- Spring DI Tutorial
- Spring DI - Home
- Spring DI - Overview
- Spring DI - Environment Setup
- Spring DI - IOC Containers
- Spring Dependency Injection
- Spring DI - Create Project
- Constructor Based Injection Examples
- Spring DI - Constructor Based
- Spring DI - Inner Beans Constructor
- Spring DI - Collections Constructor
- Spring DI - Collection Ref Constructor
- Spring DI - Map Constructor
- Spring DI - Map Ref Constructor
- Setter Based Injection Examples
- Spring DI - Setter Based
- Spring DI - Inner Beans Setter
- Spring DI - Collections Setter
- Spring DI - Collection Ref Setter
- Spring DI - Map Setter
- Spring DI - Map Ref Setter
- Autowiring Examples
- Spring DI - Autowiring
- Spring DI - Autowiring ByName
- Spring DI - Autowiring ByType
- Spring DI - Autowiring Constructor
- Factory Method
- Spring DI - Static Factory
- Spring DI - Non-Static Factory
- Spring DI Useful Resources
- Spring DI - Quick Guide
- Spring DI - Useful Resources
- Spring DI - Discussion
Spring DI - Injecting Inner Beans 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
The following example shows a class TextEditor that can only be dependency-injected using 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.
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(); } }
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." ); } }
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(); } }
Following is the configuration file applicationcontext.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.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.