Question

In my Spring MVC webapplication I want to mix xml based configuration with annotations:
I use annotations like @Controller, @RequestMapping("bla.htm"), @RequestParam etc. to resolve HttpRequests to Controller Methods. Therefore I added

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping"/>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter"/>
<context:component-scan base-package="somePackage.controller"/>

to my dispatcher-servlet.xml.

But my controllers have attributes. Those attributes could be injected via @AutoWired annotation. But I also have do define Scopes. So i would have two annotations per attribute, which makes the code bad readable. So I want to inject dependencies in my applicationContext.xml file.

Is there a way I can keep the annotation-driven request-mapping but use context.xml files for Dependency Injection? Or is it only possible to use EITHER annotations OR xml configuration?

note: my beans for dependency injection are in a different xml file.

PS:

I should have mentioned, I use Spring 2.5 and can’t upgrade it.

Answer 1

No, <mvc:annotation-driven> works fine with XML. But you’ll need to get rid of the <context:component-scan>.

Update: with Spring 2.5, this should get you started:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-2.5.xsd">

    <context:annotation-config />

    <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping" />
    <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter" />

    <!-- now add some controllers -->

</beans>