Spring loading properties from a bean - spring

Question

I am currently usinmg PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer to load properties into my spring context, however I want to have a custom hierarchy/overriding of property files that I am handling in a Java class. Can I have my class, which itself is a bean in the context, inject the properties into the context?
e.g.
<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="locations" value="classpath:/config/conf.properties" />
</bean>
<bean id="config" class="com.main.Config" />
My Config class has a Properties getProperties() method -- can I wire that into spring somehow? Obviously the properties would not be loaded until the config bean is created or inited.
Thanks!
Update: As suggested by the answer I change my Config to Config extends PropertySource<Properties> and had to write a small wrapper around MutablePropertySources that takes a single PropertySource and then my xml looks like this:
<bean class="org.springframework.context.support.PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="propertySources">
<bean class="com.main.ConfigMutablePropertySources">
<constructor-arg name="propertySource" ref="config" />
</bean>
</property>
</bean>
Where:
public class ConfigMutablePropertySources extends MutablePropertySources {
public ConfigMutablePropertySources(PropertySource<?> propertySource) {
super(new MutablePropertySources());
addLast(propertySource);
}
}

Answer 1

Looking at the methods available (from JavaDoc for PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer) suggests to me no easy way to do such a thing.
The general comment at the top suggests that, as of Spring 3.1, one should prefer to use PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer instead. Using this solution, it appears that you could register your own set of PropertySource objects via the setPropertySources(...) method. Of course your Config class would have to be fit into the interface (abstract class actually) of PropertySource.
It is worth noting that using the setPropertySources(...) method above will assume nothing else about your property sources and will therefore not add the default property sources (Environment and Local properties).