Spring - Constructor-based Dependency Injection

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Constructor-based DI is accomplished when the container invokes a class constructor with a number of arguments, each representing a dependency on the other class.

Example - Usage of Constructor based Dependency Injection

The following example shows a class TextEditor that can only be dependency-injected with constructor injection.

Let us have a working Eclipse IDE in place and take the following steps to create a Spring application −

TextEditor.java

package com.tutorialspoint;

public class TextEditor {
   private SpellChecker spellChecker;

   public TextEditor(SpellChecker spellChecker) {
      System.out.println("Inside TextEditor constructor." );
      this.spellChecker = spellChecker;
   }
   public void spellCheck() {
      spellChecker.checkSpelling();
   }
}

SpellChecker.java

package com.tutorialspoint;

public class SpellChecker {
   public SpellChecker(){
      System.out.println("Inside SpellChecker constructor." );
   }
   public void checkSpelling() {
      System.out.println("Inside checkSpelling." );
   }
}

MainApp.java

package com.tutorialspoint;

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

public class MainApp {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("Beans.xml");

      TextEditor te = (TextEditor) context.getBean("textEditor");
      te.spellCheck();
   }
}

Beans.xml

Following is the configuration file Beans.xml which has configuration for the constructor-based injection −

<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
   xmlns:xsi = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xsi:schemaLocation = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd">

   <!-- Definition for textEditor bean -->
   <bean id = "textEditor" class = "com.tutorialspoint.TextEditor">
      <constructor-arg ref = "spellChecker"/>
   </bean>

   <!-- Definition for spellChecker bean -->
   <bean id = "spellChecker" class = "com.tutorialspoint.SpellChecker"></bean>

</beans>

Output

Once you are done creating the source and bean configuration files, let us run the application. If everything is fine with your application, it will print the following message −

Inside SpellChecker constructor.
Inside TextEditor constructor.
Inside checkSpelling.

Constructor arguments resolution

There may be an ambiguity while passing arguments to the constructor, in case there are more than one parameters. To resolve this ambiguity, the order in which the constructor arguments are defined in a bean definition is the order in which those arguments are supplied to the appropriate constructor. Consider the following class −

package x.y;

public class Foo {
   public Foo(Bar bar, Baz baz) {
      // ...
   }
}

The following configuration works fine −

<beans>
   <bean id = "foo" class = "x.y.Foo">
      <constructor-arg ref = "bar"/>
      <constructor-arg ref = "baz"/>
   </bean>

   <bean id = "bar" class = "x.y.Bar"/>
   <bean id = "baz" class = "x.y.Baz"/>
</beans>

Let us check one more case where we pass different types to the constructor. Consider the following class −

package x.y;

public class Foo {
   public Foo(int year, String name) {
      // ...
   }
}

The container can also use type matching with simple types, if you explicitly specify the type of the constructor argument using the type attribute. For example −

<beans>

   <bean id = "exampleBean" class = "examples.ExampleBean">
      <constructor-arg type = "int" value = "2001"/>
      <constructor-arg type = "java.lang.String" value = "Zara"/>
   </bean>

</beans>

Finally, the best way to pass constructor arguments, use the index attribute to specify explicitly the index of constructor arguments. Here, the index is 0 based. For example −

<beans>

   <bean id = "exampleBean" class = "examples.ExampleBean">
      <constructor-arg index = "0" value = "2001"/>
      <constructor-arg index = "1" value = "Zara"/>
   </bean>

</beans>

A final note, in case you are passing a reference to an object, you need to use ref attribute of <constructor-arg> tag and if you are passing a value directly then you should use value attribute as shown above.