Spring DI - Injecting Inner Beans via Constructor

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 = "...">
      <constructor-arg name = "target">
         <bean id = "innerBean" class = "..."/>
      </constructor-arg>
   </bean>

</beans>

Example - Usage of Constructor Based DI of Inner Beans

The following example shows a class TextEditor that can only be dependency-injected with constructor based injection.

Let's update the project created in Spring DI - Create Project chapter. We're adding following files −

• TextEditor.java − A class containing a SpellChecker as dependency.

• SpellChecker.java − A dependency class.

• MainApp.java − Main application to run and test.

TextEditor.java

Here is the content of TextEditor.java file −

package com.tutorialspoint;

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

SpellChecker.java

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

package com.tutorialspoint;

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

MainApp.java

Following is the content of the MainApp.java file.

package com.tutorialspoint;

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

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

      TextEditor te = (TextEditor) context.getBean("textEditor");
      te.spellCheck();
   }
}

applicationcontext.xml

Following is the configuration file applicationcontext.xml which has configuration for the constructor-based injection −

<?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.tutorialspoint.TextEditor">
      <constructor-arg name = "spellChecker">
         <bean id = "spellChecker" class = "com.tutorialspoint.SpellChecker"/>
      </constructor-arg>
   </bean>

</beans>

Output

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 TextEditor constructor.
Inside checkSpelling.