How to achieve conditional resource import in a Spring XML context?

Question

What I would like to achieve is the ability to "dynamically" (i.e. based on a property defined in a configuration file) enable/disable the importing of a child Spr

Answer 1

This is now completely possible, using Spring 4.

In your main application content file

And the MyConditionalConfiguration looks like

@Configuration
@Conditional(MyConditionalConfiguration.Condition.class)
@ImportResource("/com/example/context-fragment.xml")
public class MyConditionalConfiguration {
    static class Condition implements ConfigurationCondition {
         @Override
         public ConfigurationPhase getConfigurationPhase() {
             return ConfigurationPhase.PARSE_CONFIGURATION;
         }
         @Override
         public boolean matches(ConditionContext context, AnnotatedTypeMetadata metadata) {
             // only load context-fragment.xml if the system property is defined
             return System.getProperty("com.example.context-fragment") != null;
         }
    }
}

And then finally, you put the bean definitions you want included in the /com/example/context-fragment.xml

See the JavaDoc for @Conditional