Bean order when autowired into list

Question

I have defined an interface IWorker and some implementations of it as WorkerA and WorkerB, both annotated with @Component.

I then autowire them into my app via:

@Autowired
private List<IWorker> workers = new ArrayList<IWorker>();

• From what does the order the workers are put into the list depend on?

• How can I let additional WorkerC and WorkerD (also implementations of IWorker) not annotated with @Component be autowired into the same list via my applicationContext.xml?

• Is the order of WorkerC and WorkerD from the xml preserved?

• Is there a rule I can rely on in which order worker A, B, C and D will be put into the list?

Answer 1

If you want to order these dependencies in the List injected by Spring, then use @Order annotation.