Split an object over multiple config files in Spring ?

[Brian Quinn]

I have an object that contains 4 maps, all of which are rather large amounts of static data. I would like to split the maps up into separate files, but you can make a map a bean, so I can't have <property name="map1" ref="map1Bean"> or at least I can't tell that I can.

this is what I have

    
<bean id ="someObject">
<property name="map1">
 <map>
  ... lots of objects loaded into map
 </map>
</property>
<property name="map2">
 <map>
  ... lots of objects loaded into map
 </map>
</property>
</bean>

I would like to do this so I can put maps in separate files

    
<bean id ="someObject">
<property name="map1" ref="map1Bean">
 
</property>
<property name="map2" ref="map2Bean">
 
</property>
</bean>
 
<bean id="map1Bean">
... lots of objects loaded into map
</bean

Is this possible ?

[Craig Walls]

If you're using Spring 2, you can create maps as beans using the <util:map> configuration element.

First, you'll need to add the util namespace:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
[B]    xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util"
[/B]    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans 
        <a href="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd</a>
<b>        <a href="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.springframework.org/schema/util</a> 
        <a href="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util-2.0.xsd"</b rel="nofollow">>" target="_blank">http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util-2.0.xsd"[/B]></a>
 
...
 
</beans>

Then, create your map:

<util:map id="myMap">
  <entry key="abc" value="123" />
  <entry key="def" value="456" />  
</util:map>

Then you can wire "myMap" into a Map property.