Skip optional bean reference property

Question

I have two beans for the same class:

<bean id="child1" class"abc.Parent"/>

<bean id="child2" class"abc.Parent">
    <property name"service" ref="fooService"/
</beans>

Class-

class Parent
{
    private FooService service;

    public void doStuff() {
        service.doFooStuff();
    }

    public FooService getService() {
        return service;
    }

    public void setService(FooService service) {
        this.service = service;
    }
}

I don't want to populate service for child2. Is there any design pattern of spring based check to ensure that nothing happens for child2 apart from the good old null check?

Answer 1

This looks similar. I am wondering if an "optional" suggestion would be a good idea - feels clean and self explanatory to me but I have never use it myself.