how to validate spring applicationContext.xml file

Question

I have couple of beans defined in the applicationContext.xml file and found if I made mistake(say typo) with the bean's name, spring won't complain anything and go ahead load the invalidate configuration. doesn't spring do the checking automatically? and how can i implement schema validation on the applicationContext.xml file? thanks.

Answer 1

IntelliJ IDEA has a wonderful support for Spring, including:

• detecting broken references (bean does not exist, has a wrong type, etc.)
• completing bean names when Ctrl+Space is pressed (along with narrowing the list to only the beans matching by type)
• discovering missing/duplicated beans when @Resource/@Autowired is used and it will fail to autowire at runtime
• quick navigation between Java and application context XML
• ...and lots more

Also I strongly recommend writing Spring smoke integration test. It doesn't have to test anything, just context startup (you would be amazed, how many errors it discovers).