Adding a new XML element

When adding a new node, you must specify the node after, before or inside which you want to add the node and the XML fragment to add as shown below.

<processor>
  ...
  <add>
    <after>/beans/bean[@id='testBean']</after>
    <value>
      <![CDATA[
        <bean id="testBean2" class="com.foo.TestBean">
        </bean>
      ]]>
    </value>
  </add>
  ...
</processor>

This fragment will instruct the config processor plugin to add the new bean element after the bean with id="testBean".

To add a new attribute, you specify the node using the name configuration instead of after/before because attribute ordering is not supported, you can't say "Add X after attribute Y", you only specify which node will have the attribute added.

<processor>
  ...
  <add>
    <name>/beans/bean[@id='testBean']</name>
    <value>
      <![CDATA[
        scope="prototype"
      ]]>
    </value>
  </add>
  ...
</processor>

This fragment will instruct the config processor to add the scope attribute to the bean with id="testBean".

As of version 1.8, it is possible to add another XML file instead of specifying value as the following:

<processor>
  ...
  <add>
    <inside>/beans</inside>
    <file>src/assembly/my-config-bean.xml</file>
  </add>
  ...
</processor>

The plugin will append the entire my-config-bean.xml file inside the /beans node. The root node of the file being added will be ignore by default, if you need it to be added too, you can add the attribute ignore-root to the file element in the configuration file. The file tag can reference files in the file system, other maven artifacts, classpath resources or URLs.

Removing an XML element

To remove an XML element, you have to configure its XPath as follows.

<processor>
  ...
  <remove>
    <name>/beans/bean[@id='testBean']</name>
  </remove>
  ...
</processor>

This fragment will instruct the config processor plugin to generate the processed file without the bean with id="testBean".

If you want to remove just the scope attribute of the bean, the XPath expression would be: /beans/bean[@id='testBean']/@scope

Modifying an XML element

To modify an XML element, you must define the XPath expression to find it and the fragment to put on its place as shown below.

<processor>
  ...
  <modify>
    <name>/beans/bean[@id='testBean']</name>
    <value>
      <![CDATA[
        <bean id="testBean" class="com.foo.ActualTestBean">
        </bean>
      ]]>
    </value>
  </modify>
  ...
</processor>

This fragment will instruct the config processor to remove the bean with id="testBean" and put in its place the new bean definition.

If you need to change the scope of the bean, say from "prototype" to "singleton", the configuration is as follows:

<processor>
  ...
  <modify>
    <name>/beans/bean[@id='testBean']/@scope</name>
    <value>singleton</value>
  </modify>
  ...
</processor>

Modifying XML elements using Regular Expressions

As of version 1.8, it is possible to modify XML element values and comments using regular expressions as follows:

<processor>
  ...
  <modify>
    <find>[\\w\\-]+@\\w+\\.\\w+</find>
    <replace>my-email@domain.com</replace>
  </modify>
  ...
</processor>

This will look for e-mails in element values and comments and modify them to my-email@domain.com.