Spring inject List XML tutorial

last modified October 18, 2023

Spring inject List XML tutorial shows how to inject a list into application context in an XML configuration.

Spring is a popular Java application framework for creating enterprise applications.

The util schema

The util XML schema deals with common, utility configuration issues, such as configuring collections or referencing constants.

Spring inject List example

The application injects a List collection from a Spring XML configuration.

pom.xml

<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8”?> <project xmlns=“http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi=“http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation=“http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd"> <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

<groupId>com.zetcode</groupId>
<artifactId>injectlistex</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

<properties>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
    <maven.compiler.source>17</maven.compiler.source>
    <maven.compiler.target>17</maven.compiler.target>
    <spring-version>5.3.23</spring-version>

</properties>

<dependencies>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
        <artifactId>logback-classic</artifactId>
        <version>1.4.0</version>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
        <version>${spring-version}</version>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
        <version>${spring-version}</version>
    </dependency>
    
</dependencies>

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
            <artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>3.1.0</version>
            <configuration>
                <mainClass>com.zetcode.Application</mainClass>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

</project>

In the pom.xml file, we have basic Spring dependencies spring-core and spring-context and logging logback-classic dependency.

The exec-maven-plugin is used for executing Spring application from the Maven on the command line.

src/main/resources/logback.xml

<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8”?> <configuration> <logger name=“org.springframework” level=“ERROR”/> <logger name=“com.zetcode” level=“INFO”/>

<appender name="consoleAppender" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
    <encoder>
        <Pattern>%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} [%thread] %blue(%-5level) %magenta(%logger{36}) - %msg %n
        </Pattern>
    </encoder>
</appender>

<root>
    <level value="INFO" />
    <appender-ref ref="consoleAppender" />
</root>

</configuration>

The logback.xml is a configuration file for the Logback logging library.

src/main/resources/my-beans.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" xmlns:context=“http://www.springframework.org/schema/context" xmlns:util=“http://www.springframework.org/schema/util" xsi:schemaLocation=“http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/util http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util.xsd">

<context:component-scan base-package="com.zetcode"/>

<util:list id="myColours" value-type="java.lang.String">
    <value>red</value>
    <value>green</value>
    <value>blue</value>
    <value>yellow</value>
    <value>brown</value>
    <value>orange</value>
</util:list>

</beans>

In the my-beans.xml configuration file, we define a list of colours. The list type is java.util.String and the values are specified with value tags. We need to import the proper schema definitions.

src/main/java/com/zetcode/Application.java

package com.zetcode;

import org.slf4j.Logger; import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory; import org.springframework.context.support.GenericXmlApplicationContext;

import java.util.List;

public class Application {

private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(Application.class);

public static void main(String[] args) {

    var ctx = new GenericXmlApplicationContext("my-beans.xml");
    var colours = (List<String>) ctx.getBean("myColours");

    logger.info(colours.toString());

    ctx.close();
}

}

In the Application class, we retrieve the list of beans with getBean and log it to the console.

$ mvn -q exec:java 21:28:19.770 [com.zetcode.Application.main()] INFO com.zetcode.Application - [red, green, blue, yellow, brown, orange]

We run the application.

In this article we have showed how to inject a list of values into an application using XML configuration.

Author

My name is Jan Bodnar, and I am a passionate programmer with extensive programming experience. I have been writing programming articles since 2007. To date, I have authored over 1,400 articles and 8 e-books. I possess more than ten years of experience in teaching programming.

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