3.1 Defining Beans

A bean is an object that has its lifecycle controlled by the Micronaut IoC container. That lifecycle may include creation, execution, and destruction. Micronaut implements the JSR-330 (javax.inject) - Dependency Injection for Java specification hence to use Micronaut you simply use the annotations provided by javax.inject.

The following is a simple example:

public interface Engine { (1)
    int getCylinders();
    String start();
}
@Singleton(2)
public class V8Engine implements Engine {
    @Override
    public String start() {
        return "Starting V8";
    }
    @Override
    public int getCylinders() {
        return cylinders;
    }
    public void setCylinders(int cylinders) {
        this.cylinders = cylinders;
    }
    private int cylinders = 8;
}
@Singleton
public class Vehicle {
    private final Engine engine;
    public Vehicle(Engine engine) {(3)
        this.engine = engine;
    }
    public String start() {
        return engine.start();
    }
}

interface Engine { (1)
    int getCylinders()
    String start()
}
@Singleton (2)
class V8Engine implements Engine {
    int cylinders = 8
    @Override
    String start() {
        "Starting V8"
    }
}
@Singleton
class Vehicle {
    final Engine engine
    Vehicle(Engine engine) { (3)
        this.engine = engine
    }
    String start() {
        engine.start()
    }
}

interface Engine {
    (1)
    val cylinders: Int
    fun start(): String
}
@Singleton(2)
class V8Engine : Engine {
    override var cylinders = 8
    override fun start(): String {
        return "Starting V8"
    }
}
@Singleton
class Vehicle(private val engine: Engine)(3)
{
    fun start(): String {
        return engine.start()
    }
}

To perform dependency injection simply run the BeanContext using the run() method and lookup a bean using getBean(Class), as per the following example:

final BeanContext context = BeanContext.run();
Vehicle vehicle = context.getBean(Vehicle.class);
System.out.println(vehicle.start());

def context = BeanContext.run()
Vehicle vehicle = context.getBean(Vehicle)
println( vehicle.start() )

val context = BeanContext.run()
val vehicle = context.getBean(Vehicle::class.java)
println(vehicle.start())

Micronaut will automatically discover dependency injection metadata on the classpath and wire the beans together according to injection points you define.

Micronaut supports the following types of dependency injection:

• Constructor injection (must be one public constructor or a single contructor annotated with @Inject)

• Field injection

• JavaBean property injection

• Method parameter injection