Stereotype and Meta Annotations in Spring

@ComponentScan checks not only for components but for annotations that are themselves annotated with @Component too. Those are stereotype annotations:

• Component
• Controller
• Repository
• Service

We could add @Configuration and @RestController because @Configuration is annotated with @Component and @RestController is annotated with @Controller (some people disagree)

Meta-annotations are annotations that can be used to annotate other annotations. For example, the next custom annotation @MyTransactionalService is a meta-annotation:

@MyTransactionalService public class TransferServiceImpl implements TransferService { ... } @Retention(RUNTIME) @Target(TYPE) @Service @Transactional(timeout=60) public @interface MyTransactionalService { String value() default ""; }