Allow short-form "idref" properties in addition to "ref" [SPR-2444]

[spring-projects-issues]

Antranig Basman opened SPR-2444 and commented

Although in Spring 1.2 the "short form" attribute syntax for properties allows bean references and values ("ref" and "value") to be specified inline, currently there is no way to do this for references to the names of beans, for example the following

<bean id="defaultViewProxy" parent="RSACStringBridge">
<property name="targetBeanName">
<idref bean="defaultView" />
</property>
</bean>

could be written in the proposed syntax

<bean id="defaultViewProxy" parent="RSACStringBridge">
<property name="targetBeanName" idref="defaultView"/>
</bean>

Currently the only workaround is to use "value" in place of "idref" if one wants a short form.

I believe this case is common enough, and the extra link-safety provided by idref is valuable enough to make this small change worthwhile.

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Affects: 2.0 RC3

Issue Links:

• Evaluate 'idref' element and 'local' attribute in Spring 3.1 [SPR-8179] #12830 Evaluate 'idref' element and 'local' attribute in Spring 3.1

[spring-projects-issues]

Chris Beams commented

All use of xsd:ID and xsd:IDREF has been removed from the spring-beans schema for 3.1 in order to accommodate nested <beans> elements, bean definition profiles, etc.