No, @Autowired is not deprecated in Spring Boot! However, it has been optional since Spring 4.3. Learn why constructor injection is now the preferred approach and when you still need @Autowired.

Ramesh Fadatare

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Mar 17, 2025

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📌 Is @Autowired Deprecated in Spring Boot?

No, @Autowired is NOT deprecated in Spring or Spring Boot. However, since Spring 4.3, it has been made optional if a class has only one constructor.

With Spring Boot 3+, the best practice is to use constructor injection without @Autowired, as Spring automatically injects dependencies when a bean has only one constructor.

🔹 What is @Autowired?

The @Autowired annotation is used in Spring to enable automatic dependency injection. It allows Spring to inject the required dependencies into a class automatically, without requiring manual object creation.

✅ Example: Using @Autowired to Inject Dependencies

@Service
public class ProductService {

    @Autowired
    private ProductRepository productRepository;

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

💡 This tells Spring to automatically inject an instance of ProductRepository into ProductService.

📌 Why is @Autowired Optional in Spring Boot 3+?

Since Spring 4.3, @Autowired is not needed when using constructor-based injection, provided that there is only one constructor in the class.

✅ How Spring Automatically Injects Dependencies

If a class has a single constructor, Spring automatically injects dependencies without requiring @Autowired.

🚨 Before (Using @Autowired)

@Service
public class ProductService {
    private final ProductRepository productRepository;

    @Autowired // Not needed in Spring Boot 3+
    public ProductService(ProductRepository productRepository) {
        this.productRepository = productRepository;
    }
}

✅ After (Best Practice)

@Service
public class ProductService…