Java and XML configuration are not exclusive - both can be used inside the same Spring application. In order to retrieve a bean from an XML file, one has to use the Spring container. As mentioned, one can achieve this with @ExternalBean annotation (the recommended way). For cases where this is not suitable or desired, the underlying beanFactory used for the @Configuration class can be access. Out of the box, this can be achieved by extending configuration classes from ConfigurationSupport or by implementing the BeanFactoryAware interface.

Consider the following XML configuration:

<bean id="myBean" class="MyBean"/>

In order to refer to myBean bean when using Java, one can use the following snippets:

@Configuration
public class MyConfig extends ConfigurationSupport {

  @Bean
  public ExampleBean anotherBean() {
     ExampleBean bean = new ExampleBean("anotherBean");
     bean.setDep(getBean("myBean")); // use utility method to get a hold of 'myBean'
     return bean;
  }
}

@Configuration
public class MyOtherConfig implements BeanFactoryAware {
  private BeanFactory beanFactory;

  public void setBeanFactory(BeanFactory beanFactory) {
     // get access to the owning bean factory
     this.beanFactory = beanFactory;
  }

  @Bean
  public ExampleBean yetAnotherBean() {
     ExampleBean bean = new ExampleBean("yetAnotherBean");
     bean.setDep(beanFactory.getBean("myBean")); // use dependency lookup
     return bean;
  }
}

Again, please consider twice before using ConfigurationSupport and/or BeanFactoryAware as @ExternalBean offers the same capability in a refactoring friendly manner.

JavaConfig distribution contains a converted Petclinic sample that replaces some XML configuration parts, with Java and Groovy - please see the samples folder for more info.