How to read xml file and inject bean reference using Spring Framework?

Introduction

This article presents sample source code for creating the Bean instance using the Spring Framework. This is basic example to read configuration file from the file system and create the beans from the applicationContext.xml file. This xml file define two beans Employee and Address. Address bean is injected inside Employee bean using the ref attribute. If you are looking for more spring frameworkrelated resources, please read our list of Spring framework articles.

also read:

• Spring Tutorials
• Spring 4 Tutorials
• Spring Interview Questions

Sample Source Code

Employee.java

package javabeat.spring;
/**
 * Source : https://javabeat.net
 */

public class Employee {
    private String name;

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
    private Address address;

    public Address getAddress() {
        return address;
    }

    public void setAddress(Address address) {
        this.address = address;
    }
}

Address.java

package javabeat.spring;
/**
 * Source : https://javabeat.net
 */

public class Address {
    public Address(){

    }
    private String street;
    private String city;
    private String pincode;

    public String getCity() {
        return city;
    }

    public void setCity(String city) {
        this.city = city;
    }

    public String getPincode() {
        return pincode;
    }

    public void setPincode(String pincode) {
        this.pincode = pincode;
    }

    public String getStreet() {
        return street;
    }

    public void setStreet(String street) {
        this.street = street;
    }

}

MainClass.java

package javabeat.spring;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanFactory;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanFactory;
import org.springframework.core.io.FileSystemResource;
import org.springframework.core.io.Resource;

/**
 * Source : https://javabeat.net
 */
public class MainClass {
    public static void main(String args[]) {
        Resource xmlResource = new FileSystemResource("applicationContext.xml");
        BeanFactory factory = new XmlBeanFactory(xmlResource);
        Employee employeeBean = (Employee)factory.getBean("employeeBean");
        System.out.println(employeeBean.getName());
        System.out.println(employeeBean.getAddress().getStreet());
        System.out.println(employeeBean.getAddress().getCity());
        System.out.println(employeeBean.getAddress().getPincode());
    }
}

applicationContext.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:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
       xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
       xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-2.5.xsd
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-2.5.xsd">
    <bean id="addressBean" class="javabeat.spring.Address">
        <property name="street">
            <value>Street</value>
        </property>
        <property name="city">
            <value>Bangalore</value>
        </property>
        <property name="pincode">
            <value>567456</value>
        </property>
    </bean>
    <bean id="employeeBean" class="javabeat.spring.Employee">
        <property name="name">
            <value>Krishna Srinivasan</value>
        </property>
        <property name="address">
            <ref bean="addressBean"/>
        </property>
    </bean>
</beans>

also read:

• Spring Books
• Introduction to Spring Framework
• Introduction to Spring MVC Framework