ref local does not consider name attribute [SPR-413]

[spring-projects-issues]

Andreas Senft opened SPR-413 and commented

I just found out that there is a difference on using <ref bean="..."> or <ref local="...">, when accessing beans within the same configuration file.

If the referenced bean has only a name attribute and no id attribute it can be referenced via ref bean, but not via ref local.

Failing Example:

<bean id="Root" class="test.Root">
<property name="foo">
<ref local="Foo"/> <!-- ref bean will work -->
</property>
</bean>
<bean name="Foo" class="test.Foo">
</bean>

org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanDefinitionStoreException: Line 35 in XML document from class path resource [test.xml] is invalid; nested exception is org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: An element with the identifier "Foo" must appear in the document.
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: An element with the identifier "Foo" must appear in the document.
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)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java:127)
at test.SpringTest.main(SpringTest.java:29)

---

Affects: 1.1.1

[spring-projects-issues]

Juergen Hoeller commented

This is expected behavior: We should probably state this more clearly. "local" refers to XML ids within the same XML file, validated by the XML parser. Only "id" defines such an XML id; "name" is ignored by the XML parser in that respect.

Essentially, that's the only advantage of "local" over "bean": The XML parser is able to validate it. If you can live without that or don't what that to happen in the first place, simply choose "bean" for all your references.

Juergen

[spring-projects-issues]

Andreas Senft commented

Quick resolution :-)

I also advise to clarify this in the documentation. It is no big issue, but confusing when encountered.

Regards,
Andreas