Layered Service Application

Build a controller → service → repository app fully wired with DI.

Dependency InjectionBeansConfiguration

Overview

Every Spring application is, underneath its annotations, a graph of plain Java objects — Spring just calls that graph the "IoC container" and the objects inside it "beans." This project builds the simplest possible version of a real Spring application's shape: a repository that owns data, a service that owns business rules, and a controller (here, a plain facade class rather than a web endpoint) that is the one thing calling code talks to. None of these classes will ever call new on one another directly — instead, every dependency arrives already built, through a constructor, because Spring's container assembled the whole graph before your code ever asked for it.

This is core Spring, not Spring Boot: there is no auto-configuration guessing what beans you probably want, and no @SpringBootApplication scanning your whole classpath by convention. Every bean in this project is declared explicitly in one @Configuration class using @Bean factory methods, which is the classic Java-config alternative to an older Spring application's XML <beans> file — same end result, but type-checked by the compiler and refactorable by your IDE. By the end, you will have seen constructor injection resolve an unambiguous dependency automatically, and @Qualifier step in the one time two beans of the exact same interface type would otherwise leave Spring unable to decide between them.

What You'll Build

A Product model and a ProductRepository interface with one InMemoryProductRepository implementation.
A DiscountPolicy interface with two implementations — RegularDiscountPolicy and PremiumDiscountPolicy.
A ProductService that receives both its repository and its discount policy through constructor injection.
A ProductController facade — a plain, non-web entry-point class standing in for what would be a @RestController in a full web app.
One @Configuration class wiring every bean explicitly with @Bean methods.
@Qualifier resolving the ambiguity created by having two DiscountPolicy beans of the same type.

Prerequisites

What Inversion of Control means — objects receiving their dependencies instead of constructing them.
Java interfaces and multiple implementations of the same interface.
Constructors and final fields.
Maven basics — a pom.xml with dependencies and mvn compile/mvn exec:java.
No prior Spring experience assumed — this is the first project in the course.

Project Structure

Unlike the single-file console apps from earlier Java courses, a Spring project is naturally split into one class per file, organized into a package — here, com.programinds.catalog. Product and the two interfaces (ProductRepository, DiscountPolicy) carry no Spring annotations at all; they are plain Java. InMemoryProductRepository, RegularDiscountPolicy, and PremiumDiscountPolicy are also plain classes — in this project none of them are annotated @Component, because every bean is instead declared explicitly inside AppConfig, the one @Configuration class that owns every wiring decision.

The dependency direction only ever points one way: ProductController depends on ProductService, which depends on ProductRepository and DiscountPolicy — never the reverse. That one-way arrow is what makes each layer independently testable and replaceable, and it is the same repository → service → controller shape you will reuse in every larger Spring project from here on, including the MVC and JDBC projects later in this course.

pom.xml (dependency)

<!-- spring-context pulls in the IoC container itself — ApplicationContext,
     @Configuration, @Bean, and everything this project actually uses. -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
    <version>6.1.13</version>
</dependency>

Step 1: Define the Product Model

Product is deliberately the one class in this whole project with no Spring annotations and no Spring awareness whatsoever — it is a plain data object, created fresh every time a product is added, and it is never itself registered as a bean. Only things Spring needs to create ONCE and hand out to multiple dependents (repositories, services, policies) belong in the container; ordinary data objects created many times over the life of the program do not.

package com.programinds.catalog;

// Plain data class — no Spring annotations at all. Nothing about a Product
// needs to live in the container, since a new one is created every time
// addProduct() runs, rather than being injected as a shared dependency.
public class Product {
    private int id;             // Assigned by the repository, never chosen by the caller
    private String name;        // Product display name
    private double price;       // Base price before any discount is applied

    public Product(int id, String name, double price) {
        this.id = id;
        this.name = name;
        this.price = price;
    }

    public int getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public double getPrice() {
        return price;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return String.format("#%d %-20s $%.2f", id, name, price);
    }
}

Step 2: Build the Repository Layer

ProductRepository is an interface, and ProductService in Step 4 will depend only on this interface — never on InMemoryProductRepository directly. That distinction is what makes dependency injection actually useful rather than just a longer way to write new: if a JdbcProductRepository were added later, ProductService's source code would not change by a single line, only AppConfig's single @Bean method for productRepository() would.

package com.programinds.catalog;

import java.util.List;

// The contract every repository implementation must satisfy. ProductService
// is written against THIS type, not against any concrete class — that is the
// whole reason a second implementation could be swapped in later without
// touching ProductService at all.
public interface ProductRepository {
    Product save(String name, double price);
    Product findById(int id);
    List<Product> findAll();
}

package com.programinds.catalog;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

// The only ProductRepository implementation in this project. It is a plain
// class with no @Repository annotation, because Step 6 wires it into the
// container explicitly via a @Bean method rather than relying on classpath
// scanning to discover it.
public class InMemoryProductRepository implements ProductRepository {
    private final List<Product> products = new ArrayList<>();   // Backing store; never exposed directly
    private int nextId = 1;                                      // Auto-incrementing id, assigned by the repository itself

    @Override
    public Product save(String name, double price) {
        Product product = new Product(nextId, name, price);
        products.add(product);
        nextId++;                                                 // Guarantees the next saved product gets a fresh id
        return product;
    }

    @Override
    public Product findById(int id) {
        for (Product p : products) {
            if (p.getId() == id) {
                return p;
            }
        }
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    public List<Product> findAll() {
        return products;
    }
}

Step 3: Add a DiscountPolicy Abstraction With Two Implementations

This abstraction is independent of the repository layer — it exists specifically so this project has two beans of the exact same interface type. Spring can autowire a dependency by type only when exactly one bean matches; the moment RegularDiscountPolicy and PremiumDiscountPolicy both implement DiscountPolicy, any injection point typed DiscountPolicy becomes ambiguous, which is precisely the situation @Qualifier exists to resolve in Step 6.

package com.programinds.catalog;

public interface DiscountPolicy {
    double applyDiscount(double price);
}

package com.programinds.catalog;

public class RegularDiscountPolicy implements DiscountPolicy {
    @Override
    public double applyDiscount(double price) {
        return price * 0.95;   // Regular customers get a flat 5% off
    }
}

package com.programinds.catalog;

public class PremiumDiscountPolicy implements DiscountPolicy {
    @Override
    public double applyDiscount(double price) {
        return price * 0.85;   // Premium customers get a steeper 15% off
    }
}

Step 4: Build the ProductService With Constructor Injection

Both dependencies arrive through the constructor and are stored in final fields, assigned exactly once. This is constructor injection, and it is the reason a ProductService can never exist in a half-wired state — there is no setter that could be called with null, and no way to construct one without supplying both a repository and a discount policy up front. Spring's container follows this same discipline when it builds the bean in Step 6: it will not create a ProductService bean until both constructor arguments are ready.

package com.programinds.catalog;

import java.util.List;

// Neither dependency is annotated @Autowired here, because this project wires
// beans explicitly through @Bean factory methods in AppConfig (Step 6) rather
// than through field/setter injection — the constructor itself is the only
// injection point ProductService exposes.
public class ProductService {
    private final ProductRepository productRepository;   // Where products actually live
    private final DiscountPolicy discountPolicy;          // Which discount rule to apply to every price

    public ProductService(ProductRepository productRepository, DiscountPolicy discountPolicy) {
        this.productRepository = productRepository;   // Assigned once, in the constructor, and never reassigned
        this.discountPolicy = discountPolicy;
    }

    public Product addProduct(String name, double price) {
        return productRepository.save(name, price);
    }

    public double getDiscountedPrice(int productId) {
        Product product = productRepository.findById(productId);
        if (product == null) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("No product with id " + productId);
        }
        return discountPolicy.applyDiscount(product.getPrice());   // Delegates the actual math to whichever policy was injected
    }

    public List<Product> getAllProducts() {
        return productRepository.findAll();
    }
}

Step 5: Build the ProductController Facade

This is the "controller" of the layered chain, but since this project has no web layer, it is a plain facade class rather than a @Controller with HTTP mappings — its only job is to be the single entry point main() talks to, the same way a real @RestController would be the entry point a browser talks to. Everything below it stays hidden behind this one class's two public methods.

package com.programinds.catalog;

public class ProductController {
    private final ProductService productService;   // The only dependency this layer needs

    public ProductController(ProductService productService) {
        this.productService = productService;   // Constructor injection again, one layer up
    }

    public void addProduct(String name, double price) {
        Product created = productService.addProduct(name, price);
        System.out.println("Added: " + created);
    }

    public void printCatalogWithDiscount() {
        System.out.println("\n--- Product Catalog (Discounted Prices) ---");
        for (Product p : productService.getAllProducts()) {
            double discounted = productService.getDiscountedPrice(p.getId());
            System.out.printf("#%d %-20s $%.2f -> $%.2f%n", p.getId(), p.getName(), p.getPrice(), discounted);
        }
    }
}

Step 6: Wire Everything With @Configuration, @Bean, and @Qualifier

@Configuration marks this class itself as a source of bean definitions — Spring instantiates it and calls every @Bean-annotated method exactly once, caching each return value as a singleton by default. Nothing here is discovered through classpath scanning; every bean and every wiring decision is spelled out explicitly, which is the entire meaning of "Java-based configuration" as opposed to an older XML <beans> file achieving the same result with no compile-time checking.

@Bean factory method PARAMETERS are autowired by Spring exactly like a constructor's parameters are. productRepository resolves without any ambiguity, since only one bean matches that type — but two beans match DiscountPolicy, so without @Qualifier here Spring would refuse to start at all, throwing a NoUniqueBeanDefinitionException. @Qualifier("premiumDiscountPolicy") tells the container exactly which of the two matching beans to hand to this particular parameter, using the bean name Spring derives by default from each @Bean method's own name.

package com.programinds.catalog;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Qualifier;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

    @Bean
    public ProductRepository productRepository() {
        return new InMemoryProductRepository();   // Only one bean of this type, so no @Qualifier is ever needed for it
    }

    // Two @Bean methods returning the SAME interface type. Spring names a bean
    // after its factory method by default, so these become the beans
    // "regularDiscountPolicy" and "premiumDiscountPolicy" — exactly the names
    // @Qualifier below refers to.
    @Bean
    public DiscountPolicy regularDiscountPolicy() {
        return new RegularDiscountPolicy();
    }

    @Bean
    public DiscountPolicy premiumDiscountPolicy() {
        return new PremiumDiscountPolicy();
    }

    // Without @Qualifier, Spring cannot decide which of the two DiscountPolicy
    // beans belongs here — @Qualifier("premiumDiscountPolicy") removes the
    // ambiguity by naming the exact bean to inject into this parameter.
    @Bean
    public ProductService productService(ProductRepository productRepository,
                                          @Qualifier("premiumDiscountPolicy") DiscountPolicy discountPolicy) {
        return new ProductService(productRepository, discountPolicy);
    }

    @Bean
    public ProductController productController(ProductService productService) {
        return new ProductController(productService);   // Only one ProductService bean exists, so this resolves unambiguously
    }
}

@Qualifier vs. Just Renaming the Method

You might wonder why not simply write one @Bean method instead of two and skip the ambiguity entirely. The point of this step is what happens in a LARGER app: once a second implementation of an interface legitimately needs to coexist with the first — different customers, different environments, different strategies — @Qualifier is the mechanism that lets both stay registered as beans while every injection point still says exactly which one it means.

Step 7: Run the Application With AnnotationConfigApplicationContext

AnnotationConfigApplicationContext is Spring's Java-config entry point: pass it one or more @Configuration classes, and by the time its constructor returns, every @Bean method has run and the entire dependency graph from Step 6 has been assembled. getBean(ProductController.class) then simply asks the already-built container for that one bean — no wiring happens at this point, it happened when the context was constructed.

package com.programinds.catalog;

import org.springframework.context.annotation.AnnotationConfigApplicationContext;

public class LayeredServiceApplication {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Building the context is what triggers every @Bean method in AppConfig to run.
        AnnotationConfigApplicationContext context =
            new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(AppConfig.class);

        // By the time this returns, ProductController's ProductService, its
        // ProductRepository, and its (qualified) DiscountPolicy are all already injected.
        ProductController controller = context.getBean(ProductController.class);

        controller.addProduct("Mechanical Keyboard", 4999.00);
        controller.addProduct("Wireless Mouse", 1299.00);
        controller.addProduct("USB-C Hub", 1899.00);

        controller.printCatalogWithDiscount();

        context.close();   // Releases the container and any resources its beans hold
    }
}

Complete Code

Save each class below as its own file under src/main/java/com/programinds/catalog/, matching each file's class name, then run with mvn compile exec:java -Dexec.mainClass=com.programinds.catalog.LayeredServiceApplication.

Product.java

package com.programinds.catalog;

public class Product {
    private int id;
    private String name;
    private double price;

    public Product(int id, String name, double price) {
        this.id = id;
        this.name = name;
        this.price = price;
    }

    public int getId() { return id; }
    public String getName() { return name; }
    public double getPrice() { return price; }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return String.format("#%d %-20s $%.2f", id, name, price);
    }
}

ProductRepository.java, InMemoryProductRepository.java

package com.programinds.catalog;

import java.util.List;

public interface ProductRepository {
    Product save(String name, double price);
    Product findById(int id);
    List<Product> findAll();
}

// (separate file: InMemoryProductRepository.java)
import java.util.ArrayList;

class InMemoryProductRepositoryImpl implements ProductRepository {
    private final List<Product> products = new ArrayList<>();
    private int nextId = 1;

    @Override
    public Product save(String name, double price) {
        Product product = new Product(nextId, name, price);
        products.add(product);
        nextId++;
        return product;
    }

    @Override
    public Product findById(int id) {
        for (Product p : products) {
            if (p.getId() == id) {
                return p;
            }
        }
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    public List<Product> findAll() {
        return products;
    }
}

DiscountPolicy.java + two implementations

package com.programinds.catalog;

public interface DiscountPolicy {
    double applyDiscount(double price);
}

class RegularDiscountPolicy implements DiscountPolicy {
    @Override
    public double applyDiscount(double price) {
        return price * 0.95;
    }
}

class PremiumDiscountPolicy implements DiscountPolicy {
    @Override
    public double applyDiscount(double price) {
        return price * 0.85;
    }
}

ProductService.java, ProductController.java

package com.programinds.catalog;

import java.util.List;

public class ProductService {
    private final ProductRepository productRepository;
    private final DiscountPolicy discountPolicy;

    public ProductService(ProductRepository productRepository, DiscountPolicy discountPolicy) {
        this.productRepository = productRepository;
        this.discountPolicy = discountPolicy;
    }

    public Product addProduct(String name, double price) {
        return productRepository.save(name, price);
    }

    public double getDiscountedPrice(int productId) {
        Product product = productRepository.findById(productId);
        if (product == null) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("No product with id " + productId);
        }
        return discountPolicy.applyDiscount(product.getPrice());
    }

    public List<Product> getAllProducts() {
        return productRepository.findAll();
    }
}

class ProductControllerImpl {
    private final ProductService productService;

    public ProductControllerImpl(ProductService productService) {
        this.productService = productService;
    }

    public void addProduct(String name, double price) {
        Product created = productService.addProduct(name, price);
        System.out.println("Added: " + created);
    }

    public void printCatalogWithDiscount() {
        System.out.println("\n--- Product Catalog (Discounted Prices) ---");
        for (Product p : productService.getAllProducts()) {
            double discounted = productService.getDiscountedPrice(p.getId());
            System.out.printf("#%d %-20s $%.2f -> $%.2f%n", p.getId(), p.getName(), p.getPrice(), discounted);
        }
    }
}

AppConfig.java, LayeredServiceApplication.java

package com.programinds.catalog;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Qualifier;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.AnnotationConfigApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;

@Configuration
class AppConfigImpl {
    @Bean
    public ProductRepository productRepository() {
        return new InMemoryProductRepositoryImpl();
    }

    @Bean
    public DiscountPolicy regularDiscountPolicy() {
        return new RegularDiscountPolicy();
    }

    @Bean
    public DiscountPolicy premiumDiscountPolicy() {
        return new PremiumDiscountPolicy();
    }

    @Bean
    public ProductService productService(ProductRepository productRepository,
                                          @Qualifier("premiumDiscountPolicy") DiscountPolicy discountPolicy) {
        return new ProductService(productRepository, discountPolicy);
    }

    @Bean
    public ProductControllerImpl productController(ProductService productService) {
        return new ProductControllerImpl(productService);
    }
}

public class LayeredServiceApplication {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        AnnotationConfigApplicationContext context =
            new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(AppConfigImpl.class);

        ProductControllerImpl controller = context.getBean(ProductControllerImpl.class);

        controller.addProduct("Mechanical Keyboard", 4999.00);
        controller.addProduct("Wireless Mouse", 1299.00);
        controller.addProduct("USB-C Hub", 1899.00);

        controller.printCatalogWithDiscount();

        context.close();
    }
}

One File Per Class in Real Projects

The "Complete Code" listing above merges classes into shared code blocks purely for readability on this page, with a couple of classes suffixed "Impl" to avoid duplicate top-level names within one block. In your actual project, delete those suffixes and give every class its own file exactly as shown in Steps 1-6 — Java requires a public top-level class to live in a file matching its own name.

Sample Run

Click Run to see what this code prints.

Every price is discounted by 15%, confirming that @Qualifier("premiumDiscountPolicy") in AppConfig won out over RegularDiscountPolicy — change that qualifier value to "regularDiscountPolicy" and rerun the program to see every price shift to a 5% discount instead, with no other line of code touched.

Extend This Project

Add a third DiscountPolicy implementation, NoDiscountPolicy, and a constructor argument to ProductController that lets the caller choose which qualified ProductService bean to use at runtime.
Replace field-style @Qualifier usage with a custom qualifier annotation (e.g. @Premium) to see the more advanced, type-safe alternative Spring offers for the same problem.
Add a second ProductRepository implementation and switch which one AppConfig wires in with a one-line change, confirming ProductService never needs to change.
Introduce @Primary on regularDiscountPolicy() instead of @Qualifier on the injection point, and observe how it changes which bean wins when no qualifier is specified at all.
Add unit tests for ProductService using a hand-written stub ProductRepository and stub DiscountPolicy, taking advantage of the fact that both are interfaces.

Summary

You built the smallest complete example of a layered Spring application: a repository, a service, and a facade acting as a controller, every one of them wired together by an explicit @Configuration class instead of manual new calls. ProductService and ProductController both used constructor injection to guarantee they could never exist half-wired, and @Qualifier resolved the one genuine ambiguity in the whole graph — two beans sharing the DiscountPolicy type. This repository → service → controller shape, and the discipline of depending on interfaces rather than concrete classes, is the foundation every later project in this course builds on.