Reading a List from properties file and load with spring annotation @Value

Question

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:

Answer 1

If you are using Spring Boot 2, it works as is, without any additional configuration.

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

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

Answer 2

In my case of a list of integers works this:

@Value("#{${my.list.of.integers}}")
private List<Integer> listOfIntegers;

Property file:

my.list.of.integers={100,200,300,400,999}

Answer 3

Consider using Commons Configuration. It have built in feature to break an entry in properties file to array/list. Combing with SpEL and @Value should give what you want

---

As requested, here is what you need (Haven't really tried the code, may got some typoes, please bear with me):

In Apache Commons Configuration, there is PropertiesConfiguration. It supports the feature of converting delimited string to array/list.

For example, if you have a properties file

#Foo.properties
foo=bar1, bar2, bar3

With the below code:

PropertiesConfiguration config = new PropertiesConfiguration("Foo.properties");
String[] values = config.getStringArray("foo");

will give you a string array of ["bar1", "bar2", "bar3"]

To use with Spring, have this in your app context xml:

<bean id="fooConfig" class="org.apache.commons.configuration.PropertiesConfiguration">
    <constructor-arg type="java.lang.String" value="classpath:/Foo.properties"/>
</bean>

and have this in your spring bean:

public class SomeBean {

    @Value("fooConfig.getStringArray('foo')")
    private String[] fooArray;
}

I believe this should work :P

Answer 4

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

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