Question

Is there a way I can preload all beans from the XML file at once and then loop through them without knowing their bean names? I’ve seen that it is obviously possible to do the preloading but I haven’t seen a way to access them without knowing their specific bean names. Thanks!

Answer 1

You can use getBeanDefinitionNames() from the XmlBeanFactory class. From Java Docs:-

Return the names of all beans defined in this factory.

Does not consider any hierarchy this factory may participate in, and
ignores any singleton beans that have been registered by other means
than bean definitions.

Example:

ClassPathResource context = new ClassPathResource("applicationContext.xml");
XmlBeanFactory factory = new XmlBeanFactory(context);
String[] beans = factory.getBeanDefinitionNames();
//loop through beans array to get bean names
for (int i=0; i<beans.length; i++) { 
   //do your stuff
}

Hope this helps!