BindingAnnotations

Binding Annotations

Occasionally you'll want multiple bindings for the same type. For example, you might want both a PayPal credit card processor and a Google Checkout processor. To enable this, bindings support an optional binding annotation. The annotation and type together uniquely identify a binding. This pair is called a key.

Defining a binding annotation requires two lines of code plus several imports. Put this in its own .java file or inside the type that it annotates.

package example.pizza;

import static java.lang.annotation.ElementType.PARAMETER;
import static java.lang.annotation.ElementType.FIELD;
import static java.lang.annotation.ElementType.METHOD;
import static java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME;

import java.lang.annotation.Target;
import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
import javax.inject.Qualifier;

@Qualifier @Target({ FIELD, PARAMETER, METHOD }) @Retention(RUNTIME)
public @interface PayPal {}

You don't need to understand all of these meta-annotations, but if you're curious:

@Qualifier is a JSR-330 meta-annotation that tells Guice that this is a binding annotation. Guice will produce an error if multiple binding annotations are ever applied to the same member. Guice's @BindingAnnotation is also used for this purpose in older code.
@Target({FIELD, PARAMETER, METHOD}) is a courtesy to your users. It prevents @PayPal from accidentally being applied where it serves no purpose.
@Retention(RUNTIME) makes the annotation available at runtime.

To depend on the annotated binding, apply the annotation to the injected parameter:

public class RealBillingService implements BillingService {

  @Inject
  public RealBillingService(@PayPal CreditCardProcessor processor,
      TransactionLog transactionLog) {
    ...
  }

Lastly we create a binding that uses the annotation. This uses the optional annotatedWith clause in the bind() statement:

    bind(CreditCardProcessor.class)
        .annotatedWith(PayPal.class)
        .to(PayPalCreditCardProcessor.class);

@Named

Guice comes with a built-in binding annotation @Named that takes a string:

public class RealBillingService implements BillingService {

  @Inject
  public RealBillingService(@Named("Checkout") CreditCardProcessor processor,
      TransactionLog transactionLog) {
    ...
  }

To bind a specific name, use Names.named() to create an instance to pass to annotatedWith:

    bind(CreditCardProcessor.class)
        .annotatedWith(Names.named("Checkout"))
        .to(CheckoutCreditCardProcessor.class);

Since the compiler can't check the string, we recommend using @Named sparingly. Defining your own purpose-built annotations provides better type-safety.