Dealing with command line arguments and Spring

Two possibilities I can think of.

1) Set a static reference. (A static variable, although typically frowned upon, is OK in this case, because there can only be 1 command line invocation).

public class MyApp {
  public static String[] ARGS; 
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    ARGS = args;
      // create context
  }
}

You can then reference the command line arguments in Spring via:

<util:constant static-field="MyApp.ARGS"/>

Alternatively (if you are completely opposed to static variables), you can:

2) Programmatically add the args to the application context:

 public class MyApp2 {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     DefaultListableBeanFactory beanFactory = new DefaultListableBeanFactory();

        // Define a bean and register it
     BeanDefinition beanDefinition = BeanDefinitionBuilder.
       rootBeanDefinition(Arrays.class, "asList")
       .addConstructorArgValue(args).getBeanDefinition();
     beanFactory.registerBeanDefinition("args", beanDefinition);
     GenericApplicationContext cmdArgCxt = new GenericApplicationContext(beanFactory);
     // Must call refresh to initialize context 
     cmdArgCxt.refresh();

     // Create application context, passing command line context as parent
     ApplicationContext mainContext = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(CONFIG_LOCATIONS, cmdArgCxt);

     // See if it's in the context
     System.out.println("Args: " + mainContext.getBean("args"));
   }

   private static String[] CONFIG_LOCATIONS = new String[] {
     "applicationContext.xml"
   };

 }

Parsing the command line arguments is left as an exercise to the reader.