How to make spring inject value into a static field

Question

I know this may looks like a previously asked question but I'm facing a different problem here.

I have a utility class that has only static methods. I don't and I won't take an instance from it.

public class Utils{
    private static Properties dataBaseAttr;
    public static void methodA(){

    }

    public static void methodB(){

    }
}

Now I need Spring to fill dataBaseAttr with database attributes Properties.Spring config is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/util http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util-3.0.xsd">

<util:properties id="dataBaseAttr"
        location="file:#{classPathVariable.path}/dataBaseAttr.properties" />
</beans>

I already done it in other beans but the problem here in this class (Utils) isn't a bean, And if I make it a bean nothing changes I still can't use the variable since the class will not be instantiated and variable always equals null.

Answer 1

You have two possibilities:

1. non-static setter for static property/field;
2. using org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean to invoke a static setter.

In the first option you have a bean with a regular setter but instead setting an instance property you set the static property/field.

public void setTheProperty(Object value) {
    foo.bar.Class.STATIC_VALUE = value;
}

but in order to do this you need to have an instance of a bean that will expose this setter (its more like an workaround).

In the second case it would be done as follows:

<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean">
    <property name="staticMethod" value="foo.bar.Class.setTheProperty"/>
    <property name="arguments">
        <list>
            <ref bean="theProperty"/>
        </list>
   </property>
</bean>

On you case you will add a new setter on the Utils class:

public static setDataBaseAttr(Properties p)

and in your context you will configure it with the approach exemplified above, more or less like:

<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean">
    <property name="staticMethod" value="foo.bar.Utils.setDataBaseAttr"/>
    <property name="arguments">
        <list>
            <ref bean="dataBaseAttr"/>
        </list>
   </property>
</bean>

Answer 2

I've had a similar requirement: I needed to inject a Spring-managed repository bean into my Person entity class ("entity" as in "something with an identity", for example an JPA entity). A Person instance has friends, and for this Person instance to return its friends, it shall delegate to its repository and query for friends there.

@Entity
public class Person {
    private static PersonRepository personRepository;

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue
    private long id;

    public static void setPersonRepository(PersonRepository personRepository){
        this.personRepository = personRepository;
    }

    public Set<Person> getFriends(){
        return personRepository.getFriends(id);
    }

    ...
}

.

@Repository
public class PersonRepository {

    public Person get Person(long id) {
        // do database-related stuff
    }

    public Set<Person> getFriends(long id) {
        // do database-related stuff
    }

    ...
}

So how did I inject that PersonRepository singleton into the static field of the Person class?

I created a @Configuration, which gets picked up at Spring ApplicationContext construction time. This @Configuration gets injected with all those beans that I need to inject as static fields into other classes. Then with a @PostConstruct annotation, I catch a hook to do all static field injection logic.

@Configuration
public class StaticFieldInjectionConfiguration {

    @Inject
    private PersonRepository personRepository;

    @PostConstruct
    private void init() {
        Person.setPersonRepository(personRepository);
    }
}

Answer 3

As these answers are old, I found this alternative. It is very clean and works with just java annotations:

To fix it, create a “none static setter” to assign the injected value for the static variable. For example :

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Value;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class GlobalValue {

public static String DATABASE;

@Value("${mongodb.db}")
public void setDatabase(String db) {
    DATABASE = db;
}
}

https://www.mkyong.com/spring/spring-inject-a-value-into-static-variables/