In IntelliJ IDEA I get this warning message regarding the “@Autowired” field: “Field injection is not recommended”. Why?
Here are some posts about this topic:
For me, the most important reason is that: the field injection, comparing to the other 2 injection types(constrctor injection and setter injection), makes the class cannot be used without DI. In another word, makes the class be tightly coupled with DI container like Spring.
Constructor-based or setter-based DI?
From here.
Since you can mix constructor-based and setter-based DI, it is a good rule of thumb to use constructors for mandatory dependencies and setter methods or configuration methods for optional dependencies. Note that use of the @Required annotation on a setter method can be used to make the property be a required dependency; however, constructor injection with programmatic validation of arguments is preferable.
The Spring team generally advocates constructor injection, as it lets you implement application components as immutable objects and ensures that required dependencies are not null. Furthermore, constructor-injected components are always returned to the client (calling) code in a fully initialized state. As a side note, a large number of constructor arguments is a bad code smell, implying that the class likely has too many responsibilities and should be refactored to better address proper separation of concerns.
Setter injection should primarily only be used for optional dependencies that can be assigned reasonable default values within the class. Otherwise, not-null checks must be performed everywhere the code uses the dependency. One benefit of setter injection is that setter methods make objects of that class amenable to reconfiguration or re-injection later. Management through JMX MBeans is therefore a compelling use case for setter injection.
Use the DI style that makes the most sense for a particular class. Sometimes, when dealing with third-party classes for which you do not have the source, the choice is made for you. For example, if a third-party class does not expose any setter methods, then constructor injection may be the only available form of DI.