spring: set property of one bean by reading the property of another bean?

Is it possible to set the property of one bean by re开发者_如何学运维ading the property of another bean? For instance, suppose I had:

class A {
   void setList(List list);
}

class B {
   List getList();
}

I would like Spring to instantiate both classes, and call A's setList method, passing in the result of calling B's getList method. The Spring configuration might look something like:

<bean id="b" class="B"/>
<bean id"a" class="A">
    <property name="list" ref="b" ref-property="list"/>
</bean>

Alas, this made-up XML does not work.

Why not just inject B into A? Because I do not want to introduce the extra dependency. A is only dependent List, not on B.

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in addition to @Kevin's answer if you are using spring 3.0 it is possible to do this with the new spring expression language

<bean id="a" class="A">
    <property name="list"
        value="#{b.list}"/>
</bean>

spring 3.0 documentation

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There are a couple of ways. Here is one:

<bean id="b" class="B"/>
<bean id="a" class="A">
    <property name="list">
        <bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPathFactoryBean">
            <property name="targetObject" ref="b"/>
            <property name="propertyPath" value="list"/>
        </bean>
    </property>
</bean>

Also see the <util:property-path/> element

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If you are trying to do the same for a constructor then do this.

<bean id="jdbcTemplate" class="org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate">
            <constructor-arg type="javax.sql.DataSource" value="#{jdbc.dataSource}">            
            </constructor-arg>
</bean>

Here "jdbc" is as mentioned below that has property "dataSource" with getter and setter and initilized as:

<bean id="jdbc" class="com.la.activator.DataSourceProvider">
    <property name="myDataSourcePool" ref="dsPoolService"/>
</bean>