Instantiating multiple beans of the same class with Spring annotations

Inspired by wax's answer, the implementation can be safer and not skip other post-processing if definitions are added, not constructed singletons:

public interface MultiBeanFactory<T> {  // N.B. should not implement FactoryBean
  T getObject(String name) throws Exception;
  Class<?> getObjectType();
  Collection<String> getNames();
}

public class MultiBeanFactoryPostProcessor implements BeanFactoryPostProcessor {
  public void postProcessBeanFactory(ConfigurableListableBeanFactory beanFactory) throws BeansException {
    BeanDefinitionRegistry registry = (BeanDefinitionRegistry) beanFactory;
    Map<String, MultiBeanFactory> factories = beanFactory.getBeansOfType(MultiBeanFactory.class);

    for (Map.Entry<String, MultiBeanFactory> entry : factories.entrySet()) {
      MultiBeanFactory factoryBean = entry.getValue();
      for (String name : factoryBean.getNames()) {
        BeanDefinition definition = BeanDefinitionBuilder
            .genericBeanDefinition(factoryBean.getObjectType())
            .setScope(BeanDefinition.SCOPE_SINGLETON)
            .setFactoryMethod("getObject")
            .addConstructorArgValue(name)
            .getBeanDefinition();
        definition.setFactoryBeanName(entry.getKey());
        registry.registerBeanDefinition(entry.getKey() + "_" + name, definition);
      }
    }
  }
}

@Configuration
public class Config {
  @Bean
  public static MultiBeanFactoryPostProcessor() {
    return new MultiBeanFactoryPostProcessor();
  }

  @Bean
  public MultiBeanFactory<Person> personFactory() {
    return new MultiBeanFactory<Person>() {
      public Person getObject(String name) throws Exception {
        // ...
      }
      public Class<?> getObjectType() {
        return Person.class;
      }
      public Collection<String> getNames() {
        return Arrays.asList("Joe Smith", "Mary Williams");
      }
    };
  }
}

The bean names could still come from anywhere, such as wax's @Qualifier example. There are various other properties on the bean definition, including the ability to inherit from the factory itself.

I just had to solve a similar case. This may work if you can redefine the class.

// This is not a @Component
public class Person {

}

@Component
public PersonOne extends Person {
   public PersonOne() {
       super("Joe", "Smith");
   }
}

@Component
public PersonTwo extends Person {
   public PersonTwo() {
    super("Mary","Williams");
   }
}

Then just use PersonOne or PersonTwo whenever you need to autowire a specific instance, everywhere else just use Person.

Yes, you can do it with a help of your custom BeanFactoryPostProcessor implementation.

Here is a simple example.

Suppose we have two components. One is dependency for another.

First component:

import org.springframework.beans.factory.InitializingBean;
import org.springframework.util.Assert;

 public class MyFirstComponent implements InitializingBean{

    private MySecondComponent asd;

    private MySecondComponent qwe;

    public void afterPropertiesSet() throws Exception {
        Assert.notNull(asd);
        Assert.notNull(qwe);
    }

    public void setAsd(MySecondComponent asd) {
        this.asd = asd;
    }

    public void setQwe(MySecondComponent qwe) {
        this.qwe = qwe;
    }
}

As you could see, there is nothing special about this component. It has dependency on two different instances of MySecondComponent.

Second component:

import org.springframework.beans.factory.FactoryBean;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Qualifier;


@Qualifier(value = "qwe, asd")
public class MySecondComponent implements FactoryBean {

    public Object getObject() throws Exception {
        return new MySecondComponent();
    }

    public Class getObjectType() {
        return MySecondComponent.class;
    }

    public boolean isSingleton() {
        return true;
    }
}

It's a bit more tricky. Here are two things to explain. First one - @Qualifier - annotation which contains names of MySecondComponent beans. It's a standard one, but you are free to implement your own. You'll see a bit later why.

Second thing to mention is FactoryBean implementation. If bean implements this interface, it's intended to create some other instances. In our case it creates instances with MySecondComponent type.

The trickiest part is BeanFactoryPostProcessor implementation:

import java.util.Map;

import org.springframework.beans.BeansException;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Qualifier;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanFactoryPostProcessor;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.config.ConfigurableListableBeanFactory;


public class MyBeanFactoryPostProcessor implements BeanFactoryPostProcessor {
    public void postProcessBeanFactory(ConfigurableListableBeanFactory configurableListableBeanFactory) throws BeansException {
        Map<String, Object> map =  configurableListableBeanFactory.getBeansWithAnnotation(Qualifier.class);
        for(Map.Entry<String,Object> entry : map.entrySet()){
            createInstances(configurableListableBeanFactory, entry.getKey(), entry.getValue());
        }

    }

    private void createInstances(
            ConfigurableListableBeanFactory configurableListableBeanFactory,
            String beanName,
            Object bean){
        Qualifier qualifier = bean.getClass().getAnnotation(Qualifier.class);
        for(String name : extractNames(qualifier)){
            Object newBean = configurableListableBeanFactory.getBean(beanName);
            configurableListableBeanFactory.registerSingleton(name.trim(), newBean);
        }
    }

    private String[] extractNames(Qualifier qualifier){
        return qualifier.value().split(",");
    }
}

What does it do? It goes through all beans annotated with @Qualifier, extract names from the annotation and then manually creates beans of this type with specified names.

Here is a Spring config:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">

    <bean class="MyBeanFactoryPostProcessor"/>

    <bean class="MySecondComponent"/>


    <bean name="test" class="MyFirstComponent">
        <property name="asd" ref="asd"/>
        <property name="qwe" ref="qwe"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

Last thing to notice here is although you can do it you shouldn't unless it is a must, because this is a not really natural way of configuration. If you have more than one instance of class, it's better to stick with XML configuration.

It's not possible. You get a duplicate exception.

It's also far from optimal with configuration data like this in your implementation classes.

If you want to use annotations, you can configure your class with Java config:

@Configuration
public class PersonConfig {

    @Bean
    public Person personOne() {
        return new Person("Joe", "Smith");
    }

    @Bean
    public Person personTwo() {
        return new Person("Mary", "Williams");
    }
}