Spring's overriding bean

Question

Can we have duplicate names for the same bean id that is mentioned in the XML? If not, then how do we override the bean in Spring?

Answer 1

I will add that if your need is just to override a property used by your bean, the id approach works too like skaffman explained :

In your first called XML configuration file :

   <bean id="myBeanId" class="com.blabla">
       <property name="myList" ref="myList"/>
   </bean>

   <util:list id="myList">
       <value>3</value>
       <value>4</value>
   </util:list>

In your second called XML configuration file :

   <util:list id="myList">
       <value>6</value>
   </util:list>

Then your bean "myBeanId" will be instantiated with a "myList" property of one element which is 6.

Answer 2

Not sure if that's exactly what you need, but we are using profiles to define the environment we are running at and specific bean for each environment, so it's something like that:

<bean name="myBean" class="myClass">
    <constructor-arg name="name" value="originalValue" />
</bean>
<beans profile="DEV, default">
     <!-- Specific DEV configurations, also default if no profile defined -->
    <bean name="myBean" class="myClass">
        <constructor-arg name="name" value="overrideValue" />
    </bean>
</beans>
<beans profile="CI, UAT">
     <!-- Specific CI / UAT configurations -->
</beans>
<beans profile="PROD">
     <!-- Specific PROD configurations -->
</beans>

So in this case, if I don't define a profile or if I define it as "DEV" myBean will get "overrideValue" for it's name argument. But if I set the profile to "CI", "UAT" or "PROD" it will get "originalValue" as the value.