Spring app migration: from XML to Java-based config
Our team recently built a Spring MVC 3.1 application for a web service API. We had used the traditional XML-based configuration but I wanted to see how easy would it be to migrate a Spring application from an XML-based to a Java annotation-based configuration.
I referenced three great resources for this migration:
- @baeldung’s excellent Bootstrapping a web application with Spring 3.1 and Java based Configuration series
- @doughaber’s post, Pagination with Spring MVC, Spring Data and Java Config, included some great “gotchas”, especially around web tier configuration
- @cbeam and @rstoya05’s presentation, Configuration Enhancements in Spring 3.1, laid out in terrific detail how Spring configuration has evolved and how most XML configurations could be achieved through Java annotations