How to define a List bean in Spring?

Question

I'm using Spring to define stages in my application. It's configured that the necessary class (here called Configurator) is injected with the stages.
Now I need the List of Stages in another class, named LoginBean. The Configurator doesn't offer access to his List of Stages.

I cannot change the class Configurator.

My Idea:
Define a new bean called Stages and inject it to Configurator and LoginBean. My problem with this idea is that I don't know how to transform this property:

<property ...>
  <list>
    <bean ... >...</bean>
    <bean ... >...</bean>
    <bean ... >...</bean>
  </list>
</property>

into a bean.

Something like this does not work:

<bean id="stages" class="java.util.ArrayList">

Can anybody help me with this?

Answer 1

Import the spring util namespace. Then you can define a list bean as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
                    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
                    http://www.springframework.org/schema/util
                    http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util-2.5.xsd">


<util:list id="myList" value-type="java.lang.String">
    <value>foo</value>
    <value>bar</value>
</util:list>

The value-type is the generics type to be used, and is optional. You can also specify the list implementation class using the attribute list-class.

Answer 2

Here is one method:

<bean id="stage1" class="Stageclass"/>
<bean id="stage2" class="Stageclass"/>

<bean id="stages" class="java.util.ArrayList">
    <constructor-arg>
        <list>
            <ref bean="stage1" />
            <ref bean="stage2" />                
        </list>
    </constructor-arg>
</bean>

Answer 3

Another option is to use JavaConfig. Assuming that all stages are already registered as spring beans you just have to:

@Autowired
private List<Stage> stages;

and spring will automatically inject them into this list. If you need to preserve order (upper solution doesn't do that) you can do it in that way:

@Configuration
public class MyConfiguration {
  @Autowired
  private Stage1 stage1;

  @Autowired
  private Stage2 stage2;

  @Bean
  public List<Stage> stages() {
    return Lists.newArrayList(stage1, stage2);
  }
}

The other solution to preserve order is use a @Order annotation on beans. Then list will contain beans ordered by ascending annotation value.

@Bean
@Order(1)
public Stage stage1() {
    return new Stage1();
}

@Bean
@Order(2)
public Stage stage2() {
    return new Stage2();
}

Answer 4

<bean id="someBean"
      class="com.somePackage.SomeClass">
    <property name="myList">
        <list value-type="com.somePackage.TypeForList">
            <ref bean="someBeanInTheList"/>
            <ref bean="someOtherBeanInTheList"/>
            <ref bean="someThirdBeanInTheList"/>
        </list>
    </property>
</bean>

And in SomeClass:

class SomeClass {

    List<TypeForList> myList;

    @Required
    public void setMyList(List<TypeForList> myList) {
        this.myList = myList;
    }

}

Answer 5

Stacker posed a great answer, I would go one step farther to make it more dynamic and use Spring 3 EL Expression.

<bean id="listBean" class="java.util.ArrayList">
        <constructor-arg>
            <value>#{springDAOBean.getGenericListFoo()}</value>
        </constructor-arg>
</bean>

I was trying to figure out how I could do this with the util:list but couldn't get it work due to conversion errors.

Answer 6

I think you may be looking for org.springframework.beans.factory.config.ListFactoryBean.

You declare a ListFactoryBean instance, providing the list to be instantiated as a property withe a <list> element as its value, and give the bean an id attribute. Then, each time you use the declared id as a ref or similar in some other bean declaration, a new copy of the list is instantiated. You can also specify the List class to be used.

Answer 7

 <bean id="student1" class="com.spring.assin2.Student">  
<property name="name" value="ram"></property>  
<property name="id" value="1"></property> 
<property name="listTest">
        <list value-type="java.util.List">
            <ref bean="test1"/>
            <ref bean="test2"/>
        </list>
    </property>
</bean>  

define those beans(test1,test2) afterwards :)

Answer 8

Use the util namespace, you will be able to register the list as a bean in your application context. You can then reuse the list to inject it in other bean definitions.

Answer 9

As an addition to Jakub's answer, if you plan to use JavaConfig, you can also autowire that way:

import com.google.common.collect.Lists;

import java.util.List;

import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;

<...>

@Configuration
public class MyConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public List<Stage> stages(final Stage1 stage1, final Stage2 stage2) {
        return Lists.newArrayList(stage1, stage2);
    }
}

Answer 10

You just remove id out of beans inside <list> tag. Like this:

<property name="listStaff">
  <list>
    <bean class="com.test.entity.Staff">
        <constructor-arg name="name" value = "Jonh"/>
        <constructor-arg name="age" value = "30"/>
    </bean>
    <bean class="com.test.entity.Staff">
        <constructor-arg name="name" value = "Jam"/>
        <constructor-arg name="age" value = "21"/>
    </bean>
  </list>
</property>

Answer 11

Inject list of strings.

Suppose you have Countries model class that take list of strings like below.

public class Countries {
    private List<String> countries;

    public List<String> getCountries() {
        return countries;
    }   

    public void setCountries(List<String> countries) {
        this.countries = countries;
    }

}

Following xml definition define a bean and inject list of countries.

<bean id="demoCountryCapitals" name="demoCountryCapitals" class="com.sample.pojo.Countries">
   <property name="countries">
      <list>
         <value>Iceland</value>
         <value>India</value>
         <value>Sri Lanka</value>
         <value>Russia</value>
      </list>
   </property>
</bean>

Reference link

Inject list of Pojos

Suppose if you have model class like below.

public class Country {
    private String name;
    private String capital;
    .....
    .....
 }

public class Countries {
    private List<Country> favoriteCountries;

    public List<Country> getFavoriteCountries() {
        return favoriteCountries;
    }

    public void setFavoriteCountries(List<Country> favoriteCountries) {
        this.favoriteCountries = favoriteCountries;
    }

}

Bean Definitions.

 <bean id="india" class="com.sample.pojo.Country">
  <property name="name" value="India" />
  <property name="capital" value="New Delhi" />
 </bean>

 <bean id="russia" class="com.sample.pojo.Country">
  <property name="name" value="Russia" />
  <property name="capital" value="Moscow" />
 </bean>


 <bean id="demoCountryCapitals" name="demoCountryCapitals" class="com.sample.pojo.Countries">
  <property name="favoriteCountries">
   <list>
    <ref bean="india" />
    <ref bean="russia" />
   </list>
  </property>
 </bean>

Reference Link.

Answer 12

And this is how to inject set in some property in Spring:

<bean id="process"
      class="biz.bsoft.processing">
    <property name="stages">
        <set value-type="biz.bsoft.AbstractStage">
            <ref bean="stageReady"/>
            <ref bean="stageSteady"/>
            <ref bean="stageGo"/>
        </set>
    </property>
</bean>

Answer 13

Use list-class attribute in util:list to make a standalone list of any particular type. for example if you want to make list of type ArrayList:

<util:list id="namesList" list-class="java.util.ArrayList" value-type="java.lang.String">
  <value>Abhay</value>
  <value>ankit</value>
  <value>Akshansh</value>
  <value>Db</value>
</util:list>

or if you want to make a list of type LinkedList then :

<util:list id="namesList" list-class="java.util.LinkedList" value-type="java.lang.String">
  <value>Abhay</value>
  <value>ankit</value>
  <value>Akshansh</value>
  <value>Db</value>
</util:list>