Introduction to the Spring Configurator

The Spring Configurator is a useful component providing support in common configuration issues when using the Spring framework.

Although the code was developed as part of Cocoon, it is aimed at making it easier to use Spring in any web application. It has no dependencies on Cocoon and can be used standalone. The impact on your code is nearly zero and the Spring Configurator has only Spring itself as a dependency.

Motivation

When using a framework like Spring there are always the same problems to solve, like

Where do I store my bean configurations?
How can I parameterize them dynamically?
Where do I store this extra information?
How can I handle different environments for testing or development or production?
How can I distribute code configuration information?
How can I distribute partial web applications?
How do I manage hierarchial web application contexts?

Of course Spring is flexible enough to handle these problems, but you have to implement your own solution. The danger here is that every project ends up developing its own "proprietary" solution.A standardized way of doing these things would be great. Guess what!, the Spring Configurator is the answer to your problems. Just like Maven has standardized the build process, the Spring Configurator standardizes the way of dealing with various configuration issues with Spring.

Cocoon Spring Configurator 2.2.1

Introduction to the Spring Configurator

Motivation