Setting and getting properties is done using the setPropertyValue(s) and getPropertyValue(s) methods that both come with a couple of overloaded variants. They're all described in more detail in the Javadoc Spring comes with. What's important to know is that there are a couple of conventions for indicating properties of an object. A couple of examples:

Below you'll find some examples of working with the BeanWrapper to get and set properties.

(This next section is not vitally important to you if you're not planning to work with the BeanWrapper directly. If you're just using the DataBinder and the BeanFactory and their out-of-the-box implementation, you should skip ahead to the section about PropertyEditors.)

Consider the following two classes:

public class Company {
    private String name;
    private Employee managingDirector;

    public String getName()	{ 
        return this.name; 
    }
    public void setName(String name) { 
        this.name = name; 
    } 
    public Employee getManagingDirector() { 
        return this.managingDirector; 
    }
    public void setManagingDirector(Employee managingDirector) {
        this.managingDirector = managingDirector;
    }
}

public class Employee {
    private String name;
    private float salary;

    public String getName()	{
        return this.name;
    }
    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
    public float getSalary() {
        return salary;
    }
    public void setSalary(float salary) {
        this.salary = salary;
    }
}

The following code snippets show some examples of how to retrieve and manipulate some of the properties of instantiated Companies and Employees:

BeanWrapper company = BeanWrapperImpl(new Company());
// setting the company name..
company.setPropertyValue("name", "Some Company Inc.");
// ... can also be done like this:
PropertyValue value = new PropertyValue("name", "Some Company Inc.");
company.setPropertyValue(value);

// ok, let's create the director and tie it to the company:
BeanWrapper jim = BeanWrapperImpl(new Employee());
jim.setPropertyValue("name", "Jim Stravinsky");
company.setPropertyValue("managingDirector", jim.getWrappedInstance());

// retrieving the salary of the managingDirector through the company
Float salary = (Float) company.getPropertyValue("managingDirector.salary");

Spring heavily uses the concept of PropertyEditors to effect the conversion between an Object and a String. If you think about it, it sometimes might be handy to be able to represent properties in a different way than the object itself. For example, a Date can be represented in a human readable way (as the String '2007-14-09'), while we're still able to convert the human readable form back to the original date (or even better: convert any date entered in a human readable form, back to Date objects). This behavior can be achieved by registering custom editors, of type java.beans.PropertyEditor. Registering custom editors on a BeanWrapper or alternately in a specific IoC container as mentioned in the previous chapter, gives it the knowledge of how to convert properties to the desired type. Read more about PropertyEditors in the Javadoc of the java.beans package provided by Sun.

A couple of examples where property editing is used in Spring:

Spring has a number of built-in PropertyEditors to make life easy. Each of those is listed below and they are all located in the org.springframework.beans.propertyeditors package. Most, but not all (as indicated below), are registered by default by BeanWrapperImpl. Where the property editor is configurable in some fashion, you can of course still register your own variant to override the default one:

Spring uses the java.beans.PropertyEditorManager to set the search path for property editors that might be needed. The search path also includes sun.bean.editors, which includes PropertyEditor implementations for types such as Font, Color, and most of the primitive types. Note also that the standard JavaBeans infrastructure will automatically discover PropertyEditor classes (without you having to register them explicitly) if they are in the same package as the class they handle, and have the same name as that class, with 'Editor' appended; for example, one could have the following class and package structure, which would be sufficient for the FooEditor class to be recognized and used as the PropertyEditor for Foo-typed properties.

com
  chank
    pop
      Foo
      FooEditor   // the PropertyEditor for the Foo class

Note that you can also use the standard BeanInfo JavaBeans mechanism here as well (described in not-amazing-detail here). Find below an example of using the BeanInfo mechanism for explicitly registering one or more PropertyEditor instances with the properties of an associated class.

com
  chank
    pop
      Foo
      FooBeanInfo   // the BeanInfo for the Foo class

Here is the Java source code for the referenced FooBeanInfo class. This would associate a CustomNumberEditor with the age property of the Foo class.

public class FooBeanInfo extends SimpleBeanInfo {
      
    public PropertyDescriptor[] getPropertyDescriptors() {
        try {
            final PropertyEditor numberPE = new CustomNumberEditor(Integer.class, true);
            PropertyDescriptor ageDescriptor = new PropertyDescriptor("age", Foo.class) {
                public PropertyEditor createPropertyEditor(Object bean) {
                    return numberPE;
                };
            };
            return new PropertyDescriptor[] { ageDescriptor };
        }
        catch (IntrospectionException ex) {
            throw new Error(ex.toString());
        }
    }
}

package example;
		
public class ExoticType {

    private String name;

    public ExoticType(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
}

public class DependsOnExoticType { 
   
    private ExoticType type;

    public void setType(ExoticType type) {
        this.type = type;
    }
}

<bean id="sample" class="example.DependsOnExoticType">
    <property name="type" value="aNameForExoticType"/>
</bean>

// converts string representation to ExoticType object
package example;

public class ExoticTypeEditor extends PropertyEditorSupport {

    private String format;

    public void setFormat(String format) {
        this.format = format;
    }
    
    public void setAsText(String text) {
        if (format != null && format.equals("upperCase")) {
            text = text.toUpperCase();
        }
        ExoticType type = new ExoticType(text);
        setValue(type);
    }
}

<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.CustomEditorConfigurer">
  <property name="customEditors">
    <map>
      <entry key="example.ExoticType">
        <bean class="example.ExoticTypeEditor">
          <property name="format" value="upperCase"/>
        </bean>
      </entry>
    </map>
  </property>
</bean>

package com.foo.editors.spring;

public final class CustomPropertyEditorRegistrar implements PropertyEditorRegistrar {

    public void registerCustomEditors(PropertyEditorRegistry registry) {

        // it is expected that new PropertyEditor instances are created
        registry.registerCustomEditor(ExoticType.class, new ExoticTypeEditor());

        // you could register as many custom property editors as are required here...
    }
}

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

<bean id="customPropertyEditorRegistrar" class="com.foo.editors.spring.CustomPropertyEditorRegistrar"/>

public final class RegisterUserController extends SimpleFormController {

    private final PropertyEditorRegistrar customPropertyEditorRegistrar;

    public RegisterUserController(PropertyEditorRegistrar propertyEditorRegistrar) {
        this.customPropertyEditorRegistrar = propertyEditorRegistrar;
    }

    protected void initBinder(HttpServletRequest request, ServletRequestDataBinder binder) throws Exception {
        this.customPropertyEditorRegistrar.registerCustomEditors(binder);
    }

    // other methods to do with registering a User
}