Spring IDE FAQ

Here you can find the answer to some of the most frequently asked questions about Spring IDE. If you have a question not answered by this page you can use the Support Forum. Please don't use the project's ticket system for support calls.

Contents

1   Installing and Running Spring IDE

1.1   Which version of Spring does Spring IDE support?

Spring IDE ships with a specific version of Spring and Spring Web Flow used internally for parsing and validating the corresponding Spring config files. Therefore the version of Spring IDE you are using determines the supported version of Spring and Web Flow, e.g. Spring IDE 1.x bundles Spring 1.x while Spring IDE 2.0 bundles Spring 2.1 M2 and Web Flow 1.0.

So if your're using Spring IDE 2.0 then Spring 1.x's DTD based config files are supported in addition to Spring 2.0's namespace-based config files and some upcomping features of Spring 2.1 (e.g. Java config).

1.2   Which versions of Java are supported?

Spring IDE 1.x requires at least JDK 1.4.1.

Starting with Spring IDE 2.0 at least Java 1.5 is required.

1.3   Which versions of Eclipse are supported?

Spring IDE 1.2 and above requires Eclipse 3 or newer.

Starting with Spring IDE 1.3 Eclipse 3.1.x with WebStandardTools 1.0.x is required.

Starting with Spring IDE 2.0 Eclipse 3.2 with WebStandardTools 1.5.x is required.

For Eclipse 2 use Spring IDE 1.1.1.

1.4   Which version of GEF is required?

Spring IDE requires the version of GEF which corresponds to the Eclipse version you are using. Meaning if you are using Eclipse 3.0.2 you need GEF 3.0.2, for Eclipse 3.1 you need GEF 3.1 and so on.

1.5   Why can't Eclipse's update manager find a new version on the Spring IDE's updatesite?

This is maybe due to a dirty cache in between your Eclipse's update manager and Spring IDE's updatesite. For details please refer to Paul Tomlin's blog post -> http://springide.org/blog/2007/06/27/spring-ide-20-is-final/#comment-1710

1.6   How to install the Web Standard Tools?

For installing WebStandardTools you have the following choices:

1.7   I installed Spring IDE with all required plugins but Spring IDE doesn't seem to work

Make sure that you use Eclipse's update manager to install Spring IDE as described in SpringideInstall.

Do not unzip one of the archived versions of the updatesite (named "springide_updatesite_x.x.x.zip") in your Eclipse's installation directory! These archives are intended to be used with Eclipse's update manager as well.

1.8   I'm using MyEclipse and can't install / update Spring IDE

That behaviour is basically caused by the plugin version numbers used in MyEclipse, e.g. in MyEclipse 4 M2 the Spring IDE plugins use their original plugin id's but with version number 3.9.210 or 3.9.211. Now if you try to install version 1.2.1 from the Spring IDE's updatesite Eclipse's update manager will always consider the plugins with 3.9.x to be newer than 1.2.x and will not install the 'new' plugins.

If you really want to use Spring IDE with MyEclipse you have to manually delete MyEclipse's Spring IDE plugins and reinstall them using Spring IDE's updatesite, but we cannot guarantee that MyEclipse and Spring IDE will work properly. Refer to http://www.myeclipseide.com/PNphpBB2+file-viewtopic-t-8115.html

1.9   I'm using oXygen XML and BeansXmlEditor isn't working

oXygen XML ships with it's own types for XML content. This content type interfers with the one shipped with Spring IDE's BeansXmlEditor. So if you want to use Spring IDE's BeansXmlEditor you have the following choices:

Workaround 1:

  • Decrease the priority of oXygen XML's content type contribution to "normal" as described in the entry "oXygen Eclipse Plugin conflicts with Spring IDE" http://www.oxygenxml.com/forum/ftopic2153.html on their support forum
  • Flush Eclipse's plugin metadata cache by starting Eclipse from the commandline with the option "-clean"

Workaround 2:

  • Create a new file association (example ".spring") in Window->Preferences->General->Content Types under the Text->XML content type (but NOT the Text->XML->oXygen XML content type)
  • Rename spring configurations to end with .spring
  • Edit project to point to newly named configuration files

Workaround 3:

  • Disable oXygen XML under Help->Software Updates->Manage Configuration

For details refer to ticket #400.

2   Using Spring IDE

2.1   Where can I find usage instructions for Spring IDE?

SpringideGuide gives an overview on how to use Spring IDE.

2.2   How to reference a Spring BeansConfig file defined in a different Spring project?

Spring IDE supports the notion of external Spring BeansConfig files. To know about these files Spring IDE needs a hint which Spring projects are related to each other. These SpringProject relationships are defined via the project properties dialog "Project References". Any SpringProject selected in this dialog are searched for Spring BeansConfig files if you create / edit a config set and for Spring bean classes during validation.

External BeansConfig files can be referenced from within a BeansConfigSet only (ie, you will only be allowed to select external BeansConfig files from within the "Edit Spring Beans Config Set" dialog). To distinguish between internal and external config files the external ones are decorated with a small blue arrow.

2.3   How to get Spring BeansConfig files with <import> statements supported in BeansConfigValidator and BeansGraph?

Currently Spring's <import> tag is not supported by Spring IDE. So all beans from imported BeansConfig files are not available in the context of the importing BeansConfig file.

A workaround for this is to create a BeansConfigSet containing the importing BeansConfig file as well as all of the imported BeansConfig files. This BeansConfigSet is used by the BeansConfigValidator for solving bean references and by the BeansGraph to get a list of the defined beans and their relationships.

2.4   How to check if the BeansConfigValidator is running correctly?

The BeansConfigValidator runs in SpringProject (the ones which have the SpringProjectNature - added via the context menu "Add Spring Project Nature") for every BeansConfig (the ones decorated with a small 'S' and listed in the Spring BeansView) file if:

  1. the BeansConfigValidator is enabled
This can be checked via the project's properties page "Builders". Here a builder called "Spring Project Builder" (the BeansConfigValidator) should be listed and enabled.
  1. automatic building is enabled
This is enabled via the menu item "Project / Build Automatically". Otherwise you have to use the menu item "Project / Build Project" to trigger the validator.

You can check if the SpringProjectBuilder is running by opening a BeansConfig file with Eclipse's standard text editor via "Open With / Text Editor" (this way we can assume that the valdiation errors are not created by your XML editor), invalidating the root tag <beans> and saving the file. Now you should get a validation error 'Document root element "xxx" must match DOCTYPE root "beans"'.

2.5   Why are the beans referenced with "ref bean" not being found ?

Did you create a config set for your depending config files?

Otherwise Spring IDE doesn't know anything about a relationship of certain config files and it validates every config file on it's own. With the existance of config sets config files which are part of a BeansConfigSet are validated within the context of a BeanFactory created from the config files belonging to the same BeansConfigSet.

This way the bean references can be resolved during validation.

2.6   How to get rid of Spring IDE's problem markers?

To get rid of the SpringProblemMarker decorations you have the following options:

Optionally you can turn off displaying Spring IDE's problem markers in the problem view by deselecting the entry "Spring Problem Marker" in the problem view's filter settings.

3   Leveraging and Extending Spring IDE

3.1   Where can I find information about Spring IDE's beans model?

here -> BeansCoreModel

3.2   Where can I find information about Spring IDE WebFlow support?

here -> WebFlow