Plugins for Java Spring application

Suppose I have a Java Spring-based client application, which sends a request to a server and process the response. It uses Command pattern for the response processing.

Now I would like to discover and load these Commands in run-time. How would you implement it?

I am a开发者_如何转开发ware of "plugin" technologies, such as JPF and OSGI but they look as a huge overkill for me. I am thinking about using Spring's autowiring. Would you recommend it?

---

The spring-plugin project is probably worth looking at for this need. Unlike JSPF in the accepted answer, spring-plugin is designed specifically for Spring. It touts itself as "The smallest plugin system ever" which might be debatable (I replaced my own mini-framework that was even smaller/lighter) but it's definitely easy to swallow and yet flexible.

---

If you are looking for a very nice, light and very functional plugin framework, have a look at Java Simple Plugin Framework. I have made extensive use of this and it works great.

Using Spring's autowiring, you have to consider the implications around it. eg. you can only autowire Spring Beans etc etc.