Spring is a highly adopted annotation-based configuration and it is happily accepted by developer communities. And why not? No one wants to struggle with XML tags, but that's not enough when there is no XML configuration or the external file configuration is not as powerful as an XML configuration would be; especially when we write an application that has to alter behaviors without compilation.

But still, writing an XML configuration is not readable and not easily understood by beginners, so I've written experimental plugins for Spring Boot that convert YAML definitions to Spring Beans.

Here is an example of a bean definition in XML and the bean definition in YAML.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<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="customerImpl" class="com.example.yamlbeanExample.Customer">
        <property name="firstName">
            <value>Rohit</value>
        </property>
        <property name="lastName">
            <value>jain</value>
        </property>
        <property name="phone">
            <value>203428304230</value>
        </property>
        <property name="address" ref="addressImpl"></property>
    </bean>
    <bean id="addressImpl" class="com.example.yamlbeanExample.Address">
        <property name="address1">
            <value>gyan nagar</value>
        </property>
        <property name="address2">
            <value>sector 4</value>
        </property>
        <property name="pinCode">
            <value>313001</value>
        </property>
        <property name="city">
            <value>Pune</value>
        </property>
        <property name="state">
            <value>Maharastra</value>
        </property>
        <property name="country" ref="countryImpl"></property>
    </bean>
    <bean id="countryImpl" class="com.example.yamlbeanExample.Country">
        <property name="countryName">
            <value>India</value>
        </property>
        <property name="countryCode">
            <value>+91</value>
        </property>
        <property name="currency">
            <value>INR</value>
        </property>
    </bean>
</beans>

#spring-beans

customerImpl:
  class: com.example.yamlbeanExample.Customer
  properties:
    firstName: Rohit
    lastName: jain
    phone: 203428304230
    address: ref::addressImpl
addressImpl:
  class: com.example.yamlbeanExample.Address
  properties:
    address1: gyan nagar
    address2: sector 4
    pinCode: 313001
    city: pune
    state: Maharastra
    country: ref::countryImpl
countryImpl:
  class: com.example.yamlbeanExample.Country
  properties:
    countryName: India
    countryCode: 91
    currency: INR

You can check out a project on GitHub.

Note ->  YAML-spring-beans is a just experimental library, there are lots of features not included. Feedback will be much appreciated!