Spring: @Required Annotation example

@Required annotation applied on bean property methods. It makes sure that bean property must be populated at configuration time, through an explicit property value in a bean definition or through autowiring.

Author.java

package com.sample.pojo;

public class Author{
 private String firstName;
 private String lastName;
 private String dateOfBirth;
 private String country;

 public String getFirstName() {
  return firstName;
 }

 public void setFirstName(String firstName) {
  this.firstName = firstName;
 }

 public String getLastName() {
  return lastName;
 }

 public void setLastName(String lastName) {
  this.lastName = lastName;
 }

 public String getDateOfBirth() {
  return dateOfBirth;
 }

 public void setDateOfBirth(String dateOfBirth) {
  this.dateOfBirth = dateOfBirth;
 }

 public String getCountry() {
  return country;
 }

 public void setCountry(String country) {
  this.country = country;
 }

 @Override
 public String toString() {
  StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
  builder.append("Author [firstName=").append(firstName).append(", lastName=").append(lastName)
    .append(", dateOfBirth=").append(dateOfBirth).append(", country=").append(country).append("]");
  return builder.toString();
 }

}

Book.java

package com.sample.pojo;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Required;

public class Book {
 private String title;
 private int noOfPages;
 private float price;
 private Author author;

 public String getTitle() {
  return title;
 }

 public void setTitle(String title) {
  this.title = title;
 }

 public int getNoOfPages() {
  return noOfPages;
 }

 public void setNoOfPages(int noOfPages) {
  this.noOfPages = noOfPages;
 }

 public float getPrice() {
  return price;
 }

 public void setPrice(float price) {
  this.price = price;
 }

 public Author getAuthor() {
  return author;
 }

 @Required
 public void setAuthor(Author author) {
  this.author = author;
 }

 @Override
 public String toString() {
  StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
  builder.append("Book [title=").append(title).append(", noOfPages=").append(noOfPages).append(", price=")
    .append(price).append(", author=").append(author).append("]");
  return builder.toString();
 }

}

Notify ‘setAuthor’ method, it is annotated with @Required annotation. Application must provide the author reference at the time of Book bean initialization.

myConfiguration.xml

<?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
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

 <context:annotation-config />

 <bean id="osho" class="com.sample.pojo.Author">
  <property name="firstName" value="Chandra Mohan" />
  <property name="lastName" value="Jain" />
  <property name="dateOfBirth" value="11 December 1931" />
  <property name="country" value="India" />
 </bean>

 <bean id="book1" class="com.sample.pojo.Book">
  <property name="title" value="Vedanta An Art of Dying" />
  <property name="noOfPages" value="164" />
  <property name="price" value="90" />
  <property name="author" ref="osho" />
 </bean>

</beans>

HelloWorld.java

package com.sample.test;

import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;

import com.sample.pojo.Book;

public class HelloWorld {
 public static void main(String args[]) {
  ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(new String[] { "myConfiguration.xml" });

  Book book = context.getBean("book1", Book.class);

  System.out.println(book);

  ((ClassPathXmlApplicationContext) context).close();
 }
}

Run ‘HelloWorld.java’, you can able to see following output.

Book [title=Vedanta An Art of Dying, noOfPages=164, price=90.0, author=Author [firstName=Chandra Mohan, lastName=Jain, dateOfBirth=11 December 1931, country=India]]

To confirm the usage of Required annotation, Remove the author property from book1 bean definition.

         <bean id="book1" class="com.sample.pojo.Book">

                 <property name="title" value="Vedanta An Art of Dying" />

                 <property name="noOfPages" value="164" />

                 <property name="price" value="90" />

         </bean>

Update myConfiguration.xml file like below.

myConfiguration.xml

<?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
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

 <context:annotation-config />

 <bean id="osho" class="com.sample.pojo.Author">
  <property name="firstName" value="Chandra Mohan" />
  <property name="lastName" value="Jain" />
  <property name="dateOfBirth" value="11 December 1931" />
  <property name="country" value="India" />
 </bean>

 <bean id="book1" class="com.sample.pojo.Book">
  <property name="title" value="Vedanta An Art of Dying" />
  <property name="noOfPages" value="164" />
  <property name="price" value="90" />
 </bean>

</beans>

Re run ‘HelloWorld.java’, you can able to see following error in console.

log4j:WARN No appenders could be found for logger (org.springframework.core.env.StandardEnvironment).
log4j:WARN Please initialize the log4j system properly.
log4j:WARN See http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/faq.html#noconfig for more info.
Exception in thread "main" org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'book1' defined in class path resource [myConfiguration.xml]: Initialization of bean failed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanInitializationException: Property 'author' is required for bean 'book1'
 at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:553)
 at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:482)
 at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory$1.getObject(AbstractBeanFactory.java:306)
 at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.getSingleton(DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.java:230)
 at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.doGetBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:302)
 at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.getBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:197)
 at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.preInstantiateSingletons(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:751)
 at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.finishBeanFactoryInitialization(AbstractApplicationContext.java:861)
 at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:541)
 at org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.<init>(ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.java:139)
 at org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.<init>(ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.java:93)
 at com.sample.test.HelloWorld.main(HelloWorld.java:10)
Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanInitializationException: Property 'author' is required for bean 'book1'
 at org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.postProcessPropertyValues(RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.java:156)
 at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.populateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1219)
 at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:543)
 ... 11 more

Why do we need @Require annotation?

By specifying the @Required annotation on a property, we can avoid NullPointerException.

Previous                                                 Next                                                 Home