What's the difference between @Component, @Rep

Question

Can @Component, @Repository and @Service annotations be used interchangeably in Spring or do they provide any particular functionality besides acting as a notation device?

In other words, if I have a Service class and I change the annotation from @Service to @Component, will it still behave the same way?

Or does the annotation also influence the behavior and functionality of the class?

Answer 1

Annotate other components with @Component, for example REST Resource classes.

@Component
public class AdressComp{
    .......
    ...//some code here    
}

@Component is a generic stereotype for any Spring managed component.

@Controller, @Service and @Repository are Specializations of @Component for specific use cases.

@Component in Spring

Answer 2

As many of the answers already state what these annotations are used for, we'll here focus on some minor differences among them.

First the Similarity

First point worth highlighting again is that with respect to scan-auto-detection and dependency injection for BeanDefinition all these annotations (viz., @Component, @Service, @Repository, @Controller) are the same. We can use one in place of another and can still get our way around.

---

Differences between @Component, @Repository, @Controller and @Service

@Component

This is a general-purpose stereotype annotation indicating that the class is a spring component.

What’s special about @Component
<context:component-scan> only scans @Component and does not look for @Controller, @Service and @Repository in general. They are scanned because they themselves are annotated with @Component.

Just take a look at @Controller, @Service and @Repository annotation definitions:

@Component
public @interface Service {
    ….
}

 

@Component
public @interface Repository {
    ….
}

 

@Component
public @interface Controller {
    …
}

Thus, it’s not wrong to say that @Controller, @Service and @Repository are special types of @Component annotation. <context:component-scan> picks them up and registers their following classes as beans, just as if they were annotated with @Component.

They are scanned because they themselves are annotated with @Component annotation. If we define our own custom annotation and annotate it with @Component, then it will also get scanned with <context:component-scan>

---

@Repository

This is to indicate that the class defines a data repository.

What’s special about @Repository?

In addition to pointing out that this is an Annotation based Configuration, @Repository’s job is to catch Platform specific exceptions and re-throw them as one of Spring’s unified unchecked exception. And for this, we’re provided with PersistenceExceptionTranslationPostProcessor, that we are required to add in our Spring’s application context like this:

<bean class="org.springframework.dao.annotation.PersistenceExceptionTranslationPostProcessor"/>

This bean post processor adds an advisor to any bean that’s annotated with @Repository so that any platform-specific exceptions are caught and then rethrown as one of Spring’s unchecked data access exceptions.

---

@Controller

The @Controller annotation indicates that a particular class serves the role of a controller. The @Controller annotation acts as a stereotype for the annotated class, indicating its role.

What’s special about @Controller?

We cannot switch this annotation with any other like @Service or @Repository, even though they look same. The dispatcher scans the classes annotated with @Controller and detects @RequestMapping annotations within them. We can only use @RequestMapping on @Controller annotated classes.

---

@Service

@Services hold business logic and call method in repository layer.

What’s special about @Service?

Apart from the fact that it is used to indicate that it's holding the business logic, there’s no noticeable speciality that this annotation provides, but who knows, spring may add some additional exceptional in future.

---

What else?

Similar to above, in future Spring may choose to add special functionalities for @Service, @Controller and @Repository based on their layering conventions. Hence its always a good idea to respect the convention and use them in line with layers.

Answer 3

In Spring @Component, @Service, @Controller, and @Repository are Stereotype annotations which are used for:

@Controller: where your request mapping from presentation page done i.e. Presentation layer won't go to any other file it goes directly to @Controller class and checks for requested path in @RequestMapping annotation which written before method calls if necessary.

@Service: All business logic is here i.e. Data related calculations and all.This annotation of business layer in which our user not directly call persistence method so it will call this method using this annotation. It will request @Repository as per user request

@Repository: This is Persistence layer(Data Access Layer) of application which used to get data from the database. i.e. all the Database related operations are done by the repository.

@Component - Annotate your other components (for example REST resource classes) with a component stereotype.

Indicates that an annotated class is a "component". Such classes are considered as candidates for auto-detection when using annotation-based configuration and classpath scanning.

Other class-level annotations may be considered as identifying a component as well, typically a special kind of component: e.g. the @Repository annotation or AspectJ's @Aspect annotation.

Answer 4

@Component is the top level generic annotation which makes the annotated bean to be scanned and available in the DI container

@Repository is specialized annotation and it brings the feature of converting all the unchecked exceptions from the DAO classes

@Service is specialized annotation. it do not bring any new feature as of now but it clarifies the intent of the bean

@Controller is specialized annotation which makes the bean MVC aware and allows the use of further annotation like @RequestMapping and all such

Here are more details

Answer 5

In Spring 4, latest version:

The @Repository annotation is a marker for any class that fulfills the role or stereotype of a repository (also known as Data Access Object or DAO). Among the uses of this marker is the automatic translation of exceptions as described in Section 20.2.2, “Exception translation”.

Spring provides further stereotype annotations: @Component, @Service, and @Controller. @Component is a generic stereotype for any Spring-managed component. @Repository, @Service, and @Controller are specializations of @Component for more specific use cases, for example, in the persistence, service, and presentation layers, respectively. Therefore, you can annotate your component classes with @Component, but by annotating them with @Repository, @Service, or @Controller instead, your classes are more properly suited for processing by tools or associating with aspects. For example, these stereotype annotations make ideal targets for pointcuts. It is also possible that @Repository, @Service, and @Controller may carry additional semantics in future releases of the Spring Framework. Thus, if you are choosing between using @Component or @Service for your service layer, @Service is clearly the better choice. Similarly, as stated above, @Repository is already supported as a marker for automatic exception translation in your persistence layer.

Answer 6

Repository and Service are children of Component annotation. So, all of them are Component. Repository and Service just expand it. How exactly? Service has only ideological difference: we use it for services. Repository has particular exception handler.