extensions question

[Tom Zeller]

>> But once I’m in my service code looking to use that information, it appears I
>> have only access to it as an InputStream rather than an xml dom based
>> object. I’ve tried to follow the core Shib code to see where stuff happens but
>> trying to trace that execution flow sometimes appears hopeless to me. It
>> feels wrong that I should have to parse my xml configuration file again since
>> its been done once already. What am I missing?
> 
> I don't have V2 code checked out in front of me, but I don't think it's that different than V3, there's a base class for services/components like this that should be creating a Spring application context and loading the resources into the context. Spring should be calling your registered bean parsers at that point, you don't parse the file.

In other words : in your Service, get your beans from the Spring applicationContext after it has been loaded/refreshed, either by name/id or by class.