Auto-wiring a List using util schema gives NoSuchBeanDefinitionException

Solution 1:

This is due to a rather obscure part of @Autowired's behaviour, specified in 3.11.2. @Autowired:

It is also possible to provide all beans of a particular type from the ApplicationContext by adding the annotation to a field or method that expects an array of that type...

The same applies for typed collections...

In other words, by saying @Autowired @Qualifier("myList") List<String>, you're actually asking for "give me the list of all beans of type java.lang.String that have the qualifier "myList".

The solution is mentioned in 3.11.3. Fine-tuning annotation-based autowiring with qualifiers:

If you intend to express annotation-driven injection by name, do not primarily use @Autowired - even if is technically capable of referring to a bean name through @Qualifier values. Instead, prefer the JSR-250 @Resource annotation which is semantically defined to identify a specific target component by its unique name, with the declared type being irrelevant for the matching process.

As a specific consequence of this semantic difference, beans which are themselves defined as a collection or map type cannot be injected via @Autowired since type matching is not properly applicable to them. Use @Resource for such beans, referring to the specific collection/map bean by unique name.

So use this in your test, and it works fine:

@Resource(name="myList") private List<String> stringList;