Spring 3 and JSR-330 @Inject and @Named example
Since Spring 3.0, Spring supports for the standard JSR 330: Dependency Injection for Java. In Spring 3 application, you can uses standard
@Injectinstead of Spring’s@Autowiredto inject a bean.@Namedinstead of Spring’s@Componentto declare a bean.
Those JSR-330 standard annotations are scanned and retrieved the same way as Spring annotations, the integration just happened automatically, as long as the following jar in your classpath.
<dependency> <groupId>javax.inject</groupId> <artifactId>javax.inject</artifactId> <version>1</version> </dependency>
1. Spring Annotations
Let see a normal Spring’s annotation example – @Autowired and @Component
P.S @Component, @Repository and @Service are same, just declares a bean in Spring Ioc context.
package com.mkyong.customer.dao; import org.springframework.stereotype.Repository; @Repository public class CustomerDAO { public void save() { System.out.println("CustomerDAO save method..."); } }
package com.mkyong.customer.services; import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired; import org.springframework.stereotype.Service; import com.mkyong.customer.dao.CustomerDAO; @Service public class CustomerService { @Autowired CustomerDAO customerDAO; public void save() { System.out.println("CustomerService save method..."); customerDAO.save(); } }
2. JSR-330 Annotations
Basically, it works the same, just with different annotations – @Inject and @Named.
package com.mkyong.customer.dao; import javax.inject.Named; @Named public class CustomerDAO { public void save() { System.out.println("CustomerDAO save method..."); } }
package com.mkyong.customer.services; import javax.inject.Inject; import javax.inject.Named; import com.mkyong.customer.dao.CustomerDAO; @Named public class CustomerService { @Inject CustomerDAO customerDAO; public void save() { System.out.println("CustomerService save method..."); customerDAO.save(); } }
3. Run it
Both Spring and JSR330 annotations need component scan to works.
<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-3.1.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.1.xsd"> <context:component-scan base-package="com.mkyong.customer" /> </beans>
package com.mkyong; import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext; import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext; import com.mkyong.customer.services.CustomerService; public class App { public static void main( String[] args ) { ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(new String[] {"Spring-AutoScan.xml"}); CustomerService cust = (CustomerService)context.getBean("customerService"); cust.save(); } }
Above two examples are generated the same output
CustomerService save method... CustomerDAO save method...
4. JSR-330 Limitations
There are some limitations on JSR-330 if compare to Spring :
@Injecthas no “required” attribute to make sure the bean is injected successful.- In Spring container, JSR-330 has scope singleton by default, but you can use Spring’s
@Scopeto define others. - No equivalent to Spring’s
@Value,@Requiredor@Lazy.
Check out this Spring references.
5. Go for JSR-330
In fact, Spring’s annotations are more powerful, but only available on Spring framework. The JSR-330 is a standard spec, and it’s supported on all J2ee environment that follow the JSR-330 spec.
For new or migration project, it’s always recommended to use JSR-330 annotations, and remember, it works on Spring 3 as well.

Hi,
In my DAO I have
and in managedbean I have
but when I run my application I am getting
How can I resolve this issue?
Thanks
If things are indeed in Spring as you put them, then there is a BIG difference from CDI annotation interpretation.
In CDI, by default all classes are assumed to be “injectable”, the @Named annotation being used only when a bean of that class has to be accessible in some EL-context (like jsp, jsf, etc). Otherwise, injection is Typed-based, not named-based.
So, in order to inject some User instance into o class, you just use @Inject User user, without the need for the User class to have the @Named annotation.
When using JSR-330, why not go for typesafe javax.inject.Qualifier-based custom annotations?
For simple injection, @Named and @Inject are enough.