Spring Bean Factory XML — Dasel v3 Query Patterns

<when_to_use>

Load this skill when querying any Spring bean XML file — applicationContext.xml, *_beans.xml, spring-context.xml, or any Spring ApplicationContext XML — for bean discovery, dependency analysis, JMS wiring, property injection auditing, or cross-bean reference tracing.

</when_to_use>

Dasel v3 selector patterns for Spring bean factory XML. Always pass -i xml explicitly.

Attribute prefix rule: Dasel friendly mode (default) prefixes XML attributes with -. The id attribute is -id, class is -class. Text content is #text.

Bean Discovery

# All bean IDs
cat chaosrouter_beans.xml | dasel -i xml 'beans.bean.filter(has("-id")).map("-id")'

# All bean classes
cat chaosrouter_beans.xml | dasel -i xml 'beans.bean.filter(has("-class")).map("-class")'

# Map -class across every bean (includes beans without -id)
cat chaosrouter_beans.xml | dasel -i xml 'beans.bean.map("-class")'

Class Pattern Matching

Filter beans by class name via regex on -class.

# Beans whose class contains JmsTemplate
cat chaosrouter_beans.xml | dasel -i xml 'beans.bean.filter(-class ~ ".*JmsTemplate.*").map("-id")'

# Count beans matching a class pattern
cat beans.xml | dasel -i xml 'len(beans.bean.filter(-class ~ ".*Jms.*"))'

Dependency Wiring Analysis

Find beans referencing other beans via the -ref attribute on property child elements.

Pattern: parentCollection.filter(childElement.filter(condition).len($this) > 0) — filters the parent by testing whether a matching child exists (length > 0).

# Beans that reference a specific bean ID via ref attribute
cat chaosrouter_beans.xml | dasel -i xml 'beans.bean.filter(property.filter(-ref == "targetBeanId").len($this) > 0).map("-id")'

JMS Destination Mapping

Find which beans consume which JMS destinations via property child elements.

# Beans wired to a specific destination property
cat integrationpoint_beans.xml | dasel -i xml 'beans.bean.filter(property.filter(-name == "destination").len($this) > 0).map("-id")'

Property Injection Extraction

Extract externalized ${...} placeholder values from bean definitions.

# All property values using ${...} placeholders
cat storage_beans.xml | dasel -i xml 'beans.bean.property.filter(-value ~ ".*\\$\\{.*\\}.*").map("-value")'

Attribute and Text Content Access

# <bean id="myBean" class="com.example.Foo">some text</bean>
cat beans.xml | dasel -i xml 'beans.bean[0].-id'       # myBean
cat beans.xml | dasel -i xml 'beans.bean[0].-class'    # com.example.Foo
cat beans.xml | dasel -i xml 'beans.bean[0].#text'     # some text

# Discover all keys (attributes + child elements) on first bean
cat beans.xml | dasel -i xml 'beans.bean[0].keys($this)'

Namespace Handling

Friendly mode strips namespace prefixes from element names — works for most Spring queries.

When namespace prefixes cause selector failures (element not found despite existing), switch to structured mode:

cat spring-context.xml | dasel -i xml --read-flag xml-mode=structured 'beans.bean[0]'

Cross-File Analysis

Write intermediate results to /tmp/ — never to the source tree.

# Extract bean IDs from multiple files, compare
cat chaosrouter_beans.xml | dasel -i xml 'beans.bean.filter(has("-id")).map("-id")' > /tmp/chaosrouter_beans.txt
cat integrationpoint_beans.xml | dasel -i xml 'beans.bean.filter(has("-id")).map("-id")' > /tmp/integration_beans.txt
diff /tmp/chaosrouter_beans.txt /tmp/integration_beans.txt