Simple Inversion of Control framework for Java/Scala

Question

I am looking for a simple to use IoC container for GUI applications written in Java/Scala.

It should support Convention over Configuration, lifecycle management, configuration in code (preferably without any XML needed at all), and checking dependencies at compile-time as much as possible. Something similar to Autofac would be perfect.

Answer 1

Sounds like you need something like Google Guice.

There used to quite a few IoC containers for Java (e.g. PicoContainer), but they've all been in the shadow of Spring for years now. Spring is likely a bit over the top for your needs, though.

Guice has restarted some healthy competition.

Answer 2

Google Guice is pretty good:

http://code.google.com/p/google-guice/

You don't have any XML gunk either, you can just create module programatically and write things together in that, e.g binding an interface (TransactionLog) to an implementation class (DatabaseTransactionLog):

public class BillingModule extends AbstractModule {
  @Override 
  protected void configure() {
    bind(TransactionLog.class).to(DatabaseTransactionLog.class);
  }
}

Answer 3

PicoContainer is a highly embeddable, full-service, Inversion of Control (IoC) container for components honor the Dependency Injection pattern. The project started in 2003 and pioneered Constructor Injection auto-wiring. It is also Open Source and therefore free to use. The license is BSD and thus you can safely use this with commercial or other open source software.