[Springframework-developer] Bean factory getting access to its bean id

[Cameron B. <ca...@da...>]

Is there any way that I can allow a bean factory to find out its id 
attribute from the applicationContext.xml

i.e. I am trying to get a grip on how spring works, and therefore I am 
trying to write a little integration layer to make spring an action 
factory for xwork, to allow me to use spring components and 
interceptors.  I want to try and avoid repetition of configuration 
wherever possible.

I have it at the stage where I have a bean declaration like this :

    <bean id="defaultActionTransactionAttributes" 
class="com.datacodex.spring.beans.PropertiesFactoryBean">
        <property name="properties">
            <props>
                <prop key="execute">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
            </props>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <bean id="admin.SpringAdminAction" class="WebworkActionFactoryBean">
        <property 
name="action"><value>/admin/SpringAdminAction</value></property>
        <property name="transactionManager"><ref 
local="transactionManager"/></property>
        <property name="transactionAttributes"><ref 
local="defaultActionTransactionAttributes"/></property>
    </bean>

I would like to be able to access the id="admin.SpringAdminAction" value 
(or the bean name attribute) from within the WebworkActionFactoryBean 
therefore removing the need to have the extra 'action' property 
<property name="action"><value>/admin/SpringAdminAction</value></property>.

Idealy I would like to use the /admin/SpringAdminAction as the bean id 
to make mapping from WebWork seamless, and without needing the 
conversion to '.' style.
Therefore - is there any way that the bean id can be changed to allow 
any valid xml string ?  Currently I am receiving an exception, from the 
xml validator.  Can the id atttribuet be changed to be a

[22:12:29]INFO [XmlBeanFactory] Loading XmlBeanFactory from InputStream 
[[ReadStream com.caucho.vfs.FileReadStream@190a0d6]]
[22:12:29]ERROR[ContextLoader] Failed to initialize beans in application 
context: Line 44 in XML document is invalid; nested exception is:
    org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Attribute value 
"/admin/SpringAdminAction" of type ID must be a name.
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Attribute value 
"/admin/SpringAdminAction" of type ID must be a name.
    at org.apache.xerces.parsers.DOMParser.parse(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.DocumentBuilderImpl.parse(Unknown Source)
    at javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder.parse(DocumentBuilder.java:76)

The dtd states that it myst be a valid XML ID, and to use the optional 
name attribute if you want an illegal name.  Though this will require 
two identifyers for the bean, which I think is pointless.  Does the ID 
have to be mandatory.  Can't a validation be implemented in java to 
check that atleast the name or the id is supplied ?  Then the same for 
the <!ATTLIST ref local IDREF #IMPLIED>  this could be a CDATA with java 
based validation.

Cheers,

Cameron

-- 
Any damn fool can write code that a computer can understand...
The trick is to write code that humans can understand.
[Martin Fowler http://www.martinfowler.com/distributedComputing/refactoring.pdf]