Removing Network based XSD Requirements with Namespace Handlers

http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/3.0.5.RELEASE/spring-framework-reference/html/extensible-xml.html#extensible-xml-registration

D.5.1 'META-INF/spring.handlers'

The properties file called 'spring.handlers' contains a mapping of XML Schema URIs to namespace handler classes. So for our example, we need to write the following:

http\://www.mycompany.com/schema/myns=org.springframework.samples.xml.MyNamespaceHandler
(The ':' character is a valid delimiter in the Java properties format, and so the ':' character in the URI needs to be escaped with a backslash.)

The first part (the key) of the key-value pair is the URI associated with your custom namespace extension, and needs to match exactly the value of the 'targetNamespace' attribute as specified in your custom XSD schema.

D.5.2 'META-INF/spring.schemas'

The properties file called 'spring.schemas' contains a mapping of XML Schema locations (referred to along with the schema declaration in XML files that use the schema as part of the 'xsi:schemaLocation' attribute) to classpath resources. This file is needed to prevent Spring from absolutely having to use a default EntityResolver that requires Internet access to retrieve the schema file. If you specify the mapping in this properties file, Spring will search for the schema on the classpath (in this case 'myns.xsd' in the 'org.springframework.samples.xml' package):

http\://www.mycompany.com/schema/myns/myns.xsd=org/springframework/samples/xml/myns.xsd
The upshot of this is that you are encouraged to deploy your XSD file(s) right alongside the NamespaceHandler and BeanDefinitionParser classes on the classpath.