SpEL expression supports Collection Projection which is a very powerful expression allowing to evaluate sub-expression and in result returns a new collection.

Syntax

![projectionExpresion]

Following example shows the usage.

List<String> list = (List<String>)
   parser.parseExpression("employees.![country]").getValue(deptContext);

Here SpEL will return only those employees from the list of employees whose country is USA.

Following example shows the various use cases.

Example

Let”s update the project created in Spring SpEL – Create Project chapter. We”re adding/updating following files −

• Employee.java − Employee class.

• Dept.java − Department class.

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

Here is the content of Employee.java file −

package com.tutorialspoint;

public class Employee {
   private String name;
   private String country;
   public Employee(String name, String country) {
      this.name = name;
      this.country = country;
   }
   public String getName() {
      return name;
   }
   public void setName(String name) {
      this.name = name;
   }
   public String getCountry() {
      return country;
   }
   public void setCountry(String country) {
      this.country = country;
   }
   public String toString() {
      return "[" +name+ ", "+country + "]";
   }
}

Here is the content of Dept.java file −

package com.tutorialspoint;

import java.util.List;

public class Dept {
   private List<Employee> employees;
   public List<Employee> getEmployees() {
      return employees;
   }
   public void setEmployees(List<Employee> employees) {
      this.employees = employees;
   }
}

Here is the content of MainApp.java file −

package com.tutorialspoint;

import java.text.ParseException;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import org.springframework.expression.EvaluationContext;
import org.springframework.expression.ExpressionParser;
import org.springframework.expression.spel.standard.SpelExpressionParser;
import org.springframework.expression.spel.support.StandardEvaluationContext;

public class MainApp {
   public static void main(String[] args) throws ParseException {

      ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser();

      Employee employee1 = new Employee("Robert", "USA");
      Employee employee2 = new Employee("Julie", "USA");
      Employee employee3 = new Employee("Ramesh", "India");

      List<Employee> employees = new ArrayList<Employee>();
      employees.add(employee1);
      employees.add(employee2);
      employees.add(employee3);

      Dept dept = new Dept();
      dept.setEmployees(employees);

      EvaluationContext deptContext = new StandardEvaluationContext(dept);

      // Select list of countries
      List<String> list = (List<String>)
         parser.parseExpression("employees.![country]").getValue(deptContext);
      System.out.println(list);
   }
}

Output

[USA, USA, India]