Spring Modules 0.7 and XT Framework Highlights

Hi guys,

I'm pleased to announce here the new Spring Modules 0.7 release.
We have made several changes (you can find the general changelog here), so I suggest you to update to the new release.

Talking about the XT Framework, here is a short list of the most important changes:

XT Modeling Framework :

• New annotations for better controlling the DynamicBeanIntroductor behaviour.

XT Ajax Framework :

• Enhanced integration with Prototype and Scriptaculous JavaScript libraries (in particular, full support for effects and drag and drop).
• New components, in particular the JspComponent, which let you dynamically send JSP contents through Ajax.
• Support for mapping more Ajax handlers to the same web path.
• Enhanced DefaultValidationHandler, for easy Ajax validation.

Take a look at the whole XT documentation for a full taste of all XT Framework features ... any feedback will be very welcomed!

As a final, yet important, note, I'd like to thank all the Spring Modules community, and all Spring Modules developers: it's always a pleasure to work with keen guys!

Spring 2.0 and the P-Namespace

Some days ago Rod Johnson blogged about an undocumented feature of Spring 2.0: the so-called P-Namespace, which permits you to shorten the XML configuration.
This feature has been very well welcomed by the developers community, because it clearly makes the Spring XML configuration easier to manage and read, without running into the burden of writing a custom namespace handler.

I strongly suggest you to give it a try.

As a consequence, many people started asking more, and in particular many people I know asked about the possibility of applying the same kind of configuration to collection and map properties.
Too bad, this seems to be impossible, but I'm here for giving my two cents about another (documented) way of configuring collections, that is IMHO easier to read. It uses the P-Namespace and the util schema, here is a sample:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
      xmlns:xsi=" http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util"
      xmlns:p=" http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
      xsi:schemaLocation="
      http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/util
      http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util-2.0.xsd">
 
   <util:set id="contents">
       <bean id="c1" class="org.acme.Content" p:name="c1"/>
       <bean id="c2" class="org.acme.Content" p:name="c2"/>
       <bean id="c3" class="org.acme.Content" p:name="c3"/>
   </util:set>
 
   <bean id="container" class="org.acme.Container" p:name="container" p:contentList-ref="contents"/>
 
</beans>

As you can see, you have to simply configure your collection with the util schema (that makes it reusable, too), and then inject it with the P-Namespace!

I hope you'll find it useful!