Spring applicationcontext loading hooks

Question

Are there any hooks into the Spring ApplicationContext loading process?

I want to run a piece of code just before the application context loads (before any beans/properties/aspects/etc... are instantiated).

thanks in advance

Answer 1

Maybe BeanFactoryPostProcessors will suite your needs? They are run after the whole XML configuration files are read, but before any (other) beans are instantiated.

Answer 2

You can also use the ApplicationListener to receive notification of events like ContextClosedEvent, ContextStartedEvent or ContextStoppedEvent.

More information in the IoC Container chapter.

Answer 3

I just declared my own ContextLoaderListener in order to perform the desired work before loading the Spring context. It suits for web-apps, just declare it before the Spring context listener:

public class MyServletContextListener implements ServletContextListener {

    @Override
    public void contextDestroyed(ServletContextEvent arg0) {

    }

    @Override
    public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent arg0) {
        //Perform your stuff here
    }

}

<listener>
    <listener-class>
        com.myCompany.listeners.MyServletContextListener</listener-class>
</listener>

<listener>
    <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>