most of the developers has confused about the real use and the purpose of @Bean and @Component annotations. most of them are thinking that they are just two annotations used for same purpose. This is completely wrong idea and those are two different annotations used for two different purposes. lets look at each of their purpose.
@Component
This is a generic annotation and can be applied to any class of the application to make it a spring managed component(simply, generic stereotype for any spring managed component). when the classpath is scanned by the spring’s component-scan (@ComponentScan) feature, it will identify the classes annotated with @Component annotation (within the given package) and create the beans of such classes and register them in the ApplicationContext. @Component is a class level annotation and its purpose it to make the class as spring managed component and auto detectable bean for classpath scanning feature.
if you want to know more about @Component and other stereo type annotations, it is recommended to look at this article.
@Bean
@Bean is used to explicitly declare and register a bean (as a configuration bean) in Spring IOC container that is returned from a method. @Bean is a method level annotation and it is used within a class that is annotated with @Configuration. Simply, @Bean annotation is used to register the bean returned by a method as a spring configuration bean in IOC Container. @Bean is only a method level annotation and it cannot be used with classes and object declaration.
@Bean annotation indicates that a method produces a bean that should be managed by the Spring container.
To declare a bean, simply annotate a method with the @Bean annotation. When JavaConfig encounters such a method, it will execute that method and register the return value as a bean within a ApplicationContext. By default, the bean name will be the same as the method name.The following is a simple example of a @Bean method declaration.
@Configuration
public class ApplicationConfig {
@Bean
public User adminUserProfile()
{
return new User("Chathuranga","Tennakoon");
}
}
I hope that after reading this article, you have got a clear idea about the real purpose and use of @Bean and @Component annotations.
