String to Date Conversion in Spring 4.0

Question

I am educating myself on Spring 4.0.0 M3 Following is the code,

Bean

package org.chebus.springs;

import java.util.Date;

public class Traingle {
    private String name;
    private int height;
    private Date date;

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public int getHeight() {
        return height;
    }

    public void setHeight(int height) {
        this.height = height;
    }

    public Date getDate() {
        return date;
    }

    public void setDate(Date date) {
        this.date = date;
    }

    public void drawShape() {
        System.out.println(getName() + " Traingle height " + getHeight()
                + " Date = " + getDate());
    }

}

Main

ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("org/chebus/springs/Spring.xml");
        Traingle traingle = ctx.getBean("traingle",Traingle.class);
        traingle.drawShape();

XML Config

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<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 = "traingle" class="org.chebus.springs.Traingle">
  <property name="name" value = "RightAngled"/>
  <property name="height" value = "20"/>
  <property name="date" value = "2013-09-10"/>
</bean>

<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>


</beans>

Exception:

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Cannot convert value of type [org.springframework.beans.propertyeditors.CustomDateEditor] to required type [java.lang.Class] for property 'customEditors[java.util.Date]': PropertyEditor [org.springframework.beans.propertyeditors.ClassEditor] returned inappropriate value of type [org.springframework.beans.propertyeditors.CustomDateEditor] at org.springframework.beans.TypeConverterDelegate.convertIfNecessary(TypeConverterDelegate.java:260) at org.springframework.beans.TypeConverterDelegate.convertToTypedMap(TypeConverterDelegate.java:620) at org.springframework.beans.TypeConverterDelegate.convertIfNecessary(TypeConverterDelegate.java:205) at org.springframework.beans.BeanWrapperImpl.convertIfNecessary(BeanWrapperImpl.java:459) ... 17 more

Not sure where i am going wrong. Appreciate your help. Thanks!

Answer 1

Good catch, this seems to be a new behavior with Spring 4.0+, your code works cleanly with 3.2.x version of Spring.

The reason appears to be because the type of customEditors in CustomEditorConfigurer has changed with Spring 4.0+. Whereas it was of type Map<String, ?> with Spring 3.2.x it is Map<Class<?>, Class<? extends PropertyEditor>> with Spring 4.0+.

The fix is to instead create a custom PropertyEditorRegistrar, this way:

import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;

import org.springframework.beans.PropertyEditorRegistrar;
import org.springframework.beans.PropertyEditorRegistry;
import org.springframework.beans.propertyeditors.CustomDateEditor;

public class CustomDateEditorRegistrar implements PropertyEditorRegistrar {

     @Override
     public void registerCustomEditors(PropertyEditorRegistry registry) {
         registry.registerCustomEditor(Date.class, new CustomDateEditor(new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd"), false));
     }
}

and to use this in the configuration:

<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.CustomEditorConfigurer">
    <property name="propertyEditorRegistrars">
        <list>
            <bean class="dateeditor.CustomDateEditorRegistrar"/>
        </list>
    </property>
</bean>