To discover the beans automatically, Spring provides the @Autowired annotation, which can be used as an alternative to the XML-based configuration with the help of the autowire' attribute. Let's follow the steps to use the @Autowire annotation:

1. Create a class Customer_Autowired in com.ch02.autowiring.annotation. This is similar to Customer_Component, which we created in stereotype annotations. Don't forget to add a default customer if you don't have one.

2. Add the @Autowired annotations on the field cust_address as shown in the following code:

@Autowired 
private Address cust_address; 

3. In customer_new.xml, configure a bean for Address as shown in the following code:

<bean id="cust_address" class="com.ch02.beans.Address"> 
  <property name="build_no" value="2"/> 
  <property name="city_name" value="Pune"/> 
  <property name="pin_code" value="123"/> 
</bean> 

4. Create TestCustomer_Autowired to get the bean with customer_Autowired as id:

public static void main(String[] args) { 
  // TODO Auto-generated method stub 
  ApplicationContext context = new 
    ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("customer_new.xml"); 
  Customer_Autowired customer = (Customer_Autowired)  
    context.getBean("customer_Autowired"); 
  System.out.println(customer.getCust_name() + "	" + 
    customer.getCust_id() + customer.getCust_address()); 
} 

5. We will get the following console output on execution: