Please add ${...} placeholders support for <import resource="${...}"/>. That would enable us to do something like: <import resource="file:${catalina.base}/conf/app-conf/messaging.xml"/> I started a forum topic about this yesterday, but this is probably a better spot for the feature request. http://forum.springframework.org/viewtopic.php?t=9193 I imagine this request is similar to the changes you made for Log4J in Spring 1.2.5, Log4jConfigurer resolves ${...} placeholders in Log4J config locations as system properties. My goal is to allow configuration of webapps from outside the war. Today, we can do that using properties files, but I don't know of any way to do that xml files. Any suggestions? Here are some snippets to explain: <import resource="file:${catalina.base}/conf/app-conf/messaging.xml"/> <bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer"> <property name="locations"> <list> <value>WEB-INF/messaging.default.properties</value> <value>file:${catalina.base}/conf/app-conf/messaging.properties</value> </list> </property> </bean> Thanks, Cameron