Spring @Autowired annotation is used for automatic dependency injection. Spring framework is built on dependency injection and we inject the class dependencies through spring bean configuration file.
Starting with Spring 2.5, the framework introduced annotations-driven Dependency Injection. The main annotation of this feature is @Autowired. It allows Spring to resolve and inject collaborating beans into our bean.
@Bean is just for the metadata definition to create the bean(equivalent to tag). @Autowired is to inject the dependancy into a bean(equivalent to ref XML tag/attribute).
Inversion of control means the program delegates control to someone else who will drive the flow IOC (Inversion of control) is a general parent term while DI (Dependency injection) is a subset of IOC. IOC is a concept where the flow of application is inverted.
It's the same thing. The term "autowiring" comes from the use of the @Autowired annotation, which just a marker annotation for the DI container to inject the dependency. Show activity on this post. There is no difference.
The behaviour of @Autowired annotation is similar to the @Inject annotation. The only difference is that the @Autowired annotation is part of the Spring framework. This annotation has the same execution paths as the @Inject annotation, listed in order of precedence: Match by Type.
If the design is such that application behaviors are based on implementations of an interface or an abstract class, and these behaviors are used throughout the application, then we can use either the @Inject or @Autowired annotation.
There is no difference. When the concept was new, there were several names used, and "dependency injection" ended up becoming the most common. Spring's configuration system used "autowire", and that's stuck around there, and the GoF term "inversion of control" is sometimes used, usually in a more academic setting. They're all synonyms.
Short answer: Dependency Injection is a design pattern, and @autowired is a mechanism for implementing it.
The DI idea is that, instead of your object creating an object it needs (say by using new to instantiate it), this needed object - a dependency - is handed to your object, typically using the constructor or a setter method. If you autowire, you're injecting a dependancy. In this case, Spring uses reflection to make this work, so you're not using the constructor or a setter method, but you're still injecting the dependency.
To answer question 2, its your choice. Personally, I find the XML configuration files cumbersome and use annotations whenever I can. You can accomplish whatever configuration you need to do either way.
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