ColdSpring - Using the Parent attribute to specify configuration settings like DSN

I am doing a bit of re factoring in our product, and starting to do a cleaner job of having configuration settings available to each Manager object that needs it (in the typical Manager/Gateway/DAO scenario).

I am looking at the undocumented (at this point) 'parent' attribute that can be specified on a Bean, which will then have the configuration settings injected into it, without the need to explicitly specify the config dependency. Here's an example as I've implemented it:

coldspring.xml definitions...

<!-- Regular Bean in need of some config settings (and specifies the
configGateway as the parent) -->
<bean id="regularBean" class="com.regularBean" parent="configGateway">

<property name="configSettings">
<ref bean="configSettings">
</property>
</bean>
<!-- Configuration Bean which holds config settings -->
<bean id="configSettings" class="com.configSettings">
<constructor-arg name="dsn">
<value>odbcdsn</value>
</constructor-arg>
</bean>
<bean id="nextBean" class="com.nextBean">
<property name="configSettings">
<ref bean="configSettings">
</property>
</bean>

Then in my 'RegularBean' I need the methods for configSettings i.e.:
<!--- Author: penny - Date: 7/30/2008 --->
<!--- getter and setter for configSettings --->
<cffunction name="getconfigSettings" access="public" output="false" returntype="com.configSettings">
<cfreturn>
</cfreturn>
<cffunction name="setconfigSettings" access="public" output="false" returntype="void">
<cfargument name="configSettings" type="com.configSettings" required="true">
<cfset configsettings="arguments.configSettings/">
</cfset>
</cfargument></cffunction></cffunction>

When calling Regular Bean -
application.serviceFactory.getBean('regularBean').getConfigSettings().getDSN()

This technique still requires the 'stubbed' getter/setter for the configSettings bean, but is less xml in the coldspring xml file. Here is an example of the alternative:

(BAD)
coldspring.xml file

<property name="configSettings">
<ref bean="configSettings">
</ref>
</property>
<!-- Configuration Bean which holds config settings -->
<bean id="configSettings" class="com.configSettings">
<constructor-arg name="dsn">
<value>odbcdsn</value>
</constructor-arg>
</bean>
<bean id="nextBean" class="com.nextBean">
</bean> <property name="configSettings">
<ref bean="configSettings">
</ref>
</property>

.. etc.

This will be very nice to use, and extend when new configuration settings are needed to be added to the application like 'verityroot' 'rootdirectory' or 'write_dsn' or 'read_dsn' or whatever other application configuration settings are needed for your application.

They say the documentation of this should be out soon at the coldspringframework.org/docs documentation site, so stay tuned for that.