How do I define inner bean in Spring? - Learn Java by Examples

Inner bean is a bean defined inside another bean, it can be seen as an inner class. In another word, the inner bean is a bean defined within the scope of another bean. In this case the inner bean can only be use by the outer bean. No other bean in the Spring context can refer to that bean.

So, if you sure that a bean is only use within a single bean it is a good idea to use an inner bean. Inner bean can be injected through setter injection or constructor injection.

Here is an example of Spring configuration for an inner bean 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.xsd">

    <bean id="racer" class="org.kodejava.spring.core.Racer">
        <property name="car">
            <bean class="org.kodejava.spring.core.Car">
                <property name="maker" value="Ferrari" />
                <property name="year" value="2021" />
            </bean>
        </property>
    </bean>

</beans>

In this configuration we use a setter injection. So we use the property element. Instead of using a ref attribute for referring to another bean we define the bean using the bean element inside the property element. And then we create the Car bean and sets its properties.

If you want to use a constructor injection you can inject the Car bean into the Racer bean by defining a bean inside the constructor-arg element in the Racer bean.

Below is our Racer and Car classes.

package org.kodejava.spring.core;

public class Racer {
    private Car car;

    public Racer() {
    }

    public Racer(Car car) {
        this.car = car;
    }

    public void setCar(Car car) {
        this.car = car;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return "Racer{" +
                "car=" + car +
                '}';
    }
}

package org.kodejava.spring.core;

public class Car {
    private String maker;
    private int year;

    public void setMaker(String maker) {
        this.maker = maker;
    }

    public void setYear(int year) {
        this.year = year;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return "Car{" +
                "maker='" + maker + "'" +
                ", year=" + year +
                '}';
    }
}

Let’s create our Demo class to run the program:

package org.kodejava.spring.core;

import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;

public class Demo {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        var context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("inner-bean.xml");

        Racer racer = (Racer) context.getBean("racer");
        System.out.println("Racer = " + racer);
        context.close();
    }
}

Here is the output of our program:

Racer = Racer{car=Car{maker='Ferrari', year=2021}}

Maven Dependencies

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
        <version>5.3.23</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-beans</artifactId>
        <version>5.3.23</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-context-support</artifactId>
        <version>5.3.23</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

Author
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Wayan

Founder at Kode Java

A programmer, runner and recreational diver, lives on the island of Bali, Indonesia. Programming in Java, Spring Framework, Hibernate / JPA, MySQL. To support me working on this project, buy me a cup of coffee, every little bit helps. Thank you.

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