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Using @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy

The CommonAnnotationBeanPostProcessor not only recognizes the @Resource annotation but also the JSR-250 lifecycle annotations: jakarta.annotation.PostConstruct and jakarta.annotation.PreDestroy. Introduced in Spring 2.5, the support for these annotations offers an alternative to the lifecycle callback mechanism described in initialization callbacks and destruction callbacks. Provided that the CommonAnnotationBeanPostProcessor is registered within the Spring ApplicationContext, a method carrying one of these annotations is invoked at the same point in the lifecycle as the corresponding Spring lifecycle interface method or explicitly declared callback method. In the following example, the cache is pre-populated upon initialization and cleared upon destruction:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

public class CachingMovieLister {

	@PostConstruct
	public void populateMovieCache() {
		// populates the movie cache upon initialization...
	}

	@PreDestroy
	public void clearMovieCache() {
		// clears the movie cache upon destruction...
	}
}
class CachingMovieLister {

	@PostConstruct
	fun populateMovieCache() {
		// populates the movie cache upon initialization...
	}

	@PreDestroy
	fun clearMovieCache() {
		// clears the movie cache upon destruction...
	}
}

For details about the effects of combining various lifecycle mechanisms, see Combining Lifecycle Mechanisms.

Like @Resource, the @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy annotation types were a part of the standard Java libraries from JDK 6 to 8. However, the entire javax.annotation package got separated from the core Java modules in JDK 9 and eventually removed in JDK 11. As of Jakarta EE 9, the package lives in jakarta.annotation now. If needed, the jakarta.annotation-api artifact needs to be obtained via Maven Central now, simply to be added to the application’s classpath like any other library.