ozrti2023 18.48, ‘Spring @Qualier Annotation | Baelsung “ The Spring @Qualifier Annotation Cee eee) Ragjster now to NowattsDatz ata Scientists Great - Cont Keri — F (httos //adsfreestarcom/? Last updated: September 30, 20 | written by baeldung htips/wanubaeldung.com/author/baeldung) Spring https://awrwbaeldung.com/category/spring) + Spring Annotations htips:// wwwbaeldung com/tag/sping-annotations) ‘Spring Core Basics (https://wwwbaeldung.com/tag/spring-core-basics) Get started with Spring 5 and Spring Boot 2, through the reference Learn Spring course: >> LEARN SPRING (/ls-course-start) “Nos réunions sont Bion plus vivantos"™ Pour en savoir plus, regardez cette vidA©o on ~ v hitpssivww-baeldung.comispring-qualfer-annotation weozrti2023 18.48, ‘Spring @Qualifer Annotation | Baeldung mo OU y thttps:/ads freestarcom/? utm_campaign-brandinggutm . medium-banner&utm_source-baeldung.com&ulm content-baeldung_incontent = . Overview In this tutorial, well explore what the @Qualifier annotation can help us with, which problems it solves, and how touseit, Further reading: Spring @Primary Annotation (/spring-primary) Leatn how to use Spring's Primary annotation to give preference to beans when autowiting Read more (/spring-primary) > Wiring in Spring: @Autowired, @Resource and @Inject (/spring-annotations- resource-inject-autowire) This artcte wil compare and contrast aalnject and @Autowired annotations. 2 use of annotations related to dependency injection, namely the @Resource, Read more (/spring-annotations-resource-injet-autowire) > @Lookup Annotation in Spring (/spring-lookup) Learn how to efectvely use the Lookup annotation in Spring for procedural injection, Read more (/spring-Lockup) —> ‘Well also explain how its diferent from the @Primary annotation, and from autowiring by name, Digital train data TF ration y (https /ads freestarcom/? Uutm_campaign-brandinggutm .medium-banner8utm -source-baeldung.com&utm cont 2 2. Autowire Need for Disambiguation baeldung_incontent ‘The @Autowired (/spring-autowire) annotation is a great way of making the need to inject a dependency in Spring explicit Although its useful, there are use cases for which this annotation alone isnt enough for Spring to Understand which bean to inject. By default, Spring resolves autowired entries by type. Hf more than one bean of the same type is available in the container, the framework will throw ‘NoUniqueBeanDefinitionException. indicating that more than one bean is available for autowiring. hitpssivww-baeldung.comispring-qualifer-annotation anozrti2023 18.48, ‘Spring @Qualier Annotation | Baelsung “ . (https /adssreestarcom/? Lets imagine a stuation in which two possible candidates exist for Spring to inject as bean collaborators in a given. instance component("foarernatter™ oO public class FooFornatter “mplenents Fornatter ( public String forme) { return "Yoo": y eomponent("harForeatter") public class BarFormatter “melexents Fornatter public String formt() ( return "bar's , , component public class Fooservice { anutowired Private Fornatter formatter; Ifwe ty to load FooService into our context, the Spring framework will throw a NoUniqueBeanDefinitionException. ‘This is because Spring doesn't know which bean to inject To avoid this problem, there are several solutions; the @Qualifier annotation is one of them, 3. @Qualifier Annotation By using the @@ualifer annotation, we can eliminate the issue of which bean needs to be injected. Lets revisit our previous example to see how we solve the problem by including the @Qualifer annotation to indicate which bean we want to use: public class FosService { oO enutowired ‘aqua Fer ("¥ooFormacter") Private Frornatter formatters By including the @Qualiffer annotation, together with the name of the specific implementation we want to use, in this example Foo. we can avoid ambiguity when Spring finds multiple beans of the same type. itpsuwaew-baeldung.comlspring-quaifer-annotation anozrti2023 18.48, ‘Spring @Qualier Annotation | Baelsung “ (https /adssreestarcom/? \We need to take into consideration that the qualifier name to be used is the one declared in the @Component annotation. Note that we could have also used the @Qualifor annotation on the Formattorimplementing classes. instead of ‘specifying the names in thelr Component annotations, to obtain the same effect component oO qualifier ("fooForeatter") public class FooFormatter ‘mplenents Formatter ( WN , component qualifier (*barFormatter" public class Barrormatter ‘mplenents Formatter { Ww y 4. @Qualifiervs @Primary There's ancther annotation called @Primary (/spring-primary) that we can use to decide which bean to inject when ambiguity is present regarding dependency injection ‘This annotation defines a preference when multiple beans of the same type are present. The bean associated with the @Primary annotation will be used unless otherwise indicated Lets see an example itpsuwaew-baeldung.comlspring-quaifer-annotationozrti2023 18.48, Spring @Qualier Annotation | Baeldung Figur cin “ oO public class Config. ¢ etean Fublic Employee joménployee() { return new Exployee( "John ) ean errimary Public Enployee tonyEnployes() { return new enployee("'ony" Inthis example, both methods return the same Employee type. The bean that Spring will injects the one returned by the method tonyEmployee. This is because it contains the @Primary annotation, This annotation is useful when ‘we want to specify which bean of a certain type should be injected by default. If we require the other bean at some injection point, we would need to specifically inicate it. We can do that via the @Quatifer annotation, For instance, we could specify that we want to use the bean returned by the JohnEmployee method by using the @Qualifer annotation. Its worth noting that if both the @Qualifier and @Primary annotations are present, then the @Qualifier annotation will have precedence. Basically. @Primarydefines a default, while @Qualiferis very specific. Lets look at another way of using the Primary annotation, this time using the initial example: ‘@Component Oo @erinary public class FooFormatter ‘mslenents Formatter { We d component public class BarFormatter ‘mplonents Formatter { We ) In this case, the @Primary annotation is placed in one of the implementing classes, and will disambiguate the scenario. 5. @Qualifier vs Autowiring by Name Another way to decide between multiple beans when autowiring, is by using the name of the field to inject. This is the default in case there are no other hints for Spring. Let's see some code based on our intial example: public class FooService oO utowi red Private Fornatter foorornatter; In this case, Spring will determine that the bean to inject is the FooFormatter one, since the field name is matched to the value that we used in the @Component annotation for that bean. 6. Conclusion Inthis article, we described the scenarios where we need to disambiguate which beans to inject. In particular, we ‘examined the @Quatifer annotation, and compared it with other similar ways of determining which beans need to be used. v itpsuwaew-baeldung.comlspring-quaifer-annotation sro2rii2023 18.48 ‘Spring @Qualier Annotation | Baelsung “ . Ihttps//adsfreestarcom/? ‘As usual, the complete code for this article is available over on GitHub {httpsi//githucom/eugenp/tutorials/tree/master/spring-di Get started with Spring 5 and Spring Boot 2, through the Learn Spring course: >» THE COURSE (/ls-course-end) Learning to build your API with Spring? Download the E-book (/rest-api-spring-guide) ‘Comments are closed on this article! htipsifwnew.baeldung,comspring-qualiferannotationozrti2023 18.48, ‘Spring @Qualier Annotation | Baelsung “ ‘couRSES SERIES ‘ABOUT htipsifwnew.baeldung,comspring-qualiferannotation W