STS and XSD

It has been a while since I used SpringSource Tool Suite. This has been a terrible mistake on my side as I was forced to use other IDEs. As I was finally giving a choice to re-start using it, I came across an issue that I thought will write about. I'm sure most people already know about this: XSD (for the Spring beans) are no longer included in the distribution. This means that if you are using STS from version 2.7.0 and above, you have to include the proper jar (including the XSD inside the jar) into the classpath. I think this is a good move on SpringSource as I can see why it would make sense for the IDE to help you resolve based on your classpath (i.e. what you are building).

Removing Unused Workspaces from Eclipse

Workspaces in Eclipse is one of those features that are often unused or not used enough.  Personally, I find it extremely helpful to use them, particularly when working on different branches. There are times when you need/want to delete some of these workspaces from your workspace list. Here is how you can do this:

Spring: @Autowired Constructors

Since the introduction of Spring 2.0, I have seen a trend where developers use the @Autowired annotation very often. I must admit, I like a combination of annotations with some XML declaration, however I'm still debating whether making a decision of using @Autowired scales well in the long run. I would like to show how this feature can seem unintuitive.  Furthermore, even tools like SpringSource Tool Suite can get confused at times.

XML Validation within Eclipse

  Working with XML can be a wonderful experience. Most people I know (in the industry) don't consider XSD/DTD validation a task that is challenging enough so as to spend time and/or effort to either learning it or writing to it. This feeling changes rapidly as tooling support (e.g. IDEs) produces hiccups when XML validation generates errors that can not be understood by the same engineering staff.  For example, have you ever had the infamous problem reported through Eclipse's console:

cvc-complex-type.2.4.c: The matching wildcard is strict, but no declaration can be found for element 'custom-filter'.


  By default Eclipse has XML validation on. This means that it will look for a DTD of XSD to validate your XML file. The message above indicates that there's an XML element named custom-filter that can not be resolved with any of the XSD that Eclipse is aware within it's catalog registry.

Dynamic Web Projects in Eclipse

As I fixed a maven war project to more effectively use the Web Tools Project (WTP), I realized I could share the configuration I used with the hope to help others get some light as needed.  I'll be assuming you are familiar with the .classpath file as well as the .project file (which Eclipse uses heavily) to setup the dynamic web project.  Furthermore, I'll assume you are familiar with the notion of a "nature" within the Eclipse environment.  Lastly, I would like to refer readers to the official Eclipse FAQ.  In particular, I would like to refer you to the section where the sharing of the .project and .classpath files in version control (e.g. subversion, git, etc) is considered a good practice. Note that these tips will also work with the Springsource Tool Suite (STS)