How to use spring annotations like #Autowired in kotlin? - spring

Question

Is it possible to do something like following in Kotlin?
#Autowired
internal var mongoTemplate: MongoTemplate
#Autowired
internal var solrClient: SolrClient

Answer 1

Recommended approach to do Dependency Injection in Spring is constructor injection:
#Component
class YourBean(
private val mongoTemplate: MongoTemplate,
private val solrClient: SolrClient
) {
// code
}
Prior to Spring 4.3 constructor should be explicitly annotated with Autowired:
#Component
class YourBean #Autowired constructor(
private val mongoTemplate: MongoTemplate,
private val solrClient: SolrClient
) {
// code
}
In rare cases, you might like to use field injection, and you can do it with the help of lateinit:
#Component
class YourBean {
#Autowired
private lateinit var mongoTemplate: MongoTemplate
#Autowired
private lateinit var solrClient: SolrClient
}
Constructor injection checks all dependencies at bean creation time and all injected fields is val, at other hand lateinit injected fields can be only var, and have little runtime overhead. And to test class with constructor, you don't need reflection.
Links:
Documentation on lateinit
Documentation on constructors
Developing Spring Boot applications with Kotlin

Answer 2

Yes, java annotations are supported in Kotlin mostly as in Java.
One gotcha is annotations on the primary constructor requires the explicit 'constructor' keyword:
From https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/annotations.html
If you need to annotate the primary constructor of a class, you need to add the constructor keyword to the constructor declaration, and add the annotations before it:
class Foo #Inject constructor(dependency: MyDependency) {
// ...
}

Answer 3

You can also autowire dependencies through the constructor. Remember to annotate your dependencies with #Configuration, #Component, #Service etc
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component
#Component
class Foo (private val dependency: MyDependency) {
//...
}

Answer 4

like that
#Component class Girl( #Autowired var outfit: Outfit)

Answer 5

If you want property injection but don't like lateinit var, here is my solution using property delegate:
private lateinit var ctx: ApplicationContext
#Component
private class CtxVarConfigurer : ApplicationContextAware {
override fun setApplicationContext(context: ApplicationContext) {
ctx = context
}
}
inline fun <reified T : Any> autowired(name: String? = null) = Autowired(T::class.java, name)
class Autowired<T : Any>(private val javaType: Class<T>, private val name: String?) {
private val value by lazy {
if (name == null) {
ctx.getBean(javaType)
} else {
ctx.getBean(name, javaType)
}
}
operator fun getValue(thisRef: Any?, property: KProperty<*>): T = value
}
Then you can use the much better by delegate syntax:
#Service
class MyService {
private val serviceToBeInjected: ServiceA by autowired()
private val ambiguousBean: AmbiguousService by autowired("qualifier")
}