Injection with @Resource

Spring also supports injection by using the JSR-250 @Resource annotation (jakarta.annotation.Resource) on fields or bean property setter methods. This is a common pattern in Jakarta EE: for example, in JSF-managed beans and JAX-WS endpoints. Spring supports this pattern for Spring-managed objects as well.

@Resource takes a name attribute. By default, Spring interprets that value as the bean name to be injected. In other words, it follows by-name semantics, as demonstrated in the following example:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

public class SimpleMovieLister {

	private MovieFinder movieFinder;

	@Resource(name="myMovieFinder") (1)
	public void setMovieFinder(MovieFinder movieFinder) {
		this.movieFinder = movieFinder;
	}
}
1 This line injects a @Resource.
class SimpleMovieLister {

	@Resource(name="myMovieFinder") (1)
	private lateinit var movieFinder:MovieFinder
}
1 This line injects a @Resource.

If no name is explicitly specified, the default name is derived from the field name or setter method. In case of a field, it takes the field name. In case of a setter method, it takes the bean property name. The following example is going to have the bean named movieFinder injected into its setter method:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

public class SimpleMovieLister {

	private MovieFinder movieFinder;

	@Resource
	public void setMovieFinder(MovieFinder movieFinder) {
		this.movieFinder = movieFinder;
	}
}
class SimpleMovieLister {

	@set:Resource
	private lateinit var movieFinder: MovieFinder

}
The name provided with the annotation is resolved as a bean name by the ApplicationContext of which the CommonAnnotationBeanPostProcessor is aware. The names can be resolved through JNDI if you configure Spring’s SimpleJndiBeanFactory explicitly. However, we recommend that you rely on the default behavior and use Spring’s JNDI lookup capabilities to preserve the level of indirection.

In the exclusive case of @Resource usage with no explicit name specified, and similar to @Autowired, @Resource finds a primary type match instead of a specific named bean and resolves well known resolvable dependencies: the BeanFactory, ApplicationContext, ResourceLoader, ApplicationEventPublisher, and MessageSource interfaces.

Thus, in the following example, the customerPreferenceDao field first looks for a bean named "customerPreferenceDao" and then falls back to a primary type match for the type CustomerPreferenceDao:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

public class MovieRecommender {

	@Resource
	private CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao;

	@Resource
	private ApplicationContext context; (1)

	public MovieRecommender() {
	}

	// ...
}
1 The context field is injected based on the known resolvable dependency type: ApplicationContext.
class MovieRecommender {

	@Resource
	private lateinit var customerPreferenceDao: CustomerPreferenceDao


	@Resource
	private lateinit var context: ApplicationContext (1)

	// ...
}
1 The context field is injected based on the known resolvable dependency type: ApplicationContext.