Spring Boot YAML configuration for a list of strings containing commas

Question

I'm using Spring Boot version 1.5.22 because of Java 7 compatibility - legacy stuff, museum grade, don't use.

I need an array of strings containing commas in YAML config for Spring Boot. The problem is that this old Spring Boot doesn't fully support all YAML features - namely arrays are implemented a bit hacky.

For other arrays of strings (not containing commas), I use the following:

YAML:

element:
  list: >
    aaaa,
    bbbb

Java:

@Value("${element.list}")
protected String[] elementList;

However, with commas, the following either ended with an empty array, or ignored any escaping I tried and got split by all the commas:

YAML:

element:
  list: >
    aa,aa,
    bb,bb

element:
  list: >
    "aa,aa",
    "bb,bb"

element:
  list: >
    'aa,aa',
    'bb,bb'

element:
  list: >
    aa\,aa,
    bb\,bb

element:
  list: [
    "aa,aa",
    "bb,bb"
  ]

element:
  list:
    - aa,aa
    - bb,bb

element:
  list:
    - "aa,aa"
    - "bb,bb"

Answer 1

It looks like this old version of Spring Boot splits arrays by commas and ignores any escaping attempt. I ended up with the following:

YAML (use semicolons instead of commas):

element:
  list: >
    aa;aa,
    bb;bb

Java (replace ; -> , in @PostConstruct):

@Value("${element.list}")
protected String[] elementList;

@PostConstruct
private void postConstruct() {
    for (int i = 0; i < elementList.length; i++) {
        elementList[i] = elementList[i].replace(";", ",");
    }
}