Can I set null as the default value for a @Value in Spring?

Question

I'm currently using the @Value Spring 3.1.x annotation like this:

@Value("${stuff.value:}")
private String value;

This puts an empty String into the variable if the attribute is not present. I would like to have null as the default instead of an empty String. Of course I also want to avoid an error when the property stuff.value is not set.

Answer 1

This is really old, but you can use Spring EL now, e.g.

@Value("${stuff.value:#{null}}")

See this question.

Answer 2

Thanks to @vorburger:

@Value("${email.protocol:#{null}}")
String protocol;

will set the string value at null without any other configurations.