Using Spring 3 autowire in a standalone Java application

Question

Here is my code:

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Main p = new Main();
        p.start(args);
    }

    @Autowired
    private MyBean myBean;
    private void start(String[] args) {
        ApplicationContext context = 
            new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("META-INF/config.xml");
        System.out.println("my beans method: " + myBean.getStr());
    }
}

@Service 
public class MyBean {
    public String getStr() {
        return "string";
    }
}

---

<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-3.0.xsd
     http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
     http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd"> 
    <context:annotation-config /> 
    <context:component-scan base-package="mypackage"/>
</beans>

Why doesn't this work? I get NullPointerException. Is it possible to use autowiring in a standalone application?

Answer 1

Spring works in standalone application. You are using the wrong way to create a spring bean. The correct way to do it like this:

@Component
public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        ApplicationContext context = 
            new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("META-INF/config.xml");

        Main p = context.getBean(Main.class);
        p.start(args);
    }

    @Autowired
    private MyBean myBean;
    private void start(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("my beans method: " + myBean.getStr());
    }
}

@Service 
public class MyBean {
    public String getStr() {
        return "string";
    }
}

In the first case (the one in the question), you are creating the object by yourself, rather than getting it from the Spring context. So Spring does not get a chance to Autowire the dependencies (which causes the NullPointerException).

In the second case (the one in this answer), you get the bean from the Spring context and hence it is Spring managed and Spring takes care of autowiring.