Ant task for Spring Validation - spring

Question

I need an ANT task to validate spring configuration. I need to find problems at build time before runtime ? For example, In spring context file contains a property a bean, but this bean doesnt have this property.
In eclipse, there is a tool Spring Explorer that do this validation.
thanks,
org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener failed: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'readController' defined in class path resource [applicationContext.xml]: Error setting property values; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.NotWritablePropertyException: Invalid property 'productOperations' of bean class [com.bee.view.json.ReadController]: Bean property 'productOperations' is not writable or has an invalid setter method.
Does the parameter type of the setter match the return type of the getter?.

Answer 1

An easy way to ensure that your context is valid would be to create a JUnit test, which loads the context. Using the spring-test.jar support classes makes that easy:
public class MyTest extends AbstractDependencyInjectionSpringContextTests {
// this will be injected by Spring
private QueryDao queryDao;
private MyBusinessObject myBusinessObject;
// ensure that spring will inject the objects to test by name
public MyTest () {
setAutowireMode(AUTOWIRE_BY_NAME);
}
#Override
protected String[] getConfigLocations() {
return new String[] { "applicationContextJUnit.xml" };
}
public void testQueryDao() {
List<SomeData> list = queryDao.findSomeData();
assertNotNull(list);
// etc
}
public void testMyBusinessObject() {
myBusinessObject.someMethod();
}
public void setQueryDao(QueryDao queryDao) {
this.queryDao = queryDao;
}
}
The problem with loading a context that is used in a web application is that JUnit does not necessarily have access to the same resources (e.g. JNDI data sources), so if you've got the following in your "applicationContext.xml":
<beans ...>
<bean id="myBusinessObject" class="com.test.MyBusinessObject">
<property name="queryDao" ref="queryDao"/>
</bean>
<bean id="queryDao" class="com.test.QueryDao">
<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
</bean>
<jee:jndi-lookup
id="dataSource"
jndi-name="jdbc/mydatasource"
resource-ref="true"
cache="true"
lookup-on-startup="false"
proxy-interface="javax.sql.DataSource"/>
</beans>
and your "applicationContextJUnit.xml" would import your "real" application context and redefine resources:
<beans ...>
<import resource="classpath:applicationContext.xml"/>
<bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">
<property name="driverClassName" value="oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver"/>
<property name="url" value="jdbc:oracle:thin:..."/>
<property name="username" value="scott"/>
<property name="password" value="tiger"/>
</bean>
</beans>
That way your unit tests will load the application context (even the ones that you don't explicitly test in your unit test), and you can have the confidence that your context is correct, because Spring itself loaded it. If you have an error, then the unit tests will fail.