As the preceding diagram shows, the Spring IoC container consumes a form of configuration metadata; this configuration metadata represents how you as an application developer tell the Spring container to instantiate, configure, and assemble the objects in your application.

Configuration metadata is traditionally supplied in a simple and intuitive XML format, which is what most of this chapter uses to convey key concepts and features of the Spring IoC container.

	Note
	XML-based metadata is not the only allowed form of configuration metadata. The Spring IoC container itself is totally decoupled from the format in which this configuration metadata is actually written. These days many developers choose Java-based configuration for their Spring applications.

For information about using other forms of metadata with the Spring container, see:

Spring configuration consists of at least one and typically more than one bean definition that the container must manage. XML-based configuration metadata shows these beans configured as <bean/> elements inside a top-level <beans/> element. Java configuration typically uses @Bean annotated methods within a @Configuration class.

These bean definitions correspond to the actual objects that make up your application. Typically you define service layer objects, data access objects (DAOs), presentation objects such as Struts Action instances, infrastructure objects such as Hibernate SessionFactories, JMS Queues, and so forth. Typically one does not configure fine-grained domain objects in the container, because it is usually the responsibility of DAOs and business logic to create and load domain objects. However, you can use Spring’s integration with AspectJ to configure objects that have been created outside the control of an IoC container. See Using AspectJ to dependency-inject domain objects with Spring.

The following example shows the basic structure of XML-based configuration metadata:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">

    <bean id="..." class="...">
        <!-- collaborators and configuration for this bean go here -->
    </bean>

    <bean id="..." class="...">
        <!-- collaborators and configuration for this bean go here -->
    </bean>

    <!-- more bean definitions go here -->

</beans>

The id attribute is a string that you use to identify the individual bean definition. The class attribute defines the type of the bean and uses the fully qualified classname. The value of the id attribute refers to collaborating objects. The XML for referring to collaborating objects is not shown in this example; see Dependencies for more information.

Instantiating a Spring IoC container is straightforward. The location path or paths supplied to an ApplicationContext constructor are actually resource strings that allow the container to load configuration metadata from a variety of external resources such as the local file system, from the Java CLASSPATH, and so on.

ApplicationContext context =
    new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(new String[] {"services.xml", "daos.xml"});

	Note
	After you learn about Spring’s IoC container, you may want to know more about Spring’s Resource abstraction, as described in Chapter 5, Resources, which provides a convenient mechanism for reading an InputStream from locations defined in a URI syntax. In particular, Resource paths are used to construct applications contexts as described in Section 5.7, “Application contexts and Resource paths”.

The following example shows the service layer objects (services.xml) configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">

    <!-- services -->

    <bean id="petStore" class="org.springframework.samples.jpetstore.services.PetStoreServiceImpl">
        <property name="accountDao" ref="accountDao"/>
        <property name="itemDao" ref="itemDao"/>
        <!-- additional collaborators and configuration for this bean go here -->
    </bean>

    <!-- more bean definitions for services go here -->

</beans>

The following example shows the data access objects daos.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">

    <bean id="accountDao"
        class="org.springframework.samples.jpetstore.dao.jpa.JpaAccountDao">
        <!-- additional collaborators and configuration for this bean go here -->
    </bean>

    <bean id="itemDao" class="org.springframework.samples.jpetstore.dao.jpa.JapItemDao">
        <!-- additional collaborators and configuration for this bean go here -->
    </bean>

    <!-- more bean definitions for data access objects go here -->

</beans>

In the preceding example, the service layer consists of the class PetStoreServiceImpl, and two data access objects of the type JpaAccountDao and JpaItemDao (based on the JPA Object/Relational mapping standard). The property name element refers to the name of the JavaBean property, and the ref element refers to the name of another bean definition. This linkage between id and ref elements expresses the dependency between collaborating objects. For details of configuring an object’s dependencies, see Dependencies.

Composing XML-based configuration metadata

It can be useful to have bean definitions span multiple XML files. Often each individual XML configuration file represents a logical layer or module in your architecture.

You can use the application context constructor to load bean definitions from all these XML fragments. This constructor takes multiple Resource locations, as was shown in the previous section. Alternatively, use one or more occurrences of the <import/> element to load bean definitions from another file or files. For example:

<beans>
    <import resource="services.xml"/>
    <import resource="resources/messageSource.xml"/>
    <import resource="/resources/themeSource.xml"/>

    <bean id="bean1" class="..."/>
    <bean id="bean2" class="..."/>
</beans>

In the preceding example, external bean definitions are loaded from three files, services.xml, messageSource.xml, and themeSource.xml. All location paths are relative to the definition file doing the importing, so services.xml must be in the same directory or classpath location as the file doing the importing, while messageSource.xml and themeSource.xml must be in a resources location below the location of the importing file. As you can see, a leading slash is ignored, but given that these paths are relative, it is better form not to use the slash at all. The contents of the files being imported, including the top level <beans/> element, must be valid XML bean definitions according to the Spring Schema.

Note

It is possible, but not recommended, to reference files in parent directories using a relative "../" path. Doing so creates a dependency on a file that is outside the current application. In particular, this reference is not recommended for "classpath:" URLs (for example, "classpath:../services.xml"), where the runtime resolution process chooses the "nearest" classpath root and then looks into its parent directory. Classpath configuration changes may lead to the choice of a different, incorrect directory. You can always use fully qualified resource locations instead of relative paths: for example, "file:C:/config/services.xml" or "classpath:/config/services.xml". However, be aware that you are coupling your application’s configuration to specific absolute locations. It is generally preferable to keep an indirection for such absolute locations, for example, through "${…}" placeholders that are resolved against JVM system properties at runtime.

The ApplicationContext is the interface for an advanced factory capable of maintaining a registry of different beans and their dependencies. Using the method T getBean(String name, Class<T> requiredType) you can retrieve instances of your beans.

The ApplicationContext enables you to read bean definitions and access them as follows:

// create and configure beans
ApplicationContext context =
    new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(new String[] {"services.xml", "daos.xml"});

// retrieve configured instance
PetStoreService service = context.getBean("petStore", PetStoreService.class);

// use configured instance
List<String> userList = service.getUsernameList();

You use getBean() to retrieve instances of your beans. The ApplicationContext interface has a few other methods for retrieving beans, but ideally your application code should never use them. Indeed, your application code should have no calls to the getBean() method at all, and thus no dependency on Spring APIs at all. For example, Spring’s integration with web frameworks provides for dependency injection for various web framework classes such as controllers and JSF-managed beans.

Every bean has one or more identifiers. These identifiers must be unique within the container that hosts the bean. A bean usually has only one identifier, but if it requires more than one, the extra ones can be considered aliases.

In XML-based configuration metadata, you use the id and/or name attributes to specify the bean identifier(s). The id attribute allows you to specify exactly one id. Conventionally these names are alphanumeric (myBean, fooService, etc.), but may contain special characters as well. If you want to introduce other aliases to the bean, you can also specify them in the name attribute, separated by a comma (,), semicolon (;), or white space. As a historical note, in versions prior to Spring 3.1, the id attribute was defined as an xsd:ID type, which constrained possible characters. As of 3.1, it is defined as an xsd:string type. Note that bean id uniqueness is still enforced by the container, though no longer by XML parsers.

You are not required to supply a name or id for a bean. If no name or id is supplied explicitly, the container generates a unique name for that bean. However, if you want to refer to that bean by name, through the use of the ref element or Service Locator style lookup, you must provide a name. Motivations for not supplying a name are related to using inner beans and autowiring collaborators.

<alias name="fromName" alias="toName"/>

<alias name="subsystemA-dataSource" alias="subsystemB-dataSource"/>
<alias name="subsystemA-dataSource" alias="myApp-dataSource" />

A bean definition essentially is a recipe for creating one or more objects. The container looks at the recipe for a named bean when asked, and uses the configuration metadata encapsulated by that bean definition to create (or acquire) an actual object.

If you use XML-based configuration metadata, you specify the type (or class) of object that is to be instantiated in the class attribute of the <bean/> element. This class attribute, which internally is a Class property on a BeanDefinition instance, is usually mandatory. (For exceptions, see the section called “Instantiation using an instance factory method” and Section 4.7, “Bean definition inheritance”.) You use the Class property in one of two ways:

<bean id="exampleBean" class="examples.ExampleBean"/>

<bean name="anotherExample" class="examples.ExampleBeanTwo"/>

<bean id="clientService"
    class="examples.ClientService"
    factory-method="createInstance"/>

public class ClientService {
    private static ClientService clientService = new ClientService();
    private ClientService() {}

    public static ClientService createInstance() {
        return clientService;
    }
}

Instantiation using an instance factory method

Similar to instantiation through a static factory method, instantiation with an instance factory method invokes a non-static method of an existing bean from the container to create a new bean. To use this mechanism, leave the class attribute empty, and in the factory-bean attribute, specify the name of a bean in the current (or parent/ancestor) container that contains the instance method that is to be invoked to create the object. Set the name of the factory method itself with the factory-method attribute.

<!-- the factory bean, which contains a method called createInstance() -->
<bean id="serviceLocator" class="examples.DefaultServiceLocator">
    <!-- inject any dependencies required by this locator bean -->
</bean>

<!-- the bean to be created via the factory bean -->
<bean id="clientService"
    factory-bean="serviceLocator"
    factory-method="createClientServiceInstance"/>

public class DefaultServiceLocator {

    private static ClientService clientService = new ClientServiceImpl();
    private DefaultServiceLocator() {}

    public ClientService createClientServiceInstance() {
        return clientService;
    }
}

One factory class can also hold more than one factory method as shown here:

<bean id="serviceLocator" class="examples.DefaultServiceLocator">
    <!-- inject any dependencies required by this locator bean -->
</bean>

<bean id="clientService"
    factory-bean="serviceLocator"
    factory-method="createClientServiceInstance"/>

<bean id="accountService"
    factory-bean="serviceLocator"
    factory-method="createAccountServiceInstance"/>

public class DefaultServiceLocator {

    private static ClientService clientService = new ClientServiceImpl();
    private static AccountService accountService = new AccountServiceImpl();

    private DefaultServiceLocator() {}

    public ClientService createClientServiceInstance() {
        return clientService;
    }

    public AccountService createAccountServiceInstance() {
        return accountService;
    }

}

This approach shows that the factory bean itself can be managed and configured through dependency injection (DI). See Dependencies and configuration in detail.

	Note
	In Spring documentation, factory bean refers to a bean that is configured in the Spring container that will create objects through an instance or static factory method. By contrast, FactoryBean (notice the capitalization) refers to a Spring-specific FactoryBean.

Dependency injection (DI) is a process whereby objects define their dependencies, that is, the other objects they work with, only through constructor arguments, arguments to a factory method, or properties that are set on the object instance after it is constructed or returned from a factory method. The container then injects those dependencies when it creates the bean. This process is fundamentally the inverse, hence the name Inversion of Control (IoC), of the bean itself controlling the instantiation or location of its dependencies on its own by using direct construction of classes, or the Service Locator pattern.

Code is cleaner with the DI principle and decoupling is more effective when objects are provided with their dependencies. The object does not look up its dependencies, and does not know the location or class of the dependencies. As such, your classes become easier to test, in particular when the dependencies are on interfaces or abstract base classes, which allow for stub or mock implementations to be used in unit tests.

DI exists in two major variants, Constructor-based dependency injection and Setter-based dependency injection.

public class SimpleMovieLister {

    // the SimpleMovieLister has a dependency on a MovieFinder
    private MovieFinder movieFinder;

    // a constructor so that the Spring container can inject a MovieFinder
    public SimpleMovieLister(MovieFinder movieFinder) {
        this.movieFinder = movieFinder;
    }

    // business logic that actually uses the injected MovieFinder is omitted...

}

package x.y;

public class Foo {

    public Foo(Bar bar, Baz baz) {
        // ...
    }

}

<beans>
    <bean id="foo" class="x.y.Foo">
        <constructor-arg ref="bar"/>
        <constructor-arg ref="baz"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="bar" class="x.y.Bar"/>

    <bean id="baz" class="x.y.Baz"/>
</beans>

package examples;

public class ExampleBean {

    // Number of years to calculate the Ultimate Answer
    private int years;

    // The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
    private String ultimateAnswer;

    public ExampleBean(int years, String ultimateAnswer) {
        this.years = years;
        this.ultimateAnswer = ultimateAnswer;
    }

}

<bean id="exampleBean" class="examples.ExampleBean">
    <constructor-arg type="int" value="7500000"/>
    <constructor-arg type="java.lang.String" value="42"/>
</bean>

<bean id="exampleBean" class="examples.ExampleBean">
    <constructor-arg index="0" value="7500000"/>
    <constructor-arg index="1" value="42"/>
</bean>

<bean id="exampleBean" class="examples.ExampleBean">
    <constructor-arg name="years" value="7500000"/>
    <constructor-arg name="ultimateanswer" value="42"/>
</bean>

package examples;

public class ExampleBean {

    // Fields omitted

    @ConstructorProperties({"years", "ultimateAnswer"})
    public ExampleBean(int years, String ultimateAnswer) {
        this.years = years;
        this.ultimateAnswer = ultimateAnswer;
    }

}

public class SimpleMovieLister {

    // the SimpleMovieLister has a dependency on the MovieFinder
    private MovieFinder movieFinder;

    // a setter method so that the Spring container can inject a MovieFinder
    public void setMovieFinder(MovieFinder movieFinder) {
        this.movieFinder = movieFinder;
    }

    // business logic that actually uses the injected MovieFinder is omitted...

}

<bean id="exampleBean" class="examples.ExampleBean">
    <!-- setter injection using the nested <ref/> element -->
    <property name="beanOne">
        <ref bean="anotherExampleBean"/>
    </property>

    <!-- setter injection using the neater ref attribute -->
    <property name="beanTwo" ref="yetAnotherBean"/>
    <property name="integerProperty" value="1"/>
</bean>

<bean id="anotherExampleBean" class="examples.AnotherBean"/>
<bean id="yetAnotherBean" class="examples.YetAnotherBean"/>

public class ExampleBean {

    private AnotherBean beanOne;
    private YetAnotherBean beanTwo;
    private int i;

    public void setBeanOne(AnotherBean beanOne) {
        this.beanOne = beanOne;
    }

    public void setBeanTwo(YetAnotherBean beanTwo) {
        this.beanTwo = beanTwo;
    }

    public void setIntegerProperty(int i) {
        this.i = i;
    }

}

<bean id="exampleBean" class="examples.ExampleBean">
    <!-- constructor injection using the nested <ref/> element -->
    <constructor-arg>
        <ref bean="anotherExampleBean"/>
    </constructor-arg>

    <!-- constructor injection using the neater ref attribute -->
    <constructor-arg ref="yetAnotherBean"/>

    <constructor-arg type="int" value="1"/>
</bean>

<bean id="anotherExampleBean" class="examples.AnotherBean"/>
<bean id="yetAnotherBean" class="examples.YetAnotherBean"/>

public class ExampleBean {

    private AnotherBean beanOne;
    private YetAnotherBean beanTwo;
    private int i;

    public ExampleBean(
        AnotherBean anotherBean, YetAnotherBean yetAnotherBean, int i) {
        this.beanOne = anotherBean;
        this.beanTwo = yetAnotherBean;
        this.i = i;
    }

}

<bean id="exampleBean" class="examples.ExampleBean" factory-method="createInstance">
    <constructor-arg ref="anotherExampleBean"/>
    <constructor-arg ref="yetAnotherBean"/>
    <constructor-arg value="1"/>
</bean>

<bean id="anotherExampleBean" class="examples.AnotherBean"/>
<bean id="yetAnotherBean" class="examples.YetAnotherBean"/>

public class ExampleBean {

    // a private constructor
    private ExampleBean(...) {
        ...
    }

    // a static factory method; the arguments to this method can be
    // considered the dependencies of the bean that is returned,
    // regardless of how those arguments are actually used.
    public static ExampleBean createInstance (
        AnotherBean anotherBean, YetAnotherBean yetAnotherBean, int i) {

        ExampleBean eb = new ExampleBean (...);
        // some other operations...
        return eb;
    }

}

As mentioned in the previous section, you can define bean properties and constructor arguments as references to other managed beans (collaborators), or as values defined inline. Spring’s XML-based configuration metadata supports sub-element types within its <property/> and <constructor-arg/> elements for this purpose.

<bean id="myDataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">
    <!-- results in a setDriverClassName(String) call -->
    <property name="driverClassName" value="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"/>
    <property name="url" value="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mydb"/>
    <property name="username" value="root"/>
    <property name="password" value="masterkaoli"/>
</bean>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">

    <bean id="myDataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource"
        destroy-method="close"
        p:driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
        p:url="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mydb"
        p:username="root"
        p:password="masterkaoli"/>

</beans>

<bean id="mappings"
    class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">

    <!-- typed as a java.util.Properties -->
    <property name="properties">
        <value>
            jdbc.driver.className=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
            jdbc.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mydb
        </value>
    </property>
</bean>

<bean id="theTargetBean" class="..."/>

<bean id="theClientBean" class="...">
    <property name="targetName">
        <idref bean="theTargetBean" />
    </property>
</bean>

<bean id="theTargetBean" class="..." />

<bean id="client" class="...">
    <property name="targetName" value="theTargetBean" />
</bean>

<property name="targetName">
    <!-- a bean with id theTargetBean must exist; otherwise an exception will be thrown -->
    <idref bean="theTargetBean"/>
</property>

References to other beans (collaborators)

The ref element is the final element inside a <constructor-arg/> or <property/> definition element. Here you set the value of the specified property of a bean to be a reference to another bean (a collaborator) managed by the container. The referenced bean is a dependency of the bean whose property will be set, and it is initialized on demand as needed before the property is set. (If the collaborator is a singleton bean, it may be initialized already by the container.) All references are ultimately a reference to another object. Scoping and validation depend on whether you specify the id/name of the other object through the bean, local, or parent attributes.

Specifying the target bean through the bean attribute of the <ref/> tag is the most general form, and allows creation of a reference to any bean in the same container or parent container, regardless of whether it is in the same XML file. The value of the bean attribute may be the same as the id attribute of the target bean, or as one of the values in the name attribute of the target bean.

<ref bean="someBean"/>

Specifying the target bean through the parent attribute creates a reference to a bean that is in a parent container of the current container. The value of the parent attribute may be the same as either the id attribute of the target bean, or one of the values in the name attribute of the target bean, and the target bean must be in a parent container of the current one. You use this bean reference variant mainly when you have a hierarchy of containers and you want to wrap an existing bean in a parent container with a proxy that will have the same name as the parent bean.

<!-- in the parent context -->
<bean id="accountService" class="com.foo.SimpleAccountService">
    <!-- insert dependencies as required as here -->
</bean>

<!-- in the child (descendant) context -->
<bean id="accountService" <-- bean name is the same as the parent bean -->
    class="org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean">
    <property name="target">
        <ref parent="accountService"/> <!-- notice how we refer to the parent bean -->
    </property>
    <!-- insert other configuration and dependencies as required here -->
</bean>

	Note
	The local attribute on the ref element is no longer supported in the 4.0 beans xsd since it does not provide value over a regular bean reference anymore. Simply change your existing ref local references to ref bean when upgrading to the 4.0 schema.

<bean id="outer" class="...">
    <!-- instead of using a reference to a target bean, simply define the target bean inline -->
    <property name="target">
        <bean class="com.example.Person"> <!-- this is the inner bean -->
            <property name="name" value="Fiona Apple"/>
            <property name="age" value="25"/>
        </bean>
    </property>
</bean>

<bean id="moreComplexObject" class="example.ComplexObject">
    <!-- results in a setAdminEmails(java.util.Properties) call -->
    <property name="adminEmails">
        <props>
            <prop key="administrator">[email protected]</prop>
            <prop key="support">[email protected]</prop>
            <prop key="development">[email protected]</prop>
        </props>
    </property>
    <!-- results in a setSomeList(java.util.List) call -->
    <property name="someList">
        <list>
            <value>a list element followed by a reference</value>
            <ref bean="myDataSource" />
        </list>
    </property>
    <!-- results in a setSomeMap(java.util.Map) call -->
    <property name="someMap">
        <map>
            <entry key="an entry" value="just some string"/>
            <entry key ="a ref" value-ref="myDataSource"/>
        </map>
    </property>
    <!-- results in a setSomeSet(java.util.Set) call -->
    <property name="someSet">
        <set>
            <value>just some string</value>
            <ref bean="myDataSource" />
        </set>
    </property>
</bean>

bean | ref | idref | list | set | map | props | value | null

<beans>
    <bean id="parent" abstract="true" class="example.ComplexObject">
        <property name="adminEmails">
            <props>
                <prop key="administrator">[email protected]</prop>
                <prop key="support">[email protected]</prop>
            </props>
        </property>
    </bean>
    <bean id="child" parent="parent">
        <property name="adminEmails">
            <!-- the merge is specified on the child collection definition -->
            <props merge="true">
                <prop key="sales">[email protected]</prop>
                <prop key="support">[email protected]</prop>
            </props>
        </property>
    </bean>
<beans>

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

public class Foo {

    private Map<String, Float> accounts;

    public void setAccounts(Map<String, Float> accounts) {
        this.accounts = accounts;
    }
}

<beans>
    <bean id="foo" class="x.y.Foo">
        <property name="accounts">
            <map>
                <entry key="one" value="9.99"/>
                <entry key="two" value="2.75"/>
                <entry key="six" value="3.99"/>
            </map>
        </property>
    </bean>
</beans>

<bean class="ExampleBean">
    <property name="email" value=""/>
</bean>

<bean class="ExampleBean">
    <property name="email">
        <null/>
    </property>
</bean>

XML shortcut with the p-namespace

The p-namespace enables you to use the bean element’s attributes, instead of nested <property/> elements, to describe your property values and/or collaborating beans.

Spring supports extensible configuration formats with namespaces, which are based on an XML Schema definition. The beans configuration format discussed in this chapter is defined in an XML Schema document. However, the p-namespace is not defined in an XSD file and exists only in the core of Spring.

The following example shows two XML snippets that resolve to the same result: The first uses standard XML format and the second uses the p-namespace.

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">

    <bean name="classic" class="com.example.ExampleBean">
        <property name="email" value="[email protected]"/>
    </bean>

    <bean name="p-namespace" class="com.example.ExampleBean"
        p:email="[email protected]"/>
</beans>

The example shows an attribute in the p-namespace called email in the bean definition. This tells Spring to include a property declaration. As previously mentioned, the p-namespace does not have a schema definition, so you can set the name of the attribute to the property name.

This next example includes two more bean definitions that both have a reference to another bean:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">

    <bean name="john-classic" class="com.example.Person">
        <property name="name" value="John Doe"/>
        <property name="spouse" ref="jane"/>
    </bean>

    <bean name="john-modern"
        class="com.example.Person"
        p:name="John Doe"
        p:spouse-ref="jane"/>

    <bean name="jane" class="com.example.Person">
        <property name="name" value="Jane Doe"/>
    </bean>
</beans>

As you can see, this example includes not only a property value using the p-namespace, but also uses a special format to declare property references. Whereas the first bean definition uses <property name="spouse" ref="jane"/> to create a reference from bean john to bean jane, the second bean definition uses p:spouse-ref="jane" as an attribute to do the exact same thing. In this case spouse is the property name, whereas the -ref part indicates that this is not a straight value but rather a reference to another bean.

	Note
	The p-namespace is not as flexible as the standard XML format. For example, the format for declaring property references clashes with properties that end in Ref, whereas the standard XML format does not. We recommend that you choose your approach carefully and communicate this to your team members, to avoid producing XML documents that use all three approaches at the same time.

XML shortcut with the c-namespace

Similar to the the section called “XML shortcut with the p-namespace”, the c-namespace, newly introduced in Spring 3.1, allows usage of inlined attributes for configuring the constructor arguments rather then nested constructor-arg elements.

Let’s review the examples from the section called “Constructor-based dependency injection” with the c: namespace:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:c="http://www.springframework.org/schema/c"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">

    <bean id="bar" class="x.y.Bar"/>
    <bean id="baz" class="x.y.Baz"/>

    <!-- traditional declaration -->
    <bean id="foo" class="x.y.Foo">
        <constructor-arg ref="bar"/>
        <constructor-arg ref="baz"/>
        <constructor-arg value="[email protected]"/>
    </bean>

    <!-- c-namespace declaration -->
    <bean id="foo" class="x.y.Foo" c:bar-ref="bar" c:baz-ref="baz" c:email="[email protected]"/>

</beans>

The c: namespace uses the same conventions as the p: one (trailing -ref for bean references) for setting the constructor arguments by their names. And just as well, it needs to be declared even though it is not defined in an XSD schema (but it exists inside the Spring core).

For the rare cases where the constructor argument names are not available (usually if the bytecode was compiled without debugging information), one can use fallback to the argument indexes:

<!-- c-namespace index declaration -->
<bean id="foo" class="x.y.Foo" c:_0-ref="bar" c:_1-ref="baz"/>

	Note
	Due to the XML grammar, the index notation requires the presence of the leading _ as XML attribute names cannot start with a number (even though some IDE allow it).

In practice, the constructor resolution mechanism is quite efficient in matching arguments so unless one really needs to, we recommend using the name notation through-out your configuration.

<bean id="foo" class="foo.Bar">
    <property name="fred.bob.sammy" value="123" />
</bean>

If a bean is a dependency of another that usually means that one bean is set as a property of another. Typically you accomplish this with the <ref/> element in XML-based configuration metadata. However, sometimes dependencies between beans are less direct; for example, a static initializer in a class needs to be triggered, such as database driver registration. The depends-on attribute can explicitly force one or more beans to be initialized before the bean using this element is initialized. The following example uses the depends-on attribute to express a dependency on a single bean:

<bean id="beanOne" class="ExampleBean" depends-on="manager"/>
<bean id="manager" class="ManagerBean" />

To express a dependency on multiple beans, supply a list of bean names as the value of the depends-on attribute, with commas, whitespace and semicolons, used as valid delimiters:

<bean id="beanOne" class="ExampleBean" depends-on="manager,accountDao">
    <property name="manager" ref="manager" />
</bean>

<bean id="manager" class="ManagerBean" />
<bean id="accountDao" class="x.y.jdbc.JdbcAccountDao" />

	Note
	The depends-on attribute in the bean definition can specify both an initialization time dependency and, in the case of singleton beans only, a corresponding destroy time dependency. Dependent beans that define a depends-on relationship with a given bean are destroyed first, prior to the given bean itself being destroyed. Thus depends-on can also control shutdown order.

By default, ApplicationContext implementations eagerly create and configure all singleton beans as part of the initialization process. Generally, this pre-instantiation is desirable, because errors in the configuration or surrounding environment are discovered immediately, as opposed to hours or even days later. When this behavior is not desirable, you can prevent pre-instantiation of a singleton bean by marking the bean definition as lazy-initialized. A lazy-initialized bean tells the IoC container to create a bean instance when it is first requested, rather than at startup.

In XML, this behavior is controlled by the lazy-init attribute on the <bean/> element; for example:

<bean id="lazy" class="com.foo.ExpensiveToCreateBean" lazy-init="true"/>
<bean name="not.lazy" class="com.foo.AnotherBean"/>

When the preceding configuration is consumed by an ApplicationContext, the bean named lazy is not eagerly pre-instantiated when the ApplicationContext is starting up, whereas the not.lazy bean is eagerly pre-instantiated.

However, when a lazy-initialized bean is a dependency of a singleton bean that is not lazy-initialized, the ApplicationContext creates the lazy-initialized bean at startup, because it must satisfy the singleton’s dependencies. The lazy-initialized bean is injected into a singleton bean elsewhere that is not lazy-initialized.

You can also control lazy-initialization at the container level by using the default-lazy-init attribute on the <beans/> element; for example:

<beans default-lazy-init="true">
    <!-- no beans will be pre-instantiated... -->
</beans>

The Spring container can autowire relationships between collaborating beans. You can allow Spring to resolve collaborators (other beans) automatically for your bean by inspecting the contents of the ApplicationContext. Autowiring has the following advantages:

When using XML-based configuration metadata ^[2], you specify autowire mode for a bean definition with the autowire attribute of the <bean/> element. The autowiring functionality has five modes. You specify autowiring per bean and thus can choose which ones to autowire.

With byType or constructor autowiring mode, you can wire arrays and typed-collections. In such cases all autowire candidates within the container that match the expected type are provided to satisfy the dependency. You can autowire strongly-typed Maps if the expected key type is String. An autowired Maps values will consist of all bean instances that match the expected type, and the Maps keys will contain the corresponding bean names.

You can combine autowire behavior with dependency checking, which is performed after autowiring completes.

In most application scenarios, most beans in the container are singletons. When a singleton bean needs to collaborate with another singleton bean, or a non-singleton bean needs to collaborate with another non-singleton bean, you typically handle the dependency by defining one bean as a property of the other. A problem arises when the bean lifecycles are different. Suppose singleton bean A needs to use non-singleton (prototype) bean B, perhaps on each method invocation on A. The container only creates the singleton bean A once, and thus only gets one opportunity to set the properties. The container cannot provide bean A with a new instance of bean B every time one is needed.

A solution is to forego some inversion of control. You can make bean A aware of the container by implementing the ApplicationContextAware interface, and by making a getBean("B") call to the container ask for (a typically new) bean B instance every time bean A needs it. The following is an example of this approach:

// a class that uses a stateful Command-style class to perform some processing
package fiona.apple;

// Spring-API imports
import org.springframework.beans.BeansException;
import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextAware;

public class CommandManager implements ApplicationContextAware {

    private ApplicationContext applicationContext;

    public Object process(Map commandState) {
        // grab a new instance of the appropriate Command
        Command command = createCommand();
        // set the state on the (hopefully brand new) Command instance
        command.setState(commandState);
        return command.execute();
    }

    protected Command createCommand() {
        // notice the Spring API dependency!
        return this.applicationContext.getBean("command", Command.class);
    }

    public void setApplicationContext(
            ApplicationContext applicationContext) throws BeansException {
        this.applicationContext = applicationContext;
    }
}

The preceding is not desirable, because the business code is aware of and coupled to the Spring Framework. Method Injection, a somewhat advanced feature of the Spring IoC container, allows this use case to be handled in a clean fashion.

Lookup method injection

Lookup method injection is the ability of the container to override methods on container managed beans, to return the lookup result for another named bean in the container. The lookup typically involves a prototype bean as in the scenario described in the preceding section. The Spring Framework implements this method injection by using bytecode generation from the CGLIB library to generate dynamically a subclass that overrides the method.

Note

For this dynamic subclassing to work, the class that the Spring container will subclass cannot be final, and the method to be overridden cannot be final either. Also, testing a class that has an abstract method requires you to subclass the class yourself and to supply a stub implementation of the abstract method. Finally, objects that have been the target of method injection cannot be serialized. As of Spring 3.2 it is no longer necessary to add CGLIB to your classpath, because CGLIB classes are repackaged under org.springframework and distributed within the spring-core JAR. This is done both for convenience as well as to avoid potential conflicts with other projects that use differing versions of CGLIB.

Looking at the CommandManager class in the previous code snippet, you see that the Spring container will dynamically override the implementation of the createCommand() method. Your CommandManager class will not have any Spring dependencies, as can be seen in the reworked example:

package fiona.apple;

// no more Spring imports!

public abstract class CommandManager {

    public Object process(Object commandState) {
        // grab a new instance of the appropriate Command interface
        Command command = createCommand();
        // set the state on the (hopefully brand new) Command instance
        command.setState(commandState);
        return command.execute();
    }

    // okay... but where is the implementation of this method?
    protected abstract Command createCommand();
}

In the client class containing the method to be injected (the CommandManager in this case), the method to be injected requires a signature of the following form:

<public|protected> [abstract] <return-type> theMethodName(no-arguments);

If the method is abstract, the dynamically-generated subclass implements the method. Otherwise, the dynamically-generated subclass overrides the concrete method defined in the original class. For example:

<!-- a stateful bean deployed as a prototype (non-singleton) -->
<bean id="command" class="fiona.apple.AsyncCommand" scope="prototype">
    <!-- inject dependencies here as required -->
</bean>

<!-- commandProcessor uses statefulCommandHelper -->
<bean id="commandManager" class="fiona.apple.CommandManager">
    <lookup-method name="createCommand" bean="command"/>
</bean>

The bean identified as commandManager calls its own method createCommand() whenever it needs a new instance of the command bean. You must be careful to deploy the command bean as a prototype, if that is actually what is needed. If it is deployed as a singleton, the same instance of the command bean is returned each time.

Tip

The interested reader may also find the ServiceLocatorFactoryBean (in the org.springframework.beans.factory.config package) to be of use. The approach used in ServiceLocatorFactoryBean is similar to that of another utility class, ObjectFactoryCreatingFactoryBean, but it allows you to specify your own lookup interface as opposed to a Spring-specific lookup interface. Consult the JavaDocs for these classes for additional information.

public class MyValueCalculator {

    public String computeValue(String input) {
        // some real code...
    }

    // some other methods...

}

/**
 * meant to be used to override the existing computeValue(String)
 * implementation in MyValueCalculator
 */
public class ReplacementComputeValue implements MethodReplacer {

    public Object reimplement(Object o, Method m, Object[] args) throws Throwable {
        // get the input value, work with it, and return a computed result
        String input = (String) args[0];
        ...
        return ...;
    }
}

<bean id="myValueCalculator" class="x.y.z.MyValueCalculator">
    <!-- arbitrary method replacement -->
    <replaced-method name="computeValue" replacer="replacementComputeValue">
        <arg-type>String</arg-type>
    </replaced-method>
</bean>

<bean id="replacementComputeValue" class="a.b.c.ReplacementComputeValue"/>

java.lang.String
String
Str

Only one shared instance of a singleton bean is managed, and all requests for beans with an id or ids matching that bean definition result in that one specific bean instance being returned by the Spring container.

To put it another way, when you define a bean definition and it is scoped as a singleton, the Spring IoC container creates exactly one instance of the object defined by that bean definition. This single instance is stored in a cache of such singleton beans, and all subsequent requests and references for that named bean return the cached object.

Figure 4.2. 

Spring’s concept of a singleton bean differs from the Singleton pattern as defined in the Gang of Four (GoF) patterns book. The GoF Singleton hard-codes the scope of an object such that one and only one instance of a particular class is created per ClassLoader. The scope of the Spring singleton is best described as per container and per bean. This means that if you define one bean for a particular class in a single Spring container, then the Spring container creates one and only one instance of the class defined by that bean definition. The singleton scope is the default scope in Spring. To define a bean as a singleton in XML, you would write, for example:

<bean id="accountService" class="com.foo.DefaultAccountService"/>

<!-- the following is equivalent, though redundant (singleton scope is the default) -->
<bean id="accountService" class="com.foo.DefaultAccountService" scope="singleton"/>

The non-singleton, prototype scope of bean deployment results in the creation of a new bean instance every time a request for that specific bean is made. That is, the bean is injected into another bean or you request it through a getBean() method call on the container. As a rule, use the prototype scope for all stateful beans and the singleton scope for stateless beans.

The following diagram illustrates the Spring prototype scope. A data access object (DAO) is not typically configured as a prototype, because a typical DAO does not hold any conversational state; it was just easier for this author to reuse the core of the singleton diagram.

Figure 4.3. 

The following example defines a bean as a prototype in XML:

<bean id="accountService" class="com.foo.DefaultAccountService" scope="prototype"/>

In contrast to the other scopes, Spring does not manage the complete lifecycle of a prototype bean: the container instantiates, configures, and otherwise assembles a prototype object, and hands it to the client, with no further record of that prototype instance. Thus, although initialization lifecycle callback methods are called on all objects regardless of scope, in the case of prototypes, configured destruction lifecycle callbacks are not called. The client code must clean up prototype-scoped objects and release expensive resources that the prototype bean(s) are holding. To get the Spring container to release resources held by prototype-scoped beans, try using a custom bean post-processor, which holds a reference to beans that need to be cleaned up.

In some respects, the Spring container’s role in regard to a prototype-scoped bean is a replacement for the Java new operator. All lifecycle management past that point must be handled by the client. (For details on the lifecycle of a bean in the Spring container, see Section 4.6.1, “Lifecycle callbacks”.)

When you use singleton-scoped beans with dependencies on prototype beans, be aware that dependencies are resolved at instantiation time. Thus if you dependency-inject a prototype-scoped bean into a singleton-scoped bean, a new prototype bean is instantiated and then dependency-injected into the singleton bean. The prototype instance is the sole instance that is ever supplied to the singleton-scoped bean.

However, suppose you want the singleton-scoped bean to acquire a new instance of the prototype-scoped bean repeatedly at runtime. You cannot dependency-inject a prototype-scoped bean into your singleton bean, because that injection occurs only once, when the Spring container is instantiating the singleton bean and resolving and injecting its dependencies. If you need a new instance of a prototype bean at runtime more than once, see Section 4.4.6, “Method injection”

The request, session, and global session scopes are only available if you use a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext implementation (such as XmlWebApplicationContext). If you use these scopes with regular Spring IoC containers such as the ClassPathXmlApplicationContext, you get an IllegalStateException complaining about an unknown bean scope.

<web-app>
    ...
    <listener>
        <listener-class>
            org.springframework.web.context.request.RequestContextListener
        </listener-class>
    </listener>
    ...
</web-app>

<web-app>
    ...
    <filter>
        <filter-name>requestContextFilter</filter-name>
        <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.RequestContextFilter</filter-class>
    </filter>
    <filter-mapping>
        <filter-name>requestContextFilter</filter-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </filter-mapping>
    ...
</web-app>

<bean id="loginAction" class="com.foo.LoginAction" scope="request"/>

<bean id="userPreferences" class="com.foo.UserPreferences" scope="session"/>

<bean id="userPreferences" class="com.foo.UserPreferences" scope="globalSession"/>

Scoped beans as dependencies

The Spring IoC container manages not only the instantiation of your objects (beans), but also the wiring up of collaborators (or dependencies). If you want to inject (for example) an HTTP request scoped bean into another bean, you must inject an AOP proxy in place of the scoped bean. That is, you need to inject a proxy object that exposes the same public interface as the scoped object but that can also retrieve the real, target object from the relevant scope (for example, an HTTP request) and delegate method calls onto the real object.

	Note
	You do not need to use the <aop:scoped-proxy/> in conjunction with beans that are scoped as singletons or prototypes.

The configuration in the following example is only one line, but it is important to understand the "why" as well as the "how" behind it.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop.xsd">

    <!-- an HTTP Session-scoped bean exposed as a proxy -->
    <bean id="userPreferences" class="com.foo.UserPreferences" scope="session">
        <!-- instructs the container to proxy the surrounding bean -->
        <aop:scoped-proxy/>
    </bean>

    <!-- a singleton-scoped bean injected with a proxy to the above bean -->
    <bean id="userService" class="com.foo.SimpleUserService">
        <!-- a reference to the proxied userPreferences bean -->
        <property name="userPreferences" ref="userPreferences"/>
    </bean>
</beans>

To create such a proxy, you insert a child <aop:scoped-proxy/> element into a scoped bean definition. See the section called “Choosing the type of proxy to create” and Chapter 33, XML Schema-based configuration.) Why do definitions of beans scoped at the request, session, globalSession and custom-scope levels require the <aop:scoped-proxy/> element ? Let’s examine the following singleton bean definition and contrast it with what you need to define for the aforementioned scopes. (The following userPreferences bean definition as it stands is incomplete.)

<bean id="userPreferences" class="com.foo.UserPreferences" scope="session"/>

<bean id="userManager" class="com.foo.UserManager">
    <property name="userPreferences" ref="userPreferences"/>
</bean>

In the preceding example, the singleton bean userManager is injected with a reference to the HTTP Session-scoped bean userPreferences. The salient point here is that the userManager bean is a singleton: it will be instantiated exactly once per container, and its dependencies (in this case only one, the userPreferences bean) are also injected only once. This means that the userManager bean will only operate on the exact same userPreferences object, that is, the one that it was originally injected with.

This is not the behavior you want when injecting a shorter-lived scoped bean into a longer-lived scoped bean, for example injecting an HTTP Session-scoped collaborating bean as a dependency into singleton bean. Rather, you need a single userManager object, and for the lifetime of an HTTP Session, you need a userPreferences object that is specific to said HTTP Session. Thus the container creates an object that exposes the exact same public interface as the UserPreferences class (ideally an object that is a UserPreferences instance) which can fetch the real UserPreferences object from the scoping mechanism (HTTP request, Session, etc.). The container injects this proxy object into the userManager bean, which is unaware that this UserPreferences reference is a proxy. In this example, when a UserManager instance invokes a method on the dependency-injected UserPreferences object, it actually is invoking a method on the proxy. The proxy then fetches the real UserPreferences object from (in this case) the HTTP Session, and delegates the method invocation onto the retrieved real UserPreferences object.

Thus you need the following, correct and complete, configuration when injecting request-, session-, and globalSession-scoped beans into collaborating objects:

<bean id="userPreferences" class="com.foo.UserPreferences" scope="session">
    <aop:scoped-proxy/>
</bean>
<bean id="userManager" class="com.foo.UserManager">
    <property name="userPreferences" ref="userPreferences"/>
</bean>

Choosing the type of proxy to create

By default, when the Spring container creates a proxy for a bean that is marked up with the <aop:scoped-proxy/> element, a CGLIB-based class proxy is created.

	Note
	CGLIB proxies only intercept public method calls! Do not call non-public methods on such a proxy; they will not be delegated to the scoped target object.

Alternatively, you can configure the Spring container to create standard JDK interface-based proxies for such scoped beans, by specifying false for the value of the proxy-target-class attribute of the <aop:scoped-proxy/> element. Using JDK interface-based proxies means that you do not need additional libraries in your application classpath to effect such proxying. However, it also means that the class of the scoped bean must implement at least one interface, and that all collaborators into which the scoped bean is injected must reference the bean through one of its interfaces.

<!-- DefaultUserPreferences implements the UserPreferences interface -->
<bean id="userPreferences" class="com.foo.DefaultUserPreferences" scope="session">
    <aop:scoped-proxy proxy-target-class="false"/>
</bean>
<bean id="userManager" class="com.foo.UserManager">
    <property name="userPreferences" ref="userPreferences"/>
</bean>

For more detailed information about choosing class-based or interface-based proxying, see Section 8.6, “Proxying mechanisms”.

The bean scoping mechanism is extensible; You can define your own scopes, or even redefine existing scopes, although the latter is considered bad practice and you cannot override the built-in singleton and prototype scopes.

Object get(String name, ObjectFactory objectFactory)

Object remove(String name)

void registerDestructionCallback(String name, Runnable destructionCallback)

String getConversationId()

Using a custom scope

After you write and test one or more custom Scope implementations, you need to make the Spring container aware of your new scope(s). The following method is the central method to register a new Scope with the Spring container:

void registerScope(String scopeName, Scope scope);

This method is declared on the ConfigurableBeanFactory interface, which is available on most of the concrete ApplicationContext implementations that ship with Spring via the BeanFactory property.

The first argument to the registerScope(..) method is the unique name associated with a scope; examples of such names in the Spring container itself are singleton and prototype. The second argument to the registerScope(..) method is an actual instance of the custom Scope implementation that you wish to register and use.

Suppose that you write your custom Scope implementation, and then register it as below.

	Note
	The example below uses SimpleThreadScope which is included with Spring, but not registered by default. The instructions would be the same for your own custom Scope implementations.

Scope threadScope = new SimpleThreadScope();
beanFactory.registerScope("thread", threadScope);

You then create bean definitions that adhere to the scoping rules of your custom Scope:

<bean id="..." class="..." scope="thread">

With a custom Scope implementation, you are not limited to programmatic registration of the scope. You can also do the Scope registration declaratively, using the CustomScopeConfigurer class:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop.xsd">

    <bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.CustomScopeConfigurer">
        <property name="scopes">
            <map>
                <entry key="thread">
                    <bean class="org.springframework.context.support.SimpleThreadScope"/>
                </entry>
            </map>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <bean id="bar" class="x.y.Bar" scope="thread">
        <property name="name" value="Rick"/>
        <aop:scoped-proxy/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="foo" class="x.y.Foo">
        <property name="bar" ref="bar"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

	Note
	When you place <aop:scoped-proxy/> in a FactoryBean implementation, it is the factory bean itself that is scoped, not the object returned from getObject().

To interact with the container’s management of the bean lifecycle, you can implement the Spring InitializingBean and DisposableBean interfaces. The container calls afterPropertiesSet() for the former and destroy() for the latter to allow the bean to perform certain actions upon initialization and destruction of your beans.

Tip

The JSR-250 @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy annotations are generally considered best practice for receiving lifecycle callbacks in a modern Spring application. Using these annotations means that your beans are not coupled to Spring specific interfaces. For details see Section 4.9.7, “@PostConstruct and @PreDestroy”. If you don’t want to use the JSR-250 annotations but you are still looking to remove coupling consider the use of init-method and destroy-method object definition metadata.

Internally, the Spring Framework uses BeanPostProcessor implementations to process any callback interfaces it can find and call the appropriate methods. If you need custom features or other lifecycle behavior Spring does not offer out-of-the-box, you can implement a BeanPostProcessor yourself. For more information, see Section 4.8, “Container Extension Points”.

In addition to the initialization and destruction callbacks, Spring-managed objects may also implement the Lifecycle interface so that those objects can participate in the startup and shutdown process as driven by the container’s own lifecycle.

The lifecycle callback interfaces are described in this section.

void afterPropertiesSet() throws Exception;

<bean id="exampleInitBean" class="examples.ExampleBean" init-method="init"/>

public class ExampleBean {

    public void init() {
        // do some initialization work
    }

}

<bean id="exampleInitBean" class="examples.AnotherExampleBean"/>

public class AnotherExampleBean implements InitializingBean {

    public void afterPropertiesSet() {
        // do some initialization work
    }

}

void destroy() throws Exception;

<bean id="exampleInitBean" class="examples.ExampleBean" destroy-method="cleanup"/>

public class ExampleBean {

    public void cleanup() {
        // do some destruction work (like releasing pooled connections)
    }

}

<bean id="exampleInitBean" class="examples.AnotherExampleBean"/>

public class AnotherExampleBean implements DisposableBean {

    public void destroy() {
        // do some destruction work (like releasing pooled connections)
    }

}

public class DefaultBlogService implements BlogService {

    private BlogDao blogDao;

    public void setBlogDao(BlogDao blogDao) {
        this.blogDao = blogDao;
    }

    // this is (unsurprisingly) the initialization callback method
    public void init() {
        if (this.blogDao == null) {
            throw new IllegalStateException("The [blogDao] property must be set.");
        }
    }

}

<beans default-init-method="init">

    <bean id="blogService" class="com.foo.DefaultBlogService">
        <property name="blogDao" ref="blogDao" />
    </bean>

</beans>

Combining lifecycle mechanisms

As of Spring 2.5, you have three options for controlling bean lifecycle behavior: the InitializingBean and DisposableBean callback interfaces; custom init() and destroy() methods; and the @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy annotations. You can combine these mechanisms to control a given bean.

Note

If multiple lifecycle mechanisms are configured for a bean, and each mechanism is configured with a different method name, then each configured method is executed in the order listed below. However, if the same method name is configured - for example, init() for an initialization method - for more than one of these lifecycle mechanisms, that method is executed once, as explained in the preceding section.

Multiple lifecycle mechanisms configured for the same bean, with different initialization methods, are called as follows:

• Methods annotated with @PostConstruct
• afterPropertiesSet() as defined by the InitializingBean callback interface
• A custom configured init() method

Destroy methods are called in the same order:

• Methods annotated with @PreDestroy
• destroy() as defined by the DisposableBean callback interface
• A custom configured destroy() method

public interface Lifecycle {

    void start();

    void stop();

    boolean isRunning();

}

public interface LifecycleProcessor extends Lifecycle {

    void onRefresh();

    void onClose();

}

public interface Phased {

    int getPhase();

}

public interface SmartLifecycle extends Lifecycle, Phased {

    boolean isAutoStartup();

    void stop(Runnable callback);

}

<bean id="lifecycleProcessor" class="org.springframework.context.support.DefaultLifecycleProcessor">
    <!-- timeout value in milliseconds -->
    <property name="timeoutPerShutdownPhase" value="10000"/>
</bean>

Shutting down the Spring IoC container gracefully in non-web applications

	Note
	This section applies only to non-web applications. Spring’s web-based ApplicationContext implementations already have code in place to shut down the Spring IoC container gracefully when the relevant web application is shut down.

If you are using Spring’s IoC container in a non-web application environment; for example, in a rich client desktop environment; you register a shutdown hook with the JVM. Doing so ensures a graceful shutdown and calls the relevant destroy methods on your singleton beans so that all resources are released. Of course, you must still configure and implement these destroy callbacks correctly.

To register a shutdown hook, you call the registerShutdownHook() method that is declared on the AbstractApplicationContext class:

import org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;

public final class Boot {

    public static void main(final String[] args) throws Exception {

        AbstractApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(
                new String []{"beans.xml"});

        // add a shutdown hook for the above context...
        ctx.registerShutdownHook();

        // app runs here...

        // main method exits, hook is called prior to the app shutting down...

    }
}

When an ApplicationContext creates a class that implements the org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextAware interface, the class is provided with a reference to that ApplicationContext.

public interface ApplicationContextAware {

    void setApplicationContext(ApplicationContext applicationContext) throws BeansException;

}

Thus beans can manipulate programmatically the ApplicationContext that created them, through the ApplicationContext interface, or by casting the reference to a known subclass of this interface, such as ConfigurableApplicationContext, which exposes additional functionality. One use would be the programmatic retrieval of other beans. Sometimes this capability is useful; however, in general you should avoid it, because it couples the code to Spring and does not follow the Inversion of Control style, where collaborators are provided to beans as properties. Other methods of the ApplicationContext provide access to file resources, publishing application events, and accessing a MessageSource. These additional features are described in Section 4.16, “Additional Capabilities of the ApplicationContext”

As of Spring 2.5, autowiring is another alternative to obtain reference to the ApplicationContext. The "traditional" constructor and byType autowiring modes (as described in Section 4.4.5, “Autowiring collaborators”) can provide a dependency of type ApplicationContext for a constructor argument or setter method parameter, respectively. For more flexibility, including the ability to autowire fields and multiple parameter methods, use the new annotation-based autowiring features. If you do, the ApplicationContext is autowired into a field, constructor argument, or method parameter that is expecting the ApplicationContext type if the field, constructor, or method in question carries the @Autowired annotation. For more information, see Section 4.9.2, “@Autowired”.

When an ApplicationContext creates a class that implements the org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanNameAware interface, the class is provided with a reference to the name defined in its associated object definition.

public interface BeanNameAware {

    void setBeanName(string name) throws BeansException;

}

The callback is invoked after population of normal bean properties but before an initialization callback such as InitializingBean afterPropertiesSet or a custom init-method.

Besides ApplicationContextAware and BeanNameAware discussed above, Spring offers a range of Aware interfaces that allow beans to indicate to the container that they require a certain infrastructure dependency. The most important Aware interfaces are summarized below - as a general rule, the name is a good indication of the dependency type:

Note again that usage of these interfaces ties your code to the Spring API and does not follow the Inversion of Control style. As such, they are recommended for infrastructure beans that require programmatic access to the container.

The BeanPostProcessor interface defines callback methods that you can implement to provide your own (or override the container’s default) instantiation logic, dependency-resolution logic, and so forth. If you want to implement some custom logic after the Spring container finishes instantiating, configuring, and initializing a bean, you can plug in one or more BeanPostProcessor implementations.

You can configure multiple BeanPostProcessor instances, and you can control the order in which these BeanPostProcessor s execute by setting the order property. You can set this property only if the BeanPostProcessor implements the Ordered interface; if you write your own BeanPostProcessor you should consider implementing the Ordered interface too. For further details, consult the Javadoc for the BeanPostProcessor and Ordered interfaces. See also the note below on programmatic registration of BeanPostProcessors

Note

BeanPostProcessor s operate on bean (or object) instances; that is to say, the Spring IoC container instantiates a bean instance and then BeanPostProcessor s do their work. BeanPostProcessor s are scoped per-container. This is only relevant if you are using container hierarchies. If you define a BeanPostProcessor in one container, it will only post-process the beans in that container. In other words, beans that are defined in one container are not post-processed by a BeanPostProcessor defined in another container, even if both containers are part of the same hierarchy. To change the actual bean definition (i.e., the blueprint that defines the bean), you instead need to use a BeanFactoryPostProcessor as described in Section 4.8.2, “Customizing configuration metadata with a BeanFactoryPostProcessor”.

The org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanPostProcessor interface consists of exactly two callback methods. When such a class is registered as a post-processor with the container, for each bean instance that is created by the container, the post-processor gets a callback from the container both before container initialization methods (such as InitializingBean’s afterPropertiesSet() and any declared init method) are called as well as after any bean initialization callbacks. The post-processor can take any action with the bean instance, including ignoring the callback completely. A bean post-processor typically checks for callback interfaces or may wrap a bean with a proxy. Some Spring AOP infrastructure classes are implemented as bean post-processors in order to provide proxy-wrapping logic.

An ApplicationContext automatically detects any beans that are defined in the configuration metadata which implement the BeanPostProcessor interface. The ApplicationContext registers these beans as post-processors so that they can be called later upon bean creation. Bean post-processors can be deployed in the container just like any other beans.

Note

Programmatically registering BeanPostProcessors While the recommended approach for BeanPostProcessor registration is through ApplicationContext auto-detection (as described above), it is also possible to register them programmatically against a ConfigurableBeanFactory using the addBeanPostProcessor method. This can be useful when needing to evaluate conditional logic before registration, or even for copying bean post processors across contexts in a hierarchy. Note however that BeanPostProcessors added programmatically do not respect the Ordered interface. Here it is the order of registration that dictates the order of execution. Note also that BeanPostProcessors registered programmatically are always processed before those registered through auto-detection, regardless of any explicit ordering.

Note

BeanPostProcessors and AOP auto-proxying Classes that implement the BeanPostProcessor interface are special and are treated differently by the container. All BeanPostProcessors and beans that they reference directly are instantiated on startup, as part of the special startup phase of the ApplicationContext. Next, all BeanPostProcessors are registered in a sorted fashion and applied to all further beans in the container. Because AOP auto-proxying is implemented as a BeanPostProcessor itself, neither BeanPostProcessors nor the beans they reference directly are eligible for auto-proxying, and thus do not have aspects woven into them. For any such bean, you should see an informational log message: "Bean foo is not eligible for getting processed by all BeanPostProcessor interfaces (for example: not eligible for auto-proxying)". Note that if you have beans wired into your BeanPostProcessor using autowiring or @Resource (which may fall back to autowiring), Spring might access unexpected beans when searching for type-matching dependency candidates, and therefore make them ineligible for auto-proxying or other kinds of bean post-processing. For example, if you have a dependency annotated with @Resource where the field/setter name does not directly correspond to the declared name of a bean and no name attribute is used, then Spring will access other beans for matching them by type.

The following examples show how to write, register, and use BeanPostProcessors in an ApplicationContext.

package scripting;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanPostProcessor;
import org.springframework.beans.BeansException;

public class InstantiationTracingBeanPostProcessor implements BeanPostProcessor {

    // simply return the instantiated bean as-is
    public Object postProcessBeforeInitialization(Object bean,
            String beanName) throws BeansException {
        return bean; // we could potentially return any object reference here...
    }

    public Object postProcessAfterInitialization(Object bean,
            String beanName) throws BeansException {
        System.out.println("Bean " + beanName + " created : " + bean.toString());
        return bean;
    }

}

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:lang="http://www.springframework.org/schema/lang"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/lang
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/lang/spring-lang.xsd">

    <lang:groovy id="messenger"
            script-source="classpath:org/springframework/scripting/groovy/Messenger.groovy">
        <lang:property name="message" value="Fiona Apple Is Just So Dreamy."/>
    </lang:groovy>

    <!--
    when the above bean (messenger) is instantiated, this custom
    BeanPostProcessor implementation will output the fact to the system console
    -->
    <bean class="scripting.InstantiationTracingBeanPostProcessor"/>

</beans>

import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.scripting.Messenger;

public final class Boot {

    public static void main(final String[] args) throws Exception {
        ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("scripting/beans.xml");
        Messenger messenger = (Messenger) ctx.getBean("messenger");
        System.out.println(messenger);
    }

}

Bean messenger created : org.springframework.scripting.groovy.GroovyMessenger@272961
org.springframework.scripting.groovy.GroovyMessenger@272961

The next extension point that we will look at is the org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanFactoryPostProcessor. The semantics of this interface are similar to those of the BeanPostProcessor, with one major difference: BeanFactoryPostProcessor operates on the bean configuration metadata; that is, the Spring IoC container allows a BeanFactoryPostProcessor to read the configuration metadata and potentially change it before the container instantiates any beans other than BeanFactoryPostProcessors.

You can configure multiple BeanFactoryPostProcessors, and you can control the order in which these BeanFactoryPostProcessors execute by setting the order property. However, you can only set this property if the BeanFactoryPostProcessor implements the Ordered interface. If you write your own BeanFactoryPostProcessor, you should consider implementing the Ordered interface too. Consult the Javadoc for the BeanFactoryPostProcessor and Ordered interfaces for more details.

Note

If you want to change the actual bean instances (i.e., the objects that are created from the configuration metadata), then you instead need to use a BeanPostProcessor (described above in Section 4.8.1, “Customizing beans using a BeanPostProcessor”). While it is technically possible to work with bean instances within a BeanFactoryPostProcessor (e.g., using BeanFactory.getBean()), doing so causes premature bean instantiation, violating the standard container lifecycle. This may cause negative side effects such as bypassing bean post processing. Also, BeanFactoryPostProcessors are scoped per-container. This is only relevant if you are using container hierarchies. If you define a BeanFactoryPostProcessor in one container, it will only be applied to the bean definitions in that container. Bean definitions in one container will not be post-processed by BeanFactoryPostProcessors in another container, even if both containers are part of the same hierarchy.

A bean factory post-processor is executed automatically when it is declared inside an ApplicationContext, in order to apply changes to the configuration metadata that define the container. Spring includes a number of predefined bean factory post-processors, such as PropertyOverrideConfigurer and PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer. A custom BeanFactoryPostProcessor can also be used, for example, to register custom property editors.

An ApplicationContext automatically detects any beans that are deployed into it that implement the BeanFactoryPostProcessor interface. It uses these beans as bean factory post-processors, at the appropriate time. You can deploy these post-processor beans as you would any other bean.

Note

As with BeanPostProcessor s , you typically do not want to configure BeanFactoryPostProcessor s for lazy initialization. If no other bean references a Bean(Factory)PostProcessor, that post-processor will not get instantiated at all. Thus, marking it for lazy initialization will be ignored, and the Bean(Factory)PostProcessor will be instantiated eagerly even if you set the default-lazy-init attribute to true on the declaration of your <beans /> element.

Example: the Class name substitution PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer

You use the PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer to externalize property values from a bean definition in a separate file using the standard Java Properties format. Doing so enables the person deploying an application to customize environment-specific properties such as database URLs and passwords, without the complexity or risk of modifying the main XML definition file or files for the container.

Consider the following XML-based configuration metadata fragment, where a DataSource with placeholder values is defined. The example shows properties configured from an external Properties file. At runtime, a PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer is applied to the metadata that will replace some properties of the DataSource. The values to replace are specified as placeholders of the form ${property-name} which follows the Ant / log4j / JSP EL style.

<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
    <property name="locations" value="classpath:com/foo/jdbc.properties"/>
</bean>

<bean id="dataSource" destroy-method="close"
        class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource">
    <property name="driverClassName" value="${jdbc.driverClassName}"/>
    <property name="url" value="${jdbc.url}"/>
    <property name="username" value="${jdbc.username}"/>
    <property name="password" value="${jdbc.password}"/>
</bean>

The actual values come from another file in the standard Java Properties format:

jdbc.driverClassName=org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver
jdbc.url=jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://production:9002
jdbc.username=sa
jdbc.password=root

Therefore, the string ${jdbc.username} is replaced at runtime with the value sa, and the same applies for other placeholder values that match keys in the properties file. The PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer checks for placeholders in most properties and attributes of a bean definition. Furthermore, the placeholder prefix and suffix can be customized.

With the context namespace introduced in Spring 2.5, it is possible to configure property placeholders with a dedicated configuration element. One or more locations can be provided as a comma-separated list in the location attribute.

<context:property-placeholder location="classpath:com/foo/jdbc.properties"/>

The PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer not only looks for properties in the Properties file you specify. By default it also checks against the Java System properties if it cannot find a property in the specified properties files. You can customize this behavior by setting the systemPropertiesMode property of the configurer with one of the following three supported integer values:

• never (0): Never check system properties
• fallback (1): Check system properties if not resolvable in the specified properties files. This is the default.
• override (2): Check system properties first, before trying the specified properties files. This allows system properties to override any other property source.

Consult the Javadoc for the PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer for more information.

Tip

You can use the PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer to substitute class names, which is sometimes useful when you have to pick a particular implementation class at runtime. For example: <bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer"> <property name="locations"> <value>classpath:com/foo/strategy.properties</value> </property> <property name="properties"> <value>custom.strategy.class=com.foo.DefaultStrategy</value> </property> </bean> <bean id="serviceStrategy" class="${custom.strategy.class}"/> If the class cannot be resolved at runtime to a valid class, resolution of the bean fails when it is about to be created, which is during the preInstantiateSingletons() phase of an ApplicationContext for a non-lazy-init bean.

Example: the PropertyOverrideConfigurer

The PropertyOverrideConfigurer, another bean factory post-processor, resembles the PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer, but unlike the latter, the original definitions can have default values or no values at all for bean properties. If an overriding Properties file does not have an entry for a certain bean property, the default context definition is used.

Note that the bean definition is not aware of being overridden, so it is not immediately obvious from the XML definition file that the override configurer is being used. In case of multiple PropertyOverrideConfigurer instances that define different values for the same bean property, the last one wins, due to the overriding mechanism.

Properties file configuration lines take this format:

beanName.property=value

For example:

dataSource.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
dataSource.url=jdbc:mysql:mydb

This example file can be used with a container definition that contains a bean called dataSource, which has driver and url properties.

Compound property names are also supported, as long as every component of the path except the final property being overridden is already non-null (presumably initialized by the constructors). In this example…

foo.fred.bob.sammy=123

1. the sammy property of the bob property of the fred property of the foo bean is set to the scalar value 123.

	Note
	Specified override values are always literal values; they are not translated into bean references. This convention also applies when the original value in the XML bean definition specifies a bean reference.

With the context namespace introduced in Spring 2.5, it is possible to configure property overriding with a dedicated configuration element:

<context:property-override location="classpath:override.properties"/>

Implement the org.springframework.beans.factory.FactoryBean interface for objects that are themselves factories.

The FactoryBean interface is a point of pluggability into the Spring IoC container’s instantiation logic. If you have complex initialization code that is better expressed in Java as opposed to a (potentially) verbose amount of XML, you can create your own FactoryBean, write the complex initialization inside that class, and then plug your custom FactoryBean into the container.

The FactoryBean interface provides three methods:

The FactoryBean concept and interface is used in a number of places within the Spring Framework; more than 50 implementations of the FactoryBean interface ship with Spring itself.

When you need to ask a container for an actual FactoryBean instance itself instead of the bean it produces, preface the bean’s id with the ampersand symbol ( &) when calling the getBean() method of the ApplicationContext. So for a given FactoryBean with an id of myBean, invoking getBean("myBean") on the container returns the product of the FactoryBean; whereas, invoking getBean("&myBean") returns the FactoryBean instance itself.

The @Required annotation applies to bean property setter methods, as in the following example:

public class SimpleMovieLister {

    private MovieFinder movieFinder;

    @Required
    public void setMovieFinder(MovieFinder movieFinder) {
        this.movieFinder = movieFinder;
    }

    // ...

}

This annotation simply indicates that the affected bean property must be populated at configuration time, through an explicit property value in a bean definition or through autowiring. The container throws an exception if the affected bean property has not been populated; this allows for eager and explicit failure, avoiding NullPointerException s or the like later on. It is still recommended that you put assertions into the bean class itself, for example, into an init method. Doing so enforces those required references and values even when you use the class outside of a container.

As expected, you can apply the @Autowired annotation to "traditional" setter methods:

public class SimpleMovieLister {

    private MovieFinder movieFinder;

    @Autowired
    public void setMovieFinder(MovieFinder movieFinder) {
        this.movieFinder = movieFinder;
    }

    // ...

}

	Note
	JSR 330’s @Inject annotation can be used in place of Spring’s @Autowired annotation in the examples below. See here for more details

You can also apply the annotation to methods with arbitrary names and/or multiple arguments:

public class MovieRecommender {

    private MovieCatalog movieCatalog;

    private CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao;

    @Autowired
    public void prepare(MovieCatalog movieCatalog,
            CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao) {
        this.movieCatalog = movieCatalog;
        this.customerPreferenceDao = customerPreferenceDao;
    }

    // ...

}

You can apply @Autowired to constructors and fields:

public class MovieRecommender {

    @Autowired
    private MovieCatalog movieCatalog;

    private CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao;

    @Autowired
    public MovieRecommender(CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao) {
        this.customerPreferenceDao = customerPreferenceDao;
    }

    // ...

}

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:

public class MovieRecommender {

    @Autowired
    private MovieCatalog[] movieCatalogs;

    // ...

}

The same applies for typed collections:

public class MovieRecommender {

    private Set<MovieCatalog> movieCatalogs;

    @Autowired
    public void setMovieCatalogs(Set<MovieCatalog> movieCatalogs) {
        this.movieCatalogs = movieCatalogs;
    }

    // ...

}

	Tip
	Your beans can implement the org.springframework.core.Ordered interface or use the the @Ordered annotation if you want items in the array or list to be sorted into a specific order.

Even typed Maps can be autowired as long as the expected key type is String. The Map values will contain all beans of the expected type, and the keys will contain the corresponding bean names:

public class MovieRecommender {

    private Map<String, MovieCatalog> movieCatalogs;

    @Autowired
    public void setMovieCatalogs(Map<String, MovieCatalog> movieCatalogs) {
        this.movieCatalogs = movieCatalogs;
    }

    // ...

}

By default, the autowiring fails whenever zero candidate beans are available; the default behavior is to treat annotated methods, constructors, and fields as indicating required dependencies. This behavior can be changed as demonstrated below.

public class SimpleMovieLister {

    private MovieFinder movieFinder;

    @Autowired(required=false)
    public void setMovieFinder(MovieFinder movieFinder) {
        this.movieFinder = movieFinder;
    }

    // ...

}

Note

Only one annotated constructor per-class can be marked as required, but multiple non-required constructors can be annotated. In that case, each is considered among the candidates and Spring uses the greediest constructor whose dependencies can be satisfied, that is the constructor that has the largest number of arguments. @Autowired's required attribute is recommended over the @Required annotation. The required attribute indicates that the property is not required for autowiring purposes, the property is ignored if it cannot be autowired. @Required, on the other hand, is stronger in that it enforces the property that was set by any means supported by the container. If no value is injected, a corresponding exception is raised.

You can also use @Autowired for interfaces that are well-known resolvable dependencies: BeanFactory, ApplicationContext, Environment, ResourceLoader, ApplicationEventPublisher, and MessageSource. These interfaces and their extended interfaces, such as ConfigurableApplicationContext or ResourcePatternResolver, are automatically resolved, with no special setup necessary.

public class MovieRecommender {

    @Autowired
    private ApplicationContext context;

    public MovieRecommender() {
    }

    // ...

}

	Note
	@Autowired, @Inject, @Resource, and @Value annotations are handled by a Spring BeanPostProcessor implementations which in turn means that you cannot apply these annotations within your own BeanPostProcessor or BeanFactoryPostProcessor types (if any). These types must be wired up explicitly via XML or using a Spring @Bean method.

Because autowiring by type may lead to multiple candidates, it is often necessary to have more control over the selection process. One way to accomplish this is with Spring’s @Qualifier annotation. You can associate qualifier values with specific arguments, narrowing the set of type matches so that a specific bean is chosen for each argument. In the simplest case, this can be a plain descriptive value:

public class MovieRecommender {

    @Autowired
    @Qualifier("main")
    private MovieCatalog movieCatalog;

    // ...

}

The @Qualifier annotation can also be specified on individual constructor arguments or method parameters:

public class MovieRecommender {

    private MovieCatalog movieCatalog;

    private CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao;

    @Autowired
    public void prepare(@Qualifier("main")MovieCatalog movieCatalog,
            CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao) {
        this.movieCatalog = movieCatalog;
        this.customerPreferenceDao = customerPreferenceDao;
    }

    // ...

}

The corresponding bean definitions appear as follows. The bean with qualifier value "main" is wired with the constructor argument that is qualified with the same value.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

    <context:annotation-config/>

    <bean class="example.SimpleMovieCatalog">
        <qualifier value="main"/>

        <!-- inject any dependencies required by this bean -->
    </bean>

    <bean class="example.SimpleMovieCatalog">
        <qualifier value="action"/>

        <!-- inject any dependencies required by this bean -->
    </bean>

    <bean id="movieRecommender" class="example.MovieRecommender"/>

</beans>

For a fallback match, the bean name is considered a default qualifier value. Thus you can define the bean with an id "main" instead of the nested qualifier element, leading to the same matching result. However, although you can use this convention to refer to specific beans by name, @Autowired is fundamentally about type-driven injection with optional semantic qualifiers. This means that qualifier values, even with the bean name fallback, always have narrowing semantics within the set of type matches; they do not semantically express a reference to a unique bean id. Good qualifier values are "main" or "EMEA" or "persistent", expressing characteristics of a specific component that are independent from the bean id, which may be auto-generated in case of an anonymous bean definition like the one in the preceding example.

Qualifiers also apply to typed collections, as discussed above, for example, to Set<MovieCatalog>. In this case, all matching beans according to the declared qualifiers are injected as a collection. This implies that qualifiers do not have to be unique; they rather simply constitute filtering criteria. For example, you can define multiple MovieCatalog beans with the same qualifier value "action"; all of which would be injected into a Set<MovieCatalog> annotated with @Qualifier("action").

Tip

If you intend to express annotation-driven injection by name, do not primarily use @Autowired, even if is technically capable of referring to a bean name through @Qualifier values. Instead, use the JSR-250 @Resource annotation, which is semantically defined to identify a specific target component by its unique name, with the declared type being irrelevant for the matching process. As a specific consequence of this semantic difference, beans that are themselves defined as a collection or map type cannot be injected through @Autowired, because type matching is not properly applicable to them. Use @Resource for such beans, referring to the specific collection or map bean by unique name. @Autowired applies to fields, constructors, and multi-argument methods, allowing for narrowing through qualifier annotations at the parameter level. By contrast, @Resource is supported only for fields and bean property setter methods with a single argument. As a consequence, stick with qualifiers if your injection target is a constructor or a multi-argument method.

You can create your own custom qualifier annotations. Simply define an annotation and provide the @Qualifier annotation within your definition:

@Target({ElementType.FIELD, ElementType.PARAMETER})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Qualifier
public @interface Genre {

    String value();
}

Then you can provide the custom qualifier on autowired fields and parameters:

public class MovieRecommender {

    @Autowired
    @Genre("Action")
    private MovieCatalog actionCatalog;
    private MovieCatalog comedyCatalog;

    @Autowired
    public void setComedyCatalog(@Genre("Comedy") MovieCatalog comedyCatalog) {
        this.comedyCatalog = comedyCatalog;
    }

    // ...

}

Next, provide the information for the candidate bean definitions. You can add <qualifier/> tags as sub-elements of the <bean/> tag and then specify the type and value to match your custom qualifier annotations. The type is matched against the fully-qualified class name of the annotation. Or, as a convenience if no risk of conflicting names exists, you can use the short class name. Both approaches are demonstrated in the following example.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

    <context:annotation-config/>

    <bean class="example.SimpleMovieCatalog">
        <qualifier type="Genre" value="Action"/>
        <!-- inject any dependencies required by this bean -->
    </bean>

    <bean class="example.SimpleMovieCatalog">
        _<qualifier type="example.Genre" value="Comedy"/>
        <!-- inject any dependencies required by this bean -->
    </bean>

    <bean id="movieRecommender" class="example.MovieRecommender"/>

</beans>

In Section 4.10, “Classpath scanning and managed components”, you will see an annotation-based alternative to providing the qualifier metadata in XML. Specifically, see Section 4.10.8, “Providing qualifier metadata with annotations”.

In some cases, it may be sufficient to use an annotation without a value. This may be useful when the annotation serves a more generic purpose and can be applied across several different types of dependencies. For example, you may provide an offline catalog that would be searched when no Internet connection is available. First define the simple annotation:

@Target({ElementType.FIELD, ElementType.PARAMETER})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Qualifier
public @interface Offline {

}

Then add the annotation to the field or property to be autowired:

public class MovieRecommender {

    @Autowired
    @Offline
    private MovieCatalog offlineCatalog;

    // ...

}

Now the bean definition only needs a qualifier type:

<bean class="example.SimpleMovieCatalog">
    <qualifier type="Offline"/>
    <!-- inject any dependencies required by this bean -->
</bean>

You can also define custom qualifier annotations that accept named attributes in addition to or instead of the simple value attribute. If multiple attribute values are then specified on a field or parameter to be autowired, a bean definition must match all such attribute values to be considered an autowire candidate. As an example, consider the following annotation definition:

@Target({ElementType.FIELD, ElementType.PARAMETER})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Qualifier
public @interface MovieQualifier {

    String genre();

    Format format();

}

In this case Format is an enum:

public enum Format {
    VHS, DVD, BLURAY
}

The fields to be autowired are annotated with the custom qualifier and include values for both attributes: genre and format.

public class MovieRecommender {

    @Autowired
    @MovieQualifier(format=Format.VHS, genre="Action")
    private MovieCatalog actionVhsCatalog;

    @Autowired
    @MovieQualifier(format=Format.VHS, genre="Comedy")
    private MovieCatalog comedyVhsCatalog;

    @Autowired
    @MovieQualifier(format=Format.DVD, genre="Action")
    private MovieCatalog actionDvdCatalog;

    @Autowired
    @MovieQualifier(format=Format.BLURAY, genre="Comedy")
    private MovieCatalog comedyBluRayCatalog;

    // ...

}

Finally, the bean definitions should contain matching qualifier values. This example also demonstrates that bean meta attributes may be used instead of the <qualifier/> sub-elements. If available, the <qualifier/> and its attributes take precedence, but the autowiring mechanism falls back on the values provided within the <meta/> tags if no such qualifier is present, as in the last two bean definitions in the following example.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

    <context:annotation-config/>

    <bean class="example.SimpleMovieCatalog">
        <qualifier type="MovieQualifier">
            <attribute key="format" value="VHS"/>
            <attribute key="genre" value="Action"/>
        </qualifier>
        <!-- inject any dependencies required by this bean -->
    </bean>

    <bean class="example.SimpleMovieCatalog">
        <qualifier type="MovieQualifier">
            <attribute key="format" value="VHS"/>
            <attribute key="genre" value="Comedy"/>
        </qualifier>
        <!-- inject any dependencies required by this bean -->
    </bean>

    <bean class="example.SimpleMovieCatalog">
        <meta key="format" value="DVD"/>
        <meta key="genre" value="Action"/>
        <!-- inject any dependencies required by this bean -->
    </bean>

    <bean class="example.SimpleMovieCatalog">
        <meta key="format" value="BLURAY"/>
        <meta key="genre" value="Comedy"/>
        <!-- inject any dependencies required by this bean -->
    </bean>

</beans>

In addition to the @Qualifier annotation, it is also possible to use Java generic types as an implicit form of qualification. For example, suppose you have the following configuration:

@Configuration
public class MyConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public StringStore stringStore() {
        return new StringStore();
    }

    @Bean
    public IntegerStore integerStore() {
        return new IntegerStore();
    }

}

Assuming that beans above implement a generic interface, i.e. Store<String> and Store<Integer>, you can @Autowire the Store interface and the generic will be used as a qualifier:

@Autowired
private Store<String> s1; // <String> qualifier, injects the stringStore bean

@Autowired
private Store<Integer> s2; // <Integer> qualifier, injects the integerStore bean

Generic qualifiers also apply when autowiring Lists, Maps and Arrays:

// Inject all Store beans as long as they have an <Integer> generic
// Store<String> beans will not appear in this list
@Autowired
private List<Store<Integer>> s;

The CustomAutowireConfigurer is a BeanFactoryPostProcessor that enables you to register your own custom qualifier annotation types even if they are not annotated with Spring’s @Qualifier annotation.

<bean id="customAutowireConfigurer"
        class="org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.CustomAutowireConfigurer">
    <property name="customQualifierTypes">
        <set>
            <value>example.CustomQualifier</value>
        </set>
    </property>
</bean>

The AutowireCandidateResolver determines autowire candidates by:

When multiple beans qualify as autowire candidates, the determination of a "primary" is the following: if exactly one bean definition among the candidates has a primary attribute set to true, it will be selected.

Spring also supports injection using the JSR-250 @Resource annotation on fields or bean property setter methods. This is a common pattern in Java EE 5 and 6, for example in JSF 1.2 managed beans or JAX-WS 2.0 endpoints. Spring supports this pattern for Spring-managed objects as well.

@Resource takes a name attribute, and by default Spring interprets that value as the bean name to be injected. In other words, it follows by-name semantics, as demonstrated in this example:

public class SimpleMovieLister {

    private MovieFinder movieFinder;

    @Resource(name="myMovieFinder")
    public void setMovieFinder(MovieFinder movieFinder) {
        this.movieFinder = movieFinder;
    }

}

If no name is specified explicitly, the default name is derived from the field name or setter method. In case of a field, it takes the field name; in case of a setter method, it takes the bean property name. So the following example is going to have the bean with name "movieFinder" injected into its setter method:

public class SimpleMovieLister {

    private MovieFinder movieFinder;

    @Resource
    public void setMovieFinder(MovieFinder movieFinder) {
        this.movieFinder = movieFinder;
    }

}

	Note
	The name provided with the annotation is resolved as a bean name by the ApplicationContext of which the CommonAnnotationBeanPostProcessor is aware. The names can be resolved through JNDI if you configure Spring’s SimpleJndiBeanFactory explicitly. However, it is recommended that you rely on the default behavior and simply use Spring’s JNDI lookup capabilities to preserve the level of indirection.

In the exclusive case of @Resource usage with no explicit name specified, and similar to @Autowired, @Resource finds a primary type match instead of a specific named bean and resolves well-known resolvable dependencies: the BeanFactory, ApplicationContext, ResourceLoader, ApplicationEventPublisher, and MessageSource interfaces.

Thus in the following example, the customerPreferenceDao field first looks for a bean named customerPreferenceDao, then falls back to a primary type match for the type CustomerPreferenceDao. The "context" field is injected based on the known resolvable dependency type ApplicationContext.

public class MovieRecommender {

    @Resource
    private CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao;

    @Resource
    private ApplicationContext context;

    public MovieRecommender() {
    }

    // ...

}

The CommonAnnotationBeanPostProcessor not only recognizes the @Resource annotation but also the JSR-250 lifecycle annotations. Introduced in Spring 2.5, the support for these annotations offers yet another alternative to those 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 example below, the cache will be pre-populated upon initialization and cleared upon destruction.

public class CachingMovieLister {

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

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

}

	Note
	For details about the effects of combining various lifecycle mechanisms, see the section called “Combining lifecycle mechanisms”.

The @Repository annotation is a marker for any class that fulfills the role or stereotype (also known as Data Access Object or DAO) of a repository. Among the uses of this marker is the automatic translation of exceptions as described in Section 14.2.2, “Exception translation”.

Spring provides further stereotype annotations: @Component, @Service, and @Controller. @Component is a generic stereotype for any Spring-managed component. @Repository, @Service, and @Controller are specializations of @Component for more specific use cases, for example, in the persistence, service, and presentation layers, respectively. Therefore, you can annotate your component classes with @Component, but by annotating them with @Repository, @Service, or @Controller instead, your classes are more properly suited for processing by tools or associating with aspects. For example, these stereotype annotations make ideal targets for pointcuts. It is also possible that @Repository, @Service, and @Controller may carry additional semantics in future releases of the Spring Framework. Thus, if you are choosing between using @Component or @Service for your service layer, @Service is clearly the better choice. Similarly, as stated above, @Repository is already supported as a marker for automatic exception translation in your persistence layer.

Many of the annotations provided by Spring can be used as "meta-annotations" in your own code. A meta-annotation is simply an annotation, that can be applied to another annotation. For example, The @Service annotation mentioned above is meta-annotated with with @Component:

@Target({ElementType.TYPE})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Documented
@Component // Spring will see this and treat @Service in the same way as @Component
public @interface Service {

    // ....

}

Meta-annotations can also be combined together to create composed annotations. For example, the @RestController annotation from Spring MVC is composed of @Controller and @ResponseBody.

With the exception of value(), meta-annotated types may redeclare attributes from the source annotation to allow user customization. This can be particularly useful when you want to only expose a subset of the source annotation attributes. For example, here is a custom @Scope annotation that defines session scope, but still allows customization of the proxyMode.

@Target({ElementType.TYPE})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Documented
@Scope("session")
public @interface SessionScope {

    ScopedProxyMode proxyMode() default ScopedProxyMode.DEFAULT

}

Spring can automatically detect stereotyped classes and register corresponding BeanDefinition s with the ApplicationContext. For example, the following two classes are eligible for such autodetection:

@Service
public class SimpleMovieLister {

    private MovieFinder movieFinder;

    @Autowired
    public SimpleMovieLister(MovieFinder movieFinder) {
        this.movieFinder = movieFinder;
    }

}

@Repository
public class JpaMovieFinder implements MovieFinder {
    // implementation elided for clarity
}

To autodetect these classes and register the corresponding beans, you need to include the following element in XML, where the base-package element is a common parent package for the two classes. (Alternatively, you can specify a comma-separated list that includes the parent package of each class.)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

    <context:component-scan base-package="org.example"/>

</beans>

	Tip
	The use of <context:component-scan> implicitly enables the functionality of <context:annotation-config>. There is usually no need to include the <context:annotation-config> element when using <context:component-scan>.

Note

The scanning of classpath packages requires the presence of corresponding directory entries in the classpath. When you build JARs with Ant, make sure that you do not activate the files-only switch of the JAR task. Also, classpath directories may not get exposed based on security policies in some environments, e.g. standalone apps on JDK 1.7.0_45 and higher (which requires Trusted-Library setup in your manifests; see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19394570/java-jre-7u45-breaks-classloader-getresources).

Furthermore, the AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor and CommonAnnotationBeanPostProcessor are both included implicitly when you use the component-scan element. That means that the two components are autodetected and wired together - all without any bean configuration metadata provided in XML.

	Note
	You can disable the registration of AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor and CommonAnnotationBeanPostProcessor by including the annotation-config attribute with a value of false.

By default, classes annotated with @Component, @Repository, @Service, @Controller, or a custom annotation that itself is annotated with @Component are the only detected candidate components. However, you can modify and extend this behavior simply by applying custom filters. Add them as include-filter or exclude-filter sub-elements of the component-scan element. Each filter element requires the type and expression attributes. The following table describes the filtering options.

The following example shows the XML configuration ignoring all @Repository annotations and using "stub" repositories instead.

<beans>
    <context:component-scan base-package="org.example">
        <context:include-filter type="regex"
                expression=".*Stub.*Repository"/>
        <context:exclude-filter type="annotation"
                expression="org.springframework.stereotype.Repository"/>
    </context:component-scan>
</beans>

	Note
	You can also disable the default filters by providing use-default-filters="false" as an attribute of the <component-scan/> element. This will in effect disable automatic detection of classes annotated with @Component, @Repository, @Service, or @Controller.

Spring components can also contribute bean definition metadata to the container. You do this with the same @Bean annotation used to define bean metadata within @Configuration annotated classes. Here is a simple example:

@Component
public class FactoryMethodComponent {

    @Bean
    @Qualifier("public")
    public TestBean publicInstance() {
        return new TestBean("publicInstance");
    }

    public void doWork() {
        // Component method implementation omitted
    }

}

This class is a Spring component that has application-specific code contained in its doWork() method. However, it also contributes a bean definition that has a factory method referring to the method publicInstance(). The @Bean annotation identifies the factory method and other bean definition properties, such as a qualifier value through the @Qualifier annotation. Other method level annotations that can be specified are @Scope, @Lazy, and custom qualifier annotations.

	Tip
	In addition to its role for component initialization, the @Lazy annotation may also be placed on injection points marked with @Autowired or @Inject. In this context, it leads to the injection of a lazy-resolution proxy.

Autowired fields and methods are supported as previously discussed, with additional support for autowiring of @Bean methods:

@Component
public class FactoryMethodComponent {

    private static int i;

    @Bean
    @Qualifier("public")
    public TestBean publicInstance() {
        return new TestBean("publicInstance");
    }

    // use of a custom qualifier and autowiring of method parameters

    @Bean
    protected TestBean protectedInstance(
            @Qualifier("public") TestBean spouse,
            @Value("#{privateInstance.age}") String country) {
        TestBean tb = new TestBean("protectedInstance", 1);
        tb.setSpouse(tb);
        tb.setCountry(country);
        return tb;
    }

    @Bean
    @Scope(BeanDefinition.SCOPE_SINGLETON)
    private TestBean privateInstance() {
        return new TestBean("privateInstance", i++);
    }

    @Bean
    @Scope(value = WebApplicationContext.SCOPE_SESSION, proxyMode = ScopedProxyMode.TARGET_CLASS)
    public TestBean requestScopedInstance() {
        return new TestBean("requestScopedInstance", 3);
    }

}

The example autowires the String method parameter country to the value of the Age property on another bean named privateInstance. A Spring Expression Language element defines the value of the property through the notation #{ <expression> }. For @Value annotations, an expression resolver is preconfigured to look for bean names when resolving expression text.

The @Bean methods in a Spring component are processed differently than their counterparts inside a Spring @Configuration class. The difference is that @Component classes are not enhanced with CGLIB to intercept the invocation of methods and fields. CGLIB proxying is the means by which invoking methods or fields within @Configuration classes @Bean methods create bean metadata references to collaborating objects. Methods are not invoked with normal Java semantics. In contrast, calling a method or field within a @Component classes @Bean method has standard Java semantics.

When a component is autodetected as part of the scanning process, its bean name is generated by the BeanNameGenerator strategy known to that scanner. By default, any Spring stereotype annotation ( @Component, @Repository, @Service, and @Controller) that contains a name value will thereby provide that name to the corresponding bean definition.

If such an annotation contains no name value or for any other detected component (such as those discovered by custom filters), the default bean name generator returns the uncapitalized non-qualified class name. For example, if the following two components were detected, the names would be myMovieLister and movieFinderImpl:

@Service("myMovieLister")
public class SimpleMovieLister {
    // ...
}

@Repository
public class MovieFinderImpl implements MovieFinder {
    // ...
}

	Note
	If you do not want to rely on the default bean-naming strategy, you can provide a custom bean-naming strategy. First, implement the BeanNameGenerator interface, and be sure to include a default no-arg constructor. Then, provide the fully-qualified class name when configuring the scanner:

<beans>
    <context:component-scan base-package="org.example"
        name-generator="org.example.MyNameGenerator" />
</beans>

As a general rule, consider specifying the name with the annotation whenever other components may be making explicit references to it. On the other hand, the auto-generated names are adequate whenever the container is responsible for wiring.

As with Spring-managed components in general, the default and most common scope for autodetected components is singleton. However, sometimes you need other scopes, which Spring 2.5 provides with a new @Scope annotation. Simply provide the name of the scope within the annotation:

@Scope("prototype")
@Repository
public class MovieFinderImpl implements MovieFinder {
    // ...
}

	Note
	To provide a custom strategy for scope resolution rather than relying on the annotation-based approach, implement the ScopeMetadataResolver interface, and be sure to include a default no-arg constructor. Then, provide the fully-qualified class name when configuring the scanner:

<beans>
    <context:component-scan base-package="org.example"
            scope-resolver="org.example.MyScopeResolver" />
</beans>

When using certain non-singleton scopes, it may be necessary to generate proxies for the scoped objects. The reasoning is described in the section called “Scoped beans as dependencies”. For this purpose, a scoped-proxy attribute is available on the component-scan element. The three possible values are: no, interfaces, and targetClass. For example, the following configuration will result in standard JDK dynamic proxies:

<beans>
    <context:component-scan base-package="org.example"
        scoped-proxy="interfaces" />
</beans>

The @Qualifier annotation is discussed in Section 4.9.3, “Fine-tuning annotation-based autowiring with qualifiers”. The examples in that section demonstrate the use of the @Qualifier annotation and custom qualifier annotations to provide fine-grained control when you resolve autowire candidates. Because those examples were based on XML bean definitions, the qualifier metadata was provided on the candidate bean definitions using the qualifier or meta sub-elements of the bean element in the XML. When relying upon classpath scanning for autodetection of components, you provide the qualifier metadata with type-level annotations on the candidate class. The following three examples demonstrate this technique:

@Component
@Qualifier("Action")
public class ActionMovieCatalog implements MovieCatalog {
    // ...
}

@Component
@Genre("Action")
public class ActionMovieCatalog implements MovieCatalog {
    // ...
}

@Component
@Offline
public class CachingMovieCatalog implements MovieCatalog {
    // ...
}

	Note
	As with most annotation-based alternatives, keep in mind that the annotation metadata is bound to the class definition itself, while the use of XML allows for multiple beans of the same type to provide variations in their qualifier metadata, because that metadata is provided per-instance rather than per-class.

Instead of @Autowired, @javax.inject.Inject may be used as follows:

import javax.inject.Inject;

public class SimpleMovieLister {

    private MovieFinder movieFinder;

    @Inject
    public void setMovieFinder(MovieFinder movieFinder) {
        this.movieFinder = movieFinder;
    }

    // ...

}

As with @Autowired, it is possible to use @Inject at the class-level, field-level, method-level and constructor-argument level. If you would like to use a qualified name for the dependency that should be injected, you should use the @Named annotation as follows:

import javax.inject.Inject;
import javax.inject.Named;

public class SimpleMovieLister {

    private MovieFinder movieFinder;

    @Inject
    public void setMovieFinder(@Named("main") MovieFinder movieFinder) {
        this.movieFinder = movieFinder;
    }

    // ...

}

Instead of @Component, @javax.inject.Named may be used as follows:

import javax.inject.Inject;
import javax.inject.Named;

@Named("movieListener")
public class SimpleMovieLister {

    private MovieFinder movieFinder;

    @Inject
    public void setMovieFinder(MovieFinder movieFinder) {
        this.movieFinder = movieFinder;
    }

    // ...

}

It is very common to use @Component without specifying a name for the component. @Named can be used in a similar fashion:

import javax.inject.Inject;
import javax.inject.Named;

@Named
public class SimpleMovieLister {

    private MovieFinder movieFinder;

    @Inject
    public void setMovieFinder(MovieFinder movieFinder) {
        this.movieFinder = movieFinder;
    }

    // ...

}

When using @Named, it is possible to use component-scanning in the exact same way as when using Spring annotations:

<beans>
    <context:component-scan base-package="org.example"/>
</beans>

When working with standard annotations, it is important to know that some significant features are not available as shown in the table below:

The central artifacts in Spring’s new Java-configuration support are @Configuration-annotated classes and @Bean-annotated methods.

The @Bean annotation is used to indicate that a method instantiates, configures and initializes a new object to be managed by the Spring IoC container. For those familiar with Spring’s <beans/> XML configuration the @Bean annotation plays the same role as the <bean/> element. You can use @Bean annotated methods with any Spring @Component, however, they are most often used with @Configuration beans.

Annotating a class with @Configuration indicates that its primary purpose is as a source of bean definitions. Furthermore, @Configuration classes allow inter-bean dependencies to be defined by simply calling other @Bean methods in the same class. The simplest possible @Configuration class would read as follows:

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

    @Bean
    public MyService myService() {
        return new MyServiceImpl();
    }

}

The AppConfig class above would be equivalent to the following Spring <beans/> XML:

<beans>
    <bean id="myService" class="com.acme.services.MyServiceImpl"/>
</beans>

The @Bean and @Configuration annotations will be discussed in depth in the sections below. First, however, we’ll cover the various ways of creating a spring container using Java-based configuration.

The sections below document Spring’s AnnotationConfigApplicationContext, new in Spring 3.0. This versatile ApplicationContext implementation is capable of accepting not only @Configuration classes as input, but also plain @Component classes and classes annotated with JSR-330 metadata.

When @Configuration classes are provided as input, the @Configuration class itself is registered as a bean definition, and all declared @Bean methods within the class are also registered as bean definitions.

When @Component and JSR-330 classes are provided, they are registered as bean definitions, and it is assumed that DI metadata such as @Autowired or @Inject are used within those classes where necessary.

public static void main(String[] args) {
    ApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(AppConfig.class);
    MyService myService = ctx.getBean(MyService.class);
    myService.doStuff();
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
    ApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(MyServiceImpl.class, Dependency1.class, Dependency2.class);
    MyService myService = ctx.getBean(MyService.class);
    myService.doStuff();
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
    AnnotationConfigApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext();
    ctx.register(AppConfig.class, OtherConfig.class);
    ctx.register(AdditionalConfig.class);
    ctx.refresh();
    MyService myService = ctx.getBean(MyService.class);
    myService.doStuff();
}

Enabling component scanning with scan(String…)

Experienced Spring users will be familiar with the following commonly-used XML declaration from Spring’s context: namespace

<beans>
    <context:component-scan base-package="com.acme"/>
</beans>

In the example above, the com.acme package will be scanned, looking for any @Component-annotated classes, and those classes will be registered as Spring bean definitions within the container. AnnotationConfigApplicationContext exposes the scan(String...) method to allow for the same component-scanning functionality:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    AnnotationConfigApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext();
    ctx.scan("com.acme");
    ctx.refresh();
    MyService myService = ctx.getBean(MyService.class);
}

	Note
	Remember that @Configuration classes are meta-annotated with @Component, so they are candidates for component-scanning! In the example above, assuming that AppConfig is declared within the com.acme package (or any package underneath), it will be picked up during the call to scan(), and upon refresh() all its @Bean methods will be processed and registered as bean definitions within the container.

<web-app>
    <!-- Configure ContextLoaderListener to use AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext
        instead of the default XmlWebApplicationContext -->
    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextClass</param-name>
        <param-value>
            org.springframework.web.context.support.AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext
        </param-value>
    </context-param>

    <!-- Configuration locations must consist of one or more comma- or space-delimited
        fully-qualified @Configuration classes. Fully-qualified packages may also be
        specified for component-scanning -->
    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>com.acme.AppConfig</param-value>
    </context-param>

    <!-- Bootstrap the root application context as usual using ContextLoaderListener -->
    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
    </listener>

    <!-- Declare a Spring MVC DispatcherServlet as usual -->
    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <!-- Configure DispatcherServlet to use AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext
            instead of the default XmlWebApplicationContext -->
        <init-param>
            <param-name>contextClass</param-name>
            <param-value>
                org.springframework.web.context.support.AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext
            </param-value>
        </init-param>
        <!-- Again, config locations must consist of one or more comma- or space-delimited
            and fully-qualified @Configuration classes -->
        <init-param>
            <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
            <param-value>com.acme.web.MvcConfig</param-value>
        </init-param>
    </servlet>

    <!-- map all requests for /app/* to the dispatcher servlet -->
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/app/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

@Bean is a method-level annotation and a direct analog of the XML <bean/> element. The annotation supports some of the attributes offered by <bean/>, such as: init-method, destroy-method, autowiring and name.

You can use the @Bean annotation in a @Configuration-annotated or in a @Component-annotated class.

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

    @Bean
    public TransferService transferService() {
        return new TransferServiceImpl();
    }

}

<beans>
    <bean id="transferService" class="com.acme.TransferServiceImpl"/>
</beans>

transferService -> com.acme.TransferServiceImpl

Receiving lifecycle callbacks

Any classes defined with the @Bean annotation support the regular lifecycle callbacks and can use the @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy annotations from JSR-250, see JSR-250 annotations for further details.

The regular Spring lifecycle callbacks are fully supported as well. If a bean implements InitializingBean, DisposableBean, or Lifecycle, their respective methods are called by the container.

The standard set of *Aware interfaces such as BeanFactoryAware, BeanNameAware, MessageSourceAware, ApplicationContextAware, and so on are also fully supported.

The @Bean annotation supports specifying arbitrary initialization and destruction callback methods, much like Spring XML’s init-method and destroy-method attributes on the bean element:

public class Foo {
    public void init() {
        // initialization logic
    }
}

public class Bar {
    public void cleanup() {
        // destruction logic
    }
}

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

    @Bean(initMethod = "init")
    public Foo foo() {
        return new Foo();
    }

    @Bean(destroyMethod = "cleanup")
    public Bar bar() {
        return new Bar();
    }

}

Of course, in the case of Foo above, it would be equally as valid to call the init() method directly during construction:

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {
    @Bean
    public Foo foo() {
        Foo foo = new Foo();
        foo.init();
    return foo;
    }

    // ...

}

	Tip
	When you work directly in Java, you can do anything you like with your objects and do not always need to rely on the container lifecycle!

@Configuration
public class MyConfiguration {

    @Bean
    @Scope("prototype")
    public Encryptor encryptor() {
        // ...
    }

}

// an HTTP Session-scoped bean exposed as a proxy
@Bean
@Scope(value = "session", proxyMode = ScopedProxyMode.TARGET_CLASS)
public UserPreferences userPreferences() {
    return new UserPreferences();
}

@Bean
public Service userService() {
    UserService service = new SimpleUserService();
    // a reference to the proxied userPreferences bean
    service.setUserPreferences(userPreferences());
    return service;
}

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

    @Bean(name = "myFoo")
    public Foo foo() {
        return new Foo();
    }

}

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

    @Bean(name = { "dataSource", "subsystemA-dataSource", "subsystemB-dataSource" })
    public DataSource dataSource() {
        // instantiate, configure and return DataSource bean...
    }

}

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

    @Bean
    @Desciption("Provides a basic example of a bean")
    public Foo foo() {
        return new Foo();
    }

}

@Configuration is a class-level annotation indicating that an object is a source of bean definitions. @Configuration classes declare beans via public @Bean annotated methods. Calls to @Bean methods on @Configuration classes can also be used to define inter-bean dependencies. See Section 4.12.1, “Basic concepts: @Bean and @Configuration” for a general introduction.

Injecting inter-bean dependencies

When @Bean s have dependencies on one another, expressing that dependency is as simple as having one bean method call another:

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

    @Bean
    public Foo foo() {
        return new Foo(bar());
    }

    @Bean
    public Bar bar() {
        return new Bar();
    }

}

In the example above, the foo bean receives a reference to bar via constructor injection.

	Note
	This method of declaring inter-bean dependencies only works when the @Bean method is declared within a @Configuration class. You cannot declare inter-bean dependencies using plain @Component classes.

public abstract class CommandManager {
    public Object process(Object commandState) {
        // grab a new instance of the appropriate Command interface
        Command command = createCommand();

        // set the state on the (hopefully brand new) Command instance
        command.setState(commandState);
    return command.execute();
    }

    // okay... but where is the implementation of this method?
    protected abstract Command createCommand();
}

@Bean
@Scope("prototype")
public AsyncCommand asyncCommand() {
    AsyncCommand command = new AsyncCommand();
    // inject dependencies here as required
    return command;
}

@Bean
public CommandManager commandManager() {
    // return new anonymous implementation of CommandManager with command() overridden
    // to return a new prototype Command object
    return new CommandManager() {
        protected Command createCommand() {
            return asyncCommand();
        }
    }
}

Further information about how Java-based configuration works internally

The following example shows a @Bean annotated method being called twice:

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

    @Bean
    public ClientService clientService1() {
        ClientServiceImpl clientService = new ClientServiceImpl();
        clientService.setClientDao(clientDao());
        return clientService;
    }

    @Bean
    public ClientService clientService2() {
        ClientServiceImpl clientService = new ClientServiceImpl();
        clientService.setClientDao(clientDao());
        return clientService;
    }

    @Bean
    public ClientDao clientDao() {
        return new ClientDaoImpl();
    }

}

clientDao() has been called once in clientService1() and once in clientService2(). Since this method creates a new instance of ClientDaoImpl and returns it, you would normally expect having 2 instances (one for each service). That definitely would be problematic: in Spring, instantiated beans have a singleton scope by default. This is where the magic comes in: All @Configuration classes are subclassed at startup-time with CGLIB. In the subclass, the child method checks the container first for any cached (scoped) beans before it calls the parent method and creates a new instance. Note that as of Spring 3.2, it is no longer necessary to add CGLIB to your classpath because CGLIB classes have been repackaged under org.springframework and included directly within the spring-core JAR.

	Note
	The behavior could be different according to the scope of your bean. We are talking about singletons here.

	Note
	There are a few restrictions due to the fact that CGLIB dynamically adds features at startup-time: Configuration classes should not be final They should have a constructor with no arguments

The ApplicationContext interface extends an interface called MessageSource, and therefore provides internationalization (i18n) functionality. Spring also provides the interface HierarchicalMessageSource, which can resolve messages hierarchically. Together these interfaces provide the foundation upon which Spring effects message resolution. The methods defined on these interfaces include:

When an ApplicationContext is loaded, it automatically searches for a MessageSource bean defined in the context. The bean must have the name messageSource. If such a bean is found, all calls to the preceding methods are delegated to the message source. If no message source is found, the ApplicationContext attempts to find a parent containing a bean with the same name. If it does, it uses that bean as the MessageSource. If the ApplicationContext cannot find any source for messages, an empty DelegatingMessageSource is instantiated in order to be able to accept calls to the methods defined above.

Spring provides two MessageSource implementations, ResourceBundleMessageSource and StaticMessageSource. Both implement HierarchicalMessageSource in order to do nested messaging. The StaticMessageSource is rarely used but provides programmatic ways to add messages to the source. The ResourceBundleMessageSource is shown in the following example:

<beans>
    <bean id="messageSource"
            class="org.springframework.context.support.ResourceBundleMessageSource">
        <property name="basenames">
            <list>
                <value>format</value>
                <value>exceptions</value>
                <value>windows</value>
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>
</beans>

In the example it is assumed you have three resource bundles defined in your classpath called format, exceptions and windows. Any request to resolve a message will be handled in the JDK standard way of resolving messages through ResourceBundles. For the purposes of the example, assume the contents of two of the above resource bundle files are…

# in format.properties
message=Alligators rock!

# in exceptions.properties
argument.required=The {0} argument is required.

A program to execute the MessageSource functionality is shown in the next example. Remember that all ApplicationContext implementations are also MessageSource implementations and so can be cast to the MessageSource interface.

public static void main(String[] args) {
    MessageSource resources = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("beans.xml");
    String message = resources.getMessage("message", null, "Default", null);
    System.out.println(message);
}

The resulting output from the above program will be…

Alligators rock!

So to summarize, the MessageSource is defined in a file called beans.xml, which exists at the root of your classpath. The messageSource bean definition refers to a number of resource bundles through its basenames property. The three files that are passed in the list to the basenames property exist as files at the root of your classpath and are called format.properties, exceptions.properties, and windows.properties respectively.

The next example shows arguments passed to the message lookup; these arguments will be converted into Strings and inserted into placeholders in the lookup message.

<beans>

    <!-- this MessageSource is being used in a web application -->
    <bean id="messageSource" class="org.springframework.context.support.ResourceBundleMessageSource">
        <property name="basename" value="exceptions"/>
    </bean>

    <!-- lets inject the above MessageSource into this POJO -->
    <bean id="example" class="com.foo.Example">
        <property name="messages" ref="messageSource"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

public class Example {

    private MessageSource messages;

    public void setMessages(MessageSource messages) {
        this.messages = messages;
    }

    public void execute() {
        String message = this.messages.getMessage("argument.required",
            new Object [] {"userDao"}, "Required", null);
        System.out.println(message);
    }

}

The resulting output from the invocation of the execute() method will be…

The userDao argument is required.

With regard to internationalization (i18n), Spring’s various MessageResource implementations follow the same locale resolution and fallback rules as the standard JDK ResourceBundle. In short, and continuing with the example messageSource defined previously, if you want to resolve messages against the British (en-GB) locale, you would create files called format_en_GB.properties, exceptions_en_GB.properties, and windows_en_GB.properties respectively.

Typically, locale resolution is managed by the surrounding environment of the application. In this example, the locale against which (British) messages will be resolved is specified manually.

# in exceptions_en_GB.properties
argument.required=Ebagum lad, the {0} argument is required, I say, required.

public static void main(final String[] args) {
    MessageSource resources = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("beans.xml");
    String message = resources.getMessage("argument.required",
        new Object [] {"userDao"}, "Required", Locale.UK);
    System.out.println(message);
}

The resulting output from the running of the above program will be…

Ebagum lad, the userDao argument is required, I say, required.

You can also use the MessageSourceAware interface to acquire a reference to any MessageSource that has been defined. Any bean that is defined in an ApplicationContext that implements the MessageSourceAware interface is injected with the application context’s MessageSource when the bean is created and configured.

Note

As an alternative to ResourceBundleMessageSource, Spring provides a ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource class. This variant supports the same bundle file format but is more flexible than the standard JDK based ResourceBundleMessageSource implementation. In particular, it allows for reading files from any Spring resource location (not just from the classpath) and supports hot reloading of bundle property files (while efficiently caching them in between). Check out the ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource javadoc for details.

Event handling in the ApplicationContext is provided through the ApplicationEvent class and ApplicationListener interface. If a bean that implements the ApplicationListener interface is deployed into the context, every time an ApplicationEvent gets published to the ApplicationContext, that bean is notified. Essentially, this is the standard Observer design pattern. Spring provides the following standard events:

You can also create and publish your own custom events. This example demonstrates a simple class that extends Spring’s ApplicationEvent base class:

public class BlackListEvent extends ApplicationEvent {

    private final String address;
    private final String test;

    public BlackListEvent(Object source, String address, String test) {
        super(source);
        this.address = address;
        this.test = test;
    }

    // accessor and other methods...

}

To publish a custom ApplicationEvent, call the publishEvent() method on an ApplicationEventPublisher. Typically this is done by creating a class that implements ApplicationEventPublisherAware and registering it as a Spring bean. The following example demonstrates such a class:

public class EmailService implements ApplicationEventPublisherAware {

    private List<String> blackList;
    private ApplicationEventPublisher publisher;

    public void setBlackList(List<String> blackList) {
        this.blackList = blackList;
    }

    public void setApplicationEventPublisher(ApplicationEventPublisher publisher) {
        this.publisher = publisher;
    }

    public void sendEmail(String address, String text) {
        if (blackList.contains(address)) {
            BlackListEvent event = new BlackListEvent(this, address, text);
            publisher.publishEvent(event);
            return;
        }
        // send email...
    }

}

At configuration time, the Spring container will detect that EmailService implements ApplicationEventPublisherAware and will automatically call setApplicationEventPublisher(). In reality, the parameter passed in will be the Spring container itself; you’re simply interacting with the application context via its ApplicationEventPublisher interface.

To receive the custom ApplicationEvent, create a class that implements ApplicationListener and register it as a Spring bean. The following example demonstrates such a class:

public class BlackListNotifier implements ApplicationListener<BlackListEvent> {

    private String notificationAddress;

    public void setNotificationAddress(String notificationAddress) {
        this.notificationAddress = notificationAddress;
    }

    public void onApplicationEvent(BlackListEvent event) {
        // notify appropriate parties via notificationAddress...
    }

}

Notice that ApplicationListener is generically parameterized with the type of your custom event, BlackListEvent. This means that the onApplicationEvent() method can remain type-safe, avoiding any need for downcasting. You may register as many event listeners as you wish, but note that by default event listeners receive events synchronously. This means the publishEvent() method blocks until all listeners have finished processing the event. One advantage of this synchronous and single-threaded approach is that when a listener receives an event, it operates inside the transaction context of the publisher if a transaction context is available. If another strategy for event publication becomes necessary, refer to the JavaDoc for Spring’s ApplicationEventMulticaster interface.

The following example shows the bean definitions used to register and configure each of the classes above:

<bean id="emailService" class="example.EmailService">
    <property name="blackList">
        <list>
            <value>[email protected]</value>
            <value>[email protected]</value>
            <value>[email protected]</value>
        </list>
    </property>
</bean>

<bean id="blackListNotifier" class="example.BlackListNotifier">
    <property name="notificationAddress" value="[email protected]"/>
</bean>

Putting it all together, when the sendEmail() method of the emailService bean is called, if there are any emails that should be blacklisted, a custom event of type BlackListEvent is published. The blackListNotifier bean is registered as an ApplicationListener and thus receives the BlackListEvent, at which point it can notify appropriate parties.

	Note
	Spring’s eventing mechanism is designed for simple communication between Spring beans within the same application context. However, for more sophisticated enterprise integration needs, the separately-maintained Spring Integration project provides complete support for building lightweight, pattern-oriented, event-driven architectures that build upon the well-known Spring programming model.

For optimal usage and understanding of application contexts, users should generally familiarize themselves with Spring’s Resource abstraction, as described in the chapter Chapter 5, Resources.

An application context is a ResourceLoader, which can be used to load Resource s. A Resource is essentially a more feature rich version of the JDK class java.net.URL, in fact, the implementations of the Resource wrap an instance of java.net.URL where appropriate. A Resource can obtain low-level resources from almost any location in a transparent fashion, including from the classpath, a filesystem location, anywhere describable with a standard URL, and some other variations. If the resource location string is a simple path without any special prefixes, where those resources come from is specific and appropriate to the actual application context type.

You can configure a bean deployed into the application context to implement the special callback interface, ResourceLoaderAware, to be automatically called back at initialization time with the application context itself passed in as the ResourceLoader. You can also expose properties of type Resource, to be used to access static resources; they will be injected into it like any other properties. You can specify those Resource properties as simple String paths, and rely on a special JavaBean PropertyEditor that is automatically registered by the context, to convert those text strings to actual Resource objects when the bean is deployed.

The location path or paths supplied to an ApplicationContext constructor are actually resource strings, and in simple form are treated appropriately to the specific context implementation. ClassPathXmlApplicationContext treats a simple location path as a classpath location. You can also use location paths (resource strings) with special prefixes to force loading of definitions from the classpath or a URL, regardless of the actual context type.

You can create ApplicationContext instances declaratively by using, for example, a ContextLoader. Of course you can also create ApplicationContext instances programmatically by using one of the ApplicationContext implementations.

You can register an ApplicationContext using the ContextLoaderListener as follows:

<context-param>
    <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
    <param-value>/WEB-INF/daoContext.xml /WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml</param-value>
</context-param>

<listener>
    <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>

<!-- or use the ContextLoaderServlet instead of the above listener
<servlet>
    <servlet-name>context</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderServlet</servlet-class>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
-->

The listener inspects the contextConfigLocation parameter. If the parameter does not exist, the listener uses /WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml as a default. When the parameter does exist, the listener separates the String by using predefined delimiters (comma, semicolon and whitespace) and uses the values as locations where application contexts will be searched. Ant-style path patterns are supported as well. Examples are /WEB-INF/*Context.xml for all files with names ending with "Context.xml", residing in the "WEB-INF" directory, and /WEB-INF/**/*Context.xml, for all such files in any subdirectory of "WEB-INF".

You can use ContextLoaderServlet instead of ContextLoaderListener. The Servlet uses the contextConfigLocation parameter just as the listener does.

It is possible to deploy a Spring ApplicationContext as a RAR file, encapsulating the context and all of its required bean classes and library JARs in a J2EE RAR deployment unit. This is the equivalent of bootstrapping a standalone ApplicationContext, just hosted in J2EE environment, being able to access the J2EE servers facilities. RAR deployment is a more natural alternative to scenario of deploying a headless WAR file, in effect, a WAR file without any HTTP entry points that is used only for bootstrapping a Spring ApplicationContext in a J2EE environment.

RAR deployment is ideal for application contexts that do not need HTTP entry points but rather consist only of message endpoints and scheduled jobs. Beans in such a context can use application server resources such as the JTA transaction manager and JNDI-bound JDBC DataSources and JMS ConnectionFactory instances, and may also register with the platform’s JMX server - all through Spring’s standard transaction management and JNDI and JMX support facilities. Application components can also interact with the application server’s JCA WorkManager through Spring’s TaskExecutor abstraction.

Check out the JavaDoc of the SpringContextResourceAdapter class for the configuration details involved in RAR deployment.

For a simple deployment of a Spring ApplicationContext as a J2EE RAR file: package all application classes into a RAR file, which is a standard JAR file with a different file extension. Add all required library JARs into the root of the RAR archive. Add a "META-INF/ra.xml" deployment descriptor (as shown in SpringContextResourceAdapter s JavaDoc) and the corresponding Spring XML bean definition file(s) (typically "META-INF/applicationContext.xml"), and drop the resulting RAR file into your application server’s deployment directory.

Note

Such RAR deployment units are usually self-contained; they do not expose components to the outside world, not even to other modules of the same application. Interaction with a RAR-based ApplicationContext usually occurs through JMS destinations that it shares with other modules. A RAR-based ApplicationContext may also, for example, schedule some jobs, reacting to new files in the file system (or the like). If it needs to allow synchronous access from the outside, it could for example export RMI endpoints, which of course may be used by other application modules on the same machine.

Use an ApplicationContext unless you have a good reason for not doing so.

Because the ApplicationContext includes all functionality of the BeanFactory, it is generally recommended over the BeanFactory, except for a few situations such as in an Applet where memory consumption might be critical and a few extra kilobytes might make a difference. However, for most typical enterprise applications and systems, the ApplicationContext is what you will want to use. Spring makes heavy use of the BeanPostProcessor extension point (to effect proxying and so on). If you use only a plain BeanFactory, a fair amount of support such as transactions and AOP will not take effect, at least not without some extra steps on your part. This situation could be confusing because nothing is actually wrong with the configuration.

The following table lists features provided by the BeanFactory and ApplicationContext interfaces and implementations.

To explicitly register a bean post-processor with a BeanFactory implementation, you must write code like this:

ConfigurableBeanFactory factory = new XmlBeanFactory(...);

// now register any needed BeanPostProcessor instances
MyBeanPostProcessor postProcessor = new MyBeanPostProcessor();
factory.addBeanPostProcessor(postProcessor);

// now start using the factory

To explicitly register a BeanFactoryPostProcessor when using a BeanFactory implementation, you must write code like this:

XmlBeanFactory factory = new XmlBeanFactory(new FileSystemResource("beans.xml"));

// bring in some property values from a Properties file
PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer cfg = new PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer();
cfg.setLocation(new FileSystemResource("jdbc.properties"));

// now actually do the replacement
cfg.postProcessBeanFactory(factory);

In both cases, the explicit registration step is inconvenient, which is one reason why the various ApplicationContext implementations are preferred above plain BeanFactory implementations in the vast majority of Spring-backed applications, especially when using BeanFactoryPostProcessors and BeanPostProcessors. These mechanisms implement important functionality such as property placeholder replacement and AOP.

It is best to write most application code in a dependency-injection (DI) style, where that code is served out of a Spring IoC container, has its own dependencies supplied by the container when it is created, and is completely unaware of the container. However, for the small glue layers of code that are sometimes needed to tie other code together, you sometimes need a singleton (or quasi-singleton) style access to a Spring IoC container. For example, third-party code may try to construct new objects directly ( Class.forName() style), without the ability to get these objects out of a Spring IoC container.If the object constructed by the third-party code is a small stub or proxy, which then uses a singleton style access to a Spring IoC container to get a real object to delegate to, then inversion of control has still been achieved for the majority of the code (the object coming out of the container). Thus most code is still unaware of the container or how it is accessed, and remains decoupled from other code, with all ensuing benefits. EJBs may also use this stub/proxy approach to delegate to a plain Java implementation object, retrieved from a Spring IoC container. While the Spring IoC container itself ideally does not have to be a singleton, it may be unrealistic in terms of memory usage or initialization times (when using beans in the Spring IoC container such as a Hibernate SessionFactory) for each bean to use its own, non-singleton Spring IoC container.

Looking up the application context in a service locator style is sometimes the only option for accessing shared Spring-managed components, such as in an EJB 2.1 environment, or when you want to share a single ApplicationContext as a parent to WebApplicationContexts across WAR files. In this case you should look into using the utility class ContextSingletonBeanFactoryLocator locator that is described in this SpringSource team blog entry.