Spring: Set nested property names

You can use nested property names when you set bean properties.

Example

 <bean id="book1" class="com.sample.pojo.Book">
  <property name="title" value="Vedanta An Art of Dying" />
  <property name="noOfPages" value="164" />
  <property name="price" value="90" />
  
  <property name="author.firstName" value="Chandra Mohan" />
  <property name="author.lastName" value="Jain" />
  <property name="author.dateOfBirth" value="11 December 1931" />
  <property name="author.country" value="India" />
 </bean>

The ‘book1’ bean has author property, which in trun has firstName, lastName, dateOfBirth and country properties. By using ‘.’ Notation we can set these nested properties. Following is the complete working application.

Author.java

package com.sample.pojo;

public class Author {
 private String firstName;
 private String lastName;
 private String dateOfBirth;
 private String country;

 public String getFirstName() {
  return firstName;
 }

 public void setFirstName(String firstName) {
  this.firstName = firstName;
 }

 public String getLastName() {
  return lastName;
 }

 public void setLastName(String lastName) {
  this.lastName = lastName;
 }

 public String getDateOfBirth() {
  return dateOfBirth;
 }

 public void setDateOfBirth(String dateOfBirth) {
  this.dateOfBirth = dateOfBirth;
 }

 public String getCountry() {
  return country;
 }

 public void setCountry(String country) {
  this.country = country;
 }

 @Override
 public String toString() {
  StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
  builder.append("Author [firstName=").append(firstName).append(", lastName=").append(lastName)
    .append(", dateOfBirth=").append(dateOfBirth).append(", country=").append(country).append("]");
  return builder.toString();
 }

}

Book.java

package com.sample.pojo;

public class Book {
 private String title;
 private int noOfPages;
 private float price;
 private Author author = new Author();
 
 public String getTitle() {
  return title;
 }

 public void setTitle(String title) {
  this.title = title;
 }

 public int getNoOfPages() {
  return noOfPages;
 }

 public void setNoOfPages(int noOfPages) {
  this.noOfPages = noOfPages;
 }

 public float getPrice() {
  return price;
 }

 public void setPrice(float price) {
  this.price = price;
 }

 public Author getAuthor() {
  return author;
 }

 public void setAuthor(Author author) {
  this.author = author;
 }

 @Override
 public String toString() {
  StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
  builder.append("Book [title=").append(title).append(", noOfPages=").append(noOfPages).append(", price=")
    .append(price).append(", author=").append(author).append("]");
  return builder.toString();
 }

}

myConfiguration.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<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.xsd">

 <bean id="book1" class="com.sample.pojo.Book">
  <property name="title" value="Vedanta An Art of Dying" />
  <property name="noOfPages" value="164" />
  <property name="price" value="90" />
  
  <property name="author.firstName" value="Chandra Mohan" />
  <property name="author.lastName" value="Jain" />
  <property name="author.dateOfBirth" value="11 December 1931" />
  <property name="author.country" value="India" />
 </bean>

</beans>

HelloWorld.java

package com.sample.test;

import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;

import com.sample.pojo.Book;

public class HelloWorld {
 public static void main(String args[]) {
  ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(new String[] { "myConfiguration.xml" });

  Book book = context.getBean("book1", Book.class);

  System.out.println(book);

  ((ClassPathXmlApplicationContext) context).close();
 }
}

Run ‘HelloWorld.java’, you can able to see following output.

Book [title=Vedanta An Art of Dying, noOfPages=164, price=90.0, author=Author [firstName=Chandra Mohan, lastName=Jain, dateOfBirth=11 December 1931, country=India]]

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