Spring EL supports ternary operator , perform “if then else” conditional checking. For example,

condition ? true : false

Spring EL in Annotation

Spring EL ternary operator with @Value annotation. In this example, if “itemBean.qtyOnHand” is less than 100, then set “customerBean.warning” to true, else set it to false.

package com.mkyong.core;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Value;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component("customerBean")
public class Customer { 
    @Value("#{itemBean.qtyOnHand < 100 ? true : false}") 
    private boolean warning; 
    public boolean isWarning() { 
        return warning; 
    } 
    public void setWarning(boolean warning) { 
        this.warning = warning; 
    } 

    @Override 
     public String toString() { 
         return "Customer [warning=" + warning + "]"; 
    }
}

package com.mkyong.core;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Value;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;
@Component("itemBean")
public class Item { 
    @Value("99") 
    private int qtyOnHand; 
    public int getQtyOnHand() { 
        return qtyOnHand; 
    } 
    public void setQtyOnHand(int qtyOnHand) { 
         this.qtyOnHand = qtyOnHand; 
    }
}

Output

Customer [warning=true]

Spring EL in XML
See equivalent version in bean definition XML file.

<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-3.0.xsd"> 
    <bean id="customerBean" class="com.mkyong.core.Customer"> 
        <property name="warning" value="#{itemBean.qtyOnHand < 100 ? true : false}" /> 
    </bean> 

    <bean id="itemBean" class="com.mkyong.core.Item"> 
        <property name="qtyOnHand" value="99" /> 
    </bean> 
</beans>

Output

Customer [warning=true]

In XML, you need to replace less than operator "<" with "<".