”;
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 = "...">
<property name = "target">
<bean id = "innerBean" class = "..."/>
</property>
</bean>
</beans>
Example
Let us have working Eclipse IDE in place and follow the following steps to create a Spring application −
| Steps | Description |
|---|---|
| 1 | Create a project with a name SpringExample and create a package com.tutorialspoint under the src folder in the created project. |
| 2 | Add required Spring libraries using Add External JARs option as explained in the Spring Hello World Example chapter. |
| 3 | Create Java classes TextEditor, SpellChecker and MainApp under the com.tutorialspoint package. |
| 4 | Create Beans configuration file Beans.xml under the src folder. |
| 5 | The final step is to create the content of all the Java files and Bean Configuration file and run the application as explained below. |
Here is the content of TextEditor.java file −
package com.tutorialspoint;
public class TextEditor {
private SpellChecker spellChecker;
// a setter method to inject the dependency.
public void setSpellChecker(SpellChecker spellChecker) {
System.out.println("Inside setSpellChecker." );
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("Beans.xml");
TextEditor te = (TextEditor) context.getBean("textEditor");
te.spellCheck();
}
}
Following is the configuration file Beans.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">
<property name = "spellChecker">
<bean id = "spellChecker" class = "com.tutorialspoint.SpellChecker"/>
</property>
</bean>
</beans>
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 setSpellChecker. Inside checkSpelling.
”;