In this example you will see how to wire map collections. For this purpose we can use the <map> element in the Spring configuration file. This element declares the java.util.Map. We will reuse the bean that we use in the previous example How do I inject collections using list element in Spring?.

The <map> element can have many <entry> element with the key and value-ref attribute.

Here is the configuration example:

<?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="song1" class="org.kodejava.spring.core.Song">
        <property name="title" value="I Saw Her Standing There" />
        <property name="writer" value="Beatles" />
    </bean>

    <bean id="song2" class="org.kodejava.spring.core.Song">
        <property name="title" value="Misery" />
        <property name="writer" value="Beatles" />
    </bean>

    <bean id="song3" class="org.kodejava.spring.core.Song">
        <property name="title" value="Anna (Go to Him)" />
        <property name="writer" value="Beatles" />
    </bean>

    <bean id="publisher" class="org.kodejava.spring.core.Publisher">
        <property name="name" value="EMI Studios" />
    </bean>

    <bean id="album" class="org.kodejava.spring.core.Album">
        <property name="title" value="Please Please Me" />
        <property name="year" value="1963" />
        <property name="publisher">
            <map>
                <entry key="publisher" value-ref="publisher" />
            </map>
        </property>
    </bean>

</beans>

The <map> element can have many <entry> elements. We can use the key attribute to use a string as its key. If you want the key to be a reference to other bean in the Spring context you can use the key-ref instead.

The value-ref is used to set the value to refer to another bean. If the value is a simple value such as string you can use the value attribute.

To run it creates the following program:

package org.kodejava.spring.core;

import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;

public class DemoMap {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try (ClassPathXmlApplicationContext context =
                     new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("collection-map.xml")) {
            Album album = (Album) context.getBean("album");
            System.out.println("Album = " + album);
        }
    }
}

And here what you’ll get on the console:

Album = Album{title='Please Please Me', year=1963, songs=[], publisher={publisher=Publisher{name=EMI Studios}}, props={}}

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>