Spring3: adding bean properties to an annotated controller

Requirement: given a Spring3 annotated controller, set bean properties on it

Comments: I have a Spring 3 controller defined with an annotation:

@Controller
public class MyController {
    ...
    public String getFred() {...}
    public void setFred(String x) {...}
    ...
}

I want to set the value of 'fred' from the XML config file.

Normally, the only place MyController is defined is in the class. An component scan of the form:

<context:component-scan base-package="my.package"/>

(in webBeans.xml or similar) finds this class and associates it with requests.

Solution:
To configure this bean with properties, we need to define it in webBeans.xml:

<bean id="myController" class="my.package.MyController" >
    <property name="fred" value="fredsValue" />
</bean>

Note that we need to set the id *and* the class. The id also needs, I think, to match the id that gets autogenerated for the class. This isn't well documented, and if it isn't right, it'll fail with either a duplicate bean or a missing bean.

Also, if you need to autowire, you can set autowire="byType" or whatever on the bean.

24 July 2011