Question

Consider this simple example –

public class Person
 {
    private String name;
    private Date dateOfBirth;

    // getters and setters here...
 }

In order to initialize Person as a Spring bean, I can write the following.

<bean id = "Michael" class = "com.sampleDomainName.Person">
<property name = "name" value = "Michael" />
</bean>

But in the above bean definition, how can I set the dateOfBirth?

For eg. I want to set the dateOfBirth as

1998-05-07

Answer 1

One of the answers mentioned here is useful, but it needs additional information. The constructor arguments for the CustomDateEditor need to be supplied.

<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.CustomEditorConfigurer">
  <property name="customEditors">
    <map>
      <entry key="java.util.Date"> <ref local = "customDateEditor" /> 
      </entry> 
    </map>
  </property> 
</bean>

<bean id = "customDateEditor" class="org.springframework.beans.propertyeditors.CustomDateEditor">
    <constructor-arg>
      <bean class="java.text.SimpleDateFormat">
          <constructor-arg value="yyyy-MM-dd" />
       </bean>
    </constructor-arg>
    <constructor-arg value="true" /> 
</bean>

Now we can do

<property name="dateOfBirth" value="1998-05-07" />