Spring list beans by type-Collection of common programming errors

Yup, you can do this. The spring docs say:

It is also possible to provide all beans of a particular type from the ApplicationContext by adding the annotation to a field or method that expects an array of that type.

Note that it says you need to expect an array, not a list. This makes sense, because generic type erasure means a list may not work at runtime. However, take the following unit test, which works:

and this unit test:

package test;

@ContextConfiguration
@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
public class Test {

    private @Autowired List beans;

    @org.junit.Test
    public void test() {
        assertNotNull(beans);
        assertEquals(2, beans.size());
        for (TypeA bean : beans) {
                assertTrue(bean instanceof TypeA);
        }
    }           

    public static interface TypeA {}
    public static class TypeB implements TypeA {}
    public static class TypeC extends TypeB {}
    public static class TypeD {}

}

So officially, you’re supposed to autowire TypeA[], not List, but the List works good.