Spring EL bean reference example
In Spring EL, you can reference a bean, and nested properties using a ‘dot (.)‘ symbol. For example, “bean.property_name“.
public class Customer {
@Value("#{addressBean.country}")
private String country;
In above code snippet, it inject the value of “country” property from “addressBean” bean into current “customer” class, “country” property.
Spring EL in Annotation
See following example, show you how to use SpEL to reference a bean, bean property and also it’s method.
package com.mkyong.core;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Value;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;
@Component("customerBean")
public class Customer {
@Value("#{addressBean}")
private Address address;
@Value("#{addressBean.country}")
private String country;
@Value("#{addressBean.getFullAddress('mkyong')}")
private String fullAddress;
//getter and setter methods
@Override
public String toString() {
return "Customer [address=" + address + "\n, country=" + country
+ "\n, fullAddress=" + fullAddress + "]";
}
}
package com.mkyong.core;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Value;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;
@Component("addressBean")
public class Address {
@Value("Block ABC, LakeView")
private String street;
@Value("98700")
private int postcode;
@Value("US")
private String country;
public String getFullAddress(String prefix) {
return prefix + " : " + street + " " + postcode + " " + country;
}
//getter and setter methods
public void setCountry(String country) {
this.country = country;
}
@Override
public String toString() {
return "Address [street=" + street + ", postcode=" + postcode
+ ", country=" + country + "]";
}
}
Run it
Customer obj = (Customer) context.getBean("customerBean");
System.out.println(obj);
Output
Customer [address=Address [street=Block ABC, LakeView, postcode=98700, country=US]
, country=US
, fullAddress=mkyong : Block ABC, LakeView 98700 US]
Spring EL in XML
See equivalent version in bean definition XML file.
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd">
<bean id="customerBean" class="com.mkyong.core.Customer">
<property name="address" value="#{addressBean}" />
<property name="country" value="#{addressBean.country}" />
<property name="fullAddress" value="#{addressBean.getFullAddress('mkyong')}" />
</bean>
<bean id="addressBean" class="com.mkyong.core.Address">
<property name="street" value="Block ABC, LakeView" />
<property name="postcode" value="98700" />
<property name="country" value="US" />
</bean>
</beans>
Download Source Code
Download It – Spring3-EL-Bean-Reference-Example.zip (6 KB)
Saved me.
Thanks
could EL work with .properties file?
hi the program is wrong ,, since you are accessing country variable which is private in the bean address , its not acceptable, plz change the code and repost again
The program is well because you access that variable (that should be private, as class attribute it is) via its get and set methods.
Very Useful.
Thanks…
nice