Spring Autowiring by Name

In Spring, “Autowiring by Name” means, if the name of a bean is same as the name of other bean property, auto wire it.

For example, if a “

customer

” bean exposes an “

address

” property, Spring will find the “

address

” bean in current container and wire it automatically. And if no matching found, just do nothing.

You can enable this feature via

autowire="byName"

like below :

<!-- customer has a property name "address" -->
<bean id="customer" class="com.mkyong.common.Customer" autowire="byName" />

<bean id="address" class="com.mkyong.common.Address" >
<property name="fulladdress" value="Block A 888, CA" />
</bean>

See a full example of Spring auto wiring by name.

1. Beans

Two beans,

customer

and

address

.

package com.mkyong.common;

public class Customer
{
private Address address;
//...
}

package com.mkyong.common;

public class Address
{
private String fulladdress;
//...
}

2. Spring Wiring

Normally, you wire the bean explicitly, via

ref

attribute like this :

<bean id="customer" class="com.mkyong.common.Customer" >
<property name="address" ref="address" />
</bean>

<bean id="address" class="com.mkyong.common.Address" >
<property name="fulladdress" value="Block A 888, CA" />
</bean>

Output

Customer [address=Address [fulladdress=Block A 888, CA]]

With autowire by name enabled, you do not need to declares the

property

tag anymore. As long as the “

address

” bean is same name as the property of “

customer

” bean, which is “

address

”, Spring will wire it automatically.

<bean id="customer" class="com.mkyong.common.Customer" autowire="byName" />

<bean id="address" class="com.mkyong.common.Address" >
<property name="fulladdress" value="Block A 888, CA" />
</bean>

Output

Customer [address=Address [fulladdress=Block A 888, CA]]

See another example, this time, the wiring will failed, caused the bean “

addressABC

” is not match the property name of bean “

customer

”.

<bean id="customer" class="com.mkyong.common.Customer" autowire="byName" />

<bean id="addressABC" class="com.mkyong.common.Address" >
<property name="fulladdress" value="Block A 888, CA" />
</bean>

Output

Customer [address=null]