Please undeprecate XmlBeanFactory [SPR-8404]

[spring-projects-issues]

Dave Syer opened SPR-8404 and commented

Please undeprecate XmlBeanFactory. It's only a few lines of code, so not a big deal to keep it I would have thought. It's really useful for testing, and those few lines have to be duplicated, plus I never remember how to do it.

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Affects: 3.1 M1

Issue Links:

• Revisit remaining XmlBeanFactory usage in reference documentation [SPR-13485] #18064 Revisit remaining XmlBeanFactory usage in reference documentation

[spring-projects-issues]

Chris Beams commented

Hi Dave,

The combination to replace XmlBeanFactory you're probably referring to is:

BeanDefinitionRegistry bdr = DefaultListableBeanFactory();
XmlBeanDefinitionReader reader = new XmlBeanDefinitionReader(bdr);
reader.loadBeanDefinitionReader(new ClassPathResource("foo.xml"));

This is certainly more verbose than:

XmlBeanFactory bf = new XmlBeanFactory(new ClassPathResource("foo.xml"));

However, the following is more concise than either:

ApplicationContext ctx = new GenericXmlApplicationContext("foo.xml");

So the first question is, why not use GXAC in your testing scenarios?

XmlBeanFactory was deprecated because it existed before the ApplicationContext abstraction did, and the ApplicationContext hierarchy was specifically designed to accommodate concrete types aligned with different bean definition types (GenericXmlApplicationContext, AnnotationConfigApplicationContext, etc), while the BeanFactory hierarchy represents a more fundamental abstraction not designed for such variability. XmlBeanFactory is the one historical exception to that rule, and the deprecation reflects that fact. Given that GenericXmlApplicationContext provides equal if not greater convenience (given the String- and Resource-based constructors), undeprecating is unlikely at this point.

[spring-projects-issues]

Chris Beams commented

Resolving "won't fix" after 1+ month of waiting for feedback.

[spring-projects-issues]

Dave Syer commented

Sorry, I didn't get any prompts for feedback, or I would have responded. I'm sure you are right that the little dance with BDR and XBDR is the equivalent of using XBF directly, but was I, as a regular user, supposed to just know how to do that?

GXAC is not the same at all because ApplicationContext has several important features and contractual obligations that BeanFactory does not. In particular it forces all beans to be instantiated and adds additional "services" that are really useful at runtime in an application, but you quite often want to avoid in a test case (of XML namespace features in particular).

[spring-projects-issues]

Chris Beams commented

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qnd-hdmgfk (but maybe Juergen can)

[spring-projects-issues]

Juergen Hoeller commented

At this point, we'd rather drop XmlBeanFactory completely than undeprecate it.