4. New Features and Enhancements in Spring Framework 4.1

4. New Features and Enhancements in Spring Framework 4.1
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4.1 JMS Improvements

Spring 4.1 introduces a much simpler infrastructure to register JMS listener endpoints by annotating bean methods with @JmsListener. The XML namespace has been enhanced to support this new style (jms:annotation-driven), and it is also possible to fully configure the infrastructure using Java config (@EnableJms, JmsListenerContainerFactory). It is also possible to register listener endpoints programmatically using JmsListenerConfigurer.

Spring 4.1 also aligns its JMS support to allow you to benefit from the spring-messaging abstraction introduced in 4.0, that is:

Message listener endpoints can have a more flexible signature and benefit from standard messaging annotations such as @Payload, @Header, @Headers, and @SendTo. It is also possible to use a standard Message in lieu of javax.jms.Message as method argument.
A new JmsMessageOperations interface is available and permits JmsTemplate like operations using the Message abstraction.

Finally, Spring 4.1 provides additional miscellaneous improvements:

Synchronous request-reply operations support in JmsTemplate
Listener priority can be specified per <jms:listener/> element
Recovery options for the message listener container are configurable using a BackOff implementation
JMS 2.0 shared consumers are supported

4.2 Caching Improvements

Spring 4.1 supports JCache (JSR-107) annotations using Spring’s existing cache configuration and infrastructure abstraction; no changes are required to use the standard annotations.

Spring 4.1 also improves its own caching abstraction significantly:

Caches can be resolved at runtime using a CacheResolver. As a result the value argument defining the cache name(s) to use is no longer mandatory.
More operation-level customizations: cache resolver, cache manager, key generator
A new @CacheConfig class-level annotation allows common settings to be shared at the class level without enabling any cache operation.
Better exception handling of cached methods using CacheErrorHandler

Spring 4.1 also has a breaking change in the CacheInterface as a new putIfAbsent method has been added.

4.3 Web Improvements

The existing support for resource handling based on the ResourceHttpRequestHandler has been expanded with new abstractions ResourceResolver, ResourceTransformer, and ResourceUrlProvider. A number of built-in implementations provide support for versioned resource URLs (for effective HTTP caching), locating gzipped resources, generating an HTML 5 AppCache manifests, and more. See Section 17.16.7, “Serving of Resources”.
JDK 1.8’s java.util.Optional is now supported for @RequestParam, @RequestHeader, and @MatrixVariable controller method arguments.
ListenableFuture is supported as a return value alternative to DeferredResult where an underlying service (or perhaps a call to AsyncRestTemplate) already returns ListenableFuture.
@ModelAttribute methods are now invoked in an order that respects inter-dependencies. See SPR-6299.
Jackson’s @JsonView is supported directly on @ResponseBody and ResponseEntity controller methods for serializing different amounts of detail for the same POJO (e.g. summary vs. detail page). This is also supported with View-based rendering by adding the serialization view type as a model attribute under a special key. See the section called “Jackson Serialization View Support” for details.
JSONP is now supported with Jackson. See the section called “Jackson JSONP Support”.
A new lifecycle option is available for intercepting @ResponseBody and ResponseEntity methods just after the controller method returns and before the response is written. To take advantage declare an @ControllerAdvice bean that implements ResponseBodyAdvice. The built-in support for @JsonView and JSONP take advantage of this. See Section 17.4.1, “Intercepting requests with a HandlerInterceptor”.
There are three new HttpMessageConverter options:
- Gson — lighter footprint than Jackson; has already been in use in Spring Android.
- Google Protocol Buffers — efficient and effective as an inter-service communication data protocol within an enterprise but can also be exposed as JSON and XML for browsers.
- Jackson based XML serialization is now supported through the jackson-dataformat-xml extension. When using @EnableWebMvc or <mvc:annotation-driven/>, this is used by default instead of JAXB2 if jackson-dataformat-xml is in the classpath.
Views such as JSPs can now build links to controllers by referring to controller mappings by name. A default name is assigned to every @RequestMapping. For example FooController with method handleFoo is named "FC#handleFoo". The naming strategy is pluggable. It is also possible to name an @RequestMapping explicitly through its name attribute. A new mvcUrl function in the Spring JSP tag library makes this easy to use in JSP pages. See Section 17.7.2, “Building URIs to Controllers and methods from views”.
ResponseEntity provides a builder-style API to guide controller methods towards the preparation of server-side responses, e.g. ResponseEntity.ok().
RequestEntity is a new type that provides a builder-style API to guide client-side REST code towards the preparation of HTTP requests.
MVC Java config and XML namespace:
- View resolvers can now be configured including support for content negotiation, see Section 17.16.6, “View Resolvers”.
- View controllers now have built-in support for redirects and for setting the response status. An application can use this to configure redirect URLs, render 404 responses with a view, send "no content" responses, etc. Some use cases are listed here.
- Path matching customizations are frequently used and now built-in. See Section 17.16.9, “Path Matching”.
Groovy markup template support (based on Groovy 2.3). See the GroovyMarkupConfigurer and respecitve ViewResolver and ‘View’ implementations.

4.4 WebSocket STOMP Messaging Improvements

SockJS (Java) client-side support. See SockJsClient and classes in same package.
New application context events SessionSubscribeEvent and SessionUnsubscribeEvent published when STOMP clients subscribe and unsubscribe.
New "websocket" scope. See Section 21.4.13, “WebSocket Scope”.
@SendToUser can target only a single session and does not require an authenticated user.
@MessageMapping methods can use dot "." instead of slash "/" as path separator. See SPR-11660.
STOMP/WebSocket monitoring info collected and logged. See Section 21.4.15, “Runtime Monitoring”.
Significantly optimized and improved logging that should remain very readable and compact even at DEBUG level.
Optimized message creation including support for temporary message mutability and avoiding automatic message id and timestamp creation. See Javadoc of MessageHeaderAccessor.
Close STOMP/WebSocket connections that have no activity within 60 seconds after the WebSocket session is established. See SPR-11884.

4.5 Testing Improvements

Groovy scripts can now be used to configure the ApplicationContext loaded for integration tests in the TestContext framework.
- See the section called “Context configuration with Groovy scripts” for details.
Test-managed transactions can now be programmatically started and ended within transactional test methods via the new TestTransaction API.
- See the section called “Programmatic transaction management” for details.
SQL script execution can now be configured declaratively via the new @Sql and @SqlConfig annotations on a per-class or per-method basis.
- See the section called “Executing SQL scripts” for details.
Test property sources which automatically override system and application property sources can be configured via the new @TestPropertySource annotation.
- See the section called “Context configuration with test property sources” for details.
Default TestExecutionListeners can now be automatically discovered.
- See the section called “Automatic discovery of default TestExecutionListeners” for details.
Custom TestExecutionListeners can now be automatically merged with the default listeners.
- See the section called “Merging TestExecutionListeners” for details.
The documentation for transactional testing support in the TestContext framework has been improved with more thorough explanations and additional examples.
- See the section called “Transaction management” for details.
Various improvements to MockServletContext, MockHttpServletRequest, and other Servlet API mocks.
AssertThrows has been refactored to support Throwable instead of Exception.
In Spring MVC Test, JSON responses can be asserted with JSON Assert as an extra option to using JSONPath much like it has been possible to do for XML with XMLUnit.
MockMvcBuilder recipes can now be created with the help of MockMvcConfigurer. This was added to make it easy to apply Spring Security setup but can be used to encapsulate common setup for any 3rd party framework or within a project.
MockRestServiceServer now supports the AsyncRestTemplate for client-side testing.

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