Spring's overriding bean

Question

Can we have duplicate names for the same bean id that is mentioned in the XML? If not, then how do we override the bean in Spring?

Answer 1

Question was more about XML but as annotation are more popular nowadays and it works similarly I'll show by example. Let's create class Foo:

public class Foo {
    private String name;

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
}

and two Configuration files (you can't create one):

@Configuration
public class Configuration1 {
    @Bean
    public Foo foo() {
        Foo foo = new Foo();
        foo.setName("configuration1");
        return foo;
    }
}

and

@Configuration
public class Configuration2 {
    @Bean
    public Foo foo() {
        Foo foo = new Foo();
        foo.setName("configuration2");
        return foo;
    }
}

and let's see what happens when calling foo.getName():

@SpringBootApplication
public class OverridingBeanDefinitionsApplication {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(OverridingBeanDefinitionsApplication.class, args);

        AnnotationConfigApplicationContext applicationContext =
                new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(
                        Configuration1.class, Configuration2.class);

        Foo foo = applicationContext.getBean(Foo.class);
        System.out.println(foo.getName());
    }
}

in this example result is: configuration2. The Spring Container gets all configuration metadata sources and merges bean definitions in those sources. In this example there are two @Beans. Order in which they are fed into ApplicationContext decide. You can flip new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(Configuration2.class, Configuration1.class); and result will be configuration1.