how to get a collection object in spring

[Samanthi perera]

this is my dog class

package Test;

import java.util.Collection;

import com.aruna.Animal;

public class Dog implements Animal {

	private Chicken ch;
	private Collection<Cats> cat;
	
	public Collection<Cats> getCat() {
		return cat;
	}

	public void setCat(Collection<Cats> cat) {
		this.cat = cat;
	}

	public Dog() {
	}

	public Dog(Chicken c) {
		System.out.println("Dog Eattttttttttttttttttttttttt");
		ch=c;
	}

	@Override
	public void eat() {
		System.out.println("Dog Eattttttttttttttttttttttttt");
		if(ch!=null){
			ch.LayEgg();
		}
	}

	public Chicken getCh() {
		return ch;
	}

	public void setCh(Chicken ch) {
		this.ch = ch;
	}

}

this is my xml

<?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-2.0.xsd">



<bean id="mydog" class="Test.Dog"></bean>

<bean id="chicken" class="Test.Chicken">
<property name="leg" value="3"></property>
</bean>

<bean id="ab" class="Test.Cats"></bean>
<bean id="cd" class="Test.Cats"></bean>
<bean id="ef" class="Test.Cats"></bean>

<bean id="secondDog" class="Test.Dog">
<constructor-arg ref="chicken"></constructor-arg>
<property name="cat">
<list>
<ref bean="ab"/>
<ref bean="cd"/>
<ref bean="ef"/>
</list>
</property>
</bean>

</beans>

this is my cat class

package Test;

public class Cats {

	private String name;

	public String getName() {
		return name;
	}

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

this is my main class

package Test;

import java.util.Collection;

import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;

public class MainApp {

	public static void main(String args[]){
		ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("my.xml");
		//Dog test=(Dog)ctx.getBean("mydog");		
		//test.eat();
		
		Dog second=(Dog)ctx.getBean("secondDog");
		Chicken c=second.getCh();
		System.out.println("legsssssssssssssssssssss "+c.getLeg());
		second.eat();
		
		Collection<Cats> d=second.getCat();
		
		System.out.println("xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "+d);
	}
}

when i run i get out put as follow

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [Test.Cats@704baa, Test.Cats@77a7f9, Test.Cats@1b4fad5]

how to get cat objects from collection d??

[David Newton]

It looks like you did. Or are you just confused about the java.util.Collection API?

[Mark Secrist]

I think you've basically got it but the collection is returning a list of Cat objects that simply implement the base class Object's toString() method. If you override this method on the Cat class and print something more to your liking then you should be good to go.

BTW - this is a Java problem, not necessarily a Spring problem.

Also, if you want your 3 cat instances to have any kind of name when they are printed out, you might want to modify your bean definitions as follows

 
<bean id="ab" class="Test.Cats"><property name="name" value="cat1"/></bean>   
<bean id="cd" class="Test.Cats"><property name="name" value="ca2"/></bean>   
<bean id="ef" class="Test.Cats"><property name="name" value="cat3"/></bean>   
 

Or... even better if you add

xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p" 

to the <beans> definition then you can do the following

 
<bean id="ab" class="Test.Cats" p:name="cat1" />
<bean id="cd" class="Test.Cats" p:name="cat2" />  
<bean id="ef" class="Test.Cats" p:name="cat3" />