Spring Autowire beans with @Autowired Annotation
This tutorial shows how to use the @Autowired annotation. The @Autowired annotation marks a constructor, field, setter method or config methods as to be autowired for the spring container.
Beans
We are using these beans. The Job bean will be autowired in the Person bean. We are showing you three ways you can autowire, via setter, constructor and field injection.
package com.memorynotfound.spring.core.autowired;
public class Person {
private String name;
private Job job;
}package com.memorynotfound.spring.core.autowired;
public class Job {
private String name;
}Enabling @Autowired Annotation
By default the @Autowired annotation is not enabled. So in order to use this annotation we need to register the AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor. We can do this by explicitly defining this bean in the spring configuration file, or we can include the <context:annotation-config /> or the<context:annotation-config /> element which register the AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor automatically.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">
<context:annotation-config/>
<bean class="com.memorynotfound.spring.core.autowired.Job">
<property name="name" value="Java Developer"/>
</bean>
<bean class="com.memorynotfound.spring.core.autowired.Person">
<property name="name" value="John Doe"/>
</bean>
</beans>Setter Injection
You can annotate a properties setter method with the @Autowired annotation. This setter method does not have to be public.
package com.memorynotfound.spring.core.autowired;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
public class Person {
private String name;
private Job job;
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
@Autowired
public void setJob(Job job) {
this.job = job;
}
}
Constructor Injection
You can have only one constructor with the @Autowired annotation per class. This constructor does not have to be public. When there are multiple constructors with the annotation, a BeanCreationException will be thrown at startup.
package com.memorynotfound.spring.core.autowired;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
public class Person {
private String name;
private Job job;
@Autowired
public Person(Job job) {
this.job = job;
}
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
}
Field Injection
Fields are injected right after construction of a bean and are set via reflection. This means that it’s non mandatory to have a setter/constructor for that property that you are autowiring. This field does not have to be public.
package com.memorynotfound.spring.core.autowired;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
public class Person {
@Autowired
private Job job;
private String name;
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
}
Output
Person{name='John Doe', job=Job{name='Java Developer'}}
