Handling Multiple Autowire Candidates with Spring @Qualifier

Handling multiple autowire candidates with @Primary is effective when only one primary candidate can be determined for multiple autowire candidates. When you need more control over the selection process, you can use spring @Qualifier annotation. The @Qualifier annotation allows you to associate a given name with a specific bean type. Thus autowiring by type and by name, to narrow the autowire dependency candidates to only one.

Handle Multiple Autowire dependencies with @Qualifier

The @Qualifier annotation may be used on a field, method or parameter as a qualifier for candidate beans when autowiring. This makes the autowiring by type and by name. Thus reducing and specifying the correct type for autowire dependency injection. In this example both MysqlMessageRepository and InMemoryMessageRepository beans are injected in the SellPhone bean.

package com.memorynotfound.spring.core.autowired;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Qualifier;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class SellPhone {

    @Autowired
    @Qualifier(value = "mysqlMessageRepository")
    private MessageRepository mysqlMessageRepository;

    @Autowired
    @Qualifier(value = "inMemoryMessageRepository")
    private MessageRepository inMemoryMessageRepository;

    public void sendMessage(){
        mysqlMessageRepository.save();
        inMemoryMessageRepository.save();
    }
}

We are creating two implementations of this interface, which we are autowiring in a spring bean.

package com.memorynotfound.spring.core.autowired;

public interface MessageRepository {

    void save();
}

The @Repository is a special marker annotation. When component scanning is enabled, spring will automatically pick it up and create a bean definition to make it available for autowiring.

package com.memorynotfound.spring.core.autowired;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Repository;

@Repository
public class InMemoryMessageRepository implements MessageRepository{

    @Override
    public void save() {
        System.out.println("saving in memory");
    }
}

This is the second implementation.

package com.memorynotfound.spring.core.autowired;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Repository;

@Repository
public class MysqlMessageRepository implements MessageRepository{

    @Override
    public void save() {
        System.out.println("saving in mysql");
    }
}

Enable Auto Component Scanning

We enable auto component scanning by registering the <context:component-scan/> element inside the top level <beans/> element. We provide a package name which spring will recursively scan for other components.

<?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:component-scan base-package="com.memorynotfound"/>

</beans>

Testing The Application

We bootstrap the application by loading the spring xml configuration file using the ClassPathXmlApplicationContext. Afterwards we get a reference of the SellPhone bean on which we invoke the save() method.

package com.memorynotfound.spring.core.autowired;

import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;

public class Run {

    public static void main(String... args) {
        ApplicationContext xmlContext = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("app-config.xml");
        SellPhone sellPhone = xmlContext.getBean(SellPhone.class);
        sellPhone.sendMessage();
    }
}

This is the produced output of the previous code. As you can see, both autowired dependencies are injected.

saving in mysql
saving in memory

References

• @Qualifier JavaDoc

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