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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)

About Author

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Founder of Mkyong.com, love Java and open source stuff. Follow him on Twitter. If you like my tutorials, consider make a donation to these charities.

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Karan
4 years ago

Saved me.

Nguy?n Duy Phong
6 years ago

Thanks

Maxi Wu
8 years ago

could EL work with .properties file?

Vinayaka Sharma
10 years ago

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

PosTi85
9 years ago

The program is well because you access that variable (that should be private, as class attribute it is) via its get and set methods.

Pratap
10 years ago

Very Useful.

Fazil
11 years ago

Thanks…

Its really Useful 
Ajay
11 years ago

nice