How do I load a resource and use its contents as a string in Spring

Question

How can I load a Spring resource contents and use it to set a bean property or pass it as an argument constructor?

The resource contains free text.

Answer 1

daoway answer was very helpful, and following Adrian remark I am adding a configuration snippet similar to daoway's code

From your component

    @Autowired
    private Resource contents;

    @PostConstruct
    public void load(){
        try {
            final InputStream inputStream = contents.getInputStream();
                //use the stream 
            BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream ,1024);
            StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
            String line;
            while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
                stringBuilder.append(line).append('\n');
            }
            br.close();
     }catch (IOException e) {
            LOGGER.error(message);
     }
  }