XML Schema Authoring
Since version 2.0, Infra has featured a mechanism for adding schema-based extensions to the basic Infra XML format for defining and configuring beans. This section covers how to write your own custom XML bean definition parsers and integrate such parsers into the Infra IoC container.
To facilitate authoring configuration files that use a schema-aware XML editor, Infra extensible XML configuration mechanism is based on XML Schema. If you are not familiar with Infra current XML configuration extensions that come with the standard Infra distribution, you should first read the previous section on XML Schemas.
To create new XML configuration extensions:
For a unified example, we create an
XML extension (a custom XML element) that lets us configure objects of the type
SimpleDateFormat
(from the java.text
package). When we are done,
we will be able to define bean definitions of type SimpleDateFormat
as follows:
<myns:dateformat id="dateFormat" pattern="yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm" lenient="true"/>
(We include much more detailed examples follow later in this appendix. The intent of this first simple example is to walk you through the basic steps of making a custom extension.)
Authoring the Schema
Creating an XML configuration extension for use with Infra IoC container starts with
authoring an XML Schema to describe the extension. For our example, we use the following schema
to configure SimpleDateFormat
objects:
myns.xsd (inside package cn/taketoday/samples/xml)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsd:schema xmlns="http://www.mycompany.example/schema/myns"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:beans="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
targetNamespace="http://www.mycompany.example/schema/myns"
elementFormDefault="qualified"
attributeFormDefault="unqualified">
<xsd:import namespace="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"/>
<xsd:element name="dateformat">
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:complexContent>
<xsd:extension base="beans:identifiedType"> (1)
<xsd:attribute name="lenient" type="xsd:boolean"/>
<xsd:attribute name="pattern" type="xsd:string" use="required"/>
</xsd:extension>
</xsd:complexContent>
</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
</xsd:schema>
1 | The indicated line contains an extension base for all identifiable tags
(meaning they have an id attribute that we can use as the bean identifier in the
container). We can use this attribute because we imported the Infra-provided
beans namespace. |
The preceding schema lets us configure SimpleDateFormat
objects directly in an
XML application context file by using the <myns:dateformat/>
element, as the following
example shows:
<myns:dateformat id="dateFormat" pattern="yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm" lenient="true"/>
Note that, after we have created the infrastructure classes, the preceding snippet of XML is essentially the same as the following XML snippet:
<bean id="dateFormat" class="java.text.SimpleDateFormat">
<constructor-arg value="yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm"/>
<property name="lenient" value="true"/>
</bean>
The second of the two preceding snippets
creates a bean in the container (identified by the name dateFormat
of type
SimpleDateFormat
) with a couple of properties set.
The schema-based approach to creating configuration format allows for tight integration with an IDE that has a schema-aware XML editor. By using a properly authored schema, you can use autocompletion to let a user choose between several configuration options defined in the enumeration. |
Coding a NamespaceHandler
In addition to the schema, we need a NamespaceHandler
to parse all elements of
this specific namespace that Infra encounters while parsing configuration files. For this example, the
NamespaceHandler
should take care of the parsing of the myns:dateformat
element.
The NamespaceHandler
interface features three methods:
-
init()
: Allows for initialization of theNamespaceHandler
and is called by Infra before the handler is used. -
BeanDefinition parse(Element, ParserContext)
: Called when Infra encounters a top-level element (not nested inside a bean definition or a different namespace). This method can itself register bean definitions, return a bean definition, or both. -
BeanDefinitionHolder decorate(Node, BeanDefinitionHolder, ParserContext)
: Called when Infra encounters an attribute or nested element of a different namespace. The decoration of one or more bean definitions is used (for example) with the scopes that Infra supports. We start by highlighting a simple example, without using decoration, after which we show decoration in a somewhat more advanced example.
Although you can code your own NamespaceHandler
for the entire
namespace (and hence provide code that parses each and every element in the namespace),
it is often the case that each top-level XML element in a Infra XML configuration file
results in a single bean definition (as in our case, where a single <myns:dateformat/>
element results in a single SimpleDateFormat
bean definition). Infra features a
number of convenience classes that support this scenario. In the following example, we
use the NamespaceHandlerSupport
class:
-
Java
package cn.taketoday.samples.xml;
import cn.taketoday.beans.factory.xml.NamespaceHandlerSupport;
public class MyNamespaceHandler extends NamespaceHandlerSupport {
public void init() {
registerBeanDefinitionParser("dateformat", new SimpleDateFormatBeanDefinitionParser());
}
}
You may notice that there is not actually a whole lot of parsing logic
in this class. Indeed, the NamespaceHandlerSupport
class has a built-in notion of
delegation. It supports the registration of any number of BeanDefinitionParser
instances, to which it delegates to when it needs to parse an element in its
namespace. This clean separation of concerns lets a NamespaceHandler
handle the
orchestration of the parsing of all of the custom elements in its namespace while
delegating to BeanDefinitionParsers
to do the grunt work of the XML parsing. This
means that each BeanDefinitionParser
contains only the logic for parsing a single
custom element, as we can see in the next step.
Using BeanDefinitionParser
A BeanDefinitionParser
is used if the NamespaceHandler
encounters an XML
element of the type that has been mapped to the specific bean definition parser
(dateformat
in this case). In other words, the BeanDefinitionParser
is
responsible for parsing one distinct top-level XML element defined in the schema. In
the parser, we' have access to the XML element (and thus to its subelements, too) so that
we can parse our custom XML content, as you can see in the following example:
-
Java
package cn.taketoday.samples.xml;
import cn.taketoday.beans.factory.support.BeanDefinitionBuilder;
import cn.taketoday.beans.factory.xml.AbstractSingleBeanDefinitionParser;
import cn.taketoday.util.StringUtils;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
public class SimpleDateFormatBeanDefinitionParser extends AbstractSingleBeanDefinitionParser { (1)
protected Class getBeanClass(Element element) {
return SimpleDateFormat.class; (2)
}
protected void doParse(Element element, BeanDefinitionBuilder bean) {
// this will never be null since the schema explicitly requires that a value be supplied
String pattern = element.getAttribute("pattern");
bean.addConstructorArgValue(pattern);
// this however is an optional property
String lenient = element.getAttribute("lenient");
if (StringUtils.hasText(lenient)) {
bean.addPropertyValue("lenient", Boolean.valueOf(lenient));
}
}
}
1 | We use the Infra-provided AbstractSingleBeanDefinitionParser to handle a lot of
the basic grunt work of creating a single BeanDefinition . |
2 | We supply the AbstractSingleBeanDefinitionParser superclass with the type that our
single BeanDefinition represents. |
In this simple case, this is all that we need to do. The creation of our single
BeanDefinition
is handled by the AbstractSingleBeanDefinitionParser
superclass, as
is the extraction and setting of the bean definition’s unique identifier.
Registering the Handler and the Schema
The coding is finished. All that remains to be done is to make the Infra XML
parsing infrastructure aware of our custom element. We do so by registering our custom
namespaceHandler
and custom XSD file in two special-purpose properties files. These
properties files are both placed in a META-INF
directory in your application and
can, for example, be distributed alongside your binary classes in a JAR file. The Infra
XML parsing infrastructure automatically picks up your new extension by consuming
these special properties files, the formats of which are detailed in the next two sections.
Writing META-INF/spring.handlers
The properties file called spring.handlers
contains a mapping of XML Schema URIs to
namespace handler classes. For our example, we need to write the following:
http\://www.mycompany.example/schema/myns=cn.taketoday.samples.xml.MyNamespaceHandler
(The :
character is a valid delimiter in the Java properties format, so
:
character in the URI needs to be escaped with a backslash.)
The first part (the key) of the key-value pair is the URI associated with your custom
namespace extension and needs to exactly match exactly the value of the targetNamespace
attribute, as specified in your custom XSD schema.
Writing 'META-INF/spring.schemas'
The properties file called spring.schemas
contains a mapping of XML Schema locations
(referred to, along with the schema declaration, in XML files that use the schema as part
of the xsi:schemaLocation
attribute) to classpath resources. This file is needed
to prevent Infra from absolutely having to use a default EntityResolver
that requires
Internet access to retrieve the schema file. If you specify the mapping in this
properties file, Infra searches for the schema (in this case,
myns.xsd
in the cn.taketoday.samples.xml
package) on the classpath.
The following snippet shows the line we need to add for our custom schema:
http\://www.mycompany.example/schema/myns/myns.xsd=org/springframework/samples/xml/myns.xsd
(Remember that the :
character must be escaped.)
You are encouraged to deploy your XSD file (or files) right alongside
the NamespaceHandler
and BeanDefinitionParser
classes on the classpath.
Using a Custom Extension in Your Infra XML Configuration
Using a custom extension that you yourself have implemented is no different from using
one of the “custom” extensions that Infra provides. The following
example uses the custom <dateformat/>
element developed in the previous steps
in a Infra XML configuration file:
<?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:myns="http://www.mycompany.example/schema/myns"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
http://www.mycompany.example/schema/myns http://www.mycompany.com/schema/myns/myns.xsd">
<!-- as a top-level bean -->
<myns:dateformat id="defaultDateFormat" pattern="yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm" lenient="true"/> (1)
<bean id="jobDetailTemplate" abstract="true">
<property name="dateFormat">
<!-- as an inner bean -->
<myns:dateformat pattern="HH:mm MM-dd-yyyy"/>
</property>
</bean>
</beans>
1 | Our custom bean. |
More Detailed Examples
This section presents some more detailed examples of custom XML extensions.
Nesting Custom Elements within Custom Elements
The example presented in this section shows how you to write the various artifacts required to satisfy a target of the following configuration:
<?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:foo="http://www.foo.example/schema/component"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
http://www.foo.example/schema/component http://www.foo.example/schema/component/component.xsd">
<foo:component id="bionic-family" name="Bionic-1">
<foo:component name="Mother-1">
<foo:component name="Karate-1"/>
<foo:component name="Sport-1"/>
</foo:component>
<foo:component name="Rock-1"/>
</foo:component>
</beans>
The preceding configuration nests custom extensions within each other. The class
that is actually configured by the <foo:component/>
element is the Component
class (shown in the next example). Notice how the Component
class does not expose a
setter method for the components
property. This makes it hard (or rather impossible)
to configure a bean definition for the Component
class by using setter injection.
The following listing shows the Component
class:
-
Java
package com.foo;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
public class Component {
private String name;
private List<Component> components = new ArrayList<Component> ();
// there is no setter method for the 'components'
public void addComponent(Component component) {
this.components.add(component);
}
public List<Component> getComponents() {
return components;
}
public String getName() {
return name;
}
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
}
The typical solution to this issue is to create a custom FactoryBean
that exposes a
setter property for the components
property. The following listing shows such a custom
FactoryBean
:
-
Java
package com.foo;
import cn.taketoday.beans.factory.FactoryBean;
import java.util.List;
public class ComponentFactoryBean implements FactoryBean<Component> {
private Component parent;
private List<Component> children;
public void setParent(Component parent) {
this.parent = parent;
}
public void setChildren(List<Component> children) {
this.children = children;
}
public Component getObject() throws Exception {
if (this.children != null && this.children.size() > 0) {
for (Component child : children) {
this.parent.addComponent(child);
}
}
return this.parent;
}
public Class<Component> getObjectType() {
return Component.class;
}
public boolean isSingleton() {
return true;
}
}
This works nicely, but it exposes a lot of Infra plumbing to the end user. What we are going to do is write a custom extension that hides away all of this Infra plumbing. If we stick to the steps described previously, we start off by creating the XSD schema to define the structure of our custom tag, as the following listing shows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<xsd:schema xmlns="http://www.foo.example/schema/component"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
targetNamespace="http://www.foo.example/schema/component"
elementFormDefault="qualified"
attributeFormDefault="unqualified">
<xsd:element name="component">
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:choice minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded">
<xsd:element ref="component"/>
</xsd:choice>
<xsd:attribute name="id" type="xsd:ID"/>
<xsd:attribute name="name" use="required" type="xsd:string"/>
</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
</xsd:schema>
Again following the process described earlier,
we then create a custom NamespaceHandler
:
-
Java
package com.foo;
import cn.taketoday.beans.factory.xml.NamespaceHandlerSupport;
public class ComponentNamespaceHandler extends NamespaceHandlerSupport {
public void init() {
registerBeanDefinitionParser("component", new ComponentBeanDefinitionParser());
}
}
Next up is the custom BeanDefinitionParser
. Remember that we are creating
a BeanDefinition
that describes a ComponentFactoryBean
. The following
listing shows our custom BeanDefinitionParser
implementation:
-
Java
package com.foo;
import cn.taketoday.beans.factory.config.BeanDefinition;
import cn.taketoday.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanDefinition;
import cn.taketoday.beans.factory.support.BeanDefinitionBuilder;
import cn.taketoday.beans.factory.support.ManagedList;
import cn.taketoday.beans.factory.xml.AbstractBeanDefinitionParser;
import cn.taketoday.beans.factory.xml.ParserContext;
import cn.taketoday.util.xml.DomUtils;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import java.util.List;
public class ComponentBeanDefinitionParser extends AbstractBeanDefinitionParser {
protected AbstractBeanDefinition parseInternal(Element element, ParserContext parserContext) {
return parseComponentElement(element);
}
private static AbstractBeanDefinition parseComponentElement(Element element) {
BeanDefinitionBuilder factory = BeanDefinitionBuilder.rootBeanDefinition(ComponentFactoryBean.class);
factory.addPropertyValue("parent", parseComponent(element));
List<Element> childElements = DomUtils.getChildElementsByTagName(element, "component");
if (childElements != null && childElements.size() > 0) {
parseChildComponents(childElements, factory);
}
return factory.getBeanDefinition();
}
private static BeanDefinition parseComponent(Element element) {
BeanDefinitionBuilder component = BeanDefinitionBuilder.rootBeanDefinition(Component.class);
component.addPropertyValue("name", element.getAttribute("name"));
return component.getBeanDefinition();
}
private static void parseChildComponents(List<Element> childElements, BeanDefinitionBuilder factory) {
ManagedList<BeanDefinition> children = new ManagedList<>(childElements.size());
for (Element element : childElements) {
children.add(parseComponentElement(element));
}
factory.addPropertyValue("children", children);
}
}
Finally, the various artifacts need to be registered with the Infra XML infrastructure,
by modifying the META-INF/spring.handlers
and META-INF/spring.schemas
files, as follows:
# in 'META-INF/spring.handlers' http\://www.foo.example/schema/component=com.foo.ComponentNamespaceHandler
# in 'META-INF/spring.schemas' http\://www.foo.example/schema/component/component.xsd=com/foo/component.xsd
Custom Attributes on “Normal” Elements
Writing your own custom parser and the associated artifacts is not hard. However, it is sometimes not the right thing to do. Consider a scenario where you need to add metadata to already existing bean definitions. In this case, you certainly do not want to have to write your own entire custom extension. Rather, you merely want to add an additional attribute to the existing bean definition element.
By way of another example, suppose that you define a bean definition for a service object that (unknown to it) accesses a clustered JCache, and you want to ensure that the named JCache instance is eagerly started within the surrounding cluster. The following listing shows such a definition:
<bean id="checkingAccountService" class="com.foo.DefaultCheckingAccountService"
jcache:cache-name="checking.account">
<!-- other dependencies here... -->
</bean>
We can then create another BeanDefinition
when the
'jcache:cache-name'
attribute is parsed. This BeanDefinition
then initializes
the named JCache for us. We can also modify the existing BeanDefinition
for the
'checkingAccountService'
so that it has a dependency on this new
JCache-initializing BeanDefinition
. The following listing shows our JCacheInitializer
:
-
Java
package com.foo;
public class JCacheInitializer {
private final String name;
public JCacheInitializer(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
public void initialize() {
// lots of JCache API calls to initialize the named cache...
}
}
Now we can move onto the custom extension. First, we need to author the XSD schema that describes the custom attribute, as follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<xsd:schema xmlns="http://www.foo.example/schema/jcache"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
targetNamespace="http://www.foo.example/schema/jcache"
elementFormDefault="qualified">
<xsd:attribute name="cache-name" type="xsd:string"/>
</xsd:schema>
Next, we need to create the associated NamespaceHandler
, as follows:
-
Java
package com.foo;
import cn.taketoday.beans.factory.xml.NamespaceHandlerSupport;
public class JCacheNamespaceHandler extends NamespaceHandlerSupport {
public void init() {
super.registerBeanDefinitionDecoratorForAttribute("cache-name",
new JCacheInitializingBeanDefinitionDecorator());
}
}
Next, we need to create the parser. Note that, in this case, because we are going to parse
an XML attribute, we write a BeanDefinitionDecorator
rather than a BeanDefinitionParser
.
The following listing shows our BeanDefinitionDecorator
implementation:
-
Java
package com.foo;
import cn.taketoday.beans.factory.config.BeanDefinitionHolder;
import cn.taketoday.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanDefinition;
import cn.taketoday.beans.factory.support.BeanDefinitionBuilder;
import cn.taketoday.beans.factory.xml.BeanDefinitionDecorator;
import cn.taketoday.beans.factory.xml.ParserContext;
import org.w3c.dom.Attr;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;
public class JCacheInitializingBeanDefinitionDecorator implements BeanDefinitionDecorator {
private static final String[] EMPTY_STRING_ARRAY = new String[0];
public BeanDefinitionHolder decorate(Node source, BeanDefinitionHolder holder,
ParserContext ctx) {
String initializerBeanName = registerJCacheInitializer(source, ctx);
createDependencyOnJCacheInitializer(holder, initializerBeanName);
return holder;
}
private void createDependencyOnJCacheInitializer(BeanDefinitionHolder holder,
String initializerBeanName) {
AbstractBeanDefinition definition = ((AbstractBeanDefinition) holder.getBeanDefinition());
String[] dependsOn = definition.getDependsOn();
if (dependsOn == null) {
dependsOn = new String[]{initializerBeanName};
} else {
List dependencies = new ArrayList(Arrays.asList(dependsOn));
dependencies.add(initializerBeanName);
dependsOn = (String[]) dependencies.toArray(EMPTY_STRING_ARRAY);
}
definition.setDependsOn(dependsOn);
}
private String registerJCacheInitializer(Node source, ParserContext ctx) {
String cacheName = ((Attr) source).getValue();
String beanName = cacheName + "-initializer";
if (!ctx.getRegistry().containsBeanDefinition(beanName)) {
BeanDefinitionBuilder initializer = BeanDefinitionBuilder.rootBeanDefinition(JCacheInitializer.class);
initializer.addConstructorArg(cacheName);
ctx.getRegistry().registerBeanDefinition(beanName, initializer.getBeanDefinition());
}
return beanName;
}
}
Finally, we need to register the various artifacts with the Infra XML infrastructure
by modifying the META-INF/spring.handlers
and META-INF/spring.schemas
files, as follows:
# in 'META-INF/spring.handlers' http\://www.foo.example/schema/jcache=com.foo.JCacheNamespaceHandler
# in 'META-INF/spring.schemas' http\://www.foo.example/schema/jcache/jcache.xsd=com/foo/jcache.xsd