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Fine-tuning Annotation-based Autowiring with `@Primary` or `@Fallback`

Because autowiring by type may lead to multiple candidates, it is often necessary to have more control over the selection process. One way to accomplish this is with Spring’s @Primary annotation. @Primary indicates that a particular bean should be given preference when multiple beans are candidates to be autowired to a single-valued dependency. If exactly one primary bean exists among the candidates, it becomes the autowired value.

Consider the following configuration that defines firstMovieCatalog as the primary MovieCatalog:

Java
Kotlin

@Configuration
public class MovieConfiguration {

	@Bean
	@Primary
	public MovieCatalog firstMovieCatalog() { ... }

	@Bean
	public MovieCatalog secondMovieCatalog() { ... }

	// ...
}

@Configuration
class MovieConfiguration {

	@Bean
	@Primary
	fun firstMovieCatalog(): MovieCatalog { ... }

	@Bean
	fun secondMovieCatalog(): MovieCatalog { ... }

	// ...
}

Alternatively, as of 6.2, there is a @Fallback annotation for demarcating any beans other than the regular ones to be injected. If only one regular bean is left, it is effectively primary as well:

Java
Kotlin

@Configuration
public class MovieConfiguration {

	@Bean
	public MovieCatalog firstMovieCatalog() { ... }

	@Bean
	@Fallback
	public MovieCatalog secondMovieCatalog() { ... }

	// ...
}

@Configuration
class MovieConfiguration {

	@Bean
	fun firstMovieCatalog(): MovieCatalog { ... }

	@Bean
	@Fallback
	fun secondMovieCatalog(): MovieCatalog { ... }

	// ...
}

With both variants of the preceding configuration, the following MovieRecommender is autowired with the firstMovieCatalog:

Java
Kotlin

public class MovieRecommender {

	@Autowired
	private MovieCatalog movieCatalog;

	// ...
}

class MovieRecommender {

	@Autowired
	private lateinit var movieCatalog: MovieCatalog

	// ...
}

The corresponding bean definitions follow:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
		https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
		http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
		https://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

	<context:annotation-config/>

	<bean class="example.SimpleMovieCatalog" primary="true">
		<!-- inject any dependencies required by this bean -->
	</bean>

	<bean class="example.SimpleMovieCatalog">
		<!-- inject any dependencies required by this bean -->
	</bean>

	<bean id="movieRecommender" class="example.MovieRecommender"/>

</beans>

Fine-tuning Annotation-based Autowiring with @Primary or @Fallback

Fine-tuning Annotation-based Autowiring with `@Primary` or `@Fallback`