Spring - Beans Autowiring 'byType'

This mode specifies autowiring by property type. Spring container looks at the beans on which autowire attribute is set to byType in the XML configuration file. It then tries to match and wire a property if its type matches with exactly one of the beans name in the configuration file. If matches are found, it will inject those beans. Otherwise, bean(s) will not be wired.

For example, if a bean definition is set to autowire byType in the configuration file, and it contains a spellChecker property of SpellChecker type, Spring looks for a bean definition named SpellChecker, and uses it to set the property. Still you can wire the remaining properties using <property> tags. The following example will illustrate the concept where you will find no difference with the above example except XML configuration file has been changed.

Example - Autowiring Beans By Type

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;
   private String name;
   
   public void setSpellChecker( SpellChecker spellChecker ){
      this.spellChecker = spellChecker;
   }
   public SpellChecker getSpellChecker() {
      return spellChecker;
   }
   public void setName(String name) {
      this.name = name;
   }
   public String getName() {
      return name;
   }
   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 in normal condition

<?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">
      <property name = "spellChecker" ref = "spellChecker" />
      <property name = "name" value = "Generic Text Editor" />
   </bean>

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

</beans>

Beans.xml

But if you are going to use autowiring 'byType', then your XML configuration file will become as follows −

<?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" autowire = "byType">
      <property name = "name" value = "Generic Text Editor" />
   </bean>

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

</beans>

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 checkSpelling.