How to autowire by name in Spring with annotations?

Question

I have several beans of the same class defined:

  @Bean
  public FieldDescriptor fullSpotField() {
     FieldDescriptor ans = new FieldDescriptor("full_spot", String.class);
     return ans;
  }

  @Bean
  public FieldDescriptor annotationIdField() {
     FieldDescriptor ans = new FieldDescriptor("annotationID", Integer.class);
     return ans;
  }

consequently when I autowire them

   @Autowired
   public FieldDescriptor fullSpotField;

   @Autowired
   public FieldDescriptor annotationIdField;

I get an exception

NoUniqueBeanDefinitionException: No qualifying bean of type [...FieldDescriptor] is defined: expected single matching bean but found ...

How to autowire by name as it possible in XML config?

Answer 1

You can use @Qualifier to solve it.

In your case you can make:

 @Bean(name="fullSpot")
 // Not mandatory. If not specified, it takes the method name i.e., "fullSpotField" as qualifier name.
  public FieldDescriptor fullSpotField() {
     FieldDescriptor ans = new FieldDescriptor("full_spot", String.class);
     return ans;
  }

  @Bean("annotationIdSpot")
  // Same as above comment.
  public FieldDescriptor annotationIdField() {
     FieldDescriptor ans = new FieldDescriptor("annotationID", Integer.class);
     return ans;
  }

and subsequently you can inject using:

   @Autowired
   @Qualifier("fullSpot")
   public FieldDescriptor fullSpotField;

   @Autowired
   @Qualifier("annotationIdSpot")
   public FieldDescriptor annotationIdField;