h1. Spring module

The spring support module help you to integrate Spring managed beans with a play application.

h2. <a>Enable the Spring module for the application</a>

In the **/conf/application.conf** file, enable the Spring module by adding this line:

bc. # The spring module
module.spring=${play.path}/modules/spring

h2. <a>Define an application-context.xml registry</a>

In the **conf/** directory of the application you can then create a **application-context.xml** file and define some beans.

For example:

bc. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC "-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN" "http://www.springsource.org/dtd/spring-beans-2.0.dtd">
<beans>
    
    <bean id="test" class="utils.Test" />
    
</beans>

h2. <a>Retrieve beans from application code</a>

You can obtain bean instances from the application code, using the **play.modules.spring.Spring** helper.

bc. public Application extends Controller {
    
    public static void index() {
        Test test = Spring.getBeanOfType(Test.class);
        ...
    }
    
}

h2. <a>@javax.inject.Inject support</a>

Not implemented yet.

h2. <a>Automatic Component Scanning</a>

Spring 2.5 and later supports auto-wiring and component identification using annotations, obviating the need to define beans explicitly in XML.

To enable component scanning, add this line to the **/conf/application.conf** file:

bc. play.spring.component-scan=true

Note that enabling this scans for @org.springframework.stereotype.Component, @org.springframework.stereotype.Repository, @org.springframework.stereotype.Service to identify Spring beans.  Additionally, running the component scan enables support for annotation based configuration (i.e., @org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired, etc). 

h3. Limited Scanning

You can limit the classes scanned to specific packages or canonical class names with this line in the **/conf/application.conf** file:

bc. play.spring.component-scan.base-packages=controllers.beans,services
 
In this example, only classes whose canonical name start with either 'controllers.beans' or 'services' will be scanned and identified as beans.

h2. Manual PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer configuration

By default, a org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer containing the properties of application.conf is added to the Spring context.  In some cases, this may not be desirable as it can conflict with a PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer that you have defined in your application-context.xml.  To disable the automatic PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer placement into the context, update application.conf with

bc. play.spring.add-play-properties=false

and then add your own definition to application-context.xml.

If you want to have your own properties and those of your Play! application handled by a PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer, you can add all of them in application-context.xml:

bc. <bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
    <property name="locations">
        <list>
            <value>classpath:jdbc.properties</value>
            <value>classpath:application.conf</value>
        </list>
    </property>
</bean>