How to autowire a bean inside a class that is not a configured bean?

Question

Forgive me if I don't get the terminology correct.

My situation is thus:

I have a class, let's call it TheClass. Inside this class is a TheData object.

I have XML to set up the TheData bean, like so:

<bean id="theData" class="com.abc.TheData">
        <property name="field" value="value1" />

    </bean>

and a setter inside TheClass like so:

public void setTheData(TheData theData)
{
     this.theData = theData;
}

My problem is that if I don't also create the TheClass bean in the XML (and thus can't let it get autowired), it won't know to autowire the theData field (right?). And due to certain restrictions, I can't configure TheClass in the XML (and thus later have it autowired). So, my question is, how can I make this work? I'm a bit of a novice so if I'm missing something, feel free to point it out.

Answer 1

If you can get hold of the Spring context, cast it to AutowireCapableBeanFactory, and pass your instance of TheClass to the autowireBean(Object) method. Spring will then try to apply its autowiring rules to that object.

You'd need to add @Autowired to the setTheData method, though.

Answer 2

You could use @Resource or @Component.

Answer 3

I just now saw this question and thought I might add one more method of doing what you want (although the AutowireCapableBeanFactory would be my choice). You can leverage the @Configurable annotation in the manner that is described in this blog post

Answer 4

You should be able to just use the @Autowired annotation on your instance variable that your setter is setting, without having to declare a TheClass bean in your XML. That is:

public class TheClass {
  @Autowired
  private TheData theData;
}