Why You Should Stop Using @Value Annotations in Spring and Its Alternatives

source: flaticon.com

In Spring-based applications, @Value annotation is frequently used to inject values from properties files or system properties into Spring-managed beans. While this annotation offers a simple solution, it comes with several limitations that can affect the scalability and maintainability of your project. In this article, we'll explore why you should consider moving away from @Value annotations and focus on more powerful and flexible alternatives.

The Downsides of Using @Value Annotations

1. Lack of Type Safety

One of the biggest issues with @Value is that it injects values as strings, relying on Spring to convert them into the appropriate data types. This process isn't always error-proof and can lead to runtime errors that are difficult to trace. For example:

@Value("${app.port}")
private int port;

In this case, if app.port contains an invalid integer value, Spring will throw a NumberFormatException at runtime. Detecting such issues during development can be challenging, as they only surface when the application is running. This lack of type safety can lead to fragile code that is prone to errors.