Declaring a Date object within the prop tag in application context

I am trying to do the following:

<bean id="someBean" class="path.to.some.class">
  <property name=开发者_开发问答"config">
    <prop key="startDate"> a java.sql Date object </prop>
  </property>
</bean>

How can I instantiate a Date object within the prop tag?

Thanks

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I don't know why you would want to have an instance of java.sql.Date - afaik that is for JDBC mapping. If you are using java.util.Date (which I suspect you are).

Then the example here works for me.