This part of the reference documentation covers the Spring Framework’s integration with a number of Java EE (and related) technologies.

1. Remoting and Web Services

Spring provides support for remoting with various technologies. The remoting support eases the development of remote-enabled services, implemented via Java interfaces and objects as input and output. Currently, Spring supports the following remoting technologies:

  • Remote Method Invocation (RMI): Through the use of RmiProxyFactoryBean and RmiServiceExporter, Spring supports both traditional RMI (with java.rmi.Remote interfaces and java.rmi.RemoteException) and transparent remoting through RMI invokers (with any Java interface).

  • Spring HTTP Invoker: Spring provides a special remoting strategy that allows for Java serialization though HTTP, supporting any Java interface (as the RMI invoker does). The corresponding support classes are HttpInvokerProxyFactoryBean and HttpInvokerServiceExporter.

  • Hessian: By using Spring’s HessianProxyFactoryBean and the HessianServiceExporter, you can transparently expose your services through the lightweight binary HTTP-based protocol provided by Caucho.

  • Java Web Services: Spring provides remoting support for web services through JAX-WS.

  • JMS: Remoting via JMS as the underlying protocol is supported through the JmsInvokerServiceExporter and JmsInvokerProxyFactoryBean classes in the spring-jms module.

  • AMQP: Remoting via AMQP as the underlying protocol is supported by the separate Spring AMQP project.

While discussing the remoting capabilities of Spring, we use the following domain model and corresponding services:

public class Account implements Serializable{

    private String name;

    public String getName(){
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
}
public interface AccountService {

    public void insertAccount(Account account);

    public List<Account> getAccounts(String name);
}
// the implementation doing nothing at the moment
public class AccountServiceImpl implements AccountService {

    public void insertAccount(Account acc) {
        // do something...
    }

    public List<Account> getAccounts(String name) {
        // do something...
    }
}

This section starts by exposing the service to a remote client by using RMI and talk a bit about the drawbacks of using RMI. It then continues with an example that uses Hessian as the protocol.

1.1. RMI

By using Spring’s support for RMI, you can transparently expose your services through the RMI infrastructure. After having this set up, you basically have a configuration similar to remote EJBs, except for the fact that there is no standard support for security context propagation or remote transaction propagation. Spring does provide hooks for such additional invocation context when you use the RMI invoker, so you can, for example, plug in security frameworks or custom security credentials.

1.1.1. Exporting the Service by Using RmiServiceExporter

Using the RmiServiceExporter, we can expose the interface of our AccountService object as RMI object. The interface can be accessed by using RmiProxyFactoryBean, or via plain RMI in case of a traditional RMI service. The RmiServiceExporter explicitly supports the exposing of any non-RMI services via RMI invokers.

We first have to set up our service in the Spring container. The following example shows how to do so:

<bean id="accountService" class="example.AccountServiceImpl">
    <!-- any additional properties, maybe a DAO? -->
</bean>

Next, we have to expose our service by using RmiServiceExporter. The following example shows how to do so:

<bean class="org.springframework.remoting.rmi.RmiServiceExporter">
    <!-- does not necessarily have to be the same name as the bean to be exported -->
    <property name="serviceName" value="AccountService"/>
    <property name="service" ref="accountService"/>
    <property name="serviceInterface" value="example.AccountService"/>
    <!-- defaults to 1099 -->
    <property name="registryPort" value="1199"/>
</bean>

In the preceding example, we override the port for the RMI registry. Often, your application server also maintains an RMI registry, and it is wise to not interfere with that one. Furthermore, the service name is used to bind the service. So, in the preceding example, the service is bound at 'rmi://HOST:1199/AccountService'. We use this URL later on to link in the service at the client side.

The servicePort property has been omitted (it defaults to 0). This means that an anonymous port is used to communicate with the service.

1.1.2. Linking in the Service at the Client

Our client is a simple object that uses the AccountService to manage accounts, as the following example shows:

public class SimpleObject {

    private AccountService accountService;

    public void setAccountService(AccountService accountService) {
        this.accountService = accountService;
    }

    // additional methods using the accountService
}

To link in the service on the client, we create a separate Spring container, to contain the following simple object and the service linking configuration bits:

<bean class="example.SimpleObject">
    <property name="accountService" ref="accountService"/>
</bean>

<bean id="accountService" class="org.springframework.remoting.rmi.RmiProxyFactoryBean">
    <property name="serviceUrl" value="rmi://HOST:1199/AccountService"/>
    <property name="serviceInterface" value="example.AccountService"/>
</bean>

That is all we need to do to support the remote account service on the client. Spring transparently creates an invoker and remotely enables the account service through the RmiServiceExporter. At the client, we link it in by using the RmiProxyFactoryBean.

1.2. Using Hessian to Remotely Call Services through HTTP

Hessian offers a binary HTTP-based remoting protocol. It is developed by Caucho, and you can find more information about Hessian itself at https://www.caucho.com/.

1.2.1. Hessian

Hessian communicates through HTTP and does so by using a custom servlet. By using Spring’s DispatcherServlet principles (see [webmvc#mvc-servlet]), we can wire up such a servlet to expose your services. First, we have to create a new servlet in our application, as shown in the following excerpt from web.xml:

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>remoting</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>remoting</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/remoting/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

If you are familiar with Spring’s DispatcherServlet principles, you probably know that now you have to create a Spring container configuration resource named remoting-servlet.xml (after the name of your servlet) in the WEB-INF directory. The application context is used in the next section.

Alternatively, consider the use of Spring’s simpler HttpRequestHandlerServlet. Doing so lets you embed the remote exporter definitions in your root application context (by default, in WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml), with individual servlet definitions pointing to specific exporter beans. In this case, each servlet name needs to match the bean name of its target exporter.

1.2.2. Exposing Your Beans by Using HessianServiceExporter

In the newly created application context called remoting-servlet.xml, we create a HessianServiceExporter to export our services, as the following example shows:

<bean id="accountService" class="example.AccountServiceImpl">
    <!-- any additional properties, maybe a DAO? -->
</bean>

<bean name="/AccountService" class="org.springframework.remoting.caucho.HessianServiceExporter">
    <property name="service" ref="accountService"/>
    <property name="serviceInterface" value="example.AccountService"/>
</bean>

Now we are ready to link in the service at the client. No explicit handler mapping is specified (to map request URLs onto services), so we use BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping used. Hence, the service is exported at the URL indicated through its bean name within the containing DispatcherServlet instance’s mapping (as defined earlier): http://HOST:8080/remoting/AccountService.

Alternatively, you can create a HessianServiceExporter in your root application context (for example, in WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml), as the following example shows:

<bean name="accountExporter" class="org.springframework.remoting.caucho.HessianServiceExporter">
    <property name="service" ref="accountService"/>
    <property name="serviceInterface" value="example.AccountService"/>
</bean>

In the latter case, you should define a corresponding servlet for this exporter in web.xml, with the same end result: The exporter gets mapped to the request path at /remoting/AccountService. Note that the servlet name needs to match the bean name of the target exporter. The following example shows how to do so:

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>accountExporter</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.context.support.HttpRequestHandlerServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>accountExporter</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/remoting/AccountService</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

1.2.3. Linking in the Service on the Client

By using the HessianProxyFactoryBean, we can link in the service at the client. The same principles apply as with the RMI example. We create a separate bean factory or application context and mention the following beans where the SimpleObject is by using the AccountService to manage accounts, as the following example shows:

<bean class="example.SimpleObject">
    <property name="accountService" ref="accountService"/>
</bean>

<bean id="accountService" class="org.springframework.remoting.caucho.HessianProxyFactoryBean">
    <property name="serviceUrl" value="http://remotehost:8080/remoting/AccountService"/>
    <property name="serviceInterface" value="example.AccountService"/>
</bean>

1.2.4. Applying HTTP Basic Authentication to a Service Exposed through Hessian

One of the advantages of Hessian is that we can easily apply HTTP basic authentication, because both protocols are HTTP-based. Your normal HTTP server security mechanism can be applied through using the web.xml security features, for example. Usually, you need not use per-user security credentials here. Rather, you can use shared credentials that you define at the HessianProxyFactoryBean level (similar to a JDBC DataSource), as the following example shows:

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping">
    <property name="interceptors" ref="authorizationInterceptor"/>
</bean>

<bean id="authorizationInterceptor"
        class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.UserRoleAuthorizationInterceptor">
    <property name="authorizedRoles" value="administrator,operator"/>
</bean>

In the preceding example, we explicitly mention the BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping and set an interceptor, to let only administrators and operators call the beans mentioned in this application context.

The preceding example does not show a flexible kind of security infrastructure. For more options as far as security is concerned, have a look at the Spring Security project at https://projects.spring.io/spring-security/.

1.3. Spring HTTP Invoker

As opposed to Hessian, Spring HTTP invokers are both lightweight protocols that use their own slim serialization mechanisms and use the standard Java serialization mechanism to expose services through HTTP. This has a huge advantage if your arguments and return types are complex types that cannot be serialized by using the serialization mechanisms Hessian uses (see the next section for more considerations when you choose a remoting technology).

Under the hood, Spring uses either the standard facilities provided by the JDK or Apache HttpComponents to perform HTTP calls. If you need more advanced and easier-to-use functionality, use the latter. See hc.apache.org/httpcomponents-client-ga/ for more information.

Be aware of vulnerabilities due to unsafe Java deserialization: Manipulated input streams can lead to unwanted code execution on the server during the deserialization step. As a consequence, do not expose HTTP invoker endpoints to untrusted clients. Rather, expose them only between your own services. In general, we strongly recommend using any other message format (such as JSON) instead.

If you are concerned about security vulnerabilities due to Java serialization, consider the general-purpose serialization filter mechanism at the core JVM level, originally developed for JDK 9 but backported to JDK 8, 7 and 6 in the meantime. See https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/entry/incoming_filter_serialization_data_a and https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/290.

1.3.1. Exposing the Service Object

Setting up the HTTP invoker infrastructure for a service object closely resembles the way you would do the same by using Hessian. As Hessian support provides HessianServiceExporter, Spring’s HttpInvoker support provides org.springframework.remoting.httpinvoker.HttpInvokerServiceExporter.

To expose the AccountService (mentioned earlier) within a Spring Web MVC DispatcherServlet, the following configuration needs to be in place in the dispatcher’s application context, as the following example shows:

<bean name="/AccountService" class="org.springframework.remoting.httpinvoker.HttpInvokerServiceExporter">
    <property name="service" ref="accountService"/>
    <property name="serviceInterface" value="example.AccountService"/>
</bean>

Such an exporter definition is exposed through the DispatcherServlet instance’s standard mapping facilities, as explained in the section on Hessian.

Alternatively, you can create an HttpInvokerServiceExporter in your root application context (for example, in 'WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml'), as the following example shows:

<bean name="accountExporter" class="org.springframework.remoting.httpinvoker.HttpInvokerServiceExporter">
    <property name="service" ref="accountService"/>
    <property name="serviceInterface" value="example.AccountService"/>
</bean>

In addition, you can define a corresponding servlet for this exporter in web.xml, with the servlet name matching the bean name of the target exporter, as the following example shows:

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>accountExporter</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.context.support.HttpRequestHandlerServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>accountExporter</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/remoting/AccountService</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

1.3.2. Linking in the Service at the Client

Again, linking in the service from the client much resembles the way you would do it when you use Hessian. By using a proxy, Spring can translate your calls to HTTP POST requests to the URL that points to the exported service. The following example shows how to configure this arrangement:

<bean id="httpInvokerProxy" class="org.springframework.remoting.httpinvoker.HttpInvokerProxyFactoryBean">
    <property name="serviceUrl" value="http://remotehost:8080/remoting/AccountService"/>
    <property name="serviceInterface" value="example.AccountService"/>
</bean>

As mentioned earlier, you can choose what HTTP client you want to use. By default, the HttpInvokerProxy uses the JDK’s HTTP functionality, but you can also use the Apache HttpComponents client by setting the httpInvokerRequestExecutor property. The following example shows how to do so:

<property name="httpInvokerRequestExecutor">
    <bean class="org.springframework.remoting.httpinvoker.HttpComponentsHttpInvokerRequestExecutor"/>
</property>

1.4. Java Web Services

Spring provides full support for the standard Java web services APIs:

  • Exposing web services using JAX-WS

  • Accessing web services using JAX-WS

In addition to stock support for JAX-WS in Spring Core, the Spring portfolio also features Spring Web Services, which is a solution for contract-first, document-driven web services — highly recommended for building modern, future-proof web services.

1.4.1. Exposing Servlet-based Web Services by Using JAX-WS

Spring provides a convenient base class for JAX-WS servlet endpoint implementations: SpringBeanAutowiringSupport. To expose our AccountService, we extend Spring’s SpringBeanAutowiringSupport class and implement our business logic here, usually delegating the call to the business layer. We use Spring’s @Autowired annotation to express such dependencies on Spring-managed beans. The following example shows our class that extends SpringBeanAutowiringSupport:

/**
 * JAX-WS compliant AccountService implementation that simply delegates
 * to the AccountService implementation in the root web application context.
 *
 * This wrapper class is necessary because JAX-WS requires working with dedicated
 * endpoint classes. If an existing service needs to be exported, a wrapper that
 * extends SpringBeanAutowiringSupport for simple Spring bean autowiring (through
 * the @Autowired annotation) is the simplest JAX-WS compliant way.
 *
 * This is the class registered with the server-side JAX-WS implementation.
 * In the case of a Java EE server, this would simply be defined as a servlet
 * in web.xml, with the server detecting that this is a JAX-WS endpoint and reacting
 * accordingly. The servlet name usually needs to match the specified WS service name.
 *
 * The web service engine manages the lifecycle of instances of this class.
 * Spring bean references will just be wired in here.
 */
import org.springframework.web.context.support.SpringBeanAutowiringSupport;

@WebService(serviceName="AccountService")
public class AccountServiceEndpoint extends SpringBeanAutowiringSupport {

    @Autowired
    private AccountService biz;

    @WebMethod
    public void insertAccount(Account acc) {
        biz.insertAccount(acc);
    }

    @WebMethod
    public Account[] getAccounts(String name) {
        return biz.getAccounts(name);
    }
}

Our AccountServiceEndpoint needs to run in the same web application as the Spring context to allow for access to Spring’s facilities. This is the case by default in Java EE environments, using the standard contract for JAX-WS servlet endpoint deployment. See the various Java EE web service tutorials for details.

1.4.2. Exporting Standalone Web Services by Using JAX-WS

The built-in JAX-WS provider that comes with Oracle’s JDK supports exposure of web services by using the built-in HTTP server that is also included in the JDK. Spring’s SimpleJaxWsServiceExporter detects all @WebService-annotated beans in the Spring application context and exports them through the default JAX-WS server (the JDK HTTP server).

In this scenario, the endpoint instances are defined and managed as Spring beans themselves. They are registered with the JAX-WS engine, but their lifecycle is up to the Spring application context. This means that you can apply Spring functionality (such as explicit dependency injection) to the endpoint instances. Annotation-driven injection through @Autowired works as well. The following example shows how to define these beans:

<bean class="org.springframework.remoting.jaxws.SimpleJaxWsServiceExporter">
    <property name="baseAddress" value="http://localhost:8080/"/>
</bean>

<bean id="accountServiceEndpoint" class="example.AccountServiceEndpoint">
    ...
</bean>

...

The AccountServiceEndpoint can but does not have to derive from Spring’s SpringBeanAutowiringSupport, since the endpoint in this example is a fully Spring-managed bean. This means that the endpoint implementation can be as follows (without any superclass declared — and Spring’s @Autowired configuration annotation is still honored):

@WebService(serviceName="AccountService")
public class AccountServiceEndpoint {

    @Autowired
    private AccountService biz;

    @WebMethod
    public void insertAccount(Account acc) {
        biz.insertAccount(acc);
    }

    @WebMethod
    public List<Account> getAccounts(String name) {
        return biz.getAccounts(name);
    }
}

1.4.3. Exporting Web Services by Using JAX-WS RI’s Spring Support

Oracle’s JAX-WS RI, developed as part of the GlassFish project, ships Spring support as part of its JAX-WS Commons project. This allows for defining JAX-WS endpoints as Spring-managed beans, similar to the standalone mode discussed in the previous section — but this time in a Servlet environment.

This is not portable in a Java EE environment. It is mainly intended for non-EE environments, such as Tomcat, that embed the JAX-WS RI as part of the web application.

The differences from the standard style of exporting servlet-based endpoints are that the lifecycle of the endpoint instances themselves are managed by Spring and that there is only one JAX-WS servlet defined in web.xml. With the standard Java EE style (as shown earlier), you have one servlet definition per service endpoint, with each endpoint typically delegating to Spring beans (through the use of @Autowired, as shown earlier).

See https://jax-ws-commons.java.net/spring/ for details on setup and usage style.

1.4.4. Accessing Web Services by Using JAX-WS

Spring provides two factory beans to create JAX-WS web service proxies, namely LocalJaxWsServiceFactoryBean and JaxWsPortProxyFactoryBean. The former can return only a JAX-WS service class for us to work with. The latter is the full-fledged version that can return a proxy that implements our business service interface. In the following example, we use JaxWsPortProxyFactoryBean to create a proxy for the AccountService endpoint (again):

<bean id="accountWebService" class="org.springframework.remoting.jaxws.JaxWsPortProxyFactoryBean">
    <property name="serviceInterface" value="example.AccountService"/> (1)
    <property name="wsdlDocumentUrl" value="http://localhost:8888/AccountServiceEndpoint?WSDL"/>
    <property name="namespaceUri" value="http://example/"/>
    <property name="serviceName" value="AccountService"/>
    <property name="portName" value="AccountServiceEndpointPort"/>
</bean>
1 Where serviceInterface is our business interface that the clients use.

wsdlDocumentUrl is the URL for the WSDL file. Spring needs this at startup time to create the JAX-WS Service. namespaceUri corresponds to the targetNamespace in the .wsdl file. serviceName corresponds to the service name in the .wsdl file. portName corresponds to the port name in the .wsdl file.

Accessing the web service is easy, as we have a bean factory for it that exposes it as an interface called AccountService. The following example shows how we can wire this up in Spring:

<bean id="client" class="example.AccountClientImpl">
    ...
    <property name="service" ref="accountWebService"/>
</bean>

From the client code, we can access the web service as if it were a normal class, as the following example shows:

public class AccountClientImpl {

    private AccountService service;

    public void setService(AccountService service) {
        this.service = service;
    }

    public void foo() {
        service.insertAccount(...);
    }
}
The above is slightly simplified in that JAX-WS requires endpoint interfaces and implementation classes to be annotated with @WebService, @SOAPBinding etc annotations. This means that you cannot (easily) use plain Java interfaces and implementation classes as JAX-WS endpoint artifacts; you need to annotate them accordingly first. Check the JAX-WS documentation for details on those requirements.

1.5. JMS

You can also expose services transparently by using JMS as the underlying communication protocol. The JMS remoting support in the Spring Framework is pretty basic. It sends and receives on the same thread and in the same non-transactional Session. As a result, throughput is implementation-dependent. Note that these single-threaded and non-transactional constraints apply only to Spring’s JMS remoting support. See JMS (Java Message Service) for information on Spring’s rich support for JMS-based messaging.

The following interface is used on both the server and the client sides:

package com.foo;

public interface CheckingAccountService {

    public void cancelAccount(Long accountId);
}

The following simple implementation of the preceding interface is used on the server-side:

package com.foo;

public class SimpleCheckingAccountService implements CheckingAccountService {

    public void cancelAccount(Long accountId) {
        System.out.println("Cancelling account [" + accountId + "]");
    }
}

The following configuration file contains the JMS-infrastructure beans that are shared on both the client and the server:

<?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
        https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">

    <bean id="connectionFactory" class="org.apache.activemq.ActiveMQConnectionFactory">
        <property name="brokerURL" value="tcp://ep-t43:61616"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="queue" class="org.apache.activemq.command.ActiveMQQueue">
        <constructor-arg value="mmm"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

1.5.1. Server-side Configuration

On the server, you need to expose the service object that uses the JmsInvokerServiceExporter, as the following example shows:

<?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
        https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">

    <bean id="checkingAccountService"
            class="org.springframework.jms.remoting.JmsInvokerServiceExporter">
        <property name="serviceInterface" value="com.foo.CheckingAccountService"/>
        <property name="service">
            <bean class="com.foo.SimpleCheckingAccountService"/>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <bean class="org.springframework.jms.listener.SimpleMessageListenerContainer">
        <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
        <property name="destination" ref="queue"/>
        <property name="concurrentConsumers" value="3"/>
        <property name="messageListener" ref="checkingAccountService"/>
    </bean>

</beans>
package com.foo;

import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;

public class Server {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("com/foo/server.xml", "com/foo/jms.xml");
    }
}

1.5.2. Client-side Configuration

The client merely needs to create a client-side proxy that implements the agreed-upon interface (CheckingAccountService).

The following example defines beans that you can inject into other client-side objects (and the proxy takes care of forwarding the call to the server-side object via JMS):

<?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
        https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">

    <bean id="checkingAccountService"
            class="org.springframework.jms.remoting.JmsInvokerProxyFactoryBean">
        <property name="serviceInterface" value="com.foo.CheckingAccountService"/>
        <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
        <property name="queue" ref="queue"/>
    </bean>

</beans>
package com.foo;

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

public class Client {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("com/foo/client.xml", "com/foo/jms.xml");
        CheckingAccountService service = (CheckingAccountService) ctx.getBean("checkingAccountService");
        service.cancelAccount(new Long(10));
    }
}

1.6. AMQP

Remoting via AMQP as the underlying protocol is supported in the Spring AMQP project. For further details please visit the Spring Remoting section of the Spring AMQP reference.

Auto-detection is not implemented for remote interfaces

The main reason why auto-detection of implemented interfaces does not occur for remote interfaces is to avoid opening too many doors to remote callers. The target object might implement internal callback interfaces, such as InitializingBean or DisposableBean which one would not want to expose to callers.

Offering a proxy with all interfaces implemented by the target usually does not matter in the local case. However, when you export a remote service, you should expose a specific service interface, with specific operations intended for remote usage. Besides internal callback interfaces, the target might implement multiple business interfaces, with only one of them intended for remote exposure. For these reasons, we require such a service interface to be specified.

This is a trade-off between configuration convenience and the risk of accidental exposure of internal methods. Always specifying a service interface is not too much effort and puts you on the safe side regarding controlled exposure of specific methods.

1.7. Considerations when Choosing a Technology

Each and every technology presented here has its drawbacks. When choosing a technology, you should carefully consider your needs, the services you expose, and the objects you send over the wire.

When using RMI, you cannot access the objects through the HTTP protocol, unless you tunnel the RMI traffic. RMI is a fairly heavy-weight protocol, in that it supports full-object serialization, which is important when you use a complex data model that needs serialization over the wire. However, RMI-JRMP is tied to Java clients. It is a Java-to-Java remoting solution.

Spring’s HTTP invoker is a good choice if you need HTTP-based remoting but also rely on Java serialization. It shares the basic infrastructure with RMI invokers but uses HTTP as transport. Note that HTTP invokers are not limited only to Java-to-Java remoting but also to Spring on both the client and the server side. (The latter also applies to Spring’s RMI invoker for non-RMI interfaces.)

Hessian might provide significant value when operating in a heterogeneous environment, because they explicitly allow for non-Java clients. However, non-Java support is still limited. Known issues include the serialization of Hibernate objects in combination with lazily-initialized collections. If you have such a data model, consider using RMI or HTTP invokers instead of Hessian.

JMS can be useful for providing clusters of services and letting the JMS broker take care of load balancing, discovery, and auto-failover. By default, Java serialization is used for JMS remoting, but the JMS provider could use a different mechanism for the wire formatting, such as XStream to let servers be implemented in other technologies.

Last but not least, EJB has an advantage over RMI, in that it supports standard role-based authentication and authorization and remote transaction propagation. It is possible to get RMI invokers or HTTP invokers to support security context propagation as well, although this is not provided by core Spring. Spring offers only appropriate hooks for plugging in third-party or custom solutions.

1.8. REST Endpoints

The Spring Framework provides two choices for making calls to REST endpoints:

  • RestTemplate: The original Spring REST client with a synchronous, template method API.

  • WebClient: a non-blocking, reactive alternative that supports both synchronous and asynchronous as well as streaming scenarios.

As of 5.0, the non-blocking, reactive WebClient offers a modern alternative to the RestTemplate with efficient support for both synchronous and asynchronous as well as streaming scenarios. The RestTemplate will be deprecated in a future version and will not have major new features added going forward.

1.8.1. RestTemplate

The RestTemplate provides a higher level API over HTTP client libraries. It makes it easy to invoke REST endpoints in a single line. It exposes the following groups of overloaded methods:

Table 1. RestTemplate methods
Method group Description

getForObject

Retrieves a representation via GET.

getForEntity

Retrieves a ResponseEntity (that is, status, headers, and body) by using GET.

headForHeaders

Retrieves all headers for a resource by using HEAD.

postForLocation

Creates a new resource by using POST and returns the Location header from the response.

postForObject

Creates a new resource by using POST and returns the representation from the response.

postForEntity

Creates a new resource by using POST and returns the representation from the response.

put

Creates or updates a resource by using PUT.

patchForObject

Updates a resource by using PATCH and returns the representation from the response. Note that the JDK HttpURLConnection does not support the PATCH, but Apache HttpComponents and others do.

delete

Deletes the resources at the specified URI by using DELETE.

optionsForAllow

Retrieves allowed HTTP methods for a resource by using ALLOW.

exchange

More generalized (and less opinionated) version of the preceding methods that provides extra flexibility when needed. It accepts a RequestEntity (including HTTP method, URL, headers, and body as input) and returns a ResponseEntity.

These methods allow the use of ParameterizedTypeReference instead of Class to specify a response type with generics.

execute

The most generalized way to perform a request, with full control over request preparation and response extraction through callback interfaces.

Initialization

The default constructor uses java.net.HttpURLConnection to perform requests. You can switch to a different HTTP library with an implementation of ClientHttpRequestFactory. There is built-in support for the following:

  • Apache HttpComponents

  • Netty

  • OkHttp

For example, to switch to Apache HttpComponents, you can use the following:

RestTemplate template = new RestTemplate(new HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory());

Each ClientHttpRequestFactory exposes configuration options specific to the underlying HTTP client library — for example, for credentials, connection pooling, and other details.

Note that the java.net implementation for HTTP requests can raise an exception when accessing the status of a response that represents an error (such as 401). If this is an issue, switch to another HTTP client library.
URIs

Many of the RestTemplate methods accept a URI template and URI template variables, either as a String variable argument, or as Map<String,String>.

The following example uses a String variable argument:

String result = restTemplate.getForObject(
        "https://example.com/hotels/{hotel}/bookings/{booking}", String.class, "42", "21");

The following example uses a Map<String, String>:

Map<String, String> vars = Collections.singletonMap("hotel", "42");

String result = restTemplate.getForObject(
        "https://example.com/hotels/{hotel}/rooms/{hotel}", String.class, vars);

Keep in mind URI templates are automatically encoded, as the following example shows:

restTemplate.getForObject("https://example.com/hotel list", String.class);

// Results in request to "https://example.com/hotel%20list"

You can use the uriTemplateHandler property of RestTemplate to customize how URIs are encoded. Alternatively, you can prepare a java.net.URI and pass it into one of the RestTemplate methods that accepts a URI.

For more details on working with and encoding URIs, see URI Links.

Headers

You can use the exchange() methods to specify request headers, as the following example shows:

String uriTemplate = "https://example.com/hotels/{hotel}";
URI uri = UriComponentsBuilder.fromUriString(uriTemplate).build(42);

RequestEntity<Void> requestEntity = RequestEntity.get(uri)
        .header(("MyRequestHeader", "MyValue")
        .build();

ResponseEntity<String> response = template.exchange(requestEntity, String.class);

String responseHeader = response.getHeaders().getFirst("MyResponseHeader");
String body = response.getBody();

You can obtain response headers through many RestTemplate method variants that return ResponseEntity.

Body

Objects passed into and returned from RestTemplate methods are converted to and from raw content with the help of an HttpMessageConverter.

On a POST, an input object is serialized to the request body, as the following example shows:

URI location = template.postForLocation("https://example.com/people", person);

You need not explicitly set the Content-Type header of the request. In most cases, you can find a compatible message converter based on the source Object type, and the chosen message converter sets the content type accordingly. If necessary, you can use the exchange methods to explicitly provide the Content-Type request header, and that, in turn, influences what message converter is selected.

On a GET, the body of the response is deserialized to an output Object, as the following example shows:

Person person = restTemplate.getForObject("https://example.com/people/{id}", Person.class, 42);

The Accept header of the request does not need to be explicitly set. In most cases, a compatible message converter can be found based on the expected response type, which then helps to populate the Accept header. If necessary, you can use the exchange methods to provide the Accept header explicitly.

By default, RestTemplate registers all built-in message converters, depending on classpath checks that help to determine what optional conversion libraries are present. You can also set the message converters to use explicitly.

Message Conversion

The spring-web module contains the HttpMessageConverter contract for reading and writing the body of HTTP requests and responses through InputStream and OutputStream. HttpMessageConverter instances are used on the client side (for example, in the RestTemplate) and on the server side (for example, in Spring MVC REST controllers).

Concrete implementations for the main media (MIME) types are provided in the framework and are, by default, registered with the RestTemplate on the client side and with RequestMethodHandlerAdapter on the server side (see Configuring Message Converters).

The implementations of HttpMessageConverter are described in the following sections. For all converters, a default media type is used, but you can override it by setting the supportedMediaTypes bean property. The following table describes each implementation:

Table 2. HttpMessageConverter Implementations
MessageConverter Description

StringHttpMessageConverter

An HttpMessageConverter implementation that can read and write String instances from the HTTP request and response. By default, this converter supports all text media types (text/*) and writes with a Content-Type of text/plain.

FormHttpMessageConverter

An HttpMessageConverter implementation that can read and write form data from the HTTP request and response. By default, this converter reads and writes the application/x-www-form-urlencoded media type. Form data is read from and written into a MultiValueMap<String, String>.

ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter

An HttpMessageConverter implementation that can read and write byte arrays from the HTTP request and response. By default, this converter supports all media types (*/*) and writes with a Content-Type of application/octet-stream. You can override this by setting the supportedMediaTypes property and overriding getContentType(byte[]).

MarshallingHttpMessageConverter

An HttpMessageConverter implementation that can read and write XML by using Spring’s Marshaller and Unmarshaller abstractions from the org.springframework.oxm package. This converter requires a Marshaller and Unmarshaller before it can be used. You can inject these through constructor or bean properties. By default, this converter supports text/xml and application/xml.

MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter

An HttpMessageConverter implementation that can read and write JSON by using Jackson’s ObjectMapper. You can customize JSON mapping as needed through the use of Jackson’s provided annotations. When you need further control (for cases where custom JSON serializers/deserializers need to be provided for specific types), you can inject a custom ObjectMapper through the ObjectMapper property. By default, this converter supports application/json.

MappingJackson2XmlHttpMessageConverter

An HttpMessageConverter implementation that can read and write XML by using Jackson XML extension’s XmlMapper. You can customize XML mapping as needed through the use of JAXB or Jackson’s provided annotations. When you need further control (for cases where custom XML serializers/deserializers need to be provided for specific types), you can inject a custom XmlMapper through the ObjectMapper property. By default, this converter supports application/xml.

SourceHttpMessageConverter

An HttpMessageConverter implementation that can read and write javax.xml.transform.Source from the HTTP request and response. Only DOMSource, SAXSource, and StreamSource are supported. By default, this converter supports text/xml and application/xml.

BufferedImageHttpMessageConverter

An HttpMessageConverter implementation that can read and write java.awt.image.BufferedImage from the HTTP request and response. This converter reads and writes the media type supported by the Java I/O API.

Jackson JSON Views

You can specify a Jackson JSON View to serialize only a subset of the object properties, as the following example shows:

MappingJacksonValue value = new MappingJacksonValue(new User("eric", "7!jd#h23"));
value.setSerializationView(User.WithoutPasswordView.class);

RequestEntity<MappingJacksonValue> requestEntity =
    RequestEntity.post(new URI("https://example.com/user")).body(value);

ResponseEntity<String> response = template.exchange(requestEntity, String.class);
Multipart

To send multipart data, you need to provide a MultiValueMap<String, Object> whose values may be an Object for part content, a Resource for a file part, or an HttpEntity for part content with headers. For example:

    MultiValueMap<String, Object> parts = new LinkedMultiValueMap<>();

    parts.add("fieldPart", "fieldValue");
    parts.add("filePart", new FileSystemResource("...logo.png"));
    parts.add("jsonPart", new Person("Jason"));

    HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
    headers.setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_XML);
    parts.add("xmlPart", new HttpEntity<>(myBean, headers));

In most cases, you do not have to specify the Content-Type for each part. The content type is determined automatically based on the HttpMessageConverter chosen to serialize it or, in the case of a Resource based on the file extension. If necessary, you can explicitly provide the MediaType with an HttpEntity wrapper.

Once the MultiValueMap is ready, you can pass it to the RestTemplate, as show below:

    MultiValueMap<String, Object> parts = ...;
    template.postForObject("https://example.com/upload", parts, Void.class);

If the MultiValueMap contains at least one non-String value, the Content-Type is set to multipart/form-data by the FormHttpMessageConverter. If the MultiValueMap has String values the Content-Type is defaulted to application/x-www-form-urlencoded. If necessary the Content-Type may also be set explicitly.

1.8.2. Using AsyncRestTemplate (Deprecated)

The AsyncRestTemplate is deprecated. For all use cases where you might consider using AsyncRestTemplate, use the WebClient instead.

2. Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) Integration

As a lightweight container, Spring is often considered an EJB replacement. We do believe that for many, if not most, applications and use cases, Spring, as a container, combined with its rich supporting functionality in the area of transactions, ORM and JDBC access, is a better choice than implementing equivalent functionality through an EJB container and EJBs.

However, it is important to note that using Spring does not prevent you from using EJBs. In fact, Spring makes it much easier to access EJBs and implement EJBs and functionality within them. Additionally, using Spring to access services provided by EJBs allows the implementation of those services to later transparently be switched between local EJB, remote EJB, or POJO (plain old Java object) variants, without the client code having to be changed.

In this chapter, we look at how Spring can help you access and implement EJBs. Spring provides particular value when accessing stateless session beans (SLSBs), so we begin by discussing this topic.

2.1. Accessing EJBs

This section covers how to access EJBs.

2.1.1. Concepts

To invoke a method on a local or remote stateless session bean, client code must normally perform a JNDI lookup to obtain the (local or remote) EJB Home object and then use a create method call on that object to obtain the actual (local or remote) EJB object. One or more methods are then invoked on the EJB.

To avoid repeated low-level code, many EJB applications use the Service Locator and Business Delegate patterns. These are better than spraying JNDI lookups throughout client code, but their usual implementations have significant disadvantages:

  • Typically, code that uses EJBs depends on Service Locator or Business Delegate singletons, making it hard to test.

  • In the case of the Service Locator pattern used without a Business Delegate, application code still ends up having to invoke the create() method on an EJB home and deal with the resulting exceptions. Thus, it remains tied to the EJB API and the complexity of the EJB programming model.

  • Implementing the Business Delegate pattern typically results in significant code duplication, where we have to write numerous methods that call the same method on the EJB.

The Spring approach is to allow the creation and use of proxy objects (normally configured inside a Spring container), which act as codeless business delegates. You need not write another Service Locator, another JNDI lookup, or duplicate methods in a hand-coded Business Delegate unless you actually add real value in such code.

2.1.2. Accessing Local SLSBs

Assume that we have a web controller that needs to use a local EJB. We follow best practice and use the EJB Business Methods Interface pattern, so that the EJB’s local interface extends a non-EJB-specific business methods interface. We call this business methods interface MyComponent. The following example shows such an interface:

public interface MyComponent {
    ...
}

One of the main reasons to use the Business Methods Interface pattern is to ensure that synchronization between method signatures in local interface and bean implementation class is automatic. Another reason is that it later makes it much easier for us to switch to a POJO (plain old Java object) implementation of the service if it makes sense to do so. We also need to implement the local home interface and provide an implementation class that implements SessionBean and the MyComponent business methods interface. Now, the only Java coding we need to do to hook up our web tier controller to the EJB implementation is to expose a setter method of type MyComponent on the controller. This saves the reference as an instance variable in the controller. The following example shows how to do so:

private MyComponent myComponent;

public void setMyComponent(MyComponent myComponent) {
    this.myComponent = myComponent;
}

We can subsequently use this instance variable in any business method in the controller. Now, assuming we obtain our controller object out of a Spring container, we can (in the same context) configure a LocalStatelessSessionProxyFactoryBean instance, which is the EJB proxy object. We configure the proxy and set the myComponent property of the controller with the following configuration entry:

<bean id="myComponent"
        class="org.springframework.ejb.access.LocalStatelessSessionProxyFactoryBean">
    <property name="jndiName" value="ejb/myBean"/>
    <property name="businessInterface" value="com.mycom.MyComponent"/>
</bean>

<bean id="myController" class="com.mycom.myController">
    <property name="myComponent" ref="myComponent"/>
</bean>

A lot of work happens behind the scenes, courtesy of the Spring AOP framework, although you are not forced to work with AOP concepts to enjoy the results. The myComponent bean definition creates a proxy for the EJB, which implements the business method interface. The EJB local home is cached on startup, so there is only a single JNDI lookup. Each time the EJB is invoked, the proxy invokes the classname method on the local EJB and invokes the corresponding business method on the EJB.

The myController bean definition sets the myComponent property of the controller class to the EJB proxy.

Alternatively (and preferably in case of many such proxy definitions), consider using the <jee:local-slsb> configuration element in Spring’s “jee” namespace. The following example shows how to do so:

<jee:local-slsb id="myComponent" jndi-name="ejb/myBean"
        business-interface="com.mycom.MyComponent"/>

<bean id="myController" class="com.mycom.myController">
    <property name="myComponent" ref="myComponent"/>
</bean>

This EJB access mechanism delivers huge simplification of application code. The web tier code (or other EJB client code) has no dependence on the use of EJB. To replace this EJB reference with a POJO or a mock object or other test stub, we could change the myComponent bean definition without changing a line of Java code. Additionally, we have not had to write a single line of JNDI lookup or other EJB plumbing code as part of our application.

Benchmarks and experience in real applications indicate that the performance overhead of this approach (which involves reflective invocation of the target EJB) is minimal and is undetectable in typical use. Remember that we do not want to make fine-grained calls to EJBs anyway, as there is a cost associated with the EJB infrastructure in the application server.

There is one caveat with regards to the JNDI lookup. In a bean container, this class is normally best used as a singleton (there is no reason to make it a prototype). However, if that bean container pre-instantiates singletons (as do the various XML ApplicationContext variants), you can have a problem if the bean container is loaded before the EJB container loads the target EJB. That is because the JNDI lookup is performed in the init() method of this class and then cached, but the EJB has not been bound at the target location yet. The solution is to not pre-instantiate this factory object but to let it be created on first use. In the XML containers, you can control this by using the lazy-init attribute.

Although not of interest to the majority of Spring users, those doing programmatic AOP work with EJBs may want to look at LocalSlsbInvokerInterceptor.

2.1.3. Accessing Remote SLSBs

Accessing remote EJBs is essentially identical to accessing local EJBs, except that the SimpleRemoteStatelessSessionProxyFactoryBean or <jee:remote-slsb> configuration element is used. Of course, with or without Spring, remote invocation semantics apply: A call to a method on an object in another VM in another computer does sometimes have to be treated differently in terms of usage scenarios and failure handling.

Spring’s EJB client support adds one more advantage over the non-Spring approach. Normally, it is problematic for EJB client code to be easily switched back and forth between calling EJBs locally or remotely. This is because the remote interface methods must declare that they throw RemoteException, and client code must deal with this, while the local interface methods need not. Client code written for local EJBs that needs to be moved to remote EJBs typically has to be modified to add handling for the remote exceptions, and client code written for remote EJBs that needs to be moved to local EJBs can either stay the same but do a lot of unnecessary handling of remote exceptions or be modified to remove that code. With the Spring remote EJB proxy, you can instead not declare any thrown RemoteException in your Business Method Interface and implementing EJB code, have a remote interface that is identical (except that it does throw RemoteException), and rely on the proxy to dynamically treat the two interfaces as if they were the same. That is, client code does not have to deal with the checked RemoteException class. Any actual RemoteException that is thrown during the EJB invocation is re-thrown as the non-checked RemoteAccessException class, which is a subclass of RuntimeException. You can then switch the target service at will between a local EJB or remote EJB (or even plain Java object) implementation, without the client code knowing or caring. Of course, this is optional: Nothing stops you from declaring RemoteException in your business interface.

2.1.4. Accessing EJB 2.x SLSBs Versus EJB 3 SLSBs

Accessing EJB 2.x Session Beans and EJB 3 Session Beans through Spring is largely transparent. Spring’s EJB accessors, including the <jee:local-slsb> and <jee:remote-slsb> facilities, transparently adapt to the actual component at runtime. They handle a home interface if found (EJB 2.x style) or perform straight component invocations if no home interface is available (EJB 3 style).

Note: For EJB 3 Session Beans, you can effectively use a JndiObjectFactoryBean / <jee:jndi-lookup> as well, since fully usable component references are exposed for plain JNDI lookups there. Defining explicit <jee:local-slsb> or <jee:remote-slsb> lookups provides consistent and more explicit EJB access configuration.

3. JMS (Java Message Service)

Spring provides a JMS integration framework that simplifies the use of the JMS API in much the same way as Spring’s integration does for the JDBC API.

JMS can be roughly divided into two areas of functionality, namely the production and consumption of messages. The JmsTemplate class is used for message production and synchronous message reception. For asynchronous reception similar to Java EE’s message-driven bean style, Spring provides a number of message-listener containers that you can use to create Message-Driven POJOs (MDPs). Spring also provides a declarative way to create message listeners.

The org.springframework.jms.core package provides the core functionality for using JMS. It contains JMS template classes that simplify the use of the JMS by handling the creation and release of resources, much like the JdbcTemplate does for JDBC. The design principle common to Spring template classes is to provide helper methods to perform common operations and, for more sophisticated usage, delegate the essence of the processing task to user-implemented callback interfaces. The JMS template follows the same design. The classes offer various convenience methods for sending messages, consuming messages synchronously, and exposing the JMS session and message producer to the user.

The org.springframework.jms.support package provides JMSException translation functionality. The translation converts the checked JMSException hierarchy to a mirrored hierarchy of unchecked exceptions. If any provider-specific subclasses of the checked javax.jms.JMSException exist, this exception is wrapped in the unchecked UncategorizedJmsException.

The org.springframework.jms.support.converter package provides a MessageConverter abstraction to convert between Java objects and JMS messages.

The org.springframework.jms.support.destination package provides various strategies for managing JMS destinations, such as providing a service locator for destinations stored in JNDI.

The org.springframework.jms.annotation package provides the necessary infrastructure to support annotation-driven listener endpoints by using @JmsListener.

The org.springframework.jms.config package provides the parser implementation for the jms namespace as well as the java config support to configure listener containers and create listener endpoints.

Finally, the org.springframework.jms.connection package provides an implementation of the ConnectionFactory suitable for use in standalone applications. It also contains an implementation of Spring’s PlatformTransactionManager for JMS (the cunningly named JmsTransactionManager). This allows for seamless integration of JMS as a transactional resource into Spring’s transaction management mechanisms.

As of Spring Framework 5, Spring’s JMS package fully supports JMS 2.0 and requires the JMS 2.0 API to be present at runtime. We recommend the use of a JMS 2.0 compatible provider.

If you happen to use an older message broker in your system, you may try upgrading to a JMS 2.0 compatible driver for your existing broker generation. Alternatively, you may also try to run against a JMS 1.1 based driver, simply putting the JMS 2.0 API jar on the classpath but only using JMS 1.1 compatible API against your driver. Spring’s JMS support adheres to JMS 1.1 conventions by default, so with corresponding configuration it does support such a scenario. However, please consider this for transition scenarios only.

3.1. Using Spring JMS

This section describes how to use Spring’s JMS components.

3.1.1. Using JmsTemplate

The JmsTemplate class is the central class in the JMS core package. It simplifies the use of JMS, since it handles the creation and release of resources when sending or synchronously receiving messages.

Code that uses the JmsTemplate needs only to implement callback interfaces that give them a clearly defined high-level contract. The MessageCreator callback interface creates a message when given a Session provided by the calling code in JmsTemplate. To allow for more complex usage of the JMS API, SessionCallback provides the JMS session, and ProducerCallback exposes a Session and MessageProducer pair.

The JMS API exposes two types of send methods, one that takes delivery mode, priority, and time-to-live as Quality of Service (QOS) parameters and one that takes no QOS parameters and uses default values. Since JmsTemplate has many send methods, setting the QOS parameters have been exposed as bean properties to avoid duplication in the number of send methods. Similarly, the timeout value for synchronous receive calls is set by using the setReceiveTimeout property.

Some JMS providers allow the setting of default QOS values administratively through the configuration of the ConnectionFactory. This has the effect that a call to a MessageProducer instance’s send method (send(Destination destination, Message message)) uses different QOS default values than those specified in the JMS specification. In order to provide consistent management of QOS values, the JmsTemplate must, therefore, be specifically enabled to use its own QOS values by setting the boolean property isExplicitQosEnabled to true.

For convenience, JmsTemplate also exposes a basic request-reply operation that allows for sending a message and waiting for a reply on a temporary queue that is created as part of the operation.

Instances of the JmsTemplate class are thread-safe, once configured. This is important, because it means that you can configure a single instance of a JmsTemplate and then safely inject this shared reference into multiple collaborators. To be clear, the JmsTemplate is stateful, in that it maintains a reference to a ConnectionFactory, but this state is not conversational state.

As of Spring Framework 4.1, JmsMessagingTemplate is built on top of JmsTemplate and provides an integration with the messaging abstraction — that is, org.springframework.messaging.Message. This lets you create the message to send in a generic manner.

3.1.2. Connections

The JmsTemplate requires a reference to a ConnectionFactory. The ConnectionFactory is part of the JMS specification and serves as the entry point for working with JMS. It is used by the client application as a factory to create connections with the JMS provider and encapsulates various configuration parameters, many of which are vendor-specific, such as SSL configuration options.

When using JMS inside an EJB, the vendor provides implementations of the JMS interfaces so that they can participate in declarative transaction management and perform pooling of connections and sessions. In order to use this implementation, Java EE containers typically require that you declare a JMS connection factory as a resource-ref inside the EJB or servlet deployment descriptors. To ensure the use of these features with the JmsTemplate inside an EJB, the client application should ensure that it references the managed implementation of the ConnectionFactory.

Caching Messaging Resources

The standard API involves creating many intermediate objects. To send a message, the following 'API' walk is performed:

ConnectionFactory->Connection->Session->MessageProducer->send

Between the ConnectionFactory and the Send operation, three intermediate objects are created and destroyed. To optimize the resource usage and increase performance, Spring provides two implementations of ConnectionFactory.

Using SingleConnectionFactory

Spring provides an implementation of the ConnectionFactory interface, SingleConnectionFactory, that returns the same Connection on all createConnection() calls and ignores calls to close(). This is useful for testing and standalone environments so that the same connection can be used for multiple JmsTemplate calls that may span any number of transactions. SingleConnectionFactory takes a reference to a standard ConnectionFactory that would typically come from JNDI.

Using CachingConnectionFactory

The CachingConnectionFactory extends the functionality of SingleConnectionFactory and adds the caching of Session, MessageProducer, and MessageConsumer instances. The initial cache size is set to 1. You can use the sessionCacheSize property to increase the number of cached sessions. Note that the number of actual cached sessions is more than that number, as sessions are cached based on their acknowledgment mode, so there can be up to four cached session instances (one for each acknowledgment mode) when sessionCacheSize is set to one . MessageProducer and MessageConsumer instances are cached within their owning session and also take into account the unique properties of the producers and consumers when caching. MessageProducers are cached based on their destination. MessageConsumers are cached based on a key composed of the destination, selector, noLocal delivery flag, and the durable subscription name (if creating durable consumers).

3.1.3. Destination Management

Destinations, as ConnectionFactory instances, are JMS administered objects that you can store and retrieved in JNDI. When configuring a Spring application context, you can use the JNDI JndiObjectFactoryBean factory class or <jee:jndi-lookup> to perform dependency injection on your object’s references to JMS destinations. However, this strategy is often cumbersome if there are a large number of destinations in the application or if there are advanced destination management features unique to the JMS provider. Examples of such advanced destination management include the creation of dynamic destinations or support for a hierarchical namespace of destinations. The JmsTemplate delegates the resolution of a destination name to a JMS destination object that implements the DestinationResolver interface. DynamicDestinationResolver is the default implementation used by JmsTemplate and accommodates resolving dynamic destinations. A JndiDestinationResolver is also provided to act as a service locator for destinations contained in JNDI and optionally falls back to the behavior contained in DynamicDestinationResolver.

Quite often, the destinations used in a JMS application are only known at runtime and, therefore, cannot be administratively created when the application is deployed. This is often because there is shared application logic between interacting system components that create destinations at runtime according to a well-known naming convention. Even though the creation of dynamic destinations is not part of the JMS specification, most vendors have provided this functionality. Dynamic destinations are created with a user-defined name, which differentiates them from temporary destinations, and are often not registered in JNDI. The API used to create dynamic destinations varies from provider to provider since the properties associated with the destination are vendor-specific. However, a simple implementation choice that is sometimes made by vendors is to disregard the warnings in the JMS specification and to use the method TopicSession createTopic(String topicName) or the QueueSession createQueue(String queueName) method to create a new destination with default destination properties. Depending on the vendor implementation, DynamicDestinationResolver can then also create a physical destination instead of only resolving one.

The boolean property pubSubDomain is used to configure the JmsTemplate with knowledge of what JMS domain is being used. By default, the value of this property is false, indicating that the point-to-point domain, Queues, is to be used. This property (used by JmsTemplate) determines the behavior of dynamic destination resolution through implementations of the DestinationResolver interface.

You can also configure the JmsTemplate with a default destination through the property defaultDestination. The default destination is with send and receive operations that do not refer to a specific destination.

3.1.4. Message Listener Containers

One of the most common uses of JMS messages in the EJB world is to drive message-driven beans (MDBs). Spring offers a solution to create message-driven POJOs (MDPs) in a way that does not tie a user to an EJB container. (See Asynchronous reception: Message-Driven POJOs for detailed coverage of Spring’s MDP support.) Since Spring Framework 4.1, endpoint methods can be annotated with @JmsListener — see Annotation-driven Listener Endpoints for more details.

A message listener container is used to receive messages from a JMS message queue and drive the MessageListener that is injected into it. The listener container is responsible for all threading of message reception and dispatches into the listener for processing. A message listener container is the intermediary between an MDP and a messaging provider and takes care of registering to receive messages, participating in transactions, resource acquisition and release, exception conversion, and so on. This lets you write the (possibly complex) business logic associated with receiving a message (and possibly respond to it), and delegates boilerplate JMS infrastructure concerns to the framework.

There are two standard JMS message listener containers packaged with Spring, each with its specialized feature set.

Using SimpleMessageListenerContainer

This message listener container is the simpler of the two standard flavors. It creates a fixed number of JMS sessions and consumers at startup, registers the listener by using the standard JMS MessageConsumer.setMessageListener() method, and leaves it up the JMS provider to perform listener callbacks. This variant does not allow for dynamic adaption to runtime demands or for participation in externally managed transactions. Compatibility-wise, it stays very close to the spirit of the standalone JMS specification, but is generally not compatible with Java EE’s JMS restrictions.

While SimpleMessageListenerContainer does not allow for participation in externally managed transactions, it does support native JMS transactions. To enable this feature, you can switch the sessionTransacted flag to true or, in the XML namespace, set the acknowledge attribute to transacted. Exceptions thrown from your listener then lead to a rollback, with the message getting redelivered. Alternatively, consider using CLIENT_ACKNOWLEDGE mode, which provides redelivery in case of an exception as well but does not use transacted Session instances and, therefore, does not include any other Session operations (such as sending response messages) in the transaction protocol.
The default AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE mode does not provide proper reliability guarantees. Messages can get lost when listener execution fails (since the provider automatically acknowledges each message after listener invocation, with no exceptions to be propagated to the provider) or when the listener container shuts down (you can configure this by setting the acceptMessagesWhileStopping flag). Make sure to use transacted sessions in case of reliability needs (for example, for reliable queue handling and durable topic subscriptions).
Using DefaultMessageListenerContainer

This message listener container is used in most cases. In contrast to SimpleMessageListenerContainer, this container variant allows for dynamic adaptation to runtime demands and is able to participate in externally managed transactions. Each received message is registered with an XA transaction when configured with a JtaTransactionManager. As a result, processing may take advantage of XA transaction semantics. This listener container strikes a good balance between low requirements on the JMS provider, advanced functionality (such as participation in externally managed transactions), and compatibility with Java EE environments.

You can customize the cache level of the container. Note that, when no caching is enabled, a new connection and a new session is created for each message reception. Combining this with a non-durable subscription with high loads may lead to message loss. Make sure to use a proper cache level in such a case.

This container also has recoverable capabilities when the broker goes down. By default, a simple BackOff implementation retries every five seconds. You can specify a custom BackOff implementation for more fine-grained recovery options. See api-spring-framework/util/backoff/ExponentialBackOff.html[ExponentialBackOff] for an example.

Like its sibling (SimpleMessageListenerContainer), DefaultMessageListenerContainer supports native JMS transactions and allows for customizing the acknowledgment mode. If feasible for your scenario, This is strongly recommended over externally managed transactions — that is, if you can live with occasional duplicate messages in case of the JVM dying. Custom duplicate message detection steps in your business logic can cover such situations — for example, in the form of a business entity existence check or a protocol table check. Any such arrangements are significantly more efficient than the alternative: wrapping your entire processing with an XA transaction (through configuring your DefaultMessageListenerContainer with an JtaTransactionManager) to cover the reception of the JMS message as well as the execution of the business logic in your message listener (including database operations etc).
The default AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE mode does not provide proper reliability guarantees. Messages can get lost when listener execution fails (since the provider automatically acknowledges each message after listener invocation, with no exceptions to be propagated to the provider) or when the listener container shuts down (you can configure this by setting the acceptMessagesWhileStopping flag). Make sure to use transacted sessions in case of reliability needs (for example, for reliable queue handling and durable topic subscriptions).

3.1.5. Transaction Management

Spring provides a JmsTransactionManager that manages transactions for a single JMS ConnectionFactory. This lets JMS applications leverage the managed-transaction features of Spring, as described in Transaction Management section of the Data Access chapter. The JmsTransactionManager performs local resource transactions, binding a JMS Connection/Session pair from the specified ConnectionFactory to the thread. JmsTemplate automatically detects such transactional resources and operates on them accordingly.

In a Java EE environment, the ConnectionFactory pools Connection and Session instances, so those resources are efficiently reused across transactions. In a standalone environment, using Spring’s SingleConnectionFactory result in a shared JMS Connection, with each transaction having its own independent Session. Alternatively, consider the use of a provider-specific pooling adapter, such as ActiveMQ’s PooledConnectionFactory class.

You can also use JmsTemplate with the JtaTransactionManager and an XA-capable JMS ConnectionFactory to perform distributed transactions. Note that this requires the use of a JTA transaction manager as well as a properly XA-configured ConnectionFactory. (Check your Java EE server’s or JMS provider’s documentation.)

Reusing code across a managed and unmanaged transactional environment can be confusing when using the JMS API to create a Session from a Connection. This is because the JMS API has only one factory method to create a Session, and it requires values for the transaction and acknowledgment modes. In a managed environment, setting these values is the responsibility of the environment’s transactional infrastructure, so these values are ignored by the vendor’s wrapper to the JMS Connection. When you use the JmsTemplate in an unmanaged environment, you can specify these values through the use of the properties sessionTransacted and sessionAcknowledgeMode. When you use a PlatformTransactionManager with JmsTemplate, the template is always given a transactional JMS Session.

3.2. Sending a Message

The JmsTemplate contains many convenience methods to send a message. Send methods specify the destination by using a javax.jms.Destination object, and others specify the destination by using a String in a JNDI lookup. The send method that takes no destination argument uses the default destination.

The following example uses the MessageCreator callback to create a text message from the supplied Session object:

import javax.jms.ConnectionFactory;
import javax.jms.JMSException;
import javax.jms.Message;
import javax.jms.Queue;
import javax.jms.Session;

import org.springframework.jms.core.MessageCreator;
import org.springframework.jms.core.JmsTemplate;

public class JmsQueueSender {

    private JmsTemplate jmsTemplate;
    private Queue queue;

    public void setConnectionFactory(ConnectionFactory cf) {
        this.jmsTemplate = new JmsTemplate(cf);
    }

    public void setQueue(Queue queue) {
        this.queue = queue;
    }

    public void simpleSend() {
        this.jmsTemplate.send(this.queue, new MessageCreator() {
            public Message createMessage(Session session) throws JMSException {
                return session.createTextMessage("hello queue world");
            }
        });
    }
}

In the preceding example, the JmsTemplate is constructed by passing a reference to a ConnectionFactory. As an alternative, a zero-argument constructor and connectionFactory is provided and can be used for constructing the instance in JavaBean style (using a BeanFactory or plain Java code). Alternatively, consider deriving from Spring’s JmsGatewaySupport convenience base class, which provides pre-built bean properties for JMS configuration.

The send(String destinationName, MessageCreator creator) method lets you send a message by using the string name of the destination. If these names are registered in JNDI, you should set the destinationResolver property of the template to an instance of JndiDestinationResolver.

If you created the JmsTemplate and specified a default destination, the send(MessageCreator c) sends a message to that destination.

3.2.1. Using Message Converters

To facilitate the sending of domain model objects, the JmsTemplate has various send methods that take a Java object as an argument for a message’s data content. The overloaded methods convertAndSend() and receiveAndConvert() methods in JmsTemplate delegate the conversion process to an instance of the MessageConverter interface. This interface defines a simple contract to convert between Java objects and JMS messages. The default implementation (SimpleMessageConverter) supports conversion between String and TextMessage, byte[] and BytesMesssage, and java.util.Map and MapMessage. By using the converter, you and your application code can focus on the business object that is being sent or received through JMS and not be concerned with the details of how it is represented as a JMS message.

The sandbox currently includes a MapMessageConverter, which uses reflection to convert between a JavaBean and a MapMessage. Other popular implementation choices you might implement yourself are converters that use an existing XML marshalling package (such as JAXB, Castor, or XStream) to create a TextMessage that represents the object.

To accommodate the setting of a message’s properties, headers, and body that can not be generically encapsulated inside a converter class, the MessagePostProcessor interface gives you access to the message after it has been converted but before it is sent. The following example shows how to modify a message header and a property after a java.util.Map is converted to a message:

public void sendWithConversion() {
    Map map = new HashMap();
    map.put("Name", "Mark");
    map.put("Age", new Integer(47));
    jmsTemplate.convertAndSend("testQueue", map, new MessagePostProcessor() {
        public Message postProcessMessage(Message message) throws JMSException {
            message.setIntProperty("AccountID", 1234);
            message.setJMSCorrelationID("123-00001");
            return message;
        }
    });
}

This results in a message of the following form:

MapMessage={
    Header={
        ... standard headers ...
        CorrelationID={123-00001}
    }
    Properties={
        AccountID={Integer:1234}
    }
    Fields={
        Name={String:Mark}
        Age={Integer:47}
    }
}

3.2.2. Using SessionCallback and ProducerCallback

While the send operations cover many common usage scenarios, you might sometimes want to perform multiple operations on a JMS Session or MessageProducer. The SessionCallback and ProducerCallback expose the JMS Session and Session / MessageProducer pair, respectively. The execute() methods on JmsTemplate execute these callback methods.

3.3. Receiving a Message

This describes how to receive messages with JMS in Spring.

3.3.1. Synchronous Reception

While JMS is typically associated with asynchronous processing, you can consume messages synchronously. The overloaded receive(..) methods provide this functionality. During a synchronous receive, the calling thread blocks until a message becomes available. This can be a dangerous operation, since the calling thread can potentially be blocked indefinitely. The receiveTimeout property specifies how long the receiver should wait before giving up waiting for a message.

3.3.2. Asynchronous reception: Message-Driven POJOs

Spring also supports annotated-listener endpoints through the use of the @JmsListener annotation and provides an open infrastructure to register endpoints programmatically. This is, by far, the most convenient way to setup an asynchronous receiver. See Enable Listener Endpoint Annotations for more details.

In a fashion similar to a Message-Driven Bean (MDB) in the EJB world, the Message-Driven POJO (MDP) acts as a receiver for JMS messages. The one restriction (but see Using MessageListenerAdapter) on an MDP is that it must implement the javax.jms.MessageListener interface. Note that, if your POJO receives messages on multiple threads, it is important to ensure that your implementation is thread-safe.

The following example shows a simple implementation of an MDP:

import javax.jms.JMSException;
import javax.jms.Message;
import javax.jms.MessageListener;
import javax.jms.TextMessage;

public class ExampleListener implements MessageListener {

    public void onMessage(Message message) {
        if (message instanceof TextMessage) {
            try {
                System.out.println(((TextMessage) message).getText());
            }
            catch (JMSException ex) {
                throw new RuntimeException(ex);
            }
        }
        else {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Message must be of type TextMessage");
        }
    }
}

Once you have implemented your MessageListener, it is time to create a message listener container.

The following example shows how to define and configure one of the message listener containers that ships with Spring (in this case, DefaultMessageListenerContainer):

<!-- this is the Message Driven POJO (MDP) -->
<bean id="messageListener" class="jmsexample.ExampleListener"/>

<!-- and this is the message listener container -->
<bean id="jmsContainer" class="org.springframework.jms.listener.DefaultMessageListenerContainer">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
    <property name="destination" ref="destination"/>
    <property name="messageListener" ref="messageListener"/>
</bean>

See the Spring javadoc of the various message listener containers (all of which implement MessageListenerContainer) for a full description of the features supported by each implementation.

3.3.3. Using the SessionAwareMessageListener Interface

The SessionAwareMessageListener interface is a Spring-specific interface that provides a similar contract to the JMS MessageListener interface but also gives the message-handling method access to the JMS Session from which the Message was received. The following listing shows the definition of the SessionAwareMessageListener interface:

package org.springframework.jms.listener;

public interface SessionAwareMessageListener {

    void onMessage(Message message, Session session) throws JMSException;
}

You can choose to have your MDPs implement this interface (in preference to the standard JMS MessageListener interface) if you want your MDPs to be able to respond to any received messages (by using the Session supplied in the onMessage(Message, Session) method). All of the message listener container implementations that ship with Spring have support for MDPs that implement either the MessageListener or SessionAwareMessageListener interface. Classes that implement the SessionAwareMessageListener come with the caveat that they are then tied to Spring through the interface. The choice of whether or not to use it is left entirely up to you as an application developer or architect.

Note that the onMessage(..) method of the SessionAwareMessageListener interface throws JMSException. In contrast to the standard JMS MessageListener interface, when using the SessionAwareMessageListener interface, it is the responsibility of the client code to handle any thrown exceptions.

3.3.4. Using MessageListenerAdapter

The MessageListenerAdapter class is the final component in Spring’s asynchronous messaging support. In a nutshell, it lets you expose almost any class as an MDP (though there are some constraints).

Consider the following interface definition:

public interface MessageDelegate {

    void handleMessage(String message);

    void handleMessage(Map message);

    void handleMessage(byte[] message);

    void handleMessage(Serializable message);
}

Notice that, although the interface extends neither the MessageListener nor the SessionAwareMessageListener interface, you can still use it as a MDP by using the MessageListenerAdapter class. Notice also how the various message handling methods are strongly typed according to the contents of the various Message types that they can receive and handle.

Now consider the following implementation of the MessageDelegate interface:

public class DefaultMessageDelegate implements MessageDelegate {
    // implementation elided for clarity...
}

In particular, note how the preceding implementation of the MessageDelegate interface (the DefaultMessageDelegate class) has no JMS dependencies at all. It truly is a POJO that we can make into an MDP through the following configuration:

<!-- this is the Message Driven POJO (MDP) -->
<bean id="messageListener" class="org.springframework.jms.listener.adapter.MessageListenerAdapter">
    <constructor-arg>
        <bean class="jmsexample.DefaultMessageDelegate"/>
    </constructor-arg>
</bean>

<!-- and this is the message listener container... -->
<bean id="jmsContainer" class="org.springframework.jms.listener.DefaultMessageListenerContainer">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
    <property name="destination" ref="destination"/>
    <property name="messageListener" ref="messageListener"/>
</bean>

The next example shows another MDP that can handle only receiving JMS TextMessage messages. Notice how the message handling method is actually called receive (the name of the message handling method in a MessageListenerAdapter defaults to handleMessage), but it is configurable (as you can see later in this section). Notice also how the receive(..) method is strongly typed to receive and respond only to JMS TextMessage messages. The following listing shows the definition of the TextMessageDelegate interface:

public interface TextMessageDelegate {

    void receive(TextMessage message);
}

The following listing shows a class that implements the TextMessageDelegate interface:

public class DefaultTextMessageDelegate implements TextMessageDelegate {
    // implementation elided for clarity...
}

The configuration of the attendant MessageListenerAdapter would then be as follows:

<bean id="messageListener" class="org.springframework.jms.listener.adapter.MessageListenerAdapter">
    <constructor-arg>
        <bean class="jmsexample.DefaultTextMessageDelegate"/>
    </constructor-arg>
    <property name="defaultListenerMethod" value="receive"/>
    <!-- we don't want automatic message context extraction -->
    <property name="messageConverter">
        <null/>
    </property>
</bean>

Note that, if the messageListener receives a JMS Message of a type other than TextMessage, an IllegalStateException is thrown (and subsequently swallowed). Another of the capabilities of the MessageListenerAdapter class is the ability to automatically send back a response Message if a handler method returns a non-void value. Consider the following interface and class:

public interface ResponsiveTextMessageDelegate {

    // notice the return type...
    String receive(TextMessage message);
}
public class DefaultResponsiveTextMessageDelegate implements ResponsiveTextMessageDelegate {
    // implementation elided for clarity...
}

If you use the DefaultResponsiveTextMessageDelegate in conjunction with a MessageListenerAdapter, any non-null value that is returned from the execution of the 'receive(..)' method is (in the default configuration) converted into a TextMessage. The resulting TextMessage is then sent to the Destination (if one exists) defined in the JMS Reply-To property of the original Message or the default Destination set on the MessageListenerAdapter (if one has been configured). If no Destination is found, an InvalidDestinationException is thrown (note that this exception is not swallowed and propagates up the call stack).

3.3.5. Processing Messages Within Transactions

Invoking a message listener within a transaction requires only reconfiguration of the listener container.

You can activate local resource transactions through the sessionTransacted flag on the listener container definition. Each message listener invocation then operates within an active JMS transaction, with message reception rolled back in case of listener execution failure. Sending a response message (through SessionAwareMessageListener) is part of the same local transaction, but any other resource operations (such as database access) operate independently. This usually requires duplicate message detection in the listener implementation, to cover the case where database processing has committed but message processing failed to commit.

Consider the following bean definition:

<bean id="jmsContainer" class="org.springframework.jms.listener.DefaultMessageListenerContainer">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
    <property name="destination" ref="destination"/>
    <property name="messageListener" ref="messageListener"/>
    <property name="sessionTransacted" value="true"/>
</bean>

To participate in an externally managed transaction, you need to configure a transaction manager and use a listener container that supports externally managed transactions (typically, DefaultMessageListenerContainer).

To configure a message listener container for XA transaction participation, you want to configure a JtaTransactionManager (which, by default, delegates to the Java EE server’s transaction subsystem). Note that the underlying JMS ConnectionFactory needs to be XA-capable and properly registered with your JTA transaction coordinator. (Check your Java EE server’s configuration of JNDI resources.) This lets message reception as well as (for example) database access be part of the same transaction (with unified commit semantics, at the expense of XA transaction log overhead).

The following bean definition creates a transaction manager:

<bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.transaction.jta.JtaTransactionManager"/>

Then we need to add it to our earlier container configuration. The container takes care of the rest. The following example shows how to do so:

<bean id="jmsContainer" class="org.springframework.jms.listener.DefaultMessageListenerContainer">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
    <property name="destination" ref="destination"/>
    <property name="messageListener" ref="messageListener"/>
    <property name="transactionManager" ref="transactionManager"/> (1)
</bean>
1 Our transaction manager.

3.4. Support for JCA Message Endpoints

Beginning with version 2.5, Spring also provides support for a JCA-based MessageListener container. The JmsMessageEndpointManager tries to automatically determine the ActivationSpec class name from the provider’s ResourceAdapter class name. Therefore, it is typically possible to provide Spring’s generic JmsActivationSpecConfig, as the following example shows:

<bean class="org.springframework.jms.listener.endpoint.JmsMessageEndpointManager">
    <property name="resourceAdapter" ref="resourceAdapter"/>
    <property name="activationSpecConfig">
        <bean class="org.springframework.jms.listener.endpoint.JmsActivationSpecConfig">
            <property name="destinationName" value="myQueue"/>
        </bean>
    </property>
    <property name="messageListener" ref="myMessageListener"/>
</bean>

Alternatively, you can set up a JmsMessageEndpointManager with a given ActivationSpec object. The ActivationSpec object may also come from a JNDI lookup (using <jee:jndi-lookup>). The following example shows how to do so:

<bean class="org.springframework.jms.listener.endpoint.JmsMessageEndpointManager">
    <property name="resourceAdapter" ref="resourceAdapter"/>
    <property name="activationSpec">
        <bean class="org.apache.activemq.ra.ActiveMQActivationSpec">
            <property name="destination" value="myQueue"/>
            <property name="destinationType" value="javax.jms.Queue"/>
        </bean>
    </property>
    <property name="messageListener" ref="myMessageListener"/>
</bean>

Using Spring’s ResourceAdapterFactoryBean, you can configure the target ResourceAdapter locally, as the following example shows:

<bean id="resourceAdapter" class="org.springframework.jca.support.ResourceAdapterFactoryBean">
    <property name="resourceAdapter">
        <bean class="org.apache.activemq.ra.ActiveMQResourceAdapter">
            <property name="serverUrl" value="tcp://localhost:61616"/>
        </bean>
    </property>
    <property name="workManager">
        <bean class="org.springframework.jca.work.SimpleTaskWorkManager"/>
    </property>
</bean>

The specified WorkManager can also point to an environment-specific thread pool — typically through a SimpleTaskWorkManager instance’s asyncTaskExecutor property. Consider defining a shared thread pool for all your ResourceAdapter instances if you happen to use multiple adapters.

In some environments (such as WebLogic 9 or above), you can instead obtain the entire ResourceAdapter object from JNDI (by using <jee:jndi-lookup>). The Spring-based message listeners can then interact with the server-hosted ResourceAdapter, which also use the server’s built-in WorkManager.

Spring also provides a generic JCA message endpoint manager that is not tied to JMS: org.springframework.jca.endpoint.GenericMessageEndpointManager. This component allows for using any message listener type (such as a CCI MessageListener) and any provider-specific ActivationSpec object. See your JCA provider’s documentation to find out about the actual capabilities of your connector, and see the GenericMessageEndpointManager javadoc for the Spring-specific configuration details.

JCA-based message endpoint management is very analogous to EJB 2.1 Message-Driven Beans. It uses the same underlying resource provider contract. As with EJB 2.1 MDBs, you can use any message listener interface supported by your JCA provider in the Spring context as well. Spring nevertheless provides explicit “convenience” support for JMS, because JMS is the most common endpoint API used with the JCA endpoint management contract.

3.5. Annotation-driven Listener Endpoints

The easiest way to receive a message asynchronously is to use the annotated listener endpoint infrastructure. In a nutshell, it lets you expose a method of a managed bean as a JMS listener endpoint. The following example shows how to use it:

@Component
public class MyService {

    @JmsListener(destination = "myDestination")
    public void processOrder(String data) { ... }
}

The idea of the preceding example is that, whenever a message is available on the javax.jms.Destination myDestination, the processOrder method is invoked accordingly (in this case, with the content of the JMS message, similar to what the MessageListenerAdapter provides).

The annotated endpoint infrastructure creates a message listener container behind the scenes for each annotated method, by using a JmsListenerContainerFactory. Such a container is not registered against the application context but can be easily located for management purposes by using the JmsListenerEndpointRegistry bean.

@JmsListener is a repeatable annotation on Java 8, so you can associate several JMS destinations with the same method by adding additional @JmsListener declarations to it.

3.5.1. Enable Listener Endpoint Annotations

To enable support for @JmsListener annotations, you can add @EnableJms to one of your @Configuration classes, as the following example shows:

@Configuration
@EnableJms
public class AppConfig {

    @Bean
    public DefaultJmsListenerContainerFactory jmsListenerContainerFactory() {
        DefaultJmsListenerContainerFactory factory = new DefaultJmsListenerContainerFactory();
        factory.setConnectionFactory(connectionFactory());
        factory.setDestinationResolver(destinationResolver());
        factory.setSessionTransacted(true);
        factory.setConcurrency("3-10");
        return factory;
    }
}

By default, the infrastructure looks for a bean named jmsListenerContainerFactory as the source for the factory to use to create message listener containers. In this case (and ignoring the JMS infrastructure setup), you can invoke the processOrder method with a core poll size of three threads and a maximum pool size of ten threads.

You can customize the listener container factory to use for each annotation or you can configure an explicit default by implementing the JmsListenerConfigurer interface. The default is required only if at least one endpoint is registered without a specific container factory. See the javadoc of classes that implement JmsListenerConfigurer for details and examples.

If you prefer XML configuration, you can use the <jms:annotation-driven> element, as the following example shows:

<jms:annotation-driven/>

<bean id="jmsListenerContainerFactory"
        class="org.springframework.jms.config.DefaultJmsListenerContainerFactory">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
    <property name="destinationResolver" ref="destinationResolver"/>
    <property name="sessionTransacted" value="true"/>
    <property name="concurrency" value="3-10"/>
</bean>

3.5.2. Programmatic Endpoint Registration

JmsListenerEndpoint provides a model of a JMS endpoint and is responsible for configuring the container for that model. The infrastructure lets you programmatically configure endpoints in addition to the ones that are detected by the JmsListener annotation. The following example shows how to do so:

@Configuration
@EnableJms
public class AppConfig implements JmsListenerConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void configureJmsListeners(JmsListenerEndpointRegistrar registrar) {
        SimpleJmsListenerEndpoint endpoint = new SimpleJmsListenerEndpoint();
        endpoint.setId("myJmsEndpoint");
        endpoint.setDestination("anotherQueue");
        endpoint.setMessageListener(message -> {
            // processing
        });
        registrar.registerEndpoint(endpoint);
    }
}

In the preceding example, we used SimpleJmsListenerEndpoint, which provides the actual MessageListener to invoke. However, you could also build your own endpoint variant to describe a custom invocation mechanism.

Note that you could skip the use of @JmsListener altogether and programmatically register only your endpoints through JmsListenerConfigurer.

3.5.3. Annotated Endpoint Method Signature

So far, we have been injecting a simple String in our endpoint, but it can actually have a very flexible method signature. In the following example, we rewrite it to inject the Order with a custom header:

@Component
public class MyService {

    @JmsListener(destination = "myDestination")
    public void processOrder(Order order, @Header("order_type") String orderType) {
        ...
    }
}

The main elements you can inject in JMS listener endpoints are as follows:

  • The raw javax.jms.Message or any of its subclasses (provided that it matches the incoming message type).

  • The javax.jms.Session for optional access to the native JMS API (for example, for sending a custom reply).

  • The org.springframework.messaging.Message that represents the incoming JMS message. Note that this message holds both the custom and the standard headers (as defined by JmsHeaders).

  • @Header-annotated method arguments to extract a specific header value, including standard JMS headers.

  • A @Headers-annotated argument that must also be assignable to java.util.Map for getting access to all headers.

  • A non-annotated element that is not one of the supported types (Message or Session) is considered to be the payload. You can make that explicit by annotating the parameter with @Payload. You can also turn on validation by adding an extra @Valid.

The ability to inject Spring’s Message abstraction is particularly useful to benefit from all the information stored in the transport-specific message without relying on transport-specific API. The following example shows how to do so:

@JmsListener(destination = "myDestination")
public void processOrder(Message<Order> order) { ... }

Handling of method arguments is provided by DefaultMessageHandlerMethodFactory, which you can further customize to support additional method arguments. You can customize the conversion and validation support there as well.

For instance, if we want to make sure our Order is valid before processing it, we can annotate the payload with @Valid and configure the necessary validator, as the following example shows:

@Configuration
@EnableJms
public class AppConfig implements JmsListenerConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void configureJmsListeners(JmsListenerEndpointRegistrar registrar) {
        registrar.setMessageHandlerMethodFactory(myJmsHandlerMethodFactory());
    }

    @Bean
    public DefaultMessageHandlerMethodFactory myHandlerMethodFactory() {
        DefaultMessageHandlerMethodFactory factory = new DefaultMessageHandlerMethodFactory();
        factory.setValidator(myValidator());
        return factory;
    }
}

3.5.4. Response Management

The existing support in MessageListenerAdapter already lets your method have a non-void return type. When that is the case, the result of the invocation is encapsulated in a javax.jms.Message, sent either in the destination specified in the JMSReplyTo header of the original message or in the default destination configured on the listener. You can now set that default destination by using the @SendTo annotation of the messaging abstraction.

Assuming that our processOrder method should now return an OrderStatus, we can write it to automatically send a response, as the following example shows:

@JmsListener(destination = "myDestination")
@SendTo("status")
public OrderStatus processOrder(Order order) {
    // order processing
    return status;
}
If you have several @JmsListener-annotated methods, you can also place the @SendTo annotation at the class level to share a default reply destination.

If you need to set additional headers in a transport-independent manner, you can return a Message instead, with a method similar to the following:

@JmsListener(destination = "myDestination")
@SendTo("status")
public Message<OrderStatus> processOrder(Order order) {
    // order processing
    return MessageBuilder
            .withPayload(status)
            .setHeader("code", 1234)
            .build();
}

If you need to compute the response destination at runtime, you can encapsulate your response in a JmsResponse instance that also provides the destination to use at runtime. We can rewrite the previous example as follows:

@JmsListener(destination = "myDestination")
public JmsResponse<Message<OrderStatus>> processOrder(Order order) {
    // order processing
    Message<OrderStatus> response = MessageBuilder
            .withPayload(status)
            .setHeader("code", 1234)
            .build();
    return JmsResponse.forQueue(response, "status");
}

Finally, if you need to specify some QoS values for the response such as the priority or the time to live, you can configure the JmsListenerContainerFactory accordingly, as the following example shows:

@Configuration
@EnableJms
public class AppConfig {

    @Bean
    public DefaultJmsListenerContainerFactory jmsListenerContainerFactory() {
        DefaultJmsListenerContainerFactory factory = new DefaultJmsListenerContainerFactory();
        factory.setConnectionFactory(connectionFactory());
        QosSettings replyQosSettings = new QosSettings();
        replyQosSettings.setPriority(2);
        replyQosSettings.setTimeToLive(10000);
        factory.setReplyQosSettings(replyQosSettings);
        return factory;
    }
}

3.6. JMS Namespace Support

Spring provides an XML namespace for simplifying JMS configuration. To use the JMS namespace elements, you need to reference the JMS schema, as the following example shows:

<?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:jms="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jms" (1)
        xsi:schemaLocation="
            http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
            http://www.springframework.org/schema/jms https://www.springframework.org/schema/jms/spring-jms.xsd">

    <!-- bean definitions here -->

</beans>
1 Referencing the JMS schema.

The namespace consists of three top-level elements: <annotation-driven/>, <listener-container/> and <jca-listener-container/>. <annotation-driven/> enables the use of annotation-driven listener endpoints. <listener-container/> and <jca-listener-container/> define shared listener container configuration and can contain <listener/> child elements. The following example shows a basic configuration for two listeners:

<jms:listener-container>

    <jms:listener destination="queue.orders" ref="orderService" method="placeOrder"/>

    <jms:listener destination="queue.confirmations" ref="confirmationLogger" method="log"/>

</jms:listener-container>

The preceding example is equivalent to creating two distinct listener container bean definitions and two distinct MessageListenerAdapter bean definitions, as shown in Using MessageListenerAdapter. In addition to the attributes shown in the preceding example, the listener element can contain several optional ones. The following table describes all of the available attributes:

Table 3. Attributes of the JMS <listener> element
Attribute Description

id

A bean name for the hosting listener container. If not specified, a bean name is automatically generated.

destination (required)

The destination name for this listener, resolved through the DestinationResolver strategy.

ref (required)

The bean name of the handler object.

method

The name of the handler method to invoke. If the ref attribute points to a MessageListener or Spring SessionAwareMessageListener, you can omit this attribute.

response-destination

The name of the default response destination to which to send response messages. This is applied in case of a request message that does not carry a JMSReplyTo field. The type of this destination is determined by the listener-container’s response-destination-type attribute. Note that this applies only to a listener method with a return value, for which each result object is converted into a response message.

subscription

The name of the durable subscription, if any.

selector

An optional message selector for this listener.

concurrency

The number of concurrent sessions or consumers to start for this listener. This value can either be a simple number indicating the maximum number (for example, 5) or a range indicating the lower as well as the upper limit (for example, 3-5). Note that a specified minimum is only a hint and might be ignored at runtime. The default is the value provided by the container.

The <listener-container/> element also accepts several optional attributes. This allows for customization of the various strategies (for example, taskExecutor and destinationResolver) as well as basic JMS settings and resource references. By using these attributes, you can define highly-customized listener containers while still benefiting from the convenience of the namespace.

You can automatically expose such settings as a JmsListenerContainerFactory by specifying the id of the bean to expose through the factory-id attribute, as the following example shows:

<jms:listener-container connection-factory="myConnectionFactory"
        task-executor="myTaskExecutor"
        destination-resolver="myDestinationResolver"
        transaction-manager="myTransactionManager"
        concurrency="10">

    <jms:listener destination="queue.orders" ref="orderService" method="placeOrder"/>

    <jms:listener destination="queue.confirmations" ref="confirmationLogger" method="log"/>

</jms:listener-container>

The following table describes all available attributes. See the class-level javadoc of the AbstractMessageListenerContainer and its concrete subclasses for more details on the individual properties. The javadoc also provides a discussion of transaction choices and message redelivery scenarios.

Table 4. Attributes of the JMS <listener-container> element
Attribute Description

container-type

The type of this listener container. The available options are default, simple, default102, or simple102 (the default option is default).

container-class

A custom listener container implementation class as a fully qualified class name. The default is Spring’s standard DefaultMessageListenerContainer or SimpleMessageListenerContainer, according to the container-type attribute.

factory-id

Exposes the settings defined by this element as a JmsListenerContainerFactory with the specified id so that they can be reused with other endpoints.

connection-factory

A reference to the JMS ConnectionFactory bean (the default bean name is connectionFactory).

task-executor

A reference to the Spring TaskExecutor for the JMS listener invokers.

destination-resolver

A reference to the DestinationResolver strategy for resolving JMS Destination instances.

message-converter

A reference to the MessageConverter strategy for converting JMS Messages to listener method arguments. The default is a SimpleMessageConverter.

error-handler

A reference to an ErrorHandler strategy for handling any uncaught exceptions that may occur during the execution of the MessageListener.

destination-type

The JMS destination type for this listener: queue, topic, durableTopic, sharedTopic, or sharedDurableTopic. This potentially enables the pubSubDomain, subscriptionDurable and subscriptionShared properties of the container. The default is queue (which disables those three properties).

response-destination-type

The JMS destination type for responses: queue or topic. The default is the value of the destination-type attribute.

client-id

The JMS client ID for this listener container. You must specify it when you use durable subscriptions.

cache

The cache level for JMS resources: none, connection, session, consumer, or auto. By default (auto), the cache level is effectively consumer, unless an external transaction manager has been specified — in which case, the effective default will be none (assuming Java EE-style transaction management, where the given ConnectionFactory is an XA-aware pool).

acknowledge

The native JMS acknowledge mode: auto, client, dups-ok, or transacted. A value of transacted activates a locally transacted Session. As an alternative, you can specify the transaction-manager attribute, described later in table. The default is auto.

transaction-manager

A reference to an external PlatformTransactionManager (typically an XA-based transaction coordinator, such as Spring’s JtaTransactionManager). If not specified, native acknowledging is used (see the acknowledge attribute).

concurrency

The number of concurrent sessions or consumers to start for each listener. It can either be a simple number indicating the maximum number (for example, 5) or a range indicating the lower as well as the upper limit (for example, 3-5). Note that a specified minimum is just a hint and might be ignored at runtime. The default is 1. You should keep concurrency limited to 1 in case of a topic listener or if queue ordering is important. Consider raising it for general queues.

prefetch

The maximum number of messages to load into a single session. Note that raising this number might lead to starvation of concurrent consumers.

receive-timeout

The timeout (in milliseconds) to use for receive calls. The default is 1000 (one second). -1 indicates no timeout.

back-off

Specifies the BackOff instance to use to compute the interval between recovery attempts. If the BackOffExecution implementation returns BackOffExecution#STOP, the listener container does not further try to recover. The recovery-interval value is ignored when this property is set. The default is a FixedBackOff with an interval of 5000 milliseconds (that is, five seconds).

recovery-interval

Specifies the interval between recovery attempts, in milliseconds. It offers a convenient way to create a FixedBackOff with the specified interval. For more recovery options, consider specifying a BackOff instance instead. The default is 5000 milliseconds (that is, five seconds).

phase

The lifecycle phase within which this container should start and stop. The lower the value, the earlier this container starts and the later it stops. The default is Integer.MAX_VALUE, meaning that the container starts as late as possible and stops as soon as possible.

Configuring a JCA-based listener container with the jms schema support is very similar, as the following example shows:

<jms:jca-listener-container resource-adapter="myResourceAdapter"
        destination-resolver="myDestinationResolver"
        transaction-manager="myTransactionManager"
        concurrency="10">

    <jms:listener destination="queue.orders" ref="myMessageListener"/>

</jms:jca-listener-container>

The following table describes the available configuration options for the JCA variant:

Table 5. Attributes of the JMS <jca-listener-container/> element
Attribute Description

factory-id

Exposes the settings defined by this element as a JmsListenerContainerFactory with the specified id so that they can be reused with other endpoints.

resource-adapter

A reference to the JCA ResourceAdapter bean (the default bean name is resourceAdapter).

activation-spec-factory

A reference to the JmsActivationSpecFactory. The default is to autodetect the JMS provider and its ActivationSpec class (see DefaultJmsActivationSpecFactory).

destination-resolver

A reference to the DestinationResolver strategy for resolving JMS Destinations.

message-converter

A reference to the MessageConverter strategy for converting JMS Messages to listener method arguments. The default is SimpleMessageConverter.

destination-type

The JMS destination type for this listener: queue, topic, durableTopic, sharedTopic. or sharedDurableTopic. This potentially enables the pubSubDomain, subscriptionDurable, and subscriptionShared properties of the container. The default is queue (which disables those three properties).

response-destination-type

The JMS destination type for responses: queue or topic. The default is the value of the destination-type attribute.

client-id

The JMS client ID for this listener container. It needs to be specified when using durable subscriptions.

acknowledge

The native JMS acknowledge mode: auto, client, dups-ok, or transacted. A value of transacted activates a locally transacted Session. As an alternative, you can specify the transaction-manager attribute described later. The default is auto.

transaction-manager

A reference to a Spring JtaTransactionManager or a javax.transaction.TransactionManager for kicking off an XA transaction for each incoming message. If not specified, native acknowledging is used (see the acknowledge attribute).

concurrency

The number of concurrent sessions or consumers to start for each listener. It can either be a simple number indicating the maximum number (for example 5) or a range indicating the lower as well as the upper limit (for example, 3-5). Note that a specified minimum is only a hint and is typically ignored at runtime when you use a JCA listener container. The default is 1.

prefetch

The maximum number of messages to load into a single session. Note that raising this number might lead to starvation of concurrent consumers.

4. JMX

The JMX (Java Management Extensions) support in Spring provides features that let you easily and transparently integrate your Spring application into a JMX infrastructure.

JMX?

This chapter is not an introduction to JMX. It does not try to explain why you might want to use JMX. If you are new to JMX, see Further Resources at the end of this chapter.

Specifically, Spring’s JMX support provides four core features:

  • The automatic registration of any Spring bean as a JMX MBean.

  • A flexible mechanism for controlling the management interface of your beans.

  • The declarative exposure of MBeans over remote, JSR-160 connectors.

  • The simple proxying of both local and remote MBean resources.

These features are designed to work without coupling your application components to either Spring or JMX interfaces and classes. Indeed, for the most part, your application classes need not be aware of either Spring or JMX in order to take advantage of the Spring JMX features.

4.1. Exporting Your Beans to JMX

The core class in Spring’s JMX framework is the MBeanExporter. This class is responsible for taking your Spring beans and registering them with a JMX MBeanServer. For example, consider the following class:

package org.springframework.jmx;

public class JmxTestBean implements IJmxTestBean {

    private String name;
    private int age;
    private boolean isSuperman;

    public int getAge() {
        return age;
    }

    public void setAge(int age) {
        this.age = age;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public int add(int x, int y) {
        return x + y;
    }

    public void dontExposeMe() {
        throw new RuntimeException();
    }
}

To expose the properties and methods of this bean as attributes and operations of an MBean, you can configure an instance of the MBeanExporter class in your configuration file and pass in the bean, as the following example shows:

<beans>
    <!-- this bean must not be lazily initialized if the exporting is to happen -->
    <bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter" lazy-init="false">
        <property name="beans">
            <map>
                <entry key="bean:name=testBean1" value-ref="testBean"/>
            </map>
        </property>
    </bean>
    <bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">
        <property name="name" value="TEST"/>
        <property name="age" value="100"/>
    </bean>
</beans>

The pertinent bean definition from the preceding configuration snippet is the exporter bean. The beans property tells the MBeanExporter exactly which of your beans must be exported to the JMX MBeanServer. In the default configuration, the key of each entry in the beans Map is used as the ObjectName for the bean referenced by the corresponding entry value. You can change this behavior, as described in Controlling ObjectName Instances for Your Beans.

With this configuration, the testBean bean is exposed as an MBean under the ObjectName bean:name=testBean1. By default, all public properties of the bean are exposed as attributes and all public methods (except those inherited from the Object class) are exposed as operations.

MBeanExporter is a Lifecycle bean (see Startup and Shutdown Callbacks). By default, MBeans are exported as late as possible during the application lifecycle. You can configure the phase at which the export happens or disable automatic registration by setting the autoStartup flag.

4.1.1. Creating an MBeanServer

The configuration shown in the preceding section assumes that the application is running in an environment that has one (and only one) MBeanServer already running. In this case, Spring tries to locate the running MBeanServer and register your beans with that server (if any). This behavior is useful when your application runs inside a container (such as Tomcat or IBM WebSphere) that has its own MBeanServer.

However, this approach is of no use in a standalone environment or when running inside a container that does not provide an MBeanServer. To address this, you can create an MBeanServer instance declaratively by adding an instance of the org.springframework.jmx.support.MBeanServerFactoryBean class to your configuration. You can also ensure that a specific MBeanServer is used by setting the value of the MBeanExporter instance’s server property to the MBeanServer value returned by an MBeanServerFactoryBean, as the following example shows:

<beans>

    <bean id="mbeanServer" class="org.springframework.jmx.support.MBeanServerFactoryBean"/>

    <!--
    this bean needs to be eagerly pre-instantiated in order for the exporting to occur;
    this means that it must not be marked as lazily initialized
    -->
    <bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">
        <property name="beans">
            <map>
                <entry key="bean:name=testBean1" value-ref="testBean"/>
            </map>
        </property>
        <property name="server" ref="mbeanServer"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">
        <property name="name" value="TEST"/>
        <property name="age" value="100"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

In the preceding example, an instance of MBeanServer is created by the MBeanServerFactoryBean and is supplied to the MBeanExporter through the server property. When you supply your own MBeanServer instance, the MBeanExporter does not try to locate a running MBeanServer and uses the supplied MBeanServer instance. For this to work correctly, you must have a JMX implementation on your classpath.

4.1.2. Reusing an Existing MBeanServer

If no server is specified, the MBeanExporter tries to automatically detect a running MBeanServer. This works in most environments, where only one MBeanServer instance is used. However, when multiple instances exist, the exporter might pick the wrong server. In such cases, you should use the MBeanServer agentId to indicate which instance to be used, as the following example shows:

<beans>
    <bean id="mbeanServer" class="org.springframework.jmx.support.MBeanServerFactoryBean">
        <!-- indicate to first look for a server -->
        <property name="locateExistingServerIfPossible" value="true"/>
        <!-- search for the MBeanServer instance with the given agentId -->
        <property name="agentId" value="MBeanServer_instance_agentId>"/>
    </bean>
    <bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">
        <property name="server" ref="mbeanServer"/>
        ...
    </bean>
</beans>

For platforms or cases where the existing MBeanServer has a dynamic (or unknown) agentId that is retrieved through lookup methods, you should use factory-method, as the following example shows:

<beans>
    <bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">
        <property name="server">
            <!-- Custom MBeanServerLocator -->
            <bean class="platform.package.MBeanServerLocator" factory-method="locateMBeanServer"/>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <!-- other beans here -->

</beans>

4.1.3. Lazily Initialized MBeans

If you configure a bean with an MBeanExporter that is also configured for lazy initialization, the MBeanExporter does not break this contract and avoids instantiating the bean. Instead, it registers a proxy with the MBeanServer and defers obtaining the bean from the container until the first invocation on the proxy occurs.

4.1.4. Automatic Registration of MBeans

Any beans that are exported through the MBeanExporter and are already valid MBeans are registered as-is with the MBeanServer without further intervention from Spring. You can cause MBeans to be automatically detected by the MBeanExporter by setting the autodetect property to true, as the following example shows:

<bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">
    <property name="autodetect" value="true"/>
</bean>

<bean name="spring:mbean=true" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.TestDynamicMBean"/>

In the preceding example, the bean called spring:mbean=true is already a valid JMX MBean and is automatically registered by Spring. By default, a bean that is autodetected for JMX registration has its bean name used as the ObjectName. You can override this behavior, as detailed in Controlling ObjectName Instances for Your Beans.

4.1.5. Controlling the Registration Behavior

Consider the scenario where a Spring MBeanExporter attempts to register an MBean with an MBeanServer by using the ObjectName bean:name=testBean1. If an MBean instance has already been registered under that same ObjectName, the default behavior is to fail (and throw an InstanceAlreadyExistsException).

You can control exactly what happens when an MBean is registered with an MBeanServer. Spring’s JMX support allows for three different registration behaviors to control the registration behavior when the registration process finds that an MBean has already been registered under the same ObjectName. The following table summarizes these registration behaviors:

Table 6. Registration Behaviors
Registration behavior Explanation

FAIL_ON_EXISTING

This is the default registration behavior. If an MBean instance has already been registered under the same ObjectName, the MBean that is being registered is not registered, and an InstanceAlreadyExistsException is thrown. The existing MBean is unaffected.

IGNORE_EXISTING

If an MBean instance has already been registered under the same ObjectName, the MBean that is being registered is not registered. The existing MBean is unaffected, and no Exception is thrown. This is useful in settings where multiple applications want to share a common MBean in a shared MBeanServer.

REPLACE_EXISTING

If an MBean instance has already been registered under the same ObjectName, the existing MBean that was previously registered is unregistered, and the new MBean is registered in its place (the new MBean effectively replaces the previous instance).

The values in the preceding table are defined as enums on the RegistrationPolicy class. If you want to change the default registration behavior, you need to set the value of the registrationPolicy property on your MBeanExporter definition to one of those values.

The following example shows how to change from the default registration behavior to the REPLACE_EXISTING behavior:

<beans>

    <bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">
        <property name="beans">
            <map>
                <entry key="bean:name=testBean1" value-ref="testBean"/>
            </map>
        </property>
        <property name="registrationPolicy" value="REPLACE_EXISTING"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">
        <property name="name" value="TEST"/>
        <property name="age" value="100"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

4.2. Controlling the Management Interface of Your Beans

In the example in the preceding section, you had little control over the management interface of your bean. All of the public properties and methods of each exported bean were exposed as JMX attributes and operations, respectively. To exercise finer-grained control over exactly which properties and methods of your exported beans are actually exposed as JMX attributes and operations, Spring JMX provides a comprehensive and extensible mechanism for controlling the management interfaces of your beans.

4.2.1. Using the MBeanInfoAssembler Interface

Behind the scenes, the MBeanExporter delegates to an implementation of the org.springframework.jmx.export.assembler.MBeanInfoAssembler interface, which is responsible for defining the management interface of each bean that is exposed. The default implementation, org.springframework.jmx.export.assembler.SimpleReflectiveMBeanInfoAssembler, defines a management interface that exposes all public properties and methods (as you saw in the examples in the preceding sections). Spring provides two additional implementations of the MBeanInfoAssembler interface that let you control the generated management interface by using either source-level metadata or any arbitrary interface.

4.2.2. Using Source-level Metadata: Java Annotations

By using the MetadataMBeanInfoAssembler, you can define the management interfaces for your beans by using source-level metadata. The reading of metadata is encapsulated by the org.springframework.jmx.export.metadata.JmxAttributeSource interface. Spring JMX provides a default implementation that uses Java annotations, namely org.springframework.jmx.export.annotation.AnnotationJmxAttributeSource. You must configure the MetadataMBeanInfoAssembler with an implementation instance of the JmxAttributeSource interface for it to function correctly (there is no default).

To mark a bean for export to JMX, you should annotate the bean class with the ManagedResource annotation. You must mark each method you wish to expose as an operation with the ManagedOperation annotation and mark each property you wish to expose with the ManagedAttribute annotation. When marking properties, you can omit either the annotation of the getter or the setter to create a write-only or read-only attribute, respectively.

A ManagedResource-annotated bean must be public, as must the methods exposing an operation or an attribute.

The following example shows the annotated version of the JmxTestBean class that we used in Creating an MBeanServer:

package org.springframework.jmx;

import org.springframework.jmx.export.annotation.ManagedResource;
import org.springframework.jmx.export.annotation.ManagedOperation;
import org.springframework.jmx.export.annotation.ManagedAttribute;

@ManagedResource(
        objectName="bean:name=testBean4",
        description="My Managed Bean",
        log=true,
        logFile="jmx.log",
        currencyTimeLimit=15,
        persistPolicy="OnUpdate",
        persistPeriod=200,
        persistLocation="foo",
        persistName="bar")
public class AnnotationTestBean implements IJmxTestBean {

    private String name;
    private int age;

    @ManagedAttribute(description="The Age Attribute", currencyTimeLimit=15)
    public int getAge() {
        return age;
    }

    public void setAge(int age) {
        this.age = age;
    }

    @ManagedAttribute(description="The Name Attribute",
            currencyTimeLimit=20,
            defaultValue="bar",
            persistPolicy="OnUpdate")
    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    @ManagedAttribute(defaultValue="foo", persistPeriod=300)
    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    @ManagedOperation(description="Add two numbers")
    @ManagedOperationParameters({
        @ManagedOperationParameter(name = "x", description = "The first number"),
        @ManagedOperationParameter(name = "y", description = "The second number")})
    public int add(int x, int y) {
        return x + y;
    }

    public void dontExposeMe() {
        throw new RuntimeException();
    }

}

In the preceding example, you can see that the JmxTestBean class is marked with the ManagedResource annotation and that this ManagedResource annotation is configured with a set of properties. These properties can be used to configure various aspects of the MBean that is generated by the MBeanExporter and are explained in greater detail later in Source-level Metadata Types.

Both the age and name properties are annotated with the ManagedAttribute annotation, but, in the case of the age property, only the getter is marked. This causes both of these properties to be included in the management interface as attributes, but the age attribute is read-only.

Finally, the add(int, int) method is marked with the ManagedOperation attribute, whereas the dontExposeMe() method is not. This causes the management interface to contain only one operation (add(int, int)) when you use the MetadataMBeanInfoAssembler.

The following configuration shows how you can configure the MBeanExporter to use the MetadataMBeanInfoAssembler:

<beans>
    <bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">
        <property name="assembler" ref="assembler"/>
        <property name="namingStrategy" ref="namingStrategy"/>
        <property name="autodetect" value="true"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="jmxAttributeSource"
            class="org.springframework.jmx.export.annotation.AnnotationJmxAttributeSource"/>

    <!-- will create management interface using annotation metadata -->
    <bean id="assembler"
            class="org.springframework.jmx.export.assembler.MetadataMBeanInfoAssembler">
        <property name="attributeSource" ref="jmxAttributeSource"/>
    </bean>

    <!-- will pick up the ObjectName from the annotation -->
    <bean id="namingStrategy"
            class="org.springframework.jmx.export.naming.MetadataNamingStrategy">
        <property name="attributeSource" ref="jmxAttributeSource"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.AnnotationTestBean">
        <property name="name" value="TEST"/>
        <property name="age" value="100"/>
    </bean>
</beans>

In the preceding example, an MetadataMBeanInfoAssembler bean has been configured with an instance of the AnnotationJmxAttributeSource class and passed to the MBeanExporter through the assembler property. This is all that is required to take advantage of metadata-driven management interfaces for your Spring-exposed MBeans.

4.2.3. Source-level Metadata Types

The following table describes the source-level metadata types that are available for use in Spring JMX:

Table 7. Source-level metadata types
Purpose Annotation Annotation Type

Mark all instances of a Class as JMX managed resources.

@ManagedResource

Class

Mark a method as a JMX operation.

@ManagedOperation

Method

Mark a getter or setter as one half of a JMX attribute.

@ManagedAttribute

Method (only getters and setters)

Define descriptions for operation parameters.

@ManagedOperationParameter and @ManagedOperationParameters

Method

The following table describes the configuration parameters that are available for use on these source-level metadata types:

Table 8. Source-level metadata parameters
Parameter Description Applies to

ObjectName

Used by MetadataNamingStrategy to determine the ObjectName of a managed resource.

ManagedResource

description

Sets the friendly description of the resource, attribute or operation.

ManagedResource, ManagedAttribute, ManagedOperation, or ManagedOperationParameter

currencyTimeLimit

Sets the value of the currencyTimeLimit descriptor field.

ManagedResource or ManagedAttribute

defaultValue

Sets the value of the defaultValue descriptor field.

ManagedAttribute

log

Sets the value of the log descriptor field.

ManagedResource

logFile

Sets the value of the logFile descriptor field.

ManagedResource

persistPolicy

Sets the value of the persistPolicy descriptor field.

ManagedResource

persistPeriod

Sets the value of the persistPeriod descriptor field.

ManagedResource

persistLocation

Sets the value of the persistLocation descriptor field.

ManagedResource

persistName

Sets the value of the persistName descriptor field.

ManagedResource

name

Sets the display name of an operation parameter.

ManagedOperationParameter

index

Sets the index of an operation parameter.

ManagedOperationParameter

4.2.4. Using the AutodetectCapableMBeanInfoAssembler Interface

To simplify configuration even further, Spring includes the AutodetectCapableMBeanInfoAssembler interface, which extends the MBeanInfoAssembler interface to add support for autodetection of MBean resources. If you configure the MBeanExporter with an instance of AutodetectCapableMBeanInfoAssembler, it is allowed to “vote” on the inclusion of beans for exposure to JMX.

The only implementation of the AutodetectCapableMBeanInfo interface is the MetadataMBeanInfoAssembler, which votes to include any bean that is marked with the ManagedResource attribute. The default approach in this case is to use the bean name as the ObjectName, which results in a configuration similar to the following:

<beans>

    <bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">
        <!-- notice how no 'beans' are explicitly configured here -->
        <property name="autodetect" value="true"/>
        <property name="assembler" ref="assembler"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">
        <property name="name" value="TEST"/>
        <property name="age" value="100"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="assembler" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.assembler.MetadataMBeanInfoAssembler">
        <property name="attributeSource">
            <bean class="org.springframework.jmx.export.annotation.AnnotationJmxAttributeSource"/>
        </property>
    </bean>

</beans>

Notice that, in the preceding configuration, no beans are passed to the MBeanExporter. However, the JmxTestBean is still registered, since it is marked with the ManagedResource attribute and the MetadataMBeanInfoAssembler detects this and votes to include it. The only problem with this approach is that the name of the JmxTestBean now has business meaning. You can address this issue by changing the default behavior for ObjectName creation as defined in Controlling ObjectName Instances for Your Beans.

4.2.5. Defining Management Interfaces by Using Java Interfaces

In addition to the MetadataMBeanInfoAssembler, Spring also includes the InterfaceBasedMBeanInfoAssembler, which lets you constrain the methods and properties that are exposed based on the set of methods defined in a collection of interfaces.

Although the standard mechanism for exposing MBeans is to use interfaces and a simple naming scheme, InterfaceBasedMBeanInfoAssembler extends this functionality by removing the need for naming conventions, letting you use more than one interface and removing the need for your beans to implement the MBean interfaces.

Consider the following interface, which is used to define a management interface for the JmxTestBean class that we showed earlier:

public interface IJmxTestBean {

    public int add(int x, int y);

    public long myOperation();

    public int getAge();

    public void setAge(int age);

    public void setName(String name);

    public String getName();

}

This interface defines the methods and properties that are exposed as operations and attributes on the JMX MBean. The following code shows how to configure Spring JMX to use this interface as the definition for the management interface:

<beans>

    <bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">
        <property name="beans">
            <map>
                <entry key="bean:name=testBean5" value-ref="testBean"/>
            </map>
        </property>
        <property name="assembler">
            <bean class="org.springframework.jmx.export.assembler.InterfaceBasedMBeanInfoAssembler">
                <property name="managedInterfaces">
                    <value>org.springframework.jmx.IJmxTestBean</value>
                </property>
            </bean>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">
        <property name="name" value="TEST"/>
        <property name="age" value="100"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

In the preceding example, the InterfaceBasedMBeanInfoAssembler is configured to use the IJmxTestBean interface when constructing the management interface for any bean. It is important to understand that beans processed by the InterfaceBasedMBeanInfoAssembler are not required to implement the interface used to generate the JMX management interface.

In the preceding case, the IJmxTestBean interface is used to construct all management interfaces for all beans. In many cases, this is not the desired behavior, and you may want to use different interfaces for different beans. In this case, you can pass InterfaceBasedMBeanInfoAssembler a Properties instance through the interfaceMappings property, where the key of each entry is the bean name and the value of each entry is a comma-separated list of interface names to use for that bean.

If no management interface is specified through either the managedInterfaces or interfaceMappings properties, the InterfaceBasedMBeanInfoAssembler reflects on the bean and uses all of the interfaces implemented by that bean to create the management interface.

4.2.6. Using MethodNameBasedMBeanInfoAssembler

MethodNameBasedMBeanInfoAssembler lets you specify a list of method names that are exposed to JMX as attributes and operations. The following code shows a sample configuration:

<bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">
    <property name="beans">
        <map>
            <entry key="bean:name=testBean5" value-ref="testBean"/>
        </map>
    </property>
    <property name="assembler">
        <bean class="org.springframework.jmx.export.assembler.MethodNameBasedMBeanInfoAssembler">
            <property name="managedMethods">
                <value>add,myOperation,getName,setName,getAge</value>
            </property>
        </bean>
    </property>
</bean>

In the preceding example, you can see that the add and myOperation methods are exposed as JMX operations, and getName(), setName(String), and getAge() are exposed as the appropriate half of a JMX attribute. In the preceding code, the method mappings apply to beans that are exposed to JMX. To control method exposure on a bean-by-bean basis, you can use the methodMappings property of MethodNameMBeanInfoAssembler to map bean names to lists of method names.

4.3. Controlling ObjectName Instances for Your Beans

Behind the scenes, the MBeanExporter delegates to an implementation of the ObjectNamingStrategy to obtain an ObjectName instance for each of the beans it registers. By default, the default implementation, KeyNamingStrategy uses the key of the beans Map as the ObjectName. In addition, the KeyNamingStrategy can map the key of the beans Map to an entry in a Properties file (or files) to resolve the ObjectName. In addition to the KeyNamingStrategy, Spring provides two additional ObjectNamingStrategy implementations: the IdentityNamingStrategy (which builds an ObjectName based on the JVM identity of the bean) and the MetadataNamingStrategy (which uses source-level metadata to obtain the ObjectName).

4.3.1. Reading ObjectName Instances from Properties

You can configure your own KeyNamingStrategy instance and configure it to read ObjectName instances from a Properties instance rather than use a bean key. The KeyNamingStrategy tries to locate an entry in the Properties with a key that corresponds to the bean key. If no entry is found or if the Properties instance is null, the bean key itself is used.

The following code shows a sample configuration for the KeyNamingStrategy:

<beans>

    <bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">
        <property name="beans">
            <map>
                <entry key="testBean" value-ref="testBean"/>
            </map>
        </property>
        <property name="namingStrategy" ref="namingStrategy"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">
        <property name="name" value="TEST"/>
        <property name="age" value="100"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="namingStrategy" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.naming.KeyNamingStrategy">
        <property name="mappings">
            <props>
                <prop key="testBean">bean:name=testBean1</prop>
            </props>
        </property>
        <property name="mappingLocations">
            <value>names1.properties,names2.properties</value>
        </property>
    </bean>

</beans>

The preceding example configures an instance of KeyNamingStrategy with a Properties instance that is merged from the Properties instance defined by the mapping property and the properties files located in the paths defined by the mappings property. In this configuration, the testBean bean is given an ObjectName of bean:name=testBean1, since this is the entry in the Properties instance that has a key corresponding to the bean key.

If no entry in the Properties instance can be found, the bean key name is used as the ObjectName.

4.3.2. Using MetadataNamingStrategy

MetadataNamingStrategy uses the objectName property of the ManagedResource attribute on each bean to create the ObjectName. The following code shows the configuration for the MetadataNamingStrategy:

<beans>

    <bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">
        <property name="beans">
            <map>
                <entry key="testBean" value-ref="testBean"/>
            </map>
        </property>
        <property name="namingStrategy" ref="namingStrategy"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">
        <property name="name" value="TEST"/>
        <property name="age" value="100"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="namingStrategy" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.naming.MetadataNamingStrategy">
        <property name="attributeSource" ref="attributeSource"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="attributeSource"
            class="org.springframework.jmx.export.annotation.AnnotationJmxAttributeSource"/>

</beans>

If no objectName has been provided for the ManagedResource attribute, an ObjectName is created with the following format: [fully-qualified-package-name]:type=[short-classname],name=[bean-name]. For example, the generated ObjectName for the following bean would be com.example:type=MyClass,name=myBean:

<bean id="myBean" class="com.example.MyClass"/>

4.3.3. Configuring Annotation-based MBean Export

If you prefer to use the annotation-based approach to define your management interfaces, a convenience subclass of MBeanExporter is available: AnnotationMBeanExporter. When defining an instance of this subclass, you no longer need the namingStrategy, assembler, and attributeSource configuration, since it always uses standard Java annotation-based metadata (autodetection is always enabled as well). In fact, rather than defining an MBeanExporter bean, an even simpler syntax is supported by the @EnableMBeanExport @Configuration annotation, as the following example shows:

@Configuration
@EnableMBeanExport
public class AppConfig {

}

If you prefer XML-based configuration, the <context:mbean-export/> element serves the same purpose and is shown in the following listing:

<context:mbean-export/>

If necessary, you can provide a reference to a particular MBean server, and the defaultDomain attribute (a property of AnnotationMBeanExporter) accepts an alternate value for the generated MBean ObjectName domains. This is used in place of the fully qualified package name as described in the previous section on MetadataNamingStrategy, as the following example shows:

@EnableMBeanExport(server="myMBeanServer", defaultDomain="myDomain")
@Configuration
ContextConfiguration {

}

The following example shows the XML equivalent of the preceding annotation-based example:

<context:mbean-export server="myMBeanServer" default-domain="myDomain"/>
Do not use interface-based AOP proxies in combination with autodetection of JMX annotations in your bean classes. Interface-based proxies “hide” the target class, which also hides the JMX-managed resource annotations. Hence, you should use target-class proxies in that case (through setting the 'proxy-target-class' flag on <aop:config/>, <tx:annotation-driven/> and so on). Otherwise, your JMX beans might be silently ignored at startup.

4.4. Using JSR-160 Connectors

For remote access, Spring JMX module offers two FactoryBean implementations inside the org.springframework.jmx.support package for creating both server- and client-side connectors.

4.4.1. Server-side Connectors

To have Spring JMX create, start, and expose a JSR-160 JMXConnectorServer, you can use the following configuration:

<bean id="serverConnector" class="org.springframework.jmx.support.ConnectorServerFactoryBean"/>

By default, ConnectorServerFactoryBean creates a JMXConnectorServer bound to service:jmx:jmxmp://localhost:9875. The serverConnector bean thus exposes the local MBeanServer to clients through the JMXMP protocol on localhost, port 9875. Note that the JMXMP protocol is marked as optional by the JSR 160 specification. Currently, the main open-source JMX implementation, MX4J, and the one provided with the JDK do not support JMXMP.

To specify another URL and register the JMXConnectorServer itself with the MBeanServer, you can use the serviceUrl and ObjectName properties, respectively, as the following example shows:

<bean id="serverConnector"
        class="org.springframework.jmx.support.ConnectorServerFactoryBean">
    <property name="objectName" value="connector:name=rmi"/>
    <property name="serviceUrl"
            value="service:jmx:rmi://localhost/jndi/rmi://localhost:1099/myconnector"/>
</bean>

If the ObjectName property is set, Spring automatically registers your connector with the MBeanServer under that ObjectName. The following example shows the full set of parameters that you can pass to the ConnectorServerFactoryBean when creating a JMXConnector:

<bean id="serverConnector"
        class="org.springframework.jmx.support.ConnectorServerFactoryBean">
    <property name="objectName" value="connector:name=iiop"/>
    <property name="serviceUrl"
        value="service:jmx:iiop://localhost/jndi/iiop://localhost:900/myconnector"/>
    <property name="threaded" value="true"/>
    <property name="daemon" value="true"/>
    <property name="environment">
        <map>
            <entry key="someKey" value="someValue"/>
        </map>
    </property>
</bean>

Note that, when you use a RMI-based connector, you need the lookup service (tnameserv or rmiregistry) to be started in order for the name registration to complete. If you use Spring to export remote services for you through RMI, Spring has already constructed an RMI registry. If not, you can easily start a registry by using the following snippet of configuration:

<bean id="registry" class="org.springframework.remoting.rmi.RmiRegistryFactoryBean">
    <property name="port" value="1099"/>
</bean>

4.4.2. Client-side Connectors

To create an MBeanServerConnection to a remote JSR-160-enabled MBeanServer, you can use the MBeanServerConnectionFactoryBean, as the following example shows:

<bean id="clientConnector" class="org.springframework.jmx.support.MBeanServerConnectionFactoryBean">
    <property name="serviceUrl" value="service:jmx:rmi://localhost/jndi/rmi://localhost:1099/jmxrmi"/>
</bean>

4.4.3. JMX over Hessian or SOAP

JSR-160 permits extensions to the way in which communication is done between the client and the server. The examples shown in the preceding sections use the mandatory RMI-based implementation required by the JSR-160 specification (IIOP and JRMP) and the (optional) JMXMP. By using other providers or JMX implementations (such as MX4J) you can take advantage of protocols such as SOAP or Hessian over simple HTTP or SSL and others, as the following example shows:

<bean id="serverConnector" class="org.springframework.jmx.support.ConnectorServerFactoryBean">
    <property name="objectName" value="connector:name=burlap"/>
    <property name="serviceUrl" value="service:jmx:burlap://localhost:9874"/>
</bean>

In the preceding example, we used MX4J 3.0.0. See the official MX4J documentation for more information.

4.5. Accessing MBeans through Proxies

Spring JMX lets you create proxies that re-route calls to MBeans that are registered in a local or remote MBeanServer. These proxies provide you with a standard Java interface, through which you can interact with your MBeans. The following code shows how to configure a proxy for an MBean running in a local MBeanServer:

<bean id="proxy" class="org.springframework.jmx.access.MBeanProxyFactoryBean">
    <property name="objectName" value="bean:name=testBean"/>
    <property name="proxyInterface" value="org.springframework.jmx.IJmxTestBean"/>
</bean>

In the preceding example, you can see that a proxy is created for the MBean registered under the ObjectName of bean:name=testBean. The set of interfaces that the proxy implements is controlled by the proxyInterfaces property, and the rules for mapping methods and properties on these interfaces to operations and attributes on the MBean are the same rules used by the InterfaceBasedMBeanInfoAssembler.

The MBeanProxyFactoryBean can create a proxy to any MBean that is accessible through an MBeanServerConnection. By default, the local MBeanServer is located and used, but you can override this and provide an MBeanServerConnection that points to a remote MBeanServer to cater for proxies that point to remote MBeans:

<bean id="clientConnector"
        class="org.springframework.jmx.support.MBeanServerConnectionFactoryBean">
    <property name="serviceUrl" value="service:jmx:rmi://remotehost:9875"/>
</bean>

<bean id="proxy" class="org.springframework.jmx.access.MBeanProxyFactoryBean">
    <property name="objectName" value="bean:name=testBean"/>
    <property name="proxyInterface" value="org.springframework.jmx.IJmxTestBean"/>
    <property name="server" ref="clientConnector"/>
</bean>

In the preceding example, we create an MBeanServerConnection that points to a remote machine that uses the MBeanServerConnectionFactoryBean. This MBeanServerConnection is then passed to the MBeanProxyFactoryBean through the server property. The proxy that is created forwards all invocations to the MBeanServer through this MBeanServerConnection.

4.6. Notifications

Spring’s JMX offering includes comprehensive support for JMX notifications.

4.6.1. Registering Listeners for Notifications

Spring’s JMX support makes it easy to register any number of NotificationListeners with any number of MBeans (this includes MBeans exported by Spring’s MBeanExporter and MBeans registered through some other mechanism). For example, consider the scenario where one would like to be informed (through a Notification) each and every time an attribute of a target MBean changes. The following example writes notifications to the console:

package com.example;

import javax.management.AttributeChangeNotification;
import javax.management.Notification;
import javax.management.NotificationFilter;
import javax.management.NotificationListener;

public class ConsoleLoggingNotificationListener
        implements NotificationListener, NotificationFilter {

    public void handleNotification(Notification notification, Object handback) {
        System.out.println(notification);
        System.out.println(handback);
    }

    public boolean isNotificationEnabled(Notification notification) {
        return AttributeChangeNotification.class.isAssignableFrom(notification.getClass());
    }

}

The following example adds ConsoleLoggingNotificationListener (defined in the preceding example) to notificationListenerMappings:

<beans>

    <bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">
        <property name="beans">
            <map>
                <entry key="bean:name=testBean1" value-ref="testBean"/>
            </map>
        </property>
        <property name="notificationListenerMappings">
            <map>
                <entry key="bean:name=testBean1">
                    <bean class="com.example.ConsoleLoggingNotificationListener"/>
                </entry>
            </map>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">
        <property name="name" value="TEST"/>
        <property name="age" value="100"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

With the preceding configuration in place, every time a JMX Notification is broadcast from the target MBean (bean:name=testBean1), the ConsoleLoggingNotificationListener bean that was registered as a listener through the notificationListenerMappings property is notified. The ConsoleLoggingNotificationListener bean can then take whatever action it deems appropriate in response to the Notification.

You can also use straight bean names as the link between exported beans and listeners, as the following example shows:

<beans>

    <bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">
        <property name="beans">
            <map>
                <entry key="bean:name=testBean1" value-ref="testBean"/>
            </map>
        </property>
        <property name="notificationListenerMappings">
            <map>
                <entry key="testBean">
                    <bean class="com.example.ConsoleLoggingNotificationListener"/>
                </entry>
            </map>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">
        <property name="name" value="TEST"/>
        <property name="age" value="100"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

If you want to register a single NotificationListener instance for all of the beans that the enclosing MBeanExporter exports, you can use the special wildcard (*) as the key for an entry in the notificationListenerMappings property map, as the following example shows:

<property name="notificationListenerMappings">
    <map>
        <entry key="*">
            <bean class="com.example.ConsoleLoggingNotificationListener"/>
        </entry>
    </map>
</property>

If you need to do the inverse (that is, register a number of distinct listeners against an MBean), you must instead use the notificationListeners list property (in preference to the notificationListenerMappings property). This time, instead of configuring a NotificationListener for a single MBean, we configure NotificationListenerBean instances. A NotificationListenerBean encapsulates a NotificationListener and the ObjectName (or ObjectNames) that it is to be registered against in an MBeanServer. The NotificationListenerBean also encapsulates a number of other properties, such as a NotificationFilter and an arbitrary handback object that can be used in advanced JMX notification scenarios.

The configuration when using NotificationListenerBean instances is not wildly different to what was presented previously, as the following example shows:

<beans>

    <bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">
        <property name="beans">
            <map>
                <entry key="bean:name=testBean1" value-ref="testBean"/>
            </map>
        </property>
        <property name="notificationListeners">
            <list>
                <bean class="org.springframework.jmx.export.NotificationListenerBean">
                    <constructor-arg>
                        <bean class="com.example.ConsoleLoggingNotificationListener"/>
                    </constructor-arg>
                    <property name="mappedObjectNames">
                        <list>
                            <value>bean:name=testBean1</value>
                        </list>
                    </property>
                </bean>
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">
        <property name="name" value="TEST"/>
        <property name="age" value="100"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

The preceding example is equivalent to the first notification example. Assume, then, that we want to be given a handback object every time a Notification is raised and that we also want to filter out extraneous Notifications by supplying a NotificationFilter. The following example accomplishes these goals:

<beans>

    <bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">
        <property name="beans">
            <map>
                <entry key="bean:name=testBean1" value-ref="testBean1"/>
                <entry key="bean:name=testBean2" value-ref="testBean2"/>
            </map>
        </property>
        <property name="notificationListeners">
            <list>
                <bean class="org.springframework.jmx.export.NotificationListenerBean">
                    <constructor-arg ref="customerNotificationListener"/>
                    <property name="mappedObjectNames">
                        <list>
                            <!-- handles notifications from two distinct MBeans -->
                            <value>bean:name=testBean1</value>
                            <value>bean:name=testBean2</value>
                        </list>
                    </property>
                    <property name="handback">
                        <bean class="java.lang.String">
                            <constructor-arg value="This could be anything..."/>
                        </bean>
                    </property>
                    <property name="notificationFilter" ref="customerNotificationListener"/>
                </bean>
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <!-- implements both the NotificationListener and NotificationFilter interfaces -->
    <bean id="customerNotificationListener" class="com.example.ConsoleLoggingNotificationListener"/>

    <bean id="testBean1" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">
        <property name="name" value="TEST"/>
        <property name="age" value="100"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="testBean2" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">
        <property name="name" value="ANOTHER TEST"/>
        <property name="age" value="200"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

(For a full discussion of what a handback object is and, indeed, what a NotificationFilter is, see the section of the JMX specification (1.2) entitled 'The JMX Notification Model'.)

4.6.2. Publishing Notifications

Spring provides support not only for registering to receive Notifications but also for publishing Notifications.

This section is really only relevant to Spring-managed beans that have been exposed as MBeans through an MBeanExporter. Any existing user-defined MBeans should use the standard JMX APIs for notification publication.

The key interface in Spring’s JMX notification publication support is the NotificationPublisher interface (defined in the org.springframework.jmx.export.notification package). Any bean that is going to be exported as an MBean through an MBeanExporter instance can implement the related NotificationPublisherAware interface to gain access to a NotificationPublisher instance. The NotificationPublisherAware interface supplies an instance of a NotificationPublisher to the implementing bean through a simple setter method, which the bean can then use to publish Notifications.

As stated in the javadoc of the NotificationPublisher interface, managed beans that publish events through the NotificationPublisher mechanism are not responsible for the state management of notification listeners. Spring’s JMX support takes care of handling all the JMX infrastructure issues. All you need to do, as an application developer, is implement the NotificationPublisherAware interface and start publishing events by using the supplied NotificationPublisher instance. Note that the NotificationPublisher is set after the managed bean has been registered with an MBeanServer.

Using a NotificationPublisher instance is quite straightforward. You create a JMX Notification instance (or an instance of an appropriate Notification subclass), populate the notification with the data pertinent to the event that is to be published, and invoke the sendNotification(Notification) on the NotificationPublisher instance, passing in the Notification.

In the following example, exported instances of the JmxTestBean publish a NotificationEvent every time the add(int, int) operation is invoked:

package org.springframework.jmx;

import org.springframework.jmx.export.notification.NotificationPublisherAware;
import org.springframework.jmx.export.notification.NotificationPublisher;
import javax.management.Notification;

public class JmxTestBean implements IJmxTestBean, NotificationPublisherAware {

    private String name;
    private int age;
    private boolean isSuperman;
    private NotificationPublisher publisher;

    // other getters and setters omitted for clarity

    public int add(int x, int y) {
        int answer = x + y;
        this.publisher.sendNotification(new Notification("add", this, 0));
        return answer;
    }

    public void dontExposeMe() {
        throw new RuntimeException();
    }

    public void setNotificationPublisher(NotificationPublisher notificationPublisher) {
        this.publisher = notificationPublisher;
    }

}

The NotificationPublisher interface and the machinery to get it all working is one of the nicer features of Spring’s JMX support. It does, however, come with the price tag of coupling your classes to both Spring and JMX. As always, the advice here is to be pragmatic. If you need the functionality offered by the NotificationPublisher and you can accept the coupling to both Spring and JMX, then do so.

4.7. Further Resources

This section contains links to further resources about JMX:

5. JCA CCI

Java EE provides a specification to standardize access to enterprise information systems (EIS): the JCA (Java EE Connector Architecture). This specification is divided into two different parts:

  • SPI (Service Provider Interfaces) that the connector provider must implement. These interfaces constitute a resource adapter that can be deployed on a Java EE application server. In such a scenario, the server manages connection pooling, transactions, and security (managed mode). The application server is also responsible for managing the configuration, which is held outside the client application. A connector can be used without an application server as well. In this case, the application must configure it directly (non-managed mode).

  • CCI (Common Client Interface) that an application can use to interact with the connector and, thus, communicate with an EIS. An API for local transaction demarcation is provided as well.

The aim of the Spring CCI support is to provide classes to access a CCI connector in typical Spring style, using the Spring Framework’s general resource and transaction management facilities.

The client side of connectors does not always use CCI. Some connectors expose their own APIs, providing a JCA resource adapter to use the system contracts of a Java EE container (connection pooling, global transactions, and security). Spring does not offer special support for such connector-specific APIs.

5.1. Configuring CCI

This section covers how to configure a Common Client Interface (CCI). It includes the following topics:

5.1.1. Connector Configuration

The base resource to use JCA CCI is the ConnectionFactory interface. The connector you use must provide an implementation of this interface.

To use your connector, you can deploy it on your application server and fetch the ConnectionFactory from the server’s JNDI environment (managed mode). The connector must be packaged as a RAR file (resource adapter archive) and contain a ra.xml file to describe its deployment characteristics. The actual name of the resource is specified when you deploy it. To access it within Spring, you can use Spring’s JndiObjectFactoryBean or <jee:jndi-lookup> to fetch the factory by its JNDI name.

Another way to use a connector is to embed it in your application (non-managed mode) and not use an application server to deploy and configure it. Spring offers the possibility to configure a connector as a bean, through a FactoryBean implementation called (LocalConnectionFactoryBean). In this manner, you only need the connector library in the classpath (no RAR file and no ra.xml descriptor needed). The library must be extracted from the connector’s RAR file, if necessary.

Once you have access to your ConnectionFactory instance, you can inject it into your components. These components can either be coded against the plain CCI API or use Spring’s support classes for CCI access (e.g. CciTemplate).

When you use a connector in non-managed mode, you cannot use global transactions, because the resource is never enlisted or delisted in the current global transaction of the current thread. The resource is not aware of any global Java EE transactions that might be running.

5.1.2. ConnectionFactory Configuration in Spring

To make connections to the EIS, you need to obtain a ConnectionFactory from the application server (if you are in a managed mode) or directly from Spring (if you are in a non-managed mode).

In managed mode, you can access a ConnectionFactory from JNDI. Its properties are configured in the application server. The following example shows how to do so:

<jee:jndi-lookup id="eciConnectionFactory" jndi-name="eis/cicseci"/>

In non-managed mode, you must configure the ConnectionFactory you want to use in the configuration of Spring as a JavaBean. The LocalConnectionFactoryBean class offers this setup style, passing in the ManagedConnectionFactory implementation of your connector, exposing the application-level CCI ConnectionFactory. The following example shows how to do so:

<bean id="eciManagedConnectionFactory" class="com.ibm.connector2.cics.ECIManagedConnectionFactory">
    <property name="serverName" value="TXSERIES"/>
    <property name="connectionURL" value="tcp://localhost/"/>
    <property name="portNumber" value="2006"/>
</bean>

<bean id="eciConnectionFactory" class="org.springframework.jca.support.LocalConnectionFactoryBean">
    <property name="managedConnectionFactory" ref="eciManagedConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>
You cannot directly instantiate a specific ConnectionFactory. You need to go through the corresponding implementation of the ManagedConnectionFactory interface for your connector. This interface is part of the JCA SPI specification.

5.1.3. Configuring CCI Connections

JCA CCI lets you configure the connections to the EIS by using the ConnectionSpec implementation of your connector. To configure its properties, you need to wrap the target connection factory with a dedicated adapter, ConnectionSpecConnectionFactoryAdapter. You can configure the dedicated ConnectionSpec with the connectionSpec property (as an inner bean).

This property is not mandatory, because the CCI ConnectionFactory interface defines two different methods to obtain a CCI connection. You can often configure some of the ConnectionSpec properties in the application server (in managed mode) or on the corresponding local ManagedConnectionFactory implementation. The following listing shows the relevant parts of the ConnectionFactory interface definition:

public interface ConnectionFactory implements Serializable, Referenceable {
    ...
    Connection getConnection() throws ResourceException;
    Connection getConnection(ConnectionSpec connectionSpec) throws ResourceException;
    ...
}

Spring provides a ConnectionSpecConnectionFactoryAdapter that lets you specify a ConnectionSpec instance to use for all operations on a given factory. If the adapter’s connectionSpec property is specified, the adapter uses the getConnection variant with the ConnectionSpec argument. Otherwise, the adapter uses the variant without that argument. The following example shows how to configure a ConnectionSpecConnectionFactoryAdapter:

<bean id="managedConnectionFactory"
        class="com.sun.connector.cciblackbox.CciLocalTxManagedConnectionFactory">
    <property name="connectionURL" value="jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost:9001"/>
    <property name="driverName" value="org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver"/>
</bean>

<bean id="targetConnectionFactory"
        class="org.springframework.jca.support.LocalConnectionFactoryBean">
    <property name="managedConnectionFactory" ref="managedConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>

<bean id="connectionFactory"
        class="org.springframework.jca.cci.connection.ConnectionSpecConnectionFactoryAdapter">
    <property name="targetConnectionFactory" ref="targetConnectionFactory"/>
    <property name="connectionSpec">
        <bean class="com.sun.connector.cciblackbox.CciConnectionSpec">
            <property name="user" value="sa"/>
            <property name="password" value=""/>
        </bean>
    </property>
</bean>

5.1.4. Using a Single CCI Connection

If you want to use a single CCI connection, Spring provides a further ConnectionFactory adapter to manage this. The SingleConnectionFactory adapter class lazily opens a single connection and closes it when this bean is destroyed at application shutdown. This class exposes special Connection proxies that behave accordingly, all sharing the same underlying physical connection. The following example shows how to use the SingleConnectionFactory adapter class:

<bean id="eciManagedConnectionFactory"
        class="com.ibm.connector2.cics.ECIManagedConnectionFactory">
    <property name="serverName" value="TEST"/>
    <property name="connectionURL" value="tcp://localhost/"/>
    <property name="portNumber" value="2006"/>
</bean>

<bean id="targetEciConnectionFactory"
        class="org.springframework.jca.support.LocalConnectionFactoryBean">
    <property name="managedConnectionFactory" ref="eciManagedConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>

<bean id="eciConnectionFactory"
        class="org.springframework.jca.cci.connection.SingleConnectionFactory">
    <property name="targetConnectionFactory" ref="targetEciConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>
This ConnectionFactory adapter cannot directly be configured with a ConnectionSpec. You can use an intermediary ConnectionSpecConnectionFactoryAdapter that the SingleConnectionFactory talks to if you require a single connection for a specific ConnectionSpec.

5.2. Using Spring’s CCI Access Support

This section describes how to use Spring’s support for CCI to achieve various purposes. It includes the following topics:

5.2.1. Record Conversion

One of the aims of Spring’s JCA CCI support is to provide convenient facilities for manipulating CCI records. You can specify the strategy to create records and extract data from records, for use with Spring’s CciTemplate. The interfaces described in this section configure the strategy to use input and output records if you do not want to work with records directly in your application.

To create an input Record, you can use a dedicated implementation of the RecordCreator interface. The following listing shows the RecordCreator interface definition:

public interface RecordCreator {

    Record createRecord(RecordFactory recordFactory) throws ResourceException, DataAccessException;

}

The createRecord(..) method receives a RecordFactory instance as a parameter, which corresponds to the RecordFactory of the ConnectionFactory used. You can use this reference to create IndexedRecord or MappedRecord instances. The following sample shows how to use the RecordCreator interface and indexed or mapped records:

public class MyRecordCreator implements RecordCreator {

    public Record createRecord(RecordFactory recordFactory) throws ResourceException {
        IndexedRecord input = recordFactory.createIndexedRecord("input");
        input.add(new Integer(id));
        return input;
    }

}

You can use an output Record to receive data back from the EIS. Hence, you can pass a specific implementation of the RecordExtractor interface to Spring’s CciTemplate to extract data from the output Record. The following listing shows the RecordExtractor interface definition:

public interface RecordExtractor {

    Object extractData(Record record) throws ResourceException, SQLException, DataAccessException;

}

The following example shows how to use the RecordExtractor interface:

public class MyRecordExtractor implements RecordExtractor {

    public Object extractData(Record record) throws ResourceException {
        CommAreaRecord commAreaRecord = (CommAreaRecord) record;
        String str = new String(commAreaRecord.toByteArray());
        String field1 = string.substring(0,6);
        String field2 = string.substring(6,1);
        return new OutputObject(Long.parseLong(field1), field2);
    }

}

5.2.2. Using CciTemplate

The CciTemplate is the central class of the core CCI support package ( org.springframework.jca.cci.core). It simplifies the use of CCI, since it handles the creation and release of resources. This helps to avoid common errors, such as forgetting to always close the connection. It cares for the lifecycle of connection and interaction objects, letting application code focus on generating input records from application data and extracting application data from output records.

The JCA CCI specification defines two distinct methods to call operations on an EIS. The CCI Interaction interface provides two execute method signatures, as the following listing shows:

public interface javax.resource.cci.Interaction {

    ...

    boolean execute(InteractionSpec spec, Record input, Record output) throws ResourceException;

    Record execute(InteractionSpec spec, Record input) throws ResourceException;

    ...

}

Depending on the template method called, CciTemplate knows which execute method to call on the interaction. In any case, a correctly initialized InteractionSpec instance is mandatory.

You can use CciTemplate.execute(..) in two ways:

  • With direct Record arguments. In this case, you need to pass in the CCI input record, and the returned object is the corresponding CCI output record.

  • With application objects, by using record mapping. In this case, you need to provide corresponding RecordCreator and RecordExtractor instances.

With the first approach, the following methods (which directly correspond to those on the Interaction interface) of the template are used:

public class CciTemplate implements CciOperations {

    public Record execute(InteractionSpec spec, Record inputRecord)
            throws DataAccessException { ... }

    public void execute(InteractionSpec spec, Record inputRecord, Record outputRecord)
            throws DataAccessException { ... }

}

With the second approach, we need to specify the record creation and record extraction strategies as arguments. The interfaces used are those describe in the previous section on record conversion. The following listing shows the corresponding CciTemplate methods:

public class CciTemplate implements CciOperations {

    public Record execute(InteractionSpec spec,
            RecordCreator inputCreator) throws DataAccessException {
        // ...
    }

    public Object execute(InteractionSpec spec, Record inputRecord,
            RecordExtractor outputExtractor) throws DataAccessException {
        // ...
    }

    public Object execute(InteractionSpec spec, RecordCreator creator,
            RecordExtractor extractor) throws DataAccessException {
        // ...
    }

}

Unless the outputRecordCreator property is set on the template (see the following section), every method calls the corresponding execute method of the CCI Interaction with two parameters: InteractionSpec and an input Record. It receives an output Record as its return value.

CciTemplate also provides methods to create IndexRecord and MappedRecord outside of a RecordCreator implementation, through its createIndexRecord(..) and createMappedRecord(..) methods. You can use this within DAO implementations to create Record instances to pass into corresponding CciTemplate.execute(..) methods. The following listing shows the CciTemplate interface definition:

public class CciTemplate implements CciOperations {

    public IndexedRecord createIndexedRecord(String name) throws DataAccessException { ... }

    public MappedRecord createMappedRecord(String name) throws DataAccessException { ... }

}

5.2.3. Using DAO Support

Spring’s CCI support provides an abstract class for DAOs, supporting injection of a ConnectionFactory or a CciTemplate instance. The name of the class is CciDaoSupport. It provides simple setConnectionFactory and setCciTemplate methods. Internally, this class creates a CciTemplate instance for a passed-in ConnectionFactory, exposing it to concrete data access implementations in subclasses. The following example shows how to use CciDaoSupport:

public abstract class CciDaoSupport {

    public void setConnectionFactory(ConnectionFactory connectionFactory) {
        // ...
    }

    public ConnectionFactory getConnectionFactory() {
        // ...
    }

    public void setCciTemplate(CciTemplate cciTemplate) {
        // ...
    }

    public CciTemplate getCciTemplate() {
        // ...
    }

}

5.2.4. Automatic Output Record Generation

If the connector you use supports only the Interaction.execute(..) method with input and output records as parameters (that is, it requires the desired output record to be passed in instead of returning an appropriate output record), you can set the outputRecordCreator property of the CciTemplate to automatically generate an output record to be filled by the JCA connector when the response is received. This record is then returned to the caller of the template.

This property holds an implementation of the RecordCreator interface, to be used for that purpose. You must directly specify the outputRecordCreator property on the CciTemplate. The following example shows how to do so:

cciTemplate.setOutputRecordCreator(new EciOutputRecordCreator());

Alternatively (and we recommend this approach), in the Spring configuration, if the CciTemplate is configured as a dedicated bean instance, you can define beans in the following fashion:

<bean id="eciOutputRecordCreator" class="eci.EciOutputRecordCreator"/>

<bean id="cciTemplate" class="org.springframework.jca.cci.core.CciTemplate">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="eciConnectionFactory"/>
    <property name="outputRecordCreator" ref="eciOutputRecordCreator"/>
</bean>
As the CciTemplate class is thread-safe, it is usually configured as a shared instance.

5.2.5. CciTemplate Interaction Summary

The following table summarizes the mechanisms of the CciTemplate class and the corresponding methods called on the CCI Interaction interface:

Table 9. Usage of Interaction execute methods
CciTemplate method signature CciTemplate outputRecordCreator property execute method called on the CCI Interaction

Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record)

Not set

Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record)

Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record)

Set

boolean execute(InteractionSpec, Record, Record)

void execute(InteractionSpec, Record, Record)

Not set

void execute(InteractionSpec, Record, Record)

void execute(InteractionSpec, Record, Record)

Set

void execute(InteractionSpec, Record, Record)

Record execute(InteractionSpec, RecordCreator)

Not set

Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record)

Record execute(InteractionSpec, RecordCreator)

Set

void execute(InteractionSpec, Record, Record)

Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record, RecordExtractor)

Not set

Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record)

Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record, RecordExtractor)

Set

void execute(InteractionSpec, Record, Record)

Record execute(InteractionSpec, RecordCreator, RecordExtractor)

Not set

Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record)

Record execute(InteractionSpec, RecordCreator, RecordExtractor)

Set

void execute(InteractionSpec, Record, Record)

5.2.6. Using a CCI Connection and an Interaction Directly

CciTemplate also lets you work directly with CCI connections and interactions, in the same manner as JdbcTemplate and JmsTemplate. This is useful when you want to perform multiple operations on a CCI connection or interaction, for example.

The ConnectionCallback interface provides a CCI Connection as an argument (to perform custom operations on it) plus the CCI ConnectionFactory with which the Connection was created. The latter can be useful (for example, to get an associated RecordFactory instance and create indexed/mapped records). The following listing shows the ConnectionCallback interface definition:

public interface ConnectionCallback {

    Object doInConnection(Connection connection, ConnectionFactory connectionFactory)
            throws ResourceException, SQLException, DataAccessException;

}

The InteractionCallback interface provides the CCI Interaction (to perform custom operations on it) plus the corresponding CCI ConnectionFactory. The following listing shows the InteractionCallback interface definition:

public interface InteractionCallback {

    Object doInInteraction(Interaction interaction, ConnectionFactory connectionFactory)
        throws ResourceException, SQLException, DataAccessException;

}
InteractionSpec objects can either be shared across multiple template calls or be newly created inside every callback method. This is completely up to the DAO implementation.

5.2.7. Example of CciTemplate Usage

In this section, we show the usage of the CciTemplate to access a CICS with ECI mode, with the IBM CICS ECI connector.

First, we must do some initializations on the CCI InteractionSpec to specify which CICS program to access and how to interact with it, as the following example shows:

ECIInteractionSpec interactionSpec = new ECIInteractionSpec();
interactionSpec.setFunctionName("MYPROG");
interactionSpec.setInteractionVerb(ECIInteractionSpec.SYNC_SEND_RECEIVE);

Then the program can use CCI through Spring’s template and specify mappings between custom objects and CCI Records, as the following example shows:

public class MyDaoImpl extends CciDaoSupport implements MyDao {

    public OutputObject getData(InputObject input) {
        ECIInteractionSpec interactionSpec = ...;

    OutputObject output = (ObjectOutput) getCciTemplate().execute(interactionSpec,
        new RecordCreator() {
            public Record createRecord(RecordFactory recordFactory) throws ResourceException {
                return new CommAreaRecord(input.toString().getBytes());
            }
        },
        new RecordExtractor() {
            public Object extractData(Record record) throws ResourceException {
                CommAreaRecord commAreaRecord = (CommAreaRecord)record;
                String str = new String(commAreaRecord.toByteArray());
                String field1 = string.substring(0,6);
                String field2 = string.substring(6,1);
                return new OutputObject(Long.parseLong(field1), field2);
            }
        });

        return output;
    }
}

As discussed previously, you can use callbacks to work directly on CCI connections or interactions. The following example shows how to do so:

public class MyDaoImpl extends CciDaoSupport implements MyDao {

    public OutputObject getData(InputObject input) {
        ObjectOutput output = (ObjectOutput) getCciTemplate().execute(
            new ConnectionCallback() {
                public Object doInConnection(Connection connection,
                        ConnectionFactory factory) throws ResourceException {

                    // do something...

                }
            });
        }
        return output;
    }

}
With a ConnectionCallback, the Connection used is managed and closed by the CciTemplate, but the callback implementation must manage any interactions created on the connection.

For a more specific callback, you can implement an InteractionCallback. If you do so, the passed-in Interaction is managed and closed by the CciTemplate. The following example shows how to do so:

public class MyDaoImpl extends CciDaoSupport implements MyDao {

    public String getData(String input) {
        ECIInteractionSpec interactionSpec = ...;
        String output = (String) getCciTemplate().execute(interactionSpec,
            new InteractionCallback() {
                public Object doInInteraction(Interaction interaction,
                        ConnectionFactory factory) throws ResourceException {
                    Record input = new CommAreaRecord(inputString.getBytes());
                    Record output = new CommAreaRecord();
                    interaction.execute(holder.getInteractionSpec(), input, output);
                    return new String(output.toByteArray());
                }
            });
        return output;
    }

}

For the preceding examples, the corresponding configuration of the involved Spring beans could resemble the following example in non-managed mode:

<bean id="managedConnectionFactory" class="com.ibm.connector2.cics.ECIManagedConnectionFactory">
    <property name="serverName" value="TXSERIES"/>
    <property name="connectionURL" value="local:"/>
    <property name="userName" value="CICSUSER"/>
    <property name="password" value="CICS"/>
</bean>

<bean id="connectionFactory" class="org.springframework.jca.support.LocalConnectionFactoryBean">
    <property name="managedConnectionFactory" ref="managedConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>

<bean id="component" class="mypackage.MyDaoImpl">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
</bean>

In managed mode (that is, in a Java EE environment), the configuration could resemble the following example:

<jee:jndi-lookup id="connectionFactory" jndi-name="eis/cicseci"/>

<bean id="component" class="MyDaoImpl">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
</bean>

5.3. Modeling CCI Access as Operation Objects

The org.springframework.jca.cci.object package contains support classes that let you access the EIS in a different style: through reusable operation objects, analogous to Spring’s JDBC operation objects (see the JDBC section of the Data Access chapter). This usually encapsulates the CCI API. An application-level input object is passed to the operation object, so it can construct the input record and then convert the received record data to an application-level output object and return it.

This approach is internally based on the CciTemplate class and the RecordCreator or RecordExtractor interfaces, reusing the machinery of Spring’s core CCI support.

5.3.1. Using MappingRecordOperation

MappingRecordOperation essentially performs the same work as CciTemplate but represents a specific, pre-configured operation as an object. It provides two template methods to specify how to convert an input object to an input record and how to convert an output record to an output object (record mapping):

  • createInputRecord(..): to specify how to convert an input object to an input Record

  • extractOutputData(..): to specify how to extract an output object from an output Record

The following listing shows the signatures of these methods:

public abstract class MappingRecordOperation extends EisOperation {

    ...

    protected abstract Record createInputRecord(RecordFactory recordFactory,
            Object inputObject) throws ResourceException, DataAccessException {
        // ...
    }

    protected abstract Object extractOutputData(Record outputRecord)
            throws ResourceException, SQLException, DataAccessException {
        // ...
    }

    ...

}

Thereafter, ito execute an EIS operation, you need to use a single execute method, passing in an application-level input object and receiving an application-level output object as the result. The following example shows how to do so:

public abstract class MappingRecordOperation extends EisOperation {

    ...

    public Object execute(Object inputObject) throws DataAccessException {
    }

    ...
}

Contrary to the CciTemplate class, this execute(..) method does not have an InteractionSpec as an argument. Instead, the InteractionSpec is global to the operation. You must use the following constructor to instantiate an operation object with a specific InteractionSpec. The following example shows how to do so:

InteractionSpec spec = ...;
MyMappingRecordOperation eisOperation = new MyMappingRecordOperation(getConnectionFactory(), spec);
...

5.3.2. Using MappingCommAreaOperation

Some connectors use records based on a COMMAREA, which represents an array of bytes that contain parameters to send to the EIS and the data returned by it. Spring provides a special operation class for working directly on COMMAREA rather than on records. The MappingCommAreaOperation class extends the MappingRecordOperation class to provide this special COMMAREA support. It implicitly uses the CommAreaRecord class as the input and output record type and provides two new methods to convert an input object into an input COMMAREA and convert the output COMMAREA into an output object. The following listing shows the relevant method signatures:

public abstract class MappingCommAreaOperation extends MappingRecordOperation {

    ...

    protected abstract byte[] objectToBytes(Object inObject)
            throws IOException, DataAccessException;

    protected abstract Object bytesToObject(byte[] bytes)
        throws IOException, DataAccessException;

    ...

}

5.3.3. Automatic Output Record Generation

As every MappingRecordOperation subclass is based on CciTemplate internally, the same way to automatically generate output records as with CciTemplate is available. Every operation object provides a corresponding setOutputRecordCreator(..) method. For further information, see Automatic Output Record Generation.

5.3.4. Summary

The operation object approach uses records in the same manner as the CciTemplate class.

Table 10. Usage of Interaction execute methods
MappingRecordOperation method signature MappingRecordOperation outputRecordCreator property execute method called on the CCI Interaction

Object execute(Object)

Not set

Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record)

Object execute(Object)

Set

boolean execute(InteractionSpec, Record, Record)

5.3.5. Example of MappingRecordOperation Usage

In this section, we show how to use MappingRecordOperation to access a database with the Blackbox CCI connector.

The original version of this connector is provided by the Java EE SDK (version 1.3), which is available from Oracle.

First, you must do some initializations on the CCI InteractionSpec to specify which SQL request to execute. In the following example, we directly define the way to convert the parameters of the request to a CCI record and the way to convert the CCI result record to an instance of the Person class:

public class PersonMappingOperation extends MappingRecordOperation {

    public PersonMappingOperation(ConnectionFactory connectionFactory) {
        setConnectionFactory(connectionFactory);
        CciInteractionSpec interactionSpec = new CciConnectionSpec();
        interactionSpec.setSql("select * from person where person_id=?");
        setInteractionSpec(interactionSpec);
    }

    protected Record createInputRecord(RecordFactory recordFactory,
            Object inputObject) throws ResourceException {
        Integer id = (Integer) inputObject;
        IndexedRecord input = recordFactory.createIndexedRecord("input");
        input.add(new Integer(id));
        return input;
    }

    protected Object extractOutputData(Record outputRecord)
            throws ResourceException, SQLException {
        ResultSet rs = (ResultSet) outputRecord;
        Person person = null;
        if (rs.next()) {
            Person person = new Person();
            person.setId(rs.getInt("person_id"));
            person.setLastName(rs.getString("person_last_name"));
            person.setFirstName(rs.getString("person_first_name"));
        }
        return person;
    }
}

Then the application can execute the operation object, with the person identifier as an argument. Note that you could set up the operation object as a shared instance, as it is thread-safe. The following executes the operation object with the person identifier as an argument:

public class MyDaoImpl extends CciDaoSupport implements MyDao {

    public Person getPerson(int id) {
        PersonMappingOperation query = new PersonMappingOperation(getConnectionFactory());
        Person person = (Person) query.execute(new Integer(id));
        return person;
    }
}

The corresponding configuration of Spring beans could be as follows in non-managed mode:

<bean id="managedConnectionFactory"
        class="com.sun.connector.cciblackbox.CciLocalTxManagedConnectionFactory">
    <property name="connectionURL" value="jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost:9001"/>
    <property name="driverName" value="org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver"/>
</bean>

<bean id="targetConnectionFactory"
        class="org.springframework.jca.support.LocalConnectionFactoryBean">
    <property name="managedConnectionFactory" ref="managedConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>

<bean id="connectionFactory"
        class="org.springframework.jca.cci.connection.ConnectionSpecConnectionFactoryAdapter">
    <property name="targetConnectionFactory" ref="targetConnectionFactory"/>
    <property name="connectionSpec">
        <bean class="com.sun.connector.cciblackbox.CciConnectionSpec">
            <property name="user" value="sa"/>
            <property name="password" value=""/>
        </bean>
    </property>
</bean>

<bean id="component" class="MyDaoImpl">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
</bean>

In managed mode (that is, in a Java EE environment), the configuration could be as follows:

<jee:jndi-lookup id="targetConnectionFactory" jndi-name="eis/blackbox"/>

<bean id="connectionFactory"
        class="org.springframework.jca.cci.connection.ConnectionSpecConnectionFactoryAdapter">
    <property name="targetConnectionFactory" ref="targetConnectionFactory"/>
    <property name="connectionSpec">
        <bean class="com.sun.connector.cciblackbox.CciConnectionSpec">
            <property name="user" value="sa"/>
            <property name="password" value=""/>
        </bean>
    </property>
</bean>

<bean id="component" class="MyDaoImpl">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
</bean>

5.3.6. Example of MappingCommAreaOperation Usage

In this section, we show how to use the usage of the MappingCommAreaOperation to access a CICS with ECI mode with the IBM CICS ECI connector.

First, we need to initialize the CCI InteractionSpec to specify which CICS program to access and how to interact with it, as the following example shows:

public abstract class EciMappingOperation extends MappingCommAreaOperation {

    public EciMappingOperation(ConnectionFactory connectionFactory, String programName) {
        setConnectionFactory(connectionFactory);
        ECIInteractionSpec interactionSpec = new ECIInteractionSpec(),
        interactionSpec.setFunctionName(programName);
        interactionSpec.setInteractionVerb(ECIInteractionSpec.SYNC_SEND_RECEIVE);
        interactionSpec.setCommareaLength(30);
        setInteractionSpec(interactionSpec);
        setOutputRecordCreator(new EciOutputRecordCreator());
    }

    private static class EciOutputRecordCreator implements RecordCreator {
        public Record createRecord(RecordFactory recordFactory) throws ResourceException {
            return new CommAreaRecord();
        }
    }

}

We can then subclass the abstract EciMappingOperation class to specify mappings between custom objects and Records, as the following example shows:

public class MyDaoImpl extends CciDaoSupport implements MyDao {

    public OutputObject getData(Integer id) {
        EciMappingOperation query = new EciMappingOperation(getConnectionFactory(), "MYPROG") {

            protected abstract byte[] objectToBytes(Object inObject) throws IOException {
                Integer id = (Integer) inObject;
                return String.valueOf(id);
            }

            protected abstract Object bytesToObject(byte[] bytes) throws IOException;
                String str = new String(bytes);
                String field1 = str.substring(0,6);
                String field2 = str.substring(6,1);
                String field3 = str.substring(7,1);
                return new OutputObject(field1, field2, field3);
            }
        });

        return (OutputObject) query.execute(new Integer(id));
    }

}

The corresponding configuration of Spring beans could be as follows in non-managed mode:

<bean id="managedConnectionFactory" class="com.ibm.connector2.cics.ECIManagedConnectionFactory">
    <property name="serverName" value="TXSERIES"/>
    <property name="connectionURL" value="local:"/>
    <property name="userName" value="CICSUSER"/>
    <property name="password" value="CICS"/>
</bean>

<bean id="connectionFactory" class="org.springframework.jca.support.LocalConnectionFactoryBean">
    <property name="managedConnectionFactory" ref="managedConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>

<bean id="component" class="MyDaoImpl">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
</bean>

In managed mode (that is, in a Java EE environment), the configuration could be as follows:

<jee:jndi-lookup id="connectionFactory" jndi-name="eis/cicseci"/>

<bean id="component" class="MyDaoImpl">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
</bean>

5.4. Transactions

JCA specifies several levels of transaction support for resource adapters. The kind of transactions that your resource adapter supports is specified in its ra.xml file. There are essentially three options: none (for example, with the CICS EPI connector), local transactions (for example, with a CICS ECI connector), and global transactions (for example, with an IMS connector). The following example configures the global option:

<connector>
    <resourceadapter>
        <!-- <transaction-support>NoTransaction</transaction-support> -->
        <!-- <transaction-support>LocalTransaction</transaction-support> -->
        <transaction-support>XATransaction</transaction-support>
    <resourceadapter>
<connector>

For global transactions, you can use Spring’s generic transaction infrastructure to demarcate transactions, with JtaTransactionManager as the backend (delegating to the Java EE server’s distributed transaction coordinator underneath).

For local transactions on a single CCI ConnectionFactory, Spring provides a specific transaction-management strategy for CCI, analogous to the DataSourceTransactionManager for JDBC. The CCI API defines a local transaction object and corresponding local transaction demarcation methods. Spring’s CciLocalTransactionManager executes such local CCI transactions in a fashion that is fully compliant with Spring’s generic PlatformTransactionManager abstraction. The following example configures a CciLocalTransactionManager:

<jee:jndi-lookup id="eciConnectionFactory" jndi-name="eis/cicseci"/>

<bean id="eciTransactionManager"
        class="org.springframework.jca.cci.connection.CciLocalTransactionManager">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="eciConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>

You can use both transaction strategies with any of Spring’s transaction demarcation facilities, be it declarative or programmatic. This is a consequence of Spring’s generic PlatformTransactionManager abstraction, which decouples transaction demarcation from the actual execution strategy. You can switch between JtaTransactionManager and CciLocalTransactionManager as needed, keeping your transaction demarcation as-is.

For more information on Spring’s transaction facilities, see Transaction Management.

6. Email

This section describes how to send email with the Spring Framework.

Library dependencies

The following JAR needs to be on the classpath of your application in order to use the Spring Framework’s email library:

This library is freely available on the web — for example, in Maven Central as com.sun.mail:javax.mail.

The Spring Framework provides a helpful utility library for sending email that shields you from the specifics of the underlying mailing system and is responsible for low-level resource handling on behalf of the client.

The org.springframework.mail package is the root level package for the Spring Framework’s email support. The central interface for sending emails is the MailSender interface. A simple value object that encapsulates the properties of a simple mail such as from and to (plus many others) is the SimpleMailMessage class. This package also contains a hierarchy of checked exceptions that provide a higher level of abstraction over the lower level mail system exceptions, with the root exception being MailException. See the javadoc for more information on the rich mail exception hierarchy.

The org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSender interface adds specialized JavaMail features, such as MIME message support to the MailSender interface (from which it inherits). JavaMailSender also provides a callback interface called org.springframework.mail.javamail.MimeMessagePreparator for preparing a MimeMessage.

6.1. Usage

Assume that we have a business interface called OrderManager, as the following example shows:

public interface OrderManager {

    void placeOrder(Order order);

}

Further assume that we have a requirement stating that an email message with an order number needs to be generated and sent to a customer who placed the relevant order.

6.1.1. Basic MailSender and SimpleMailMessage Usage

The following example shows how to use MailSender and SimpleMailMessage to send an email when someone places an order:

import org.springframework.mail.MailException;
import org.springframework.mail.MailSender;
import org.springframework.mail.SimpleMailMessage;

public class SimpleOrderManager implements OrderManager {

    private MailSender mailSender;
    private SimpleMailMessage templateMessage;

    public void setMailSender(MailSender mailSender) {
        this.mailSender = mailSender;
    }

    public void setTemplateMessage(SimpleMailMessage templateMessage) {
        this.templateMessage = templateMessage;
    }

    public void placeOrder(Order order) {

        // Do the business calculations...

        // Call the collaborators to persist the order...

        // Create a thread safe "copy" of the template message and customize it
        SimpleMailMessage msg = new SimpleMailMessage(this.templateMessage);
        msg.setTo(order.getCustomer().getEmailAddress());
        msg.setText(
            "Dear " + order.getCustomer().getFirstName()
                + order.getCustomer().getLastName()
                + ", thank you for placing order. Your order number is "
                + order.getOrderNumber());
        try{
            this.mailSender.send(msg);
        }
        catch (MailException ex) {
            // simply log it and go on...
            System.err.println(ex.getMessage());
        }
    }

}

The following example shows the bean definitions for the preceding code:

<bean id="mailSender" class="org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSenderImpl">
    <property name="host" value="mail.mycompany.com"/>
</bean>

<!-- this is a template message that we can pre-load with default state -->
<bean id="templateMessage" class="org.springframework.mail.SimpleMailMessage">
    <property name="from" value="[email protected]"/>
    <property name="subject" value="Your order"/>
</bean>

<bean id="orderManager" class="com.mycompany.businessapp.support.SimpleOrderManager">
    <property name="mailSender" ref="mailSender"/>
    <property name="templateMessage" ref="templateMessage"/>
</bean>

6.1.2. Using JavaMailSender and MimeMessagePreparator

This section describes another implementation of OrderManager that uses the MimeMessagePreparator callback interface. In the following example, the mailSender property is of type JavaMailSender so that we are able to use the JavaMail MimeMessage class:

import javax.mail.Message;
import javax.mail.MessagingException;
import javax.mail.internet.InternetAddress;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage;

import javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage;
import org.springframework.mail.MailException;
import org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSender;
import org.springframework.mail.javamail.MimeMessagePreparator;

public class SimpleOrderManager implements OrderManager {

    private JavaMailSender mailSender;

    public void setMailSender(JavaMailSender mailSender) {
        this.mailSender = mailSender;
    }

    public void placeOrder(final Order order) {
        // Do the business calculations...
        // Call the collaborators to persist the order...

        MimeMessagePreparator preparator = new MimeMessagePreparator() {
            public void prepare(MimeMessage mimeMessage) throws Exception {
                mimeMessage.setRecipient(Message.RecipientType.TO,
                        new InternetAddress(order.getCustomer().getEmailAddress()));
                mimeMessage.setFrom(new InternetAddress("[email protected]"));
                mimeMessage.setText("Dear " + order.getCustomer().getFirstName() + " " +
                        order.getCustomer().getLastName() + ", thanks for your order. " +
                        "Your order number is " + order.getOrderNumber() + ".");
            }
        };

        try {
            this.mailSender.send(preparator);
        }
        catch (MailException ex) {
            // simply log it and go on...
            System.err.println(ex.getMessage());
        }
    }

}
The mail code is a crosscutting concern and could well be a candidate for refactoring into a custom Spring AOP aspect, which then could be executed at appropriate joinpoints on the OrderManager target.

The Spring Framework’s mail support ships with the standard JavaMail implementation. See the relevant javadoc for more information.

6.2. Using the JavaMail MimeMessageHelper

A class that comes in pretty handy when dealing with JavaMail messages is org.springframework.mail.javamail.MimeMessageHelper, which shields you from having to use the verbose JavaMail API. Using the MimeMessageHelper, it is pretty easy to create a MimeMessage, as the following example shows:

// of course you would use DI in any real-world cases
JavaMailSenderImpl sender = new JavaMailSenderImpl();
sender.setHost("mail.host.com");

MimeMessage message = sender.createMimeMessage();
MimeMessageHelper helper = new MimeMessageHelper(message);
helper.setTo("[email protected]");
helper.setText("Thank you for ordering!");

sender.send(message);

6.2.1. Sending Attachments and Inline Resources

Multipart email messages allow for both attachments and inline resources. Examples of inline resources include an image or a stylesheet that you want to use in your message but that you do not want displayed as an attachment.

Attachments

The following example shows you how to use the MimeMessageHelper to send an email with a single JPEG image attachment:

JavaMailSenderImpl sender = new JavaMailSenderImpl();
sender.setHost("mail.host.com");

MimeMessage message = sender.createMimeMessage();

// use the true flag to indicate you need a multipart message
MimeMessageHelper helper = new MimeMessageHelper(message, true);
helper.setTo("[email protected]");

helper.setText("Check out this image!");

// let's attach the infamous windows Sample file (this time copied to c:/)
FileSystemResource file = new FileSystemResource(new File("c:/Sample.jpg"));
helper.addAttachment("CoolImage.jpg", file);

sender.send(message);
Inline Resources

The following example shows you how to use the MimeMessageHelper to send an email with an inline image:

JavaMailSenderImpl sender = new JavaMailSenderImpl();
sender.setHost("mail.host.com");

MimeMessage message = sender.createMimeMessage();

// use the true flag to indicate you need a multipart message
MimeMessageHelper helper = new MimeMessageHelper(message, true);
helper.setTo("[email protected]");

// use the true flag to indicate the text included is HTML
helper.setText("<html><body><img src='cid:identifier1234'></body></html>", true);

// let's include the infamous windows Sample file (this time copied to c:/)
FileSystemResource res = new FileSystemResource(new File("c:/Sample.jpg"));
helper.addInline("identifier1234", res);

sender.send(message);
Inline resources are added to the MimeMessage by using the specified Content-ID (identifier1234 in the above example). The order in which you add the text and the resource are very important. Be sure to first add the text and then the resources. If you are doing it the other way around, it does not work.

6.2.2. Creating Email Content by Using a Templating Library

The code in the examples shown in the previous sections explicitly created the content of the email message, by using methods calls such as message.setText(..). This is fine for simple cases, and it is okay in the context of the aforementioned examples, where the intent was to show you the very basics of the API.

In your typical enterprise application, though, developers often do not create the content of email messages by using the previously shown approach for a number of reasons:

  • Creating HTML-based email content in Java code is tedious and error prone.

  • There is no clear separation between display logic and business logic.

  • Changing the display structure of the email content requires writing Java code, recompiling, redeploying, and so on.

Typically, the approach taken to address these issues is to use a template library (such as FreeMarker) to define the display structure of email content. This leaves your code tasked only with creating the data that is to be rendered in the email template and sending the email. It is definitely a best practice when the content of your email messages becomes even moderately complex, and, with the Spring Framework’s support classes for FreeMarker, it becomes quite easy to do.

7. Task Execution and Scheduling

The Spring Framework provides abstractions for the asynchronous execution and scheduling of tasks with the TaskExecutor and TaskScheduler interfaces, respectively. Spring also features implementations of those interfaces that support thread pools or delegation to CommonJ within an application server environment. Ultimately, the use of these implementations behind the common interfaces abstracts away the differences between Java SE 5, Java SE 6, and Java EE environments.

Spring also features integration classes to support scheduling with the Timer (part of the JDK since 1.3) and the Quartz Scheduler ( https://www.quartz-scheduler.org/). You can set up both of those schedulers by using a FactoryBean with optional references to Timer or Trigger instances, respectively. Furthermore, a convenience class for both the Quartz Scheduler and the Timer is available that lets you invoke a method of an existing target object (analogous to the normal MethodInvokingFactoryBean operation).

7.1. The Spring TaskExecutor Abstraction

Executors are the JDK name for the concept of thread pools. The “executor” naming is due to the fact that there is no guarantee that the underlying implementation is actually a pool. An executor may be single-threaded or even synchronous. Spring’s abstraction hides implementation details between the Java SE and Java EE environments.

Spring’s TaskExecutor interface is identical to the java.util.concurrent.Executor interface. In fact, originally, its primary reason for existence was to abstract away the need for Java 5 when using thread pools. The interface has a single method (execute(Runnable task)) that accepts a task for execution based on the semantics and configuration of the thread pool.

The TaskExecutor was originally created to give other Spring components an abstraction for thread pooling where needed. Components such as the ApplicationEventMulticaster, JMS’s AbstractMessageListenerContainer, and Quartz integration all use the TaskExecutor abstraction to pool threads. However, if your beans need thread pooling behavior, you can also use this abstraction for your own needs.

7.1.1. TaskExecutor Types

Spring includes a number of pre-built implementations of TaskExecutor. In all likelihood, you should never need to implement your own. The variants that Spring provides are as follows:

  • SyncTaskExecutor: This implementation does not execute invocations asynchronously. Instead, each invocation takes place in the calling thread. It is primarily used in situations where multi-threading is not necessary, such as in simple test cases.

  • SimpleAsyncTaskExecutor: This implementation does not reuse any threads. Rather, it starts up a new thread for each invocation. However, it does support a concurrency limit that blocks any invocations that are over the limit until a slot has been freed up. If you are looking for true pooling, see ThreadPoolTaskExecutor, later in this list.

  • ConcurrentTaskExecutor: This implementation is an adapter for a java.util.concurrent.Executor instance. There is an alternative (ThreadPoolTaskExecutor) that exposes the Executor configuration parameters as bean properties. There is rarely a need to use ConcurrentTaskExecutor directly. However, if the ThreadPoolTaskExecutor is not flexible enough for your needs, ConcurrentTaskExecutor is an alternative.

  • ThreadPoolTaskExecutor: This implementation is most commonly used. It exposes bean properties for configuring a java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor and wraps it in a TaskExecutor. If you need to adapt to a different kind of java.util.concurrent.Executor, we recommend that you use a ConcurrentTaskExecutor instead.

  • WorkManagerTaskExecutor: This implementation uses a CommonJ WorkManager as its backing service provider and is the central convenience class for setting up CommonJ-based thread pool integration on WebLogic or WebSphere within a Spring application context.

  • DefaultManagedTaskExecutor: This implementation uses a JNDI-obtained ManagedExecutorService in a JSR-236 compatible runtime environment (such as a Java EE 7+ application server), replacing a CommonJ WorkManager for that purpose.

7.1.2. Using a TaskExecutor

Spring’s TaskExecutor implementations are used as simple JavaBeans. In the following example, we define a bean that uses the ThreadPoolTaskExecutor to asynchronously print out a set of messages:

import org.springframework.core.task.TaskExecutor;

public class TaskExecutorExample {

    private class MessagePrinterTask implements Runnable {

        private String message;

        public MessagePrinterTask(String message) {
            this.message = message;
        }

        public void run() {
            System.out.println(message);
        }
    }

    private TaskExecutor taskExecutor;

    public TaskExecutorExample(TaskExecutor taskExecutor) {
        this.taskExecutor = taskExecutor;
    }

    public void printMessages() {
        for(int i = 0; i < 25; i++) {
            taskExecutor.execute(new MessagePrinterTask("Message" + i));
        }
    }
}

As you can see, rather than retrieving a thread from the pool and executing it yourself, you add your Runnable to the queue. Then the TaskExecutor uses its internal rules to decide when the task gets executed.

To configure the rules that the TaskExecutor uses, we expose simple bean properties:

<bean id="taskExecutor" class="org.springframework.scheduling.concurrent.ThreadPoolTaskExecutor">
    <property name="corePoolSize" value="5"/>
    <property name="maxPoolSize" value="10"/>
    <property name="queueCapacity" value="25"/>
</bean>

<bean id="taskExecutorExample" class="TaskExecutorExample">
    <constructor-arg ref="taskExecutor"/>
</bean>

7.2. The Spring TaskScheduler Abstraction

In addition to the TaskExecutor abstraction, Spring 3.0 introduced a TaskScheduler with a variety of methods for scheduling tasks to run at some point in the future. The following listing shows the TaskScheduler interface definition:

public interface TaskScheduler {

    ScheduledFuture schedule(Runnable task, Trigger trigger);

    ScheduledFuture schedule(Runnable task, Instant startTime);

    ScheduledFuture schedule(Runnable task, Date startTime);

    ScheduledFuture scheduleAtFixedRate(Runnable task, Instant startTime, Duration period);

    ScheduledFuture scheduleAtFixedRate(Runnable task, Date startTime, long period);

    ScheduledFuture scheduleAtFixedRate(Runnable task, Duration period);

    ScheduledFuture scheduleAtFixedRate(Runnable task, long period);

    ScheduledFuture scheduleWithFixedDelay(Runnable task, Instant startTime, Duration delay);

    ScheduledFuture scheduleWithFixedDelay(Runnable task, Date startTime, long delay);

    ScheduledFuture scheduleWithFixedDelay(Runnable task, Duration delay);

    ScheduledFuture scheduleWithFixedDelay(Runnable task, long delay);
}

The simplest method is the one named schedule that takes only a Runnable and a Date. That causes the task to run once after the specified time. All of the other methods are capable of scheduling tasks to run repeatedly. The fixed-rate and fixed-delay methods are for simple, periodic execution, but the method that accepts a Trigger is much more flexible.

7.2.1. Trigger Interface

The Trigger interface is essentially inspired by JSR-236 which, as of Spring 3.0, was not yet officially implemented. The basic idea of the Trigger is that execution times may be determined based on past execution outcomes or even arbitrary conditions. If these determinations do take into account the outcome of the preceding execution, that information is available within a TriggerContext. The Trigger interface itself is quite simple, as the following listing shows:

public interface Trigger {

    Date nextExecutionTime(TriggerContext triggerContext);
}

The TriggerContext is the most important part. It encapsulates all of the relevant data and is open for extension in the future, if necessary. The TriggerContext is an interface (a SimpleTriggerContext implementation is used by default). The following listing shows the available methods for Trigger implementations.

public interface TriggerContext {

    Date lastScheduledExecutionTime();

    Date lastActualExecutionTime();

    Date lastCompletionTime();
}

7.2.2. Trigger Implementations

Spring provides two implementations of the Trigger interface. The most interesting one is the CronTrigger. It enables the scheduling of tasks based on cron expressions. For example, the following task is scheduled to run 15 minutes past each hour but only during the 9-to-5 “business hours” on weekdays:

scheduler.schedule(task, new CronTrigger("0 15 9-17 * * MON-FRI"));

The other implementation is a PeriodicTrigger that accepts a fixed period, an optional initial delay value, and a boolean to indicate whether the period should be interpreted as a fixed-rate or a fixed-delay. Since the TaskScheduler interface already defines methods for scheduling tasks at a fixed rate or with a fixed delay, those methods should be used directly whenever possible. The value of the PeriodicTrigger implementation is that you can use it within components that rely on the Trigger abstraction. For example, it may be convenient to allow periodic triggers, cron-based triggers, and even custom trigger implementations to be used interchangeably. Such a component could take advantage of dependency injection so that you can configure such Triggers externally and, therefore, easily modify or extend them.

7.2.3. TaskScheduler implementations

As with Spring’s TaskExecutor abstraction, the primary benefit of the TaskScheduler arrangement is that an application’s scheduling needs are decoupled from the deployment environment. This abstraction level is particularly relevant when deploying to an application server environment where threads should not be created directly by the application itself. For such scenarios, Spring provides a TimerManagerTaskScheduler that delegates to a CommonJ TimerManager on WebLogic or WebSphere as well as a more recent DefaultManagedTaskScheduler that delegates to a JSR-236 ManagedScheduledExecutorService in a Java EE 7+ environment. Both are typically configured with a JNDI lookup.

Whenever external thread management is not a requirement, a simpler alternative is a local ScheduledExecutorService setup within the application, which can be adapted through Spring’s ConcurrentTaskScheduler. As a convenience, Spring also provides a ThreadPoolTaskScheduler, which internally delegates to a ScheduledExecutorService to provide common bean-style configuration along the lines of ThreadPoolTaskExecutor. These variants work perfectly fine for locally embedded thread pool setups in lenient application server environments, as well — in particular on Tomcat and Jetty.

7.3. Annotation Support for Scheduling and Asynchronous Execution

Spring provides annotation support for both task scheduling and asynchronous method execution.

7.3.1. Enable Scheduling Annotations

To enable support for @Scheduled and @Async annotations, you can add @EnableScheduling and @EnableAsync to one of your @Configuration classes, as the following example shows:

@Configuration
@EnableAsync
@EnableScheduling
public class AppConfig {
}

You can pick and choose the relevant annotations for your application. For example, if you need only support for @Scheduled, you can omit @EnableAsync. For more fine-grained control, you can additionally implement the SchedulingConfigurer interface, the AsyncConfigurer interface, or both. See the SchedulingConfigurer and AsyncConfigurer javadoc for full details.

If you prefer XML configuration, you can use the <task:annotation-driven> element, as the following example shows:

<task:annotation-driven executor="myExecutor" scheduler="myScheduler"/>
<task:executor id="myExecutor" pool-size="5"/>
<task:scheduler id="myScheduler" pool-size="10"/>

Note that, with the preceding XML, an executor reference is provided for handling those tasks that correspond to methods with the @Async annotation, and the scheduler reference is provided for managing those methods annotated with @Scheduled.

The default advice mode for processing @Async annotations is proxy which allows for interception of calls through the proxy only. Local calls within the same class cannot get intercepted that way. For a more advanced mode of interception, consider switching to aspectj mode in combination with compile-time or load-time weaving.

7.3.2. The @Scheduled annotation

You can add the @Scheduled annotation to a method, along with trigger metadata. For example, the following method is invoked every five seconds with a fixed delay, meaning that the period is measured from the completion time of each preceding invocation:

@Scheduled(fixedDelay=5000)
public void doSomething() {
    // something that should execute periodically
}

If you need a fixed-rate execution, you can change the property name specified within the annotation. The following method is invoked every five seconds (measured between the successive start times of each invocation):

@Scheduled(fixedRate=5000)
public void doSomething() {
    // something that should execute periodically
}

For fixed-delay and fixed-rate tasks, you can specify an initial delay by indicating the number of milliseconds to wait before the first execution of the method, as the following fixedRate example shows:

@Scheduled(initialDelay=1000, fixedRate=5000)
public void doSomething() {
    // something that should execute periodically
}

If simple periodic scheduling is not expressive enough, you can provide a cron expression. For example, the following executes only on weekdays:

@Scheduled(cron="*/5 * * * * MON-FRI")
public void doSomething() {
    // something that should execute on weekdays only
}
You can also use the zone attribute to specify the time zone in which the cron expression is resolved.

Notice that the methods to be scheduled must have void returns and must not expect any arguments. If the method needs to interact with other objects from the application context, those would typically have been provided through dependency injection.

As of Spring Framework 4.3, @Scheduled methods are supported on beans of any scope.

Make sure that you are not initializing multiple instances of the same @Scheduled annotation class at runtime, unless you do want to schedule callbacks to each such instance. Related to this, make sure that you do not use @Configurable on bean classes that are annotated with @Scheduled and registered as regular Spring beans with the container. Otherwise, you would get double initialization (once through the container and once through the @Configurable aspect), with the consequence of each @Scheduled method being invoked twice.

7.3.3. The @Async annotation

You can provide the @Async annotation on a method so that invocation of that method occurs asynchronously. In other words, the caller returns immediately upon invocation, while the actual execution of the method occurs in a task that has been submitted to a Spring TaskExecutor. In the simplest case, you can apply the annotation to a method that returns void, as the following example shows:

@Async
void doSomething() {
    // this will be executed asynchronously
}

Unlike the methods annotated with the @Scheduled annotation, these methods can expect arguments, because they are invoked in the “normal” way by callers at runtime rather than from a scheduled task being managed by the container. For example, the following code is a legitimate application of the @Async annotation:

@Async
void doSomething(String s) {
    // this will be executed asynchronously
}

Even methods that return a value can be invoked asynchronously. However, such methods are required to have a Future-typed return value. This still provides the benefit of asynchronous execution so that the caller can perform other tasks prior to calling get() on that Future. The following example shows how to use @Async on a method that returns a value:

@Async
Future<String> returnSomething(int i) {
    // this will be executed asynchronously
}
@Async methods may not only declare a regular java.util.concurrent.Future return type but also Spring’s org.springframework.util.concurrent.ListenableFuture or, as of Spring 4.2, JDK 8’s java.util.concurrent.CompletableFuture, for richer interaction with the asynchronous task and for immediate composition with further processing steps.

You can not use @Async in conjunction with lifecycle callbacks such as @PostConstruct. To asynchronously initialize Spring beans, you currently have to use a separate initializing Spring bean that then invokes the @Async annotated method on the target, as the following example shows:

public class SampleBeanImpl implements SampleBean {

    @Async
    void doSomething() {
        // ...
    }

}

public class SampleBeanInitializer {

    private final SampleBean bean;

    public SampleBeanInitializer(SampleBean bean) {
        this.bean = bean;
    }

    @PostConstruct
    public void initialize() {
        bean.doSomething();
    }

}
There is no direct XML equivalent for @Async, since such methods should be designed for asynchronous execution in the first place, not externally re-declared to be asynchronous. However, you can manually set up Spring’s AsyncExecutionInterceptor with Spring AOP, in combination with a custom pointcut.

7.3.4. Executor Qualification with @Async

By default, when specifying @Async on a method, the executor that is used is the one configured when enabling async support, i.e. the “annotation-driven” element if you are using XML or your AsyncConfigurer implementation, if any. However, you can use the value attribute of the @Async annotation when you need to indicate that an executor other than the default should be used when executing a given method. The following example shows how to do so:

@Async("otherExecutor")
void doSomething(String s) {
    // this will be executed asynchronously by "otherExecutor"
}

In this case, "otherExecutor" can be the name of any Executor bean in the Spring container, or it may be the name of a qualifier associated with any Executor (for example, as specified with the <qualifier> element or Spring’s @Qualifier annotation).

7.3.5. Exception Management with @Async

When an @Async method has a Future-typed return value, it is easy to manage an exception that was thrown during the method execution, as this exception is thrown when calling get on the Future result. With a void return type, however, the exception is uncaught and cannot be transmitted. You can provide an AsyncUncaughtExceptionHandler to handle such exceptions. The following example shows how to do so:

public class MyAsyncUncaughtExceptionHandler implements AsyncUncaughtExceptionHandler {

    @Override
    public void handleUncaughtException(Throwable ex, Method method, Object... params) {
        // handle exception
    }
}

By default, the exception is merely logged. You can define a custom AsyncUncaughtExceptionHandler by using AsyncConfigurer or the <task:annotation-driven/> XML element.

7.4. The task Namespace

As of version 3.0, Spring includes an XML namespace for configuring TaskExecutor and TaskScheduler instances. It also provides a convenient way to configure tasks to be scheduled with a trigger.

7.4.1. The 'scheduler' Element

The following element creates a ThreadPoolTaskScheduler instance with the specified thread pool size:

<task:scheduler id="scheduler" pool-size="10"/>

The value provided for the id attribute is used as the prefix for thread names within the pool. The scheduler element is relatively straightforward. If you do not provide a pool-size attribute, the default thread pool has only a single thread. There are no other configuration options for the scheduler.

7.4.2. The executor Element

The following creates a ThreadPoolTaskExecutor instance:

<task:executor id="executor" pool-size="10"/>

As with the scheduler shown in the previous section, the value provided for the id attribute is used as the prefix for thread names within the pool. As far as the pool size is concerned, the executor element supports more configuration options than the scheduler element. For one thing, the thread pool for a ThreadPoolTaskExecutor is itself more configurable. Rather than only a single size, an executor’s thread pool can have different values for the core and the max size. If you provide a single value, the executor has a fixed-size thread pool (the core and max sizes are the same). However, the executor element’s pool-size attribute also accepts a range in the form of min-max. The following example sets a minimum value of 5 and a maximum value of 25:

<task:executor
        id="executorWithPoolSizeRange"
        pool-size="5-25"
        queue-capacity="100"/>

In the preceding configuration, a queue-capacity value has also been provided. The configuration of the thread pool should also be considered in light of the executor’s queue capacity. For the full description of the relationship between pool size and queue capacity, see the documentation for ThreadPoolExecutor. The main idea is that, when a task is submitted, the executor first tries to use a free thread if the number of active threads is currently less than the core size. If the core size has been reached, the task is added to the queue, as long as its capacity has not yet been reached. Only then, if the queue’s capacity has been reached, does the executor create a new thread beyond the core size. If the max size has also been reached, then the executor rejects the task.

By default, the queue is unbounded, but this is rarely the desired configuration, because it can lead to OutOfMemoryErrors if enough tasks are added to that queue while all pool threads are busy. Furthermore, if the queue is unbounded, the max size has no effect at all. Since the executor always tries the queue before creating a new thread beyond the core size, a queue must have a finite capacity for the thread pool to grow beyond the core size (this is why a fixed-size pool is the only sensible case when using an unbounded queue).

Consider the case, as mentioned above, when a task is rejected. By default, when a task is rejected, a thread pool executor throws a TaskRejectedException. However, the rejection policy is actually configurable. The exception is thrown when using the default rejection policy, which is the AbortPolicy implementation. For applications where some tasks can be skipped under heavy load, you can instead configure either DiscardPolicy or DiscardOldestPolicy. Another option that works well for applications that need to throttle the submitted tasks under heavy load is the CallerRunsPolicy. Instead of throwing an exception or discarding tasks, that policy forces the thread that is calling the submit method to run the task itself. The idea is that such a caller is busy while running that task and not able to submit other tasks immediately. Therefore, it provides a simple way to throttle the incoming load while maintaining the limits of the thread pool and queue. Typically, this allows the executor to “catch up” on the tasks it is handling and thereby frees up some capacity on the queue, in the pool, or both. You can choose any of these options from an enumeration of values available for the rejection-policy attribute on the executor element.

The following example shows an executor element with a number of attributes to specify various behaviors:

<task:executor
        id="executorWithCallerRunsPolicy"
        pool-size="5-25"
        queue-capacity="100"
        rejection-policy="CALLER_RUNS"/>

Finally, the keep-alive setting determines the time limit (in seconds) for which threads may remain idle before being terminated. If there are more than the core number of threads currently in the pool, after waiting this amount of time without processing a task, excess threads get terminated. A time value of zero causes excess threads to terminate immediately after executing a task without remaining follow-up work in the task queue. The following example sets the keep-alive value to two minutes:

<task:executor
        id="executorWithKeepAlive"
        pool-size="5-25"
        keep-alive="120"/>

7.4.3. The 'scheduled-tasks' Element

The most powerful feature of Spring’s task namespace is the support for configuring tasks to be scheduled within a Spring Application Context. This follows an approach similar to other “method-invokers” in Spring, such as that provided by the JMS namespace for configuring message-driven POJOs. Basically, a ref attribute can point to any Spring-managed object, and the method attribute provides the name of a method to be invoked on that object. The following listing shows a simple example:

<task:scheduled-tasks scheduler="myScheduler">
    <task:scheduled ref="beanA" method="methodA" fixed-delay="5000"/>
</task:scheduled-tasks>

<task:scheduler id="myScheduler" pool-size="10"/>

The scheduler is referenced by the outer element, and each individual task includes the configuration of its trigger metadata. In the preceding example, that metadata defines a periodic trigger with a fixed delay indicating the number of milliseconds to wait after each task execution has completed. Another option is fixed-rate, indicating how often the method should be executed regardless of how long any previous execution takes. Additionally, for both fixed-delay and fixed-rate tasks, you can specify an 'initial-delay' parameter, indicating the number of milliseconds to wait before the first execution of the method. For more control, you can instead provide a cron attribute. The following example shows these other options:

<task:scheduled-tasks scheduler="myScheduler">
    <task:scheduled ref="beanA" method="methodA" fixed-delay="5000" initial-delay="1000"/>
    <task:scheduled ref="beanB" method="methodB" fixed-rate="5000"/>
    <task:scheduled ref="beanC" method="methodC" cron="*/5 * * * * MON-FRI"/>
</task:scheduled-tasks>

<task:scheduler id="myScheduler" pool-size="10"/>

7.5. Using the Quartz Scheduler

Quartz uses Trigger, Job, and JobDetail objects to realize scheduling of all kinds of jobs. For the basic concepts behind Quartz, see https://www.quartz-scheduler.org/. For convenience purposes, Spring offers a couple of classes that simplify using Quartz within Spring-based applications.

7.5.1. Using the JobDetailFactoryBean

Quartz JobDetail objects contain all the information needed to run a job. Spring provides a JobDetailFactoryBean, which provides bean-style properties for XML configuration purposes. Consider the following example:

<bean name="exampleJob" class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.JobDetailFactoryBean">
    <property name="jobClass" value="example.ExampleJob"/>
    <property name="jobDataAsMap">
        <map>
            <entry key="timeout" value="5"/>
        </map>
    </property>
</bean>

The job detail configuration has all the information it needs to run the job (ExampleJob). The timeout is specified in the job data map. The job data map is available through the JobExecutionContext (passed to you at execution time), but the JobDetail also gets its properties from the job data mapped to properties of the job instance. So, in the following example, the ExampleJob contains a bean property named timeout, and the JobDetail has it applied automatically:

package example;

public class ExampleJob extends QuartzJobBean {

    private int timeout;

    /**
     * Setter called after the ExampleJob is instantiated
     * with the value from the JobDetailFactoryBean (5)
     */
    public void setTimeout(int timeout) {
        this.timeout = timeout;
    }

    protected void executeInternal(JobExecutionContext ctx) throws JobExecutionException {
        // do the actual work
    }

}

All additional properties from the job data map are available to you as well.

By using the name and group properties, you can modify the name and the group of the job, respectively. By default, the name of the job matches the bean name of the JobDetailFactoryBean (exampleJob in the preceding example above).

7.5.2. Using the MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean

Often you merely need to invoke a method on a specific object. By using the MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean, you can do exactly this, as the following example shows:

<bean id="jobDetail" class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean">
    <property name="targetObject" ref="exampleBusinessObject"/>
    <property name="targetMethod" value="doIt"/>
</bean>

The preceding example results in the doIt method being called on the exampleBusinessObject method, as the following example shows:

public class ExampleBusinessObject {

    // properties and collaborators

    public void doIt() {
        // do the actual work
    }
}
<bean id="exampleBusinessObject" class="examples.ExampleBusinessObject"/>

By using the MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean, you need not create one-line jobs that merely invoke a method. You need only create the actual business object and wire up the detail object.

By default, Quartz Jobs are stateless, resulting in the possibility of jobs interfering with each other. If you specify two triggers for the same JobDetail, it is possible that, before the first job has finished, the second one starts. If JobDetail classes implement the Stateful interface, this does not happen. The second job does not start before the first one has finished. To make jobs resulting from the MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean be non-concurrent, set the concurrent flag to false, as the following example shows:

<bean id="jobDetail" class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean">
    <property name="targetObject" ref="exampleBusinessObject"/>
    <property name="targetMethod" value="doIt"/>
    <property name="concurrent" value="false"/>
</bean>
By default, jobs will run in a concurrent fashion.

7.5.3. Wiring up Jobs by Using Triggers and SchedulerFactoryBean

We have created job details and jobs. We have also reviewed the convenience bean that lets you invoke a method on a specific object. Of course, we still need to schedule the jobs themselves. This is done by using triggers and a SchedulerFactoryBean. Several triggers are available within Quartz, and Spring offers two Quartz FactoryBean implementations with convenient defaults: CronTriggerFactoryBean and SimpleTriggerFactoryBean.

Triggers need to be scheduled. Spring offers a SchedulerFactoryBean that exposes triggers to be set as properties. SchedulerFactoryBean schedules the actual jobs with those triggers.

The following listing uses both a SimpleTriggerFactoryBean and a CronTriggerFactoryBean:

<bean id="simpleTrigger" class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.SimpleTriggerFactoryBean">
    <!-- see the example of method invoking job above -->
    <property name="jobDetail" ref="jobDetail"/>
    <!-- 10 seconds -->
    <property name="startDelay" value="10000"/>
    <!-- repeat every 50 seconds -->
    <property name="repeatInterval" value="50000"/>
</bean>

<bean id="cronTrigger" class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.CronTriggerFactoryBean">
    <property name="jobDetail" ref="exampleJob"/>
    <!-- run every morning at 6 AM -->
    <property name="cronExpression" value="0 0 6 * * ?"/>
</bean>

The preceding example sets up two triggers, one running every 50 seconds with a starting delay of 10 seconds and one running every morning at 6 AM. To finalize everything, we need to set up the SchedulerFactoryBean, as the following example shows:

<bean class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.SchedulerFactoryBean">
    <property name="triggers">
        <list>
            <ref bean="cronTrigger"/>
            <ref bean="simpleTrigger"/>
        </list>
    </property>
</bean>

More properties are available for the SchedulerFactoryBean, such as the calendars used by the job details, properties to customize Quartz with, and others. See the SchedulerFactoryBean javadoc for more information.

8. Cache Abstraction

Since version 3.1, the Spring Framework provides support for transparently adding caching to an existing Spring application. Similar to the transaction support, the caching abstraction allows consistent use of various caching solutions with minimal impact on the code.

As from Spring 4.1, the cache abstraction has been significantly extended with the support of JSR-107 annotations and more customization options.

8.1. Understanding the Cache Abstraction

Cache vs Buffer

The terms, “buffer” and “cache,” tend to be used interchangeably. Note, however, that they represent different things. Traditionally, a buffer is used as an intermediate temporary store for data between a fast and a slow entity. As one party would have to wait for the other (which affects performance), the buffer alleviates this by allowing entire blocks of data to move at once rather than in small chunks. The data is written and read only once from the buffer. Furthermore, the buffers are visible to at least one party that is aware of it.

A cache, on the other hand, is, by definition, hidden, and neither party is aware that caching occurs. It also improves performance but does so by letting the same data be read multiple times in a fast fashion.

You can find a further explanation of the differences between a buffer and a cache here.

At its core, the cache abstraction applies caching to Java methods, thus reducing the number of executions based on the information available in the cache. That is, each time a targeted method is invoked, the abstraction applies a caching behavior that checks whether the method has been already executed for the given arguments. If it has been executed, the cached result is returned without having to execute the actual method. If the method has not been executed, then it is executed, and the result is cached and returned to the user so that, the next time the method is invoked, the cached result is returned. This way, expensive methods (whether CPU- or IO-bound) can be executed only once for a given set of parameters and the result reused without having to actually execute the method again. The caching logic is applied transparently without any interference to the invoker.

This approach works only for methods that are guaranteed to return the same output (result) for a given input (or arguments) no matter how many times it is executed.

The caching abstraction provides other cache-related operations, such as the ability to update the content of the cache or to remove one or all entries. These are useful if the cache deals with data that can change during the course of the application.

As with other services in the Spring Framework, the caching service is an abstraction (not a cache implementation) and requires the use of actual storage to store the cache data — that is, the abstraction frees you from having to write the caching logic but does not provide the actual data store. This abstraction is materialized by the org.springframework.cache.Cache and org.springframework.cache.CacheManager interfaces.

Spring provides a few implementations of that abstraction: JDK java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentMap based caches, Ehcache 2.x, Gemfire cache, Caffeine, and JSR-107 compliant caches (such as Ehcache 3.x). See Plugging-in Different Back-end Caches for more information on plugging in other cache stores and providers.

The caching abstraction has no special handling for multi-threaded and multi-process environments, as such features are handled by the cache implementation. .

If you have a multi-process environment (that is, an application deployed on several nodes), you need to configure your cache provider accordingly. Depending on your use cases, a copy of the same data on several nodes can be enough. However, if you change the data during the course of the application, you may need to enable other propagation mechanisms.

Caching a particular item is a direct equivalent of the typical get-if-not-found-then- proceed-and-put-eventually code blocks found with programmatic cache interaction. No locks are applied, and several threads may try to load the same item concurrently. The same applies to eviction. If several threads are trying to update or evict data concurrently, you may use stale data. Certain cache providers offer advanced features in that area. See the documentation of your cache provider for more details.

To use the cache abstraction, you need to take care of two aspects:

  • Caching declaration: Identify the methods that need to be cached and their policy.

  • Cache configuration: The backing cache where the data is stored and from which it is read.

8.2. Declarative Annotation-based Caching

For caching declaration, Spring’s caching abstraction provides a set of Java annotations:

  • @Cacheable: Triggers cache population.

  • @CacheEvict: Triggers cache eviction.

  • @CachePut: Updates the cache without interfering with the method execution.

  • @Caching: Regroups multiple cache operations to be applied on a method.

  • @CacheConfig: Shares some common cache-related settings at class-level.

8.2.1. The @Cacheable Annotation

As the name implies, you can use @Cacheable to demarcate methods that are cacheable — that is, methods for which the result is stored in the cache so that, on subsequent invocations (with the same arguments), the value in the cache is returned without having to actually execute the method. In its simplest form, the annotation declaration requires the name of the cache associated with the annotated method, as the following example shows:

@Cacheable("books")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn) {...}

In the preceding snippet, the findBook method is associated with the cache named books. Each time the method is called, the cache is checked to see whether the invocation has already been executed and does not have to be repeated. While in most cases, only one cache is declared, the annotation lets multiple names be specified so that more than one cache is being used. In this case, each of the caches is checked before executing the method — if at least one cache is hit, the associated value is returned.

All the other caches that do not contain the value are also updated, even though the cached method was not actually executed.

The following example uses @Cacheable on the findBook method:

@Cacheable({"books", "isbns"})
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn) {...}
Default Key Generation

Since caches are essentially key-value stores, each invocation of a cached method needs to be translated into a suitable key for cache access. The caching abstraction uses a simple KeyGenerator based on the following algorithm:

  • If no params are given, return SimpleKey.EMPTY.

  • If only one param is given, return that instance.

  • If more the one param is given, return a SimpleKey that contains all parameters.

This approach works well for most use-cases, as long as parameters have natural keys and implement valid hashCode() and equals() methods. If that is not the case, you need to change the strategy.

To provide a different default key generator, you need to implement the org.springframework.cache.interceptor.KeyGenerator interface.

The default key generation strategy changed with the release of Spring 4.0. Earlier versions of Spring used a key generation strategy that, for multiple key parameters, considered only the hashCode() of parameters and not equals(). This could cause unexpected key collisions (see SPR-10237 for background). The new SimpleKeyGenerator uses a compound key for such scenarios.

If you want to keep using the previous key strategy, you can configure the deprecated org.springframework.cache.interceptor.DefaultKeyGenerator class or create a custom hash-based KeyGenerator implementation.

Custom Key Generation Declaration

Since caching is generic, the target methods are quite likely to have various signatures that cannot be readily mapped on top of the cache structure. This tends to become obvious when the target method has multiple arguments out of which only some are suitable for caching (while the rest are used only by the method logic). Consider the following example:

@Cacheable("books")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)

At first glance, while the two boolean arguments influence the way the book is found, they are no use for the cache. Furthermore, what if only one of the two is important while the other is not?

For such cases, the @Cacheable annotation lets you specify how the key is generated through its key attribute. You can use SpEL to pick the arguments of interest (or their nested properties), perform operations, or even invoke arbitrary methods without having to write any code or implement any interface. This is the recommended approach over the default generator, since methods tend to be quite different in signatures as the code base grows. While the default strategy might work for some methods, it rarely works for all methods.

The following examples ise various SpEL declarations (if you are not familiar with SpEL, do yourself a favor and read Spring Expression Language):

@Cacheable(cacheNames="books", key="#isbn")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)

@Cacheable(cacheNames="books", key="#isbn.rawNumber")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)

@Cacheable(cacheNames="books", key="T(someType).hash(#isbn)")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)

The preceding snippets show how easy it is to select a certain argument, one of its properties, or even an arbitrary (static) method.

If the algorithm responsible for generating the key is too specific or if it needs to be shared, you can define a custom keyGenerator on the operation. To do so, specify the name of the KeyGenerator bean implementation to use, as the following example shows:

@Cacheable(cacheNames="books", keyGenerator="myKeyGenerator")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)
The key and keyGenerator parameters are mutually exclusive and an operation that specifies both results in an exception.
Default Cache Resolution

The caching abstraction uses a simple CacheResolver that retrieves the caches defined at the operation level by using the configured CacheManager.

To provide a different default cache resolver, you need to implement the org.springframework.cache.interceptor.CacheResolver interface.

Custom Cache Resolution

The default cache resolution fits well for applications that work with a single CacheManager and have no complex cache resolution requirements.

For applications that work with several cache managers, you can set the cacheManager to use for each operation, as the following example shows:

@Cacheable(cacheNames="books", cacheManager="anotherCacheManager") (1)
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn) {...}
1 Specifying anotherCacheManager.

You can also replace the CacheResolver entirely in a fashion similar to that of replacing key generation. The resolution is requested for every cache operation, letting the implementation actually resolve the caches to use based on runtime arguments. The following example shows how to specify a CacheResolver:

@Cacheable(cacheResolver="runtimeCacheResolver") (1)
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn) {...}
1 Specifying the CacheResolver.

Since Spring 4.1, the value attribute of the cache annotations are no longer mandatory, since this particular information can be provided by the CacheResolver regardless of the content of the annotation.

Similarly to key and keyGenerator, the cacheManager and cacheResolver parameters are mutually exclusive, and an operation specifying both results in an exception. as a custom CacheManager is ignored by the CacheResolver implementation. This is probably not what you expect.

Synchronized Caching

In a multi-threaded environment, certain operations might be concurrently invoked for the same argument (typically on startup). By default, the cache abstraction does not lock anything, and the same value may be computed several times, defeating the purpose of caching.

For those particular cases, you can use the sync attribute to instruct the underlying cache provider to lock the cache entry while the value is being computed. As a result, only one thread is busy computing the value, while the others are blocked until the entry is updated in the cache. The following example shows how to use the sync attribute:

@Cacheable(cacheNames="foos", sync=true) (1)
public Foo executeExpensiveOperation(String id) {...}
1 Using the sync attribute.
This is an optional feature, and your favorite cache library may not support it. All CacheManager implementations provided by the core framework support it. See the documentation of your cache provider for more details.
Conditional Caching

Sometimes, a method might not be suitable for caching all the time (for example, it might depend on the given arguments). The cache annotations support such functionality through the condition parameter, which takes a SpEL expression that is evaluated to either true or false. If true, the method is cached. If not, it behaves as if the method is not cached (that is, the method is executed every time no matter what values are in the cache or what arguments are used). For example, the following method is cached only if the argument name has a length shorter than 32:

@Cacheable(cacheNames="book", condition="#name.length() < 32") (1)
public Book findBook(String name)
1 Setting a condition on @Cacheable.

In addition to the condition parameter, you can use the unless parameter to veto the adding of a value to the cache. Unlike condition, unless expressions are evaluated after the method has been called. To expand on the previous example, perhaps we only want to cache paperback books, as the following example does:

@Cacheable(cacheNames="book", condition="#name.length() < 32", unless="#result.hardback") (1)
public Book findBook(String name)
1 Using the unless attribute to block hardbacks.

The cache abstraction supports java.util.Optional, using its content as the cached value only if it is present. #result always refers to the business entity and never a supported wrapper, so the previous example can be rewritten as follows:

@Cacheable(cacheNames="book", condition="#name.length() < 32", unless="#result?.hardback")
public Optional<Book> findBook(String name)

Note that result still refers to Book and not Optional. As it might be null, we should use the safe navigation operator.

Available Caching SpEL Evaluation Context

Each SpEL expression evaluates against a dedicated context. In addition to the built-in parameters, the framework provides dedicated caching-related metadata, such as the argument names. The following table describes the items made available to the context so that you can use them for key and conditional computations:

Table 11. Cache SpEL available metadata
Name Location Description Example

methodName

Root object

The name of the method being invoked

#root.methodName

method

Root object

The method being invoked

#root.method.name

target

Root object

The target object being invoked

#root.target

targetClass

Root object

The class of the target being invoked

#root.targetClass

args

Root object

The arguments (as array) used for invoking the target

#root.args[0]

caches

Root object

Collection of caches against which the current method is executed

#root.caches[0].name

Argument name

Evaluation context

Name of any of the method arguments. If the names are not available (perhaps due to having no debug information), the argument names are also available under the #a<#arg> where #arg stands for the argument index (starting from 0).

#iban or #a0 (you can also use #p0 or #p<#arg> notation as an alias).

result

Evaluation context

The result of the method call (the value to be cached). Only available in unless expressions, cache put expressions (to compute the key), or cache evict expressions (when beforeInvocation is false). For supported wrappers (such as Optional), #result refers to the actual object, not the wrapper.

#result

8.2.2. The @CachePut Annotation

When the cache needs to be updated without interfering with the method execution, you can use the @CachePut annotation. That is, the method is always executed and its result is placed into the cache (according to the @CachePut options). It supports the same options as @Cacheable and should be used for cache population rather than method flow optimization. The following example uses the @CachePut annotation:

@CachePut(cacheNames="book", key="#isbn")
public Book updateBook(ISBN isbn, BookDescriptor descriptor)
Using @CachePut and @Cacheable annotations on the same method is generally strongly discouraged because they have different behaviors. While the latter causes the method execution to be skipped by using the cache, the former forces the execution in order to execute a cache update. This leads to unexpected behavior and, with the exception of specific corner-cases (such as annotations having conditions that exclude them from each other), such declarations should be avoided. Note also that such conditions should not rely on the result object (that is, the #result variable), as these are validated up-front to confirm the exclusion.

8.2.3. The @CacheEvict annotation

The cache abstraction allows not just population of a cache store but also eviction. This process is useful for removing stale or unused data from the cache. As opposed to @Cacheable, @CacheEvict demarcates methods that perform cache eviction (that is, methods that act as triggers for removing data from the cache). Similarly to its sibling, @CacheEvict requires specifying one or more caches that are affected by the action, allows a custom cache and key resolution or a condition to be specified, and features an extra parameter (allEntries) that indicates whether a cache-wide eviction needs to be performed rather than just an entry eviction (based on the key). The following example evicts all entries from the books cache:

@CacheEvict(cacheNames="books", allEntries=true) (1)
public void loadBooks(InputStream batch)
1 Using the allEntries attribute to evict all entries from the cache.

This option comes in handy when an entire cache region needs to be cleared out. Rather than evicting each entry (which would take a long time, since it is inefficient), all the entries are removed in one operation, as the preceding example shows. Note that the framework ignores any key specified in this scenario as it does not apply (the entire cache is evicted, not only one entry).

You can also indicate whether the eviction should occur after (the default) or before the method executes by using the beforeInvocation attribute. The former provides the same semantics as the rest of the annotations: Once the method completes successfully, an action (in this case, eviction) on the cache is executed. If the method does not execute (as it might be cached) or an exception is thrown, the eviction does not occur. The latter (beforeInvocation=true) causes the eviction to always occur before the method is invoked. This is useful in cases where the eviction does not need to be tied to the method outcome.

Note that void methods can be used with @CacheEvict - as the methods act as a trigger, the return values are ignored (as they do not interact with the cache). This is not the case with @Cacheable which adds or updates data into the cache and, thus, requires a result.

8.2.4. The @Caching Annotation

Sometimes, multiple annotations of the same type (such as @CacheEvict or @CachePut) need to be specified — for example, because the condition or the key expression is different between different caches. @Caching lets multiple nested @Cacheable, @CachePut, and @CacheEvict annotations be used on the same method. The following example uses two @CacheEvict annotations:

@Caching(evict = { @CacheEvict("primary"), @CacheEvict(cacheNames="secondary", key="#p0") })
public Book importBooks(String deposit, Date date)

8.2.5. The @CacheConfig annotation

So far, we have seen that caching operations offer many customization options and that you can set these options for each operation. However, some of the customization options can be tedious to configure if they apply to all operations of the class. For instance, specifying the name of the cache to use for every cache operation of the class can be replaced by a single class-level definition. This is where @CacheConfig comes into play. The following examples uses @CacheConfig to set the name of the cache:

@CacheConfig("books") (1)
public class BookRepositoryImpl implements BookRepository {

    @Cacheable
    public Book findBook(ISBN isbn) {...}
}
1 Using @CacheConfig to set the name of the cache.

@CacheConfig is a class-level annotation that allows sharing the cache names, the custom KeyGenerator, the custom CacheManager, and the custom CacheResolver. Placing this annotation on the class does not turn on any caching operation.

An operation-level customization always overrides a customization set on @CacheConfig. Therefore, this gives three levels of customizations for each cache operation:

  • Globally configured, available for CacheManager, KeyGenerator.

  • At the class level, using @CacheConfig.

  • At the operation level.

8.2.6. Enabling Caching Annotations

It is important to note that even though declaring the cache annotations does not automatically trigger their actions - like many things in Spring, the feature has to be declaratively enabled (which means if you ever suspect caching is to blame, you can disable it by removing only one configuration line rather than all the annotations in your code).

To enable caching annotations add the annotation @EnableCaching to one of your @Configuration classes:

@Configuration
@EnableCaching
public class AppConfig {
}

Alternatively, for XML configuration you can use the cache:annotation-driven element:

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

        <cache:annotation-driven/>
</beans>

Both the cache:annotation-driven element and the @EnableCaching annotation let you specify various options that influence the way the caching behavior is added to the application through AOP. The configuration is intentionally similar with that of @Transactional.

The default advice mode for processing caching annotations is proxy, which allows for interception of calls through the proxy only. Local calls within the same class cannot get intercepted that way. For a more advanced mode of interception, consider switching to aspectj mode in combination with compile-time or load-time weaving.
For more detail about advanced customizations (using Java configuration) that are required to implement CachingConfigurer, see the javadoc.
Table 12. Cache annotation settings
XML Attribute Annotation Attribute Default Description

cache-manager

N/A (see the CachingConfigurer javadoc)

cacheManager

The name of the cache manager to use. A default CacheResolver is initialized behind the scenes with this cache manager (or cacheManager if not set). For more fine-grained management of the cache resolution, consider setting the 'cache-resolver' attribute.

cache-resolver

N/A (see the CachingConfigurer javadoc)

A SimpleCacheResolver using the configured cacheManager.

The bean name of the CacheResolver that is to be used to resolve the backing caches. This attribute is not required and needs to be specified only as an alternative to the 'cache-manager' attribute.

key-generator

N/A (see the CachingConfigurer javadoc)

SimpleKeyGenerator

Name of the custom key generator to use.

error-handler

N/A (see the CachingConfigurer javadoc)

SimpleCacheErrorHandler

The name of the custom cache error handler to use. By default, any exception thrown during a cache related operation is thrown back at the client.

mode

mode

proxy

The default mode (proxy) processes annotated beans to be proxied by using Spring’s AOP framework (following proxy semantics, as discussed earlier, applying to method calls coming in through the proxy only). The alternative mode (aspectj) instead weaves the affected classes with Spring’s AspectJ caching aspect, modifying the target class byte code to apply to any kind of method call. AspectJ weaving requires spring-aspects.jar in the classpath as well as load-time weaving (or compile-time weaving) enabled. (See Spring configuration for details on how to set up load-time weaving.)

proxy-target-class

proxyTargetClass

false

Applies to proxy mode only. Controls what type of caching proxies are created for classes annotated with the @Cacheable or @CacheEvict annotations. If the proxy-target-class attribute is set to true, class-based proxies are created. If proxy-target-class is false or if the attribute is omitted, standard JDK interface-based proxies are created. (See Proxying Mechanisms for a detailed examination of the different proxy types.)

order

order

Ordered.LOWEST_PRECEDENCE

Defines the order of the cache advice that is applied to beans annotated with @Cacheable or @CacheEvict. (For more information about the rules related to ordering AOP advice, see Advice Ordering.) No specified ordering means that the AOP subsystem determines the order of the advice.

<cache:annotation-driven/> looks for @Cacheable/@CachePut/@CacheEvict/@Caching only on beans in the same application context in which it is defined. This means that, if you put <cache:annotation-driven/> in a WebApplicationContext for a DispatcherServlet, it checks for beans only in your controllers, not your services. See the MVC section for more information.
Method visibility and cache annotations

When you use proxies, you should apply the cache annotations only to methods with public visibility. If you do annotate protected, private, or package-visible methods with these annotations, no error is raised, but the annotated method does not exhibit the configured caching settings. Consider using AspectJ (see the rest of this section) if you need to annotate non-public methods, as it changes the bytecode itself.

Spring recommends that you only annotate concrete classes (and methods of concrete classes) with the @Cache* annotation, as opposed to annotating interfaces. You certainly can place the @Cache* annotation on an interface (or an interface method), but this works only as you would expect it to if you use interface-based proxies. The fact that Java annotations are not inherited from interfaces means that, if you use class-based proxies (proxy-target-class="true") or the weaving-based aspect (mode="aspectj"), the caching settings are not recognized by the proxying and weaving infrastructure, and the object is not wrapped in a caching proxy.
In proxy mode (the default), only external method calls coming in through the proxy are intercepted. This means that self-invocation (in effect, a method within the target object that calls another method of the target object) does not lead to actual caching at runtime even if the invoked method is marked with @Cacheable. Consider using the aspectj mode in this case. Also, the proxy must be fully initialized to provide the expected behavior, so you should not rely on this feature in your initialization code (that is, @PostConstruct).

8.2.7. Using Custom Annotations

Custom annotation and AspectJ

This feature works only with the proxy-based approach but can be enabled with a bit of extra effort by using AspectJ.

The spring-aspects module defines an aspect for the standard annotations only. If you have defined your own annotations, you also need to define an aspect for those. Check AnnotationCacheAspect for an example.

The caching abstraction lets you use your own annotations to identify what method triggers cache population or eviction. This is quite handy as a template mechanism, as it eliminates the need to duplicate cache annotation declarations, which is especially useful if the key or condition are specified or if the foreign imports (org.springframework) are not allowed in your code base. Similarly to the rest of the stereotype annotations, you can use @Cacheable, @CachePut, @CacheEvict, and @CacheConfig as meta-annotations (that is, annotations that can annotate other annotations). In the following example, we replace a common @Cacheable declaration with our own custom annotation:

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target({ElementType.METHOD})
@Cacheable(cacheNames="books", key="#isbn")
public @interface SlowService {
}

In the preceding example, we have defined our own SlowService annotation, which itself is annotated with @Cacheable. Now we can replace the following code:

@Cacheable(cacheNames="books", key="#isbn")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)

The following example shows the custom annotation with which we can replace the preceding code:

@SlowService
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)

Even though @SlowService is not a Spring annotation, the container automatically picks up its declaration at runtime and understands its meaning. Note that, as mentioned earlier, annotation-driven behavior needs to be enabled.

8.3. JCache (JSR-107) Annotations

Since version 4.1, Spring’s caching abstraction fully supports the JCache standard annotations: @CacheResult, @CachePut, @CacheRemove, and @CacheRemoveAll as well as the @CacheDefaults, @CacheKey, and @CacheValue companions. You can use these annotations even without migrating your cache store to JSR-107. The internal implementation uses Spring’s caching abstraction and provides default CacheResolver and KeyGenerator implementations that are compliant with the specification. In other words, if you are already using Spring’s caching abstraction, you can switch to these standard annotations without changing your cache storage (or configuration, for that matter).

8.3.1. Feature Summary

For those who are familiar with Spring’s caching annotations, the following table describes the main differences between the Spring annotations and the JSR-107 counterpart:

Table 13. Spring vs. JSR-107 caching annotations
Spring JSR-107 Remark

@Cacheable

@CacheResult

Fairly similar. @CacheResult can cache specific exceptions and force the execution of the method regardless of the content of the cache.

@CachePut

@CachePut

While Spring updates the cache with the result of the method invocation, JCache requires that it be passed it as an argument that is annotated with @CacheValue. Due to this difference, JCache allows updating the cache before or after the actual method invocation.

@CacheEvict

@CacheRemove

Fairly similar. @CacheRemove supports conditional eviction when the method invocation results in an exception.

@CacheEvict(allEntries=true)

@CacheRemoveAll

See @CacheRemove.

@CacheConfig

@CacheDefaults

Lets you configure the same concepts, in a similar fashion.

JCache has the notion of javax.cache.annotation.CacheResolver, which is identical to the Spring’s CacheResolver interface, except that JCache supports only a single cache. By default, a simple implementation retrieves the cache to use based on the name declared on the annotation. It should be noted that, if no cache name is specified on the annotation, a default is automatically generated. See the javadoc of @CacheResult#cacheName() for more information.

CacheResolver instances are retrieved by a CacheResolverFactory. It is possible to customize the factory for each cache operation, as the following example shows:

@CacheResult(cacheNames="books", cacheResolverFactory=MyCacheResolverFactory.class) (1)
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn)
1 Customizing the factory for this operation.
For all referenced classes, Spring tries to locate a bean with the given type. If more than one match exists, a new instance is created and can use the regular bean lifecycle callbacks, such as dependency injection.

Keys are generated by a javax.cache.annotation.CacheKeyGenerator that serves the same purpose as Spring’s KeyGenerator. By default, all method arguments are taken into account, unless at least one parameter is annotated with @CacheKey. This is similar to Spring’s custom key generation declaration. For instance, the following are identical operations, one using Spring’s abstraction and the other using JCache:

@Cacheable(cacheNames="books", key="#isbn")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)

@CacheResult(cacheName="books")
public Book findBook(@CacheKey ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)

You can also specify the CacheKeyResolver on the operation, similar to how you can specify the CacheResolverFactory.

JCache can manage exceptions thrown by annotated methods. This can prevent an update of the cache, but it can also cache the exception as an indicator of the failure instead of calling the method again. Assume that InvalidIsbnNotFoundException is thrown if the structure of the ISBN is invalid. This is a permanent failure (no book could ever be retrieved with such a parameter). The following caches the exception so that further calls with the same, invalid, ISBN throw the cached exception directly instead of invoking the method again:

@CacheResult(cacheName="books", exceptionCacheName="failures"
            cachedExceptions = InvalidIsbnNotFoundException.class)
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn)

8.3.2. Enabling JSR-107 Support

You need do nothing specific to enable the JSR-107 support alongside Spring’s declarative annotation support. Both @EnableCaching and the cache:annotation-driven element automatically enable the JCache support if both the JSR-107 API and the spring-context-support module are present in the classpath.

Depending on your use case, the choice is basically yours. You can even mix and match services by using the JSR-107 API on some and using Spring’s own annotations on others. However, if these services impact the same caches, you should use a consistent and identical key generation implementation.

8.4. Declarative XML-based Caching

If annotations are not an option (perhaps due to having no access to the sources or no external code), you can use XML for declarative caching. So, instead of annotating the methods for caching, you can specify the target method and the caching directives externally (similar to the declarative transaction management advice). The example from the previous section can be translated into the following example:

<!-- the service we want to make cacheable -->
<bean id="bookService" class="x.y.service.DefaultBookService"/>

<!-- cache definitions -->
<cache:advice id="cacheAdvice" cache-manager="cacheManager">
    <cache:caching cache="books">
        <cache:cacheable method="findBook" key="#isbn"/>
        <cache:cache-evict method="loadBooks" all-entries="true"/>
    </cache:caching>
</cache:advice>

<!-- apply the cacheable behavior to all BookService interfaces -->
<aop:config>
    <aop:advisor advice-ref="cacheAdvice" pointcut="execution(* x.y.BookService.*(..))"/>
</aop:config>

<!-- cache manager definition omitted -->

In the preceding configuration, the bookService is made cacheable. The caching semantics to apply are encapsulated in the cache:advice definition, which causes the findBooks method to be used for putting data into the cache and the loadBooks method for evicting data. Both definitions work against the books cache.

The aop:config definition applies the cache advice to the appropriate points in the program by using the AspectJ pointcut expression (more information is available in Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring). In the preceding example, all methods from the BookService are considered and the cache advice is applied to them.

The declarative XML caching supports all of the annotation-based model, so moving between the two should be fairly easy. Furthermore, both can be used inside the same application. The XML-based approach does not touch the target code. However, it is inherently more verbose. When dealing with classes that have overloaded methods that are targeted for caching, identifying the proper methods does take an extra effort, since the method argument is not a good discriminator. In these cases, you can use the AspectJ pointcut to cherry pick the target methods and apply the appropriate caching functionality. However, through XML, it is easier to apply package or group or interface-wide caching (again, due to the AspectJ pointcut) and to create template-like definitions (as we did in the preceding example by defining the target cache through the cache:definitions cache attribute).

8.5. Configuring the Cache Storage

The cache abstraction provides several storage integration options. To use them, you need to declare an appropriate CacheManager (an entity that controls and manages Cache instances and that can be used to retrieve these for storage).

8.5.1. JDK ConcurrentMap-based Cache

The JDK-based Cache implementation resides under org.springframework.cache.concurrent package. It lets you use ConcurrentHashMap as a backing Cache store. The following example shows how to configure two caches:

<!-- simple cache manager -->
<bean id="cacheManager" class="org.springframework.cache.support.SimpleCacheManager">
    <property name="caches">
        <set>
            <bean class="org.springframework.cache.concurrent.ConcurrentMapCacheFactoryBean" p:name="default"/>
            <bean class="org.springframework.cache.concurrent.ConcurrentMapCacheFactoryBean" p:name="books"/>
        </set>
    </property>
</bean>

The preceding snippet uses the SimpleCacheManager to create a CacheManager for the two nested ConcurrentMapCache instances named default and books. Note that the names are configured directly for each cache.

As the cache is created by the application, it is bound to its lifecycle, making it suitable for basic use cases, tests, or simple applications. The cache scales well and is very fast, but it does not provide any management, persistence capabilities, or eviction contracts.

8.5.2. Ehcache-based Cache

Ehcache 3.x is fully JSR-107 compliant and no dedicated support is required for it.

The Ehcache 2.x implementation is located in the org.springframework.cache.ehcache package. Again, to use it, you need to declare the appropriate CacheManager. The following example shows how to do so:

<bean id="cacheManager"
        class="org.springframework.cache.ehcache.EhCacheCacheManager" p:cache-manager-ref="ehcache"/>

<!-- EhCache library setup -->
<bean id="ehcache"
        class="org.springframework.cache.ehcache.EhCacheManagerFactoryBean" p:config-location="ehcache.xml"/>

This setup bootstraps the ehcache library inside the Spring IoC (through the ehcache bean), which is then wired into the dedicated CacheManager implementation. Note that the entire Ehcache-specific configuration is read from ehcache.xml.

8.5.3. Caffeine Cache

Caffeine is a Java 8 rewrite of Guava’s cache, and its implementation is located in the org.springframework.cache.caffeine package and provides access to several features of Caffeine.

The following example configures a CacheManager that creates the cache on demand:

<bean id="cacheManager"
        class="org.springframework.cache.caffeine.CaffeineCacheManager"/>

You can also provide the caches to use explicitly. In that case, only those are made available by the manager. The following example shows how to do so:

<bean id="cacheManager" class="org.springframework.cache.caffeine.CaffeineCacheManager">
    <property name="caches">
        <set>
            <value>default</value>
            <value>books</value>
        </set>
    </property>
</bean>

The Caffeine CacheManager also supports custom Caffeine and CacheLoader. See the Caffeine documentation for more information about those.

8.5.4. GemFire-based Cache

GemFire is a memory-oriented, disk-backed, elastically scalable, continuously available, active (with built-in pattern-based subscription notifications), globally replicated database and provides fully-featured edge caching. For further information on how to use GemFire as a CacheManager (and more), see the Spring Data GemFire reference documentation.

8.5.5. JSR-107 Cache

Spring’s caching abstraction can also use JSR-107-compliant caches. The JCache implementation is located in the org.springframework.cache.jcache package.

Again, to use it, you need to declare the appropriate CacheManager. The following example shows how to do so:

<bean id="cacheManager"
        class="org.springframework.cache.jcache.JCacheCacheManager"
        p:cache-manager-ref="jCacheManager"/>

<!-- JSR-107 cache manager setup  -->
<bean id="jCacheManager" .../>

8.5.6. Dealing with Caches without a Backing Store

Sometimes, when switching environments or doing testing, you might have cache declarations without having an actual backing cache configured. As this is an invalid configuration, an exception is thrown at runtime, since the caching infrastructure is unable to find a suitable store. In situations like this, rather than removing the cache declarations (which can prove tedious), you can wire in a simple dummy cache that performs no caching — that is, it forces the cached methods to be executed every time. The following example shows how to do so:

<bean id="cacheManager" class="org.springframework.cache.support.CompositeCacheManager">
    <property name="cacheManagers">
        <list>
            <ref bean="jdkCache"/>
            <ref bean="gemfireCache"/>
        </list>
    </property>
    <property name="fallbackToNoOpCache" value="true"/>
</bean>

The CompositeCacheManager in the preceding chains multiple CacheManager instances and, through the fallbackToNoOpCache flag, adds a no-op cache for all the definitions not handled by the configured cache managers. That is, every cache definition not found in either jdkCache or gemfireCache (configured earlier in the example) is handled by the no-op cache, which does not store any information, causing the target method to be executed every time.

8.6. Plugging-in Different Back-end Caches

Clearly, there are plenty of caching products out there that you can use as a backing store. To plug them in, you need to provide a CacheManager and a Cache implementation, since, unfortunately, there is no available standard that we can use instead. This may sound harder than it is, since, in practice, the classes tend to be simple adapters that map the caching abstraction framework on top of the storage API, as the ehcache classes do. Most CacheManager classes can use the classes in the org.springframework.cache.support package (such as AbstractCacheManager which takes care of the boiler-plate code, leaving only the actual mapping to be completed). We hope that, in time, the libraries that provide integration with Spring can fill in this small configuration gap.

8.7. How can I Set the TTL/TTI/Eviction policy/XXX feature?

Directly through your cache provider. The cache abstraction is an abstraction, not a cache implementation. The solution you use might support various data policies and different topologies that other solutions do not support (for example, the JDK ConcurrentHashMap — exposing that in the cache abstraction would be useless because there would no backing support). Such functionality should be controlled directly through the backing cache (when configuring it) or through its native API.

9. Appendix

9.1. XML Schemas

This part of the appendix lists XML schemas related to integration technologies.

9.1.1. The jee Schema

The jee elements deal with issues related to Java EE (Java Enterprise Edition) configuration, such as looking up a JNDI object and defining EJB references.

To use the elements in the jee schema, you need to have the following preamble at the top of your Spring XML configuration file. The text in the following snippet references the correct schema so that the elements in the jee namespace are available to you:

<?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:jee="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee" xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee https://www.springframework.org/schema/jee/spring-jee.xsd">

    <!-- bean definitions here -->
</beans>
<jee:jndi-lookup/> (simple)

The following example shows how to use JNDI to look up a data source without the jee schema:

<bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">
    <property name="jndiName" value="jdbc/MyDataSource"/>
</bean>
<bean id="userDao" class="com.foo.JdbcUserDao">
    <!-- Spring will do the cast automatically (as usual) -->
    <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
</bean>

The following example shows how to use JNDI to look up a data source with the jee schema:

<jee:jndi-lookup id="dataSource" jndi-name="jdbc/MyDataSource"/>

<bean id="userDao" class="com.foo.JdbcUserDao">
    <!-- Spring will do the cast automatically (as usual) -->
    <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
</bean>
<jee:jndi-lookup/> (with Single JNDI Environment Setting)

The following example shows how to use JNDI to look up an environment variable without jee:

<bean id="simple" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">
    <property name="jndiName" value="jdbc/MyDataSource"/>
    <property name="jndiEnvironment">
        <props>
            <prop key="ping">pong</prop>
        </props>
    </property>
</bean>

The following example shows how to use JNDI to look up an environment variable with jee:

<jee:jndi-lookup id="simple" jndi-name="jdbc/MyDataSource">
    <jee:environment>ping=pong</jee:environment>
</jee:jndi-lookup>
<jee:jndi-lookup/> (with Multiple JNDI Environment Settings)

The following example shows how to use JNDI to look up multiple environment variables without jee:

<bean id="simple" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">
    <property name="jndiName" value="jdbc/MyDataSource"/>
    <property name="jndiEnvironment">
        <props>
            <prop key="sing">song</prop>
            <prop key="ping">pong</prop>
        </props>
    </property>
</bean>

The following example shows how to use JNDI to look up multiple environment variables with jee:

<jee:jndi-lookup id="simple" jndi-name="jdbc/MyDataSource">
    <!-- newline-separated, key-value pairs for the environment (standard Properties format) -->
    <jee:environment>
        sing=song
        ping=pong
    </jee:environment>
</jee:jndi-lookup>
<jee:jndi-lookup/> (Complex)

The following example shows how to use JNDI to look up a data source and a number of different properties without jee:

<bean id="simple" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">
    <property name="jndiName" value="jdbc/MyDataSource"/>
    <property name="cache" value="true"/>
    <property name="resourceRef" value="true"/>
    <property name="lookupOnStartup" value="false"/>
    <property name="expectedType" value="com.myapp.DefaultThing"/>
    <property name="proxyInterface" value="com.myapp.Thing"/>
</bean>

The following example shows how to use JNDI to look up a data source and a number of different properties with jee:

<jee:jndi-lookup id="simple"
        jndi-name="jdbc/MyDataSource"
        cache="true"
        resource-ref="true"
        lookup-on-startup="false"
        expected-type="com.myapp.DefaultThing"
        proxy-interface="com.myapp.Thing"/>
<jee:local-slsb/> (Simple)

The <jee:local-slsb/> element configures a reference to a local EJB Stateless Session Bean.

The following example shows how to configures a reference to a local EJB Stateless Session Bean without jee:

<bean id="simple"
        class="org.springframework.ejb.access.LocalStatelessSessionProxyFactoryBean">
    <property name="jndiName" value="ejb/RentalServiceBean"/>
    <property name="businessInterface" value="com.foo.service.RentalService"/>
</bean>

The following example shows how to configures a reference to a local EJB Stateless Session Bean with jee:

<jee:local-slsb id="simpleSlsb" jndi-name="ejb/RentalServiceBean"
        business-interface="com.foo.service.RentalService"/>
<jee:local-slsb/> (Complex)

The <jee:local-slsb/> element configures a reference to a local EJB Stateless Session Bean.

The following example shows how to configures a reference to a local EJB Stateless Session Bean and a number of properties without jee:

<bean id="complexLocalEjb"
        class="org.springframework.ejb.access.LocalStatelessSessionProxyFactoryBean">
    <property name="jndiName" value="ejb/RentalServiceBean"/>
    <property name="businessInterface" value="com.example.service.RentalService"/>
    <property name="cacheHome" value="true"/>
    <property name="lookupHomeOnStartup" value="true"/>
    <property name="resourceRef" value="true"/>
</bean>

The following example shows how to configures a reference to a local EJB Stateless Session Bean and a number of properties with jee:

<jee:local-slsb id="complexLocalEjb"
        jndi-name="ejb/RentalServiceBean"
        business-interface="com.foo.service.RentalService"
        cache-home="true"
        lookup-home-on-startup="true"
        resource-ref="true">
<jee:remote-slsb/>

The <jee:remote-slsb/> element configures a reference to a remote EJB Stateless Session Bean.

The following example shows how to configures a reference to a remote EJB Stateless Session Bean without jee:

<bean id="complexRemoteEjb"
        class="org.springframework.ejb.access.SimpleRemoteStatelessSessionProxyFactoryBean">
    <property name="jndiName" value="ejb/MyRemoteBean"/>
    <property name="businessInterface" value="com.foo.service.RentalService"/>
    <property name="cacheHome" value="true"/>
    <property name="lookupHomeOnStartup" value="true"/>
    <property name="resourceRef" value="true"/>
    <property name="homeInterface" value="com.foo.service.RentalService"/>
    <property name="refreshHomeOnConnectFailure" value="true"/>
</bean>

The following example shows how to configures a reference to a remote EJB Stateless Session Bean with jee:

<jee:remote-slsb id="complexRemoteEjb"
        jndi-name="ejb/MyRemoteBean"
        business-interface="com.foo.service.RentalService"
        cache-home="true"
        lookup-home-on-startup="true"
        resource-ref="true"
        home-interface="com.foo.service.RentalService"
        refresh-home-on-connect-failure="true">

9.1.2. The jms Schema

The jms elements deal with configuring JMS-related beans, such as Spring’s Message Listener Containers. These elements are detailed in the section of the JMS chapter entitled JMS Namespace Support. See that chapter for full details on this support and the jms elements themselves.

In the interest of completeness, to use the elements in the jms schema, you need to have the following preamble at the top of your Spring XML configuration file. The text in the following snippet references the correct schema so that the elements in the jms namespace are available to you:

<?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:jms="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jms" xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/jms https://www.springframework.org/schema/jms/spring-jms.xsd">

    <!-- bean definitions here -->
</beans>

9.1.3. Using <context:mbean-export/>

This element is detailed in Configuring Annotation-based MBean Export.

9.1.4. The cache Schema

You can use the cache elements to enable support for Spring’s @CacheEvict, @CachePut, and @Caching annotations. It it also supports declarative XML-based caching. See Enabling Caching Annotations and Declarative XML-based Caching for details.

To use the elements in the cache schema, you need to have the following preamble at the top of your Spring XML configuration file. The text in the following snippet references the correct schema so that the elements in the cache namespace are available to you:

<?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:cache="http://www.springframework.org/schema/cache" xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/cache https://www.springframework.org/schema/cache/spring-cache.xsd">

    <!-- bean definitions here -->
</beans>