How to self start spring app without writing a main method? - spring

Question

So is there a way to initialize and start a command line Spring app without writing a main method. It seems like all such main methods have the same form
public static void main(final String[] args) throws Exception {
ApplicationContext applicationContext = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("applicationContext.xml", Boot.class);
SomeService someService = (SomeService) applicationContext.getBean("someService");
someService.bar();
}
I suppose that's not complicated, but has someone found a way to provide a way to just specify the context.xml at the command line or, better yet, in a manifest file?
The goal here is to simplify the creation of spring applications as executable jars. I hope that I can specify some utility class as the Main-Class in the manifest. I suppose I would also need to specify the starting point for the app, a bean and a method on it where begins the process.

Answer 1

<project>
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.stackoverflow</groupId>
<artifactId>stackoverflow-autostart-spring-app</artifactId>
<version>0.1</version>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring</artifactId>
<version>2.5.2</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<archive>
<manifest>
<mainClass>com.stackoverflow.spring.autostart.Autostart</mainClass>
</manifest>
</archive>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>package</phase>
<goals>
<goal>shade</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>
Write a simple SpringMain which takes an arbitrary number of xml and properties files as the arguments.java -cp myapp.jar util.SpringMain context.xml
You then use the lifecycle attributes (init-method) on your relevant beans to kick-start the application