We will start with What Dependency injection is and then discuss various form of Dependency injection.
Dependency injection is a process in which objects define their dependencies i.e. other objects they require to work, through a constructor, setter methods, factory methods. The container responsibility is to inject those while creating beans. With Dependency inject in place, we have cleaner code and clear way of decoupling. There are two prominent variants of Dependency Injection.
When you express your dependencies through constructor arguments and your container invoke your constructor with number of arguments, type of arguments expected by the constructor. Let's jump to one quick example.
@Component
public class ConstructorBasedFileParser {
private Parser parser;
@Autowired
public ConstructorBasedFileParser(Parser parser) {
this.parser = parser;
}
public void setParser(Parser parser) {
this.parser = parser;
}
public void parseFile(File file) {
if (parser.canParse(file)) {
parser.parse(file);
}
}
}In the above code snippet, ConstructorBasedFileParser is a component which express its dependency on Parser through constructor using @Autowired annotation.
Configuration class for the above code snippet looks like this.
@Configuration
@Import(value = ParserConfig.class)
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "com.gauravbytes.di.parser.constructor")
public class ConstructorBasedDIConfig {
}@Configuration declares it as Spring Configuration file. @ComponentScan is used along with Configuration classes to scan for components. @Import imports the one or more Configuration classes. It is equivalent to <import/>.
Setter based dependency injection is accomplished by calling setter methods on beans after invoking no-args constructor by the container. Let's jump to example to see how to use setter method dependency injection.
@Component
public class SetterBasedFileParser {
private Parser parser;
public SetterBasedFileParser() {
}
@Autowired
public void setParser(Parser parser) {
this.parser = parser;
}
public void parseFile(File file) {
if (parser.canParse(file)) {
parser.parse(file);
}
}
}In above code snippet, SetterBasedFileParser is a component class which expresses its dependency through setter method setParser() using @Autowired annotation.
Per se Spring documentation, use constructor-based DI for mandatory dependencies and setter-based DI for optional dependencies. It is advisable to use constructor-based DI. It makes your classes as Immutable object and also ensured that required dependencies are met before constructing that bean. Also, if you want to reconfigure your bean, then use setter-based DI.
Circular dependencies
There could be a case when your open bean say A is dependent on B and B is dependent on bean A (Both expressing dependencies through constructor). Spring IoC container will detect this at runtime and will throw
BeanCurrentlyInCreationException.Possible solution is to use setter based injection in some of beans.
I hope you find this post useful. You can get the full example code from Github.