Spring – How to pass a Date into bean property (CustomDateEditor )

Simple method may not work
Generally, Spring developer are not allow to pass a date format parameter into bean property via DI.

For example,

public class CustomerService
{
    Date date;
 
    public Date getDate() {
        return date;
    }
 
    public void setDate(Date date) {
        this.date = date;
    }
 
}

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="customerService" class="com.services.CustomerService">
       <property name="date" value="2010-01-31" />
   </bean>
 
</beans>

Run it

import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;
 
import com.mkyong.customer.services.CustomerService;
 
public class App 
{
    public static void main( String[] args )
    {
        ApplicationContext context = 
          new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(new String[] {"Spring-Customer.xml"});
 
        CustomerService cust = (CustomerService)context.getBean("customerService");
        System.out.println(cust.getDate());
    }
}

Error message prompt.

Caused by: org.springframework.beans.TypeMismatchException:
Failed to convert property value of type [java.lang.String] to
required type [java.util.Date] for property 'date';

nested exception is java.lang.IllegalArgumentException:
Cannot convert value of type [java.lang.String] to
required type [java.util.Date] for property 'date':
no matching editors or conversion strategy found

Solution

There are two solutions available.

1. Factory bean

Declare a dateFormat bean, and reference it as a factory bean from the date property. The factory method will call the SimpleDateFormat.parse() menthod to convert the String into Date object automatically.

<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="dateFormat" class="java.text.SimpleDateFormat">
    <constructor-arg value="yyyy-MM-dd" />
   </bean>
 
   <bean id="customerService" class="com.mkyong.customer.services.CustomerService">
       <property name="date">
           <bean factory-bean="dateFormat" factory-method="parse">
            <constructor-arg value="2010-01-31" />
        </bean>
    </property>
   </bean>
 
</beans>

2. Property editors (CustomEditorConfigurer + CustomDateEditor)

Declare a CustomDateEditor class to convert the String into java.util.Date properties.

<bean id="dateEditor"
       class="org.springframework.beans.propertyeditors.CustomDateEditor">
 
    <constructor-arg>
        <bean class="java.text.SimpleDateFormat">
            <constructor-arg value="yyyy-MM-dd" />
        </bean>
    </constructor-arg>
    <constructor-arg value="true" />
 
  </bean>

Register the CustomDateEditor in CustomEditorConfigurer, so that the Spring will convert the properties whose type is java.util.Date.

<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.CustomEditorConfigurer">
        <property name="customEditors">
            <map>
            <entry key="java.util.Date">
                <ref local="dateEditor" />
            </entry>
            </map>
        </property>
    </bean>

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="dateEditor"
    class="org.springframework.beans.propertyeditors.CustomDateEditor">
 
    <constructor-arg>
        <bean class="java.text.SimpleDateFormat">
            <constructor-arg value="yyyy-MM-dd" />
        </bean>
    </constructor-arg>
    <constructor-arg value="true" />
 
  </bean>
 
  <bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.CustomEditorConfigurer">
    <property name="customEditors">
       <map>
        <entry key="java.util.Date">
            <ref local="dateEditor" />
        </entry>
       </map>
    </property>
   </bean>
 
   <bean id="customerService" class="com.mkyong.customer.services.CustomerService">
       <property name="date" value="2010-02-31" />
   </bean>
 
</beans>