NoSuchBeanDefinitionException autowiring to collection with no matching types [SPR-6777]

[spring-projects-issues]

Scott Andrews opened SPR-6777 and commented

When autowiring to a collection, if there are no beans that match the collection's type, a NoSuchBeanDefinitionException is thrown saying at least one matching bean is required. In this case, I would rather have an empty list injected then the container fail to initialize.

@Autowired
public void setFoo(List<Foo> foo) {
  assert foo.isEmpty();
}

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Affects: 3.0 GA

Issue Links:

• Support injection of collection-typed beans using @Autowired+@Qualifier or @Inject+@Named [SPR-8519] #13164 Support injection of collection-typed beans using @Autowired+@Qualifier or @Inject+@Named

[spring-projects-issues]

Juergen Hoeller commented

Scott, you'll need to use @Autowired(required = false) if you are willing to accept an empty collection there. Semantically, plain @Autowired implies that there is something found for autowiring at least - when used on a regular bean reference and also when used on a collection of bean references.

Juergen