How to make spring inject value into a static field

I've had a similar requirement: I needed to inject a Spring-managed repository bean into my Person entity class ("entity" as in "something with an identity", for example an JPA entity). A Person instance has friends, and for this Person instance to return its friends, it shall delegate to its repository and query for friends there.

@Entity
public class Person {
    private static PersonRepository personRepository;

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue
    private long id;

    public static void setPersonRepository(PersonRepository personRepository){
        this.personRepository = personRepository;
    }

    public Set<Person> getFriends(){
        return personRepository.getFriends(id);
    }

    ...
}

.

@Repository
public class PersonRepository {

    public Person get Person(long id) {
        // do database-related stuff
    }

    public Set<Person> getFriends(long id) {
        // do database-related stuff
    }

    ...
}

So how did I inject that PersonRepository singleton into the static field of the Person class?

I created a @Configuration, which gets picked up at Spring ApplicationContext construction time. This @Configuration gets injected with all those beans that I need to inject as static fields into other classes. Then with a @PostConstruct annotation, I catch a hook to do all static field injection logic.

@Configuration
public class StaticFieldInjectionConfiguration {

    @Inject
    private PersonRepository personRepository;

    @PostConstruct
    private void init() {
        Person.setPersonRepository(personRepository);
    }
}

As these answers are old, I found this alternative. It is very clean and works with just java annotations:

To fix it, create a “none static setter” to assign the injected value for the static variable. For example :

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Value;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class GlobalValue {

public static String DATABASE;

@Value("${mongodb.db}")
public void setDatabase(String db) {
    DATABASE = db;
}
}

https://www.mkyong.com/spring/spring-inject-a-value-into-static-variables/

You have two possibilities:

1. non-static setter for static property/field;
2. using org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean to invoke a static setter.

In the first option you have a bean with a regular setter but instead setting an instance property you set the static property/field.

public void setTheProperty(Object value) {
    foo.bar.Class.STATIC_VALUE = value;
}

but in order to do this you need to have an instance of a bean that will expose this setter (its more like an workaround).

In the second case it would be done as follows:

<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean">
    <property name="staticMethod" value="foo.bar.Class.setTheProperty"/>
    <property name="arguments">
        <list>
            <ref bean="theProperty"/>
        </list>
   </property>
</bean>

On you case you will add a new setter on the Utils class:

public static setDataBaseAttr(Properties p)

and in your context you will configure it with the approach exemplified above, more or less like:

<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean">
    <property name="staticMethod" value="foo.bar.Utils.setDataBaseAttr"/>
    <property name="arguments">
        <list>
            <ref bean="dataBaseAttr"/>
        </list>
   </property>
</bean>