Question

Can you create a List in a Spring application-context.xml file without using the <list> element?

I have a bean whose constructor takes a Collection object and I want to pass the entire list through the “value” attribute. The reason is that this value comes from a .properties file and you can’t define a list in a .properties file.

I want to do something like this…is it possible?

MyClass.java:

public class MyClass{
  public MyClass(Collection<String> collection){ /* ... */ }
}

application-context.xml:

<bean name="myBean" class="com.company.MyClass">
  <constructor-arg value="${the.value}" />
</bean>

.properties file:

the.value=item1,item2,item3

Thanks.

Answer 1

<bean name="myBean" class="com.company.MyClass">
  <constructor-arg>
    <bean class="org.springframework.util.StringUtils" factory-method="commaDelimitedListToSet">
        <constructor-arg type="java.lang.String" value="${the.value}"/>
    </bean>
  </constructor-arg>
</bean>