java - @Inject only working for POJOs created by CDI container?

Question

I just want to confirm that I fully understood the prerequisites for CDI to work. If I have a class A:

public class A {
    @Inject private B b;
}

Now when I instantiate this class using:

A a = new A();

In that case, A.b will be null.

But if I define in another class a member:

@Inject A a;

and later use a, a.b will be correctly populated?

Does CDI only work if the class requiring an injection was also created by CDI container? Or what am I missing if injections turn out to be null while creating a POJO using ordinary instantiation with new (yes, I got beans.xml in place)?

Answer 1

Does CDI only work if the class requiring an injection was also created by CDI container?

Yes, that's pretty much it. The lifecycle of a ManagedBean is controlled by the container and should never be instantiated with the new keyword (BTW: the same is true for EJBs & Spring beans). If you need to create a new ManagedBean you will probably want to use a producer method.