Spring - Injecting Inner Beans

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As you know Java inner classes are defined within the scope of other classes, similarly, inner beans are beans that are defined within the scope of another bean. Thus, a <bean/> element inside the <property/> or <constructor-arg/> elements is called inner bean and it is shown below.

<?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-3.0.xsd">

   <bean id = "outerBean" class = "...">
      <property name = "target">
         <bean id = "innerBean" class = "..."/>
      </property>
   </bean>

</beans>

Example

Let us have working Eclipse IDE in place and follow the following steps to create a Spring application −

Steps Description
1 Create a project with a name SpringExample and create a package com.howcodex under the src folder in the created project.
2 Add required Spring libraries using Add External JARs option as explained in the Spring Hello World Example chapter.
3 Create Java classes TextEditor, SpellChecker and MainApp under the com.howcodex package.
4 Create Beans configuration file Beans.xml under the src folder.
5 The final step is to create the content of all the Java files and Bean Configuration file and run the application as explained below.

Here is the content of TextEditor.java file −

package com.howcodex;

public class TextEditor {
   private SpellChecker spellChecker;
   
   // a setter method to inject the dependency.
   public void setSpellChecker(SpellChecker spellChecker) {
      System.out.println("Inside setSpellChecker." );
      this.spellChecker = spellChecker;
   }
   
   // a getter method to return spellChecker
   public SpellChecker getSpellChecker() {
      return spellChecker;
   }
   public void spellCheck() {
      spellChecker.checkSpelling();
   }
}

Following is the content of another dependent class file SpellChecker.java −

package com.howcodex;

public class SpellChecker {
   public SpellChecker(){
      System.out.println("Inside SpellChecker constructor." );
   }
   public void checkSpelling(){
      System.out.println("Inside checkSpelling." );
   }
}

Following is the content of the MainApp.java file −

package com.howcodex;

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

public class MainApp {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("Beans.xml");
      TextEditor te = (TextEditor) context.getBean("textEditor");
      te.spellCheck();
   }
}

Following is the configuration file Beans.xml which has configuration for the setter-based injection but using inner beans −

<?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-3.0.xsd">

   <!-- Definition for textEditor bean using inner bean -->
   <bean id = "textEditor" class = "com.howcodex.TextEditor">
      <property name = "spellChecker">
         <bean id = "spellChecker" class = "com.howcodex.SpellChecker"/>
      </property>
   </bean>

</beans>

Once you are done creating the source and bean configuration files, let us run the application. If everything is fine with your application, it will print the following message −

Inside SpellChecker constructor.
Inside setSpellChecker.
Inside checkSpelling.
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