What is the purpose of the Spring Bean annotation name attribute?

Question

I'm just learning spring, and something struck me as very odd about the annotation configurations using the name attribute as a string.

@Bean(name = "com.my.injected.Service")
public InjectedService injectedService() {
    return injectedService;
}

Is this name similar to the Spring Bean XML configuration id and class attributes?

<bean id="..." class="...">
    <!-- collaborators and configuration for this bean go here -->
</bean>

Why isn't this simply

@Bean(clazz = com.my.injected.Service.class)
public InjectedService injectedService() {
    return injectedService;
}

instead?

You're fully qualifying the path in both cases and actually using the class makes it way easier for your IDE to tell you when you've screwed it up. I understand that the XML configuration came first, and naturally it was always looking up things by string, so is this just a holdover? Is there some advantage to using strings or major disadvantage to using .class?

_{Question was originally based on a false premise. I edited it to spell out what this premise was and make it less confusing for new people who come along. Hopefully I did this such that the given answers are still exactly applicable; apologies if not.}

Answer 1

Bean name is not necessarily related to its class or even any of interfaces it implements. It is a name and nothing more. When you use the annotation configuration, Spring figures out what the exact class or interface the @Bean provides like the rest of java code would: either through the fully qualified name in the code or through the imports specified in the file. In your case, you presumably have an import com.my.injected.Service; statement at the top of the java file.

Your example is using the fully qualified class name as the bean name. It is your choice. You could use any other identifier. Using the fully qualified name could be useful if your code is providing an object that is named exactly like another 3rd party @Bean object that your code must include or consume. However, you could just as easily use name = "myService".

The bean name helps Spring (and application programmer) to distinguish between multiple instances of of the same bean class because you can deploy the same class as bean several times. If only one instance of bean type appear you event do not have to give it name manually: spring does this by default.

If you have several beans that have the same type or implement the same interface and you want to refer specific bean use @Qualifier annotation.