrating the approach which I've edited to make them more applicable to your situation:
<beans>
<!-- This bean is now 'refreshable' due to the presence of the 'refresh-check-delay' attribute -->
<lang:groovy id="messenger"
refresh-check-delay="5000" <!-- switches refreshing on with 5 seconds between checks -->
script-source="classpath:Messenger.groovy">
<lang:property name="message" value="defaultMessage" />
</lang:groovy>
<bean id="service" class="org.example.DefaultService">
<property name="messenger" ref="messenger" />
</bean>
</beans>
With the Groovy script looking like this:
package org.example
class GroovyMessenger implements Messenger {
private String message = "anotherProperty";
public String getMessage() {
return message;
}
public void setMessage(String message) {
this.message = message
}
}
As the system administrator wants to make changes then they (or you) can edit the contents of the script appropriately. The script is not part of the deployed application and can reference a known file location (or one that is configured through a standard PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer during startup).
Although the example uses a Groovy class, you could have the class execute code that reads a simple properties file. In that manner, you never edit the script directly, just touch it to change the timestamp. That action then triggers the reload, which in turn triggers the refresh of properties from the (updated) properties file, which finally updates the values within the Spring context and off you go.
The documentation does point out that this technique doesn't work for constructor-injection, but maybe you can work around that.
Updated answer to cover dynamic property changes
Quoting from this article, which provides full source code, one approach is:
* a factory bean that detects file system changes
* an observer pattern for Properties, so that file system changes can be propagated
* a property placeholder configurer that remembers where which placeholders were used, and updates singleton beans’ properties
* a timer that triggers the regular check for changed files
The observer pattern is implemented by
the interfaces and classes
ReloadableProperties,
ReloadablePropertiesListener,
PropertiesReloadedEvent, and
ReloadablePropertiesBase. None of them
are especially exciting, just normal
listener handling. The class
DelegatingProperties serves to
transparently exchange the current
properties when properties are
updated. We only update the whole
property map at once, so that the
application can avoid inconsistent
intermediate states (more on this
later).
Now the
ReloadablePropertiesFactoryBean can be
written to create a
ReloadableProperties instance (instead
of a Properties instance, as the
PropertiesFactoryBean does). When
prompted to do so, the RPFB checks
file modification times, and if
necessary, updates its
ReloadableProperties. This triggers
the observer pattern machinery.
In our case, the only listener is the
ReloadingPropertyPlaceholderConfigurer.
It behaves just like a standard spring
PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer, except
that it tracks all usages of
placeholders. Now when properties are
reloaded, all usages of each modified
property are found, and the properties
of those singleton beans are assigned
again.
Original answer below covering static property changes:
Sounds like you just want to inject external properties into your Spring context. The PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer is designed for this purpose:
<!-- Property configuration (if required) -->
<bean id="serverProperties" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="locations">
<list>
<!-- Identical properties in later files overwrite earlier ones in this list -->
<value>file:/some/admin/location/application.properties</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
you then reference the external properties with Ant syntax placeholders (that can be nested if you want from Spring 2.5.5 onwards)
<bean id="example" class="org.example.DataSource">
<property name="password" value="${password}"/>
</bean>
You then ensure that the application.properties file is only accessible to the admin user and the user running the application.
Example application.properties:
password=Aardvark

Or you could use the approach from this similar question and hence also my solution:
The approach is to have beans that are configured via property files and the solution is to either
refresh the entire applicationContext (automatically using a scheduled task or manually using JMX) when properties have changed or
use a dedicated property provider object to access all properties. This property provider will keep checking the properties files for modification. For beans where prototype-based property lookup is impossible, register a custom event that your property provider will fire when it finds an updated property file. Your beans with complicated lifecycles will need to listen for that event and refresh themselves.

You can create a custom scope called "reconfigurable" into the ApplicationContext. It creates and caches instances of all beans in this scope. On a configuration change it clears the cache and re-creates the beans on first access with the new configuration. For this to work you need to wrap all instances of reconfigurable beans into an AOP scoped proxy, and access the configuration values with Spring-EL: put a map called config into the ApplicationContext and access the configuration like #{ config['key'] }.

This is not something I tried, I am trying to provide pointers.
Assuming your application context is a subclass of AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext(example XmlWebApplicationContext, ClassPathXmlApplicationContext). AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext.getBeanFactory() will give you instance of ConfigurableListableBeanFactory. Check if it is instance of BeanDefinitionRegistry. If so you can call 'registerBeanDefinition' method. This approach will be tightly coupled with Spring implementation,
Check the code of AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext and DefaultListableBeanFactory(this is the implementation you get when you call 'AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext getBeanFactory()')

Option 1 :
Inject the configurable bean into the DataSource or MailSender. Always get the configurable values from the configuration bean from within these beans.
Inside the configurable bean run a thread to read the externally configurable properties (file etc..) periodically. This way the configurable bean will refresh itself after the admin had changed the properties and so the DataSource will get the updated values automatically.
You need not actually implement the "thread" - read : http://commons.apache.org/configuration/userguide/howto_filebased.html#Automatic_Reloading
Option 2 (bad, i think, but maybe not - depends on use case) :
Always create new beans for beans of type DataSource / MailSender - using prototype scope. In the init of the bean, read the properties afresh.
Option 3 :
I think, #mR_fr0g suggestion on using JMX might not be a bad idea. What you could do is :
expose your configuration bean as a MBean (read http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/2.5.x/reference/jmx.html)
Ask your admin to change the configuration properties on the MBean (or provide an interface in the bean to trigger property updates from their source)
This MBean (a new piece of java code that you will need to write), MUST keep references of Beans (the ones that you want to change / inject the changed properties into). This should be simple (via setter injection or runtime fetch of bean names / classes)
When the property on the MBean is changed (or triggered), it must call the appropriate setters on the respective beans. That way, your legacy code does not change, you can still manage runtime property changes.
HTH!

You may want to have a look at the Spring Inspector a plug-gable component that provides programmatic access to any Spring based application at run-time. You can use Javascript to change configurations or manage the application behaviour at run-time.

Here is the nice idea of writing your own PlaceholderConfigurer that tracks the usage of properties and changes them whenever a configuration change occurs. This has two disadvantages, though:
It does not work with constructor injection of property values.
You can get race conditions if the reconfigured bean receives a
changed configuration while it is processing some stuff.

My solution was to copy the original object. Fist i created an interface
/**
* Allows updating data to some object.
* Its an alternative to {#link Cloneable} when you cannot
* replace the original pointer. Ex.: Beans
* #param <T> Type of Object
*/
public interface Updateable<T>
{
/**
* Import data from another object
* #param originalObject Object with the original data
*/
public void copyObject(T originalObject);
}
For easing the implementation of the function fist create a constructor with all fields, so the IDE could help me a bit. Then you can make a copy constructor that uses the same function Updateable#copyObject(T originalObject). You can also profit of the code of the constructor created by the IDE to create the function to implement:
public class SettingsDTO implements Cloneable, Updateable<SettingsDTO>
{
private static final Logger LOG = LoggerFactory.getLogger(SettingsDTO.class);
#Size(min = 3, max = 30)
private String id;
#Size(min = 3, max = 30)
#NotNull
private String name;
#Size(min = 3, max = 100)
#NotNull
private String description;
#Max(100)
#Min(5)
#NotNull
private Integer pageSize;
#NotNull
private String dateFormat;
public SettingsDTO()
{
}
public SettingsDTO(String id, String name, String description, Integer pageSize, String dateFormat)
{
this.id = id;
this.name = name;
this.description = description;
this.pageSize = pageSize;
this.dateFormat = dateFormat;
}
public SettingsDTO(SettingsDTO original)
{
copyObject(original);
}
#Override
public void copyObject(SettingsDTO originalObject)
{
this.id = originalObject.id;
this.name = originalObject.name;
this.description = originalObject.description;
this.pageSize = originalObject.pageSize;
this.dateFormat = originalObject.dateFormat;
}
}
I used it in a Controller for updating the current settings for the app:
if (bindingResult.hasErrors())
{
model.addAttribute("settingsData", newSettingsData);
model.addAttribute(Templates.MSG_ERROR, "The entered data has errors");
}
else
{
synchronized (settingsData)
{
currentSettingData.copyObject(newSettingsData);
redirectAttributes.addFlashAttribute(Templates.MSG_SUCCESS, "The system configuration has been updated successfully");
return String.format("redirect:/%s", getDao().getPath());
}
}
So the currentSettingsData which has the configuration of the application gonna have the updated values, located in newSettingsData. These method allows updating any bean without high complexity.

Related

Spring Reload Property - Bean not updated

I have a webservice that fetches property from application.properties file located in server like query[testSql] through spring
public class RuntimeEnvironmentPropertiesConfigurerextends PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer
implements InitializingBean, RuntimeEnvironmentInterface
Now that query is injected in my Spring bean dao.
<bean id="dao" name="dao" class="com.dao.DaoImpl">
<property name="ackJdbcTemplate" ref="ackJdbcTemplate" />
<property name="testSql" value="${dao.query.tSql}" />
</bean>
With help from How can I reload properties file in Spring 4 using annotations? link I am able to reload the property at run time.
verified by
#Autowired
public RuntimeEnvironmentInterface propertyLoader;
....
Set s=propertyLoader.getProperties();
Iterator itr=s.iterator();
while(itr.hasNext()){
String tempKey=String.valueOf(itr.next());
logger.info(tempKey +"==="+propertyLoader.getProperty(tempKey));
but problem is my dao bean does not take updated testSql query.It runs on old one untill I restart the application.
I found a way like in separate url mapping i wrote a method which does below job:
Dao.setTestSql(propertyLoader.getProperty("com.dao.query.tSql"));
and the person who is updating she have to hit the url after updating the property.
But this I have to do for all the bean and and injected property.That is pretty hectic job.I miss one property and I am doomed.
Is there any other way to automatically update the injected bean?I need that my updated properties are reflected without restart .
I tried to understand wuenschenswert code given but was unable to.
<property name="testSql" value="${dao.query.tSql}" />
This means that on bean initialization Spring computes the property value using a property called dao.query.tSql. So setTestSql() method will be called when the context is initialized, and that's all. When your properties are reloaded, property loader will not push new property value into your bean.
But, as Alexey suggests, you can pull the property value from your propertyLoader every time you execute that sql query like this:
final String actualQuery = propertyLoader.getProperty("com.dao.query.tSql");
executeQuery(actualQuery);
There is a problem: this may start look ugly when the number of properties grows. But this can be alleviated, if you create some class encapsulating these accesses; that class will provide properties via its methods. Example:
public class DynamicProperties {
private final RuntimeEnvironmentInterface propertyLoader;
public DynamicProperties(RuntimeEnvironmentInterface propertyLoader) {
this.propertyLoader = propertyLoader;
}
public String tSql() {
return propertyLoader.getProperty("dao.query.tSql");
}
... other methods for other properties
}
Then create an instance of this class in your Dao:
private DynamicProperties dynamicProperties = new DynamicProperties(propertyLoader);
And then
executeQuery(dynamicProperties.tSql());
A little bonus: you can make type conversions in that same DynamicProperties class (for example, when your property is int and not String).

Spring without getBean(..)

I'm trying to get a better understanding of the #Autowired annotations component scanning, but all the examples I found so far use context.getBean(..) at some point to get at least one Bean to start with.
I also read that doing that is considered bad practice , but I can't seem to find any information on how to do it without context.getBean(..)
Could somebody please enlighten me with an example and information on how to do this ?
Define your bean in xml and use
<context:component-scan base-package="com" />
<mvc:annotation-driven />
Bean def
<bean id="processEngine" class="com.processEngine">
<property name="processEngineConfiguration" ref="processEngineConfiguration" />
</bean>
now you can get bean as following
#Autowired
private ProcessEngine processEngine;
how it works
spring scans the bean's recipes either from xml or java configuration. then spring creates a beanDefinitions which are 'loaded' into BeanFactory. BeanFactory triggers a set of BeanPostProcessors (BPP) which are scanning classes for particular annotations like Autowired/Resource/PostProcessor and etc. and do appropriate actions. in case when your class contains #Autowired annotation, AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor would auto wire required field (dependencies), and when creation of an object is done and all BPP worked out, object is ready to be used by the app, from this point your code can get 'ready' objects from container.
there are some cases when you would need to access this beans from the code which is out of spring's control and not managed by container. in order to do so, you would need to get the ApplicationContext (container) and call #getBean specifying either name or type. using applicationContext directly is not a good practice because there are some problems that you can come to, f.ex. id of a bean might be changed and if you refer to bean by id then NPE would be thrown.
configuration
there are several approaches to configure spring to scan the classes for finding bean recipes. one would be defining component-scan, in this case classes which are located in the path that you've set and having any of valid spring annotations like #Component, #Service, #Repository, #Controller (for web container) would be considered. another way would be specifying each bean separately using <bean> or #Bean.
examples.
if you want to create a web app then you should see DispatcherServlet with ContextLoaderListener classes. this classes would boot your app and load everything according to configuration. f.ex. here,
but if you want to create a desktop app, then you would end up with something like this
From time to time (usually when not using Spring Boot), I use something along the lines of the following code:
public static <T> T autowire(ApplicationContext ctx, T bean) {
ctx.getAutowireCapableBeanFactory().autowireBean(bean);
return bean;
}
In my main, I create an instance of the main application class that contains a few #Autowired annotations for the main services / entry points to my Spring application.

JMX MXBean Attributes all UNDEFINED - Spring 3.0.x/Tomcat 6.0

I've been trying to get a sample JMX MXBean working in a Spring-configured webapp, but any basic attributes on the MXBean are coming up as UNDEFINED when I connect with jconsole.
Java interface/classes:
public interface IJmxBean { // marker interface for spring config, see below
}
public interface MgmtMXBean { // lexical convention for MXBeans - mgmt interface
public int getAttribute();
}
public class Mgmt implements IJmxBean, MgmtMXBean { // actual JMX bean
private IServiceBean serviceBean; // service bean injected by Spring
private int attribute = 0;
#Override
public int getAttribute() {
if(serviceBean != null) {
attribute = serviceBean.getRequestedAttribute();
}
return attribute;
}
public void setServiceBean(IServiceBean serviceBean) {
this.serviceBean = serviceBean;
}
}
Spring JMX config:
<beans>
<context:component-scan base-package="...">
<context:include-filter type="assignable" expression="...IJmxBean" />
</context:component-scan>
<context:mbean-export />
</beans>
Here's what I know so far:
The element is correctly instantiating a bean named "mgmt". I've got logging in a zero-argument public constructor that indicates it gets constructed.
is correctly automatically detecting and registering the MgmtMXBean interface with my Tomcat 6.0 container. I can connect to the MBeanServer in Tomcat with jconsole and drill down to the Mgmt MXBean.
When examining the MXBean, "Attribute" is always listed as UNDEFINED, but jconsole can tell the correct type of the attribute. Further, hitting "Refresh" in jconsole does not actually invoke the getter method of "Attribute"- I have logging in the getter method to indicate if it is being invoked (similar to the constructor logging that works) and I see nothing in the logs.
At this point I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I've tried a number of things, including constructing an explicit Spring MBeanExporter instance and registering the MXBean by hand, but it either results in the MBean/MXBean not getting registered with Tomcat's MBean server or an Attribute value of UNDEFINED.
For various reasons, I'd prefer not to have to use Spring's #ManagedResource/#ManagedAttribute annotations.
Is there something that I'm missing in the Spring docs or MBean/MXBean specs?
ISSUE RESOLVED: Thanks to prompting by Jon Stevens (above), I went back and re-examined my code and Spring configuration files:
Throwing an exception in the getAttribute() method is a sure way to get "Unavailable" to show up as the attribute's value in JConsole. In my case:
The Spring JMX config file I was using was lacking the default-autowire="" attribute on the root <beans> element;
The code presented above checks to see if serviceBean != null. Apparently I write better code on stackoverflow.com than in my test code, since my test code wasn't checking for that. Nor did I have implements InitializingBean or #PostConstruct to check for serviceBean != null like I normally do on almost all the other beans I use;
The code invoking the service bean was before the logging, so I never saw any log messages about getter methods being entered;
JConsole doesn't report when attribute methods throw exceptions;
The NPE did not show up in the Tomcat logs.
Once I resolved the issue with serviceBean == null, everything worked perfectly. Regardless, +1 to Jon for providing a working demo, since there are literally 50 different ways to configure MBeans/MXBeans within Spring.
I've recently built a sample Spring based webapp that very cleanly enables JMX for latest versions of Spring, Hibernate and Ehcache.
It has examples for both EntityManager based access and DAO access (including transactions!). It also shows how to do annotation based injection in order to negate having to use Spring's xml config for beans. There is even a SpringMVC based example servlet using annotations. Basically, this is a Spring based version of a fairly powerful application server running on top of any servlet engine.
It isn't documented yet, but I'll get to that soon. Take a look at the configuration files and source code and it should be pretty clear.
The motivation behind this is that I got tired of all of the crazy blog posts with 50 different ways to set things up and finally made a single simple source that people can work from. It is up on github so feel free to fork the project and do whatever you want with it.
https://github.com/lookfirst/fallback

How to automatically create and inject a proxy of a missing dependency?

Given the following classes:
package com.acme;
public class Foo {
private Bar bar;
public void setBar(Bar newBar) {
this.bar = newBar;
}
}
#AcmeService
public interface Bar {}
and a Spring configuration file of:
<beans>
<bean id="foo" class="com.acme.Foo">
<property name="bar" ref="bar" />
</bean>
</beans>
when Spring's configuration phase runs, is it possible to do the following?
Catch the missing dependency exception (or detect that there is going to be one)
Discover that the missing dependency "bar" of bean "foo" is of type com.acme.Bar
Notice that Bar is an #AcmeService, and so we're going to handle it. Otherwise, the error can be considered fatal
Generate a proxy of type com.acme.Bar
Inject the Bar proxy into Foo, ensuring that method calls on Bar can be advised with Spring AOP just as if I had explicitly created the Bar proxy in the Spring config file and injected the proxy into the Foo bean.
I was initially drawn to BeanPostProcessor and BeanFactoryPostProcessor as a means to implement this, although upon reading the documentation I did not see an obvious way of doing precisely what I want.
In case you're wondering, the underlying use case is that I want to:
Replace all Spring context files with my service-layer bean definitions with a single context file that generates proxies of #AcmeService bean interfaces.
Advise invocations against those proxies to instead be invoked on interface mocks of the service layer bean proxies. (The kicker is that the mocks are defined at runtime by a remote system and are uploaded to this app for integration testing purposes. For my regular unit tests, I do the more sane thing of simply creating and injecting mocks as needed).
I have all of that working except for the whole "dynamically generate proxies" bit. Currently I have empty implementations of my service interfaces defined in my context file just so they can be injected and advised - but I'd rather not have so many empty interface classes generated and checked in. And lastly, I assume I need to generate these proxies as I do not know how to advise attempted invocations on null dependencies.
OK, there's a number of things in here to talk about.
Firstly, I don't think you'll be able to do exactly what you're asking. In particular, if you have <property name="bar" ref="bar"/> and there is no bean definition for bar, the bean initialization will fail, and I don't think you can intercept that easily. You could, of course, write your own subclass of the BeanFactory itself, but that's not something to be taken lightly.
The closest existing mechanism to what you're asking for is auto-wiring. Take a look at AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor. You could use this as a guide for writing your own BeanPostProcessor which looks at every bean as it's instantiated by the container, looking for properties which are of types which in turn have the #AcmeService annotation. When it finds one, it can generate a proxy for that type and inject it.
That brings us on to the proxy generation itself. The place to look for that is ProxyFactory. This allows you to generate objects at runtime that implement any interface or extend any class, whilst attaching advisors/interceptors. These interceptors can do all the work - the proxy doesn't have to have anything "behind" it if you don't want to.
With this approach, you wouldn't need the "hanging" <property name="bar" ref="bar"/> entry in your config - the presence of the property in Foo would be enough to trigger the process.

Short way of making many beans depend-on one bean

When using database migrations, I obviously want none of the DAOs to be usable before the migrations are run.
At the moment I'm declaring a lot of DAOs, all having a depends-on=databaseMigrator property. I find this troubling, especially since it's error prone.
Is there a more compact way of doing this?
Notes:
the depends-on attribute is not 'inherited' from parent beans;
I am not using Hibernate or JPA so I can't make the sessionFactory bean depend-on the migrator.
You could try writing a class that implements the BeanFactoryPostProcessor interface to automatically register the dependencies for you:
Warning: This class has not been compiled.
public class DatabaseMigratorDependencyResolver implements BeanFactoryPostProcessor {
#Override
public void postProcessBeanFactory(ConfigurableListableBeanFactory beanFactory) {
String[] beanNames = beanFactory.getBeanDefinitionNames();
for (String beanName : beanNames) {
BeanDefinition beanDefinition = beanFactory.getBeanDefinition(beanName);
// Your job is here:
// Feel free to make use of the methods available from the BeanDefinition class (http://static.springframework.org/spring/docs/2.5.x/api/org/springframework/beans/factory/config/BeanDefinition.html)
boolean isDependentOnDatabaseMigrator = ...;
if (isDependentOnDatabaseMigrator) {
beanFactory.registerDependentBean("databaseMigrator", beanName);
}
}
}
}
You could then include a bean of this class alongside all your other beans.
<bean class="DatabaseMigratorDependencyResolver"/>
Spring will automatically run it before it starts initiating the rest of the beans.
I do this on application start-up. The schema version that the application requires is compiled into the application as part of the build process. It is also stored in the database and updated by the database migration scripts.
On application start-up, the app checks that the schema version in the database is what it expects and if not, aborts immediately with a clear error message.
In a normal Java program, this happens right at the start of the main method.
In a webapp, it's performed by the app's ServletContextListener and is the first thing it does when the servlet context is created.
That's saved my (apps') bacon several times.
I ended up creating a simple ForwardingDataSource class which appears in the context files as:
<bean id="dataSource" class="xxx.ForwardingDataSource" depends-on="databaseMigrator">
<property name="delegate">
<!-- real data source here -->
</property>
</bean>
If find it less elegant than Adam Paynter's solution, but clearer.

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