Autowired without component scan or setter/getter

Question

Is it possible to @Autowired a field

@Repository( "categoryDao" )
public class SomeDaoImpl implements SomeDao {
   @Autowired
   private SessionFactory sessionFactory;
   ...
}

without using setter/getter or *component scan ?

I have a config

<bean id="categoryDao" class="com.example.dao.SomeDaoImpl">
    <property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory"></property>
</bean>

<bean id="sessionFactory"
        class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
    ...
</bean>

Answer 1

You can use constructor injection instead, so something like

@Repository( "categoryDao" )
public class SomeDaoImpl implements SomeDao {

   private SessionFactory sessionFactory;

   @Autowired
   public SomeDaoImpl(SessionFactory sessionFactory) {
     this.sessionFactory = sessionFactory;
   }
   ...
}

There's a good discussion about the different types of injection, with a lot of refernce links available here

UPDATE after comment

Now that you explained, you should not change your code on accout of test. In your case you should use a test specific XML context, but reduce the packages being scanned to just enough

Also a handy construct is that inside your test context xml, you can redifine some injected beans by instantiating it first and using context:exclude-filter property, usefull for mocking, an example snippet

<!--Mock object -->
<bean id="beanDAO" name="beanDAO" class="org.mockito.Mockito" factory-method="mock">
    <constructor-arg value="your.package.BeanDAO"/>
</bean>

<context:component-scan base-package="your.package">
    <context:exclude-filter type="regex" expression="your\.package\.Bean*"/>
</context:component-scan>