#Autowired notation is not working as expected - spring

Question

#SpringBootApplication
public class MainApplication {
#Autowired
static BibliographyIndexer bi;
public static void main(String[] args) {
SpringApplication.run(MainApplication.class, args);
bi.reindex();
}
}
#Repository
public class BibliographyIndexer {
...
}
Whenever I access the properties of bi I get a NullPointerException. I know the #Autowired notation didn't work. But why?
Note: both classes are under the same package.
Additional question: Since I want to run a method upon the start of the spring application. Is this the best approach since #pepevalbe's answer already gave me the workaround I needed. Is there another way to run a method upon the start of the spring application?

Answer 1

Because you can't #Autorwire an static class. It doesn't get initialized so you get a NPE when trying to use it.
There are workarounds to wire a bean into a static class, but it is strongly discouraged.
EDIT:
If you need to execute code after initilization you could add an event listener:
#SpringBootApplication
public class MainApplication {
#Autowired
BibliographyIndexer bi;
public static void main(String[] args) {
SpringApplication.run(MainApplication.class, args);
}
#EventListener(ApplicationReadyEvent.class)
public void doAfterStartUp() {
bi.reindex();
}
}

Answer 2

There are several reasons #Autowired might not work.
When a new instance is created not by Spring but by for example manually calling a constructor, the instance of the class will not be registered in the Spring context and thus not available for dependency injection. Also when you use #Autowired in the class of which you created a new instance, the Spring context will not be known to it and thus most likely this will also fail.
Another reason can be that the class you want to use #Autowired in, is not picked up by the ComponentScan. This can basically be because of two reasons.
The package is outside the ComponentScan search path. Move the package to a scanned location or configure the ComponentScan to fix this.
The class in which you want to use #Autowired does not have a Spring annotation. Add one of the following annotatons to the class: #Component, #Repository, #Service, #Controller, #Configuration. They have different behaviors so choose carefully........

Answer 3

Your problem is that you cannot use bi in main because main is static.
Making bi static doesn't help because static fields will not be #Autowired (It is possible but does not make sense in the concepts of Dependency Injection).
Remove static and move bi.reindex() to a new method annotated with #PostConstruct. It will be executed after the MainApplication-bean is fully initialized and here you can use your injected bi.

Answer 4

In main method you can refer to context and from it get access to bean BibliographyIndexer. In static main spring can not creates and injects bean so this is how you can get it from context.
public static void main(String[] args) {
ApplicationContext context = SpringApplication.run(MainApplication.class, args);
BibliographyIndexer bibliographyIndexer = context.getBean(BibliographyIndexer.class);
bibliographyIndexer.reindex();
}
You can also do as in answer from pepevalbe and execute this code after initialization.