Difference Between @Component and @Bean Annotations in Spring

          As discussed in one of our previous blog posts on Spring stereotype annotations, @Component is a stereotype annotation in the Spring Framework. It is used to mark a Java class as a Spring-managed bean. During application startup, Spring scans the packages configured for component scanning, detects classes annotated with @Component, and automatically registers them as beans in the Spring container.

The @Bean annotation is used to explicitly define a bean in the Spring container. It is a method-level annotation and is typically used within a class annotated with @Configuration. The name of the @Bean method is used as the bean name by default, although it can be customized.

In summary, @Component is a class-level annotation used for automatic bean detection through component scanning, whereas @Bean is a method-level annotation used for explicit bean creation and configuration.

Example:-

@Component
public class ProductUtil{

   //methods


}

@Bean annotation

@Configuration
class HMSAppConfiguration{

   @Bean
   public Customer getCustomer(){
      return new Customer();
   }
}

Thank you for reading the blog.