Spring @Autowired for setter methods vs non-setter methods

Question

According to @Autowired javadoc:

Marks a constructor, field, setter method or config method as to be autowired by Spring\'s dependency injection facili

Answer 1

Config-method in this context refers to methods that you would specify under init-method or @PostConstruct

Setter as you already know is like setXXX

So obviously there is no difficulty in finding which is which. At the same time note that spring can not autowire based on parameter names.

Answer 2

A config method is a factory-like method, which in this case would get the paramaters autowired:

@Autowired
public SomeObject initSomeObject(Object1 o1, Object2 o2, ...) {

@Autowired merely ensures that Spring will (attempt to) provide the needed parameters.

Answer 3

@Autowired annotation can be used with constructor, setter method or just any other method. Whenever Spring finds @Autowired annotation it will try to find beans matching to method parameters and will invoke that method. If multiple methods (setter or non-setter) have @Autowired annotation, all will be invoked by Spring after bean instantiation.