Difference between using bean id and name in Spring configuration file

Is there any difference between using an id attribute and name attribute on a <bean> element in a Spring configuration file?

Solution 1:

From the Spring reference, 3.2.3.1 Naming Beans:

Every bean has one or more ids (also called identifiers, or names; these terms refer to the same thing). These ids must be unique within the container the bean is hosted in. A bean will almost always have only one id, but if a bean has more than one id, the extra ones can essentially be considered aliases.

When using XML-based configuration metadata, you use the 'id' or 'name' attributes to specify the bean identifier(s). The 'id' attribute allows you to specify exactly one id, and as it is a real XML element ID attribute, the XML parser is able to do some extra validation when other elements reference the id; as such, it is the preferred way to specify a bean id. However, the XML specification does limit the characters which are legal in XML IDs. This is usually not a constraint, but if you have a need to use one of these special XML characters, or want to introduce other aliases to the bean, you may also or instead specify one or more bean ids, separated by a comma (,), semicolon (;), or whitespace in the 'name' attribute.

So basically the id attribute conforms to the XML id attribute standards whereas name is a little more flexible. Generally speaking, I use name pretty much exclusively. It just seems more "Spring-y".

Solution 2:

Since Spring 3.1 the id attribute is an xsd:string and permits the same range of characters as the name attribute.

The only difference between an id and a name is that a name can contain multiple aliases separated by a comma, semicolon or whitespace, whereas an id must be a single value.

From the Spring 3.2 documentation:

In XML-based configuration metadata, you use the id and/or name attributes to specify the bean identifier(s). The id attribute allows you to specify exactly one id. Conventionally these names are alphanumeric ('myBean', 'fooService', etc), but may special characters as well. If you want to introduce other aliases to the bean, you can also specify them in the name attribute, separated by a comma (,), semicolon (;), or white space. As a historical note, in versions prior to Spring 3.1, the id attribute was typed as an xsd:ID, which constrained possible characters. As of 3.1, it is now xsd:string. Note that bean id uniqueness is still enforced by the container, though no longer by XML parsers.