Spring dependency checking with

Spring’s dependency checking in bean configuration file is used to make sure all properties of a certain types (primitive, collection or object) have been set. In most scenarios, you just need to make sure a particular property has been set, but not all properties..
For this case, you need @Required annotation, see following example :

@Required example

A Customer object, apply @Required in setPerson() method to make sure the person property has been set.

package com.mkyong.common;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Required;

public class Customer { 
    private Person person; 
    private int type; 
    private String action; 
    public Person getPerson() { 
        return person; 
    } 
   
    @Required 
    public void setPerson(Person person) { 
        this.person = person; 
    }
}

Simply apply the @Required annotation will not enforce the property checking, you also need to register an RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor to aware of the @Required annotation in bean configuration file.
The RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor can be enabled in two ways.

1. Include <context:annotation-config />
   Add Spring context and <context:annotation-config /> in bean configuration file.

<beans  ... xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"   ... http://www.springframework.org/schema/context   http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-2.5.xsd">  
    ... 
    <context:annotation-config /> 
    ...
</beans>

Full example,

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-2.5.xsd">
    <context:annotation-config />
    <bean id="CustomerBean" class="com.mkyong.common.Customer">
        <property name="action" value="buy" />
        <property name="type" value="1" />
    </bean>
    <bean id="PersonBean" class="com.mkyong.common.Person">
        <property name="name" value="mkyong" />
        <property name="address" value="address ABC" />
        <property name="age" value="29" />
    </bean>
</beans>

2. Include RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor

Include ‘RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor’ directly in bean configuration file.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd">
    <bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor" />
    <bean id="CustomerBean" class="com.mkyong.common.Customer">
        <property name="action" value="buy" />
        <property name="type" value="1" />
    </bean>
    <bean id="PersonBean" class="com.mkyong.common.Person">
        <property name="name" value="mkyong" />
        <property name="address" value="address ABC" />
        <property name="age" value="29" />
    </bean>
</beans>

If you run it , the following error message will be throw, because person property is unset.

org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanInitializationException: Property 'person' is required for bean 'CustomerBean'

Conclusion

Try @Required annotation, it is more flexible than dependency checking in XML file, because it can apply to a particular property only.