Spring SetFactoryBean example

The ‘SetFactoryBean‘ class provides developer a way to create a concrete Set collection (HashSet and TreeSet) in Spring’s bean configuration file.

Here’s a ListFactoryBean example, it will instantiate an HashSet at runtime, and inject it into a bean property

package com.mkyong.common;

import java.util.Set;

public class Customer 
{
    private Set sets;
    //...
}

Spring’s bean configuration file.

<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-2.5.xsd">

    <bean id="CustomerBean" class="com.mkyong.common.Customer">
        <property name="sets">
            <bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.SetFactoryBean">
                <property name="targetSetClass">
                    <value>java.util.HashSet</value>
                </property>
                <property name="sourceSet">
                    <list>
                        <value>1</value>
                        <value>2</value>
                        <value>3</value>
                    </list>
                </property>
            </bean>
        </property>
    </bean>

</beans>
``
Alternatively, you also can use `util` schema and `<util:set>` to achieve the same thing.

Remember to include the `util` schema, else you will hit the following error

 ```
Caused by: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: 
    The prefix "util" for element "util:set" is not bound.

Run it…

package com.mkyong.common;

import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;

public class App 
{
    public static void main( String[] args )
    {
        ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("SpringBeans.xml");

        Customer cust = (Customer)context.getBean("CustomerBean");
        System.out.println(cust);

    }
}

Ouput

Customer [sets=[3, 2, 1]] Type=[class java.util.HashSet]

You have instantiated HashSet and and injected it into Customer’s sets property at runtime.