I would go for registering an instance of ApplicationListener in the Spring context configuration, that listens for the ContextRefreshedEvent, which is signalled when the application context has finished initializing or being refreshed. After this moment you could setup your database population.
Below you will find the ApplicationListener implementation (which depends on the DAO responsible for performing the database operations) and the Spring configuration (both Java and XML)that you need to achieve this. You need to choose the configuration specific to your app:
Java-based configuration
@Configuration
public class JavaConfig {
@Bean
public ApplicationListener<ContextRefreshedEvent> contextInitFinishListener() {
return new ContextInitFinishListener(personRepository());
}
@Bean
public PersonRepository personRepository() {
return new PersonRepository();
}
}
XML
<bean class="com.package.ContextInitFinishListener">
<constructor-arg>
<bean class="com.package.PersonRepository"/>
</constructor-arg>
</bean>
This is the code for the ContextInitFinishListener class:
import org.springframework.context.ApplicationListener;
import org.springframework.context.event.ContextRefreshedEvent;
public class ContextInitFinishListener implements ApplicationListener<ContextRefreshedEvent> {
private PersonRepository personRepository;
public ContextInitFinishListener(PersonRepository personRepository) {
this.personRepository = personRepository;
}
@Override
public void onApplicationEvent(ContextRefreshedEvent event) {
//populate database with required values, using PersonRepository
}
}
NOTE: PersonRepository is just a generic DAO for the purpose of the example, it's meant to represent the DAO that YOU use in your app