Reading a List from properties file and load with

Question

Similar to this question: http://forum.springsource.org/showthread.php?111992-Loading-a-list-from-properties-file-using-Value-annotation (for which there's no reply on)

I want to have a list of values in a .properties file, ie:

my.list.of.strings=ABC,CDE,EFG

And to load it in my class directly, ie:

@Value("${my.list.of.strings}")
private List<String> myList;

As I understand, an alternative of doing this is to have it in the spring config file, and load it as a bean reference (correct me if I'm wrong), ie

<bean name="list">
 <list>
  <value>ABC</value>
  <value>CDE</value>
  <value>EFG</value>
 </list>
</bean>

But is there any way of doing this? using a .properties file? ps: I would like to do this with out any custom code if possible.

Answer 1

I think this is simpler for grabbing the array and stripping spaces:

@Value("#{'${my.array}'.replace(' ', '').split(',')}")
private List<String> array;

Answer 2

Since Spring 3.0, you can add a line like

<bean id="conversionService" 
    class="org.springframework.context.support.ConversionServiceFactoryBean" />

to your applicationContext.xml (or where you configure things). As Dmitry Chornyi points out in a comment, Java based configuration looks like:

@Bean public ConversionService conversionService() {
    return new DefaultConversionService();
}

This activates the new configuration service which supports converting String to Collection types. If you do not activate this configuration service, Spring falls back on its legacy property editors as configuration services, which do not support this kind of conversion.

Converting to collections of other types works, too:

@Value("${my.list.of.ints}")
private List<Integer> myList

will work with a line like

 my.list.of.ints= 1, 2, 3, 4

No problems with whitespace there, the ConversionServiceFactoryBean takes care of it.

See http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/htmlsingle/#core-convert-Spring-config

In a Spring application, you typically configure a ConversionService instance per Spring container (or ApplicationContext). That ConversionService will be picked up by Spring and then used whenever a type conversion needs to be performed by the framework. [...] If no ConversionService is registered with Spring, the original PropertyEditor-based system is used.

Answer 3

you can do this with annotations like this

 @Value("#{T(java.util.Arrays).asList('${my.list.of.strings:a,b,c}')}") 
    private List<String> mylist;

here my.list.of.strings will be picked from the properties file, if its not there, then the defaults a,b,c will be used

and in your properties file, you can have something like this

my.list.of.strings=d,e,f

Answer 4

Using Spring EL:

@Value("#{'${my.list.of.strings}'.split(',')}") 
private List<String> myList;

Assuming your properties file is loaded correctly with the following:

my.list.of.strings=ABC,CDE,EFG

Answer 5

Have you considered @Autowireding the constructor or a setter and String.split()ing in the body?

class MyClass {
    private List<String> myList;

    @Autowired
    public MyClass(@Value("${my.list.of.strings}") final String strs) {
        myList = Arrays.asList(strs.split(","));
    }

    //or

    @Autowired
    public void setMyList(@Value("${my.list.of.strings}") final String strs) {
        myList = Arrays.asList(strs.split(","));
    }
}

I tend to prefer doing my autowiring in one of these ways to enhance the testability of my code.

Answer 6

Beware of spaces in the values. I could be wrong, but I think spaces in the comma-separated list are not truncated using @Value and Spel. The list

foobar=a, b, c

would be read in as a list of strings

"a", " b", " c"

In most cases you would probably not want the spaces!

The expression

@Value("#{'${foobar}'.trim().replaceAll(\"\\s*(?=,)|(?<=,)\\s*\", \"\").split(',')}")
private List<String> foobarList;

would give you a list of strings:

"a", "b", "c".

The regular expression removes all spaces just before and just after a comma. Spaces inside of the values are not removed. So

foobar = AA, B B, CCC

should result in values

"AA", "B B", "CCC".