Type aliases allow you to simplify Spring configuration file by replacing fully qualified type name with an alias for frequently used types. Aliases can be registered both within config file and programatically and can be used anywhere in the context config file where fully qualified type name is expected.
Configuring Type Aliases
In order to configure type aliases you need to define custom config section in the Web/App.config file for your application, as well as the custom configuration section handler:
<configuration>
<configSections>
<sectionGroup name="spring">
<section name="typeAliases" type="Spring.Context.Support.TypeAliasesSectionHandler, Spring.Core"/>
...
</sectionGroup>
</configSections>
<spring>
<typeAliases>
<alias name="WebServiceExporter" type="Spring.Web.Services.WebServiceExporter, Spring.Web"/>
<alias name="DefaultPointcutAdvisor" type="Spring.Aop.Support.DefaultPointcutAdvisor, Spring.Aop"/>
<alias name="AttributePointcut" type="Spring.Aop.Support.AttributeMatchMethodPointcut, Spring.Aop"/>
<alias name="CacheAttribute" type="Spring.Attributes.CacheAttribute, Spring.Core"/>
<alias name="MyType" type="MyCompany.MyProject.MyNamespace.MyType, MyAssembly"/>
...
</typeAliases>
...
</spring>
</configuration>
Once you have aliases defined, you can simply use them anywhere where you would normally specify fully qualified type name:
<object id="MyWebService" type="WebServiceExporter">
...
</object>
<object id="cacheAspect" type="DefaultPointcutAdvisor">
<property name="Pointcut">
<object type="AttributePointcut">
<property name="Attribute" value="CacheAttribute"/>
</object>
</property>
<property name="Advice" ref="aspNetCacheAdvice"/>
</object>
...
Registering Type Aliases Programmatically
Programmatic alias registration is mainly intended to be used internally within the framework to pre-register aliases for the commonly used types. However, it can be used within custom application context implementations and within third party libraries that are built on top of Spring.
Registering aliases programmatically is very simple – all you need to do is call one of the static RegisterType methods on the TypeRegistry singleton:
TypeRegistry.RegisterType("WebServiceExporter", "Spring.Web.Services.WebServiceExporter, Spring.Web");
TypeRegistry.RegisterType("CacheAttribute", typeof(CacheAttribute));
...
As you can see, you can either pass a fully qualified type name as a second parameter and let Spring resolve it for you, or you can specify the type directly.
