Spring Framework 3.2.5.RELEASE Reference Documentation

Spring Framework Reference
Documentation
Authors
Rod Johnson, Juergen Hoeller, Keith Donald, Colin Sampaleanu, Rob Harrop, Thomas
Risberg, Alef Arendsen, Darren Davison, Dmitriy Kopylenko, Mark Pollack, Thierry
Templier, Erwin Vervaet, Portia Tung, Ben Hale, Adrian Colyer, John Lewis, Costin Leau,
Mark Fisher, Sam Brannen, Ramnivas Laddad, Arjen Poutsma, Chris Beams, Tareq
Abedrabbo, Andy Clement, Dave Syer, Oliver Gierke, Rossen Stoyanchev, Phillip Webb
3.2.5.RELEASE
Copyright 2004-2013
Copies of this document may be made for your own use and for distribution to others, provided that
you do not charge any fee for such copies and further provided that each copy contains this
Copyright Notice, whether distributed in print or electronically.
Table of Contents
I. Overview of Spring Framework

1. Introduction to Spring Framework
1.1. Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control
1.2. Modules
1.2.1. Core Container

1.2.2. Data Access/Integration
1.2.3. Web
1.2.4. AOP and Instrumentation
1.2.5. Test
1.3. Usage scenarios
1.3.1. Dependency Management and Naming Conventions

Spring Dependencies and Depending on Spring
Maven Dependency Management
Ivy Dependency Management
1.3.2. Logging
Not Using Commons Logging
Using SLF4J
Using Log4J
II. What's New in Spring 3

2. New Features and Enhancements in Spring
Framework 3.0
2.1. Java 5
2.2. Improved documentation
2.3. New articles and tutorials
2.4. New module organization and build system
2.5. Overview of new features
2.5.1. Core APIs updated for Java 5

2.5.2. Spring Expression Language
2.5.3. The Inversion of Control (IoC) container
Java based bean metadata
Defining bean metadata within components
2.5.4. General purpose type conversion system and field formatting
system
2.5.5. The Data Tier
2.5.6. The Web Tier
2.5.6. The Web Tier

Comprehensive REST support
@MVC additions
2.5.7. Declarative model validation
2.5.8. Early support for Java EE 6
2.5.9. Support for embedded databases

Framework 3.1
3.1. Cache Abstraction
3.2. Bean Definition Profiles
3.3. Environment Abstraction
3.4. PropertySource Abstraction
3.5. Code equivalents for Spring's XML namespaces
3.6. Support for Hibernate 4.x
3.7. TestContext framework support for @Configuration
classes and bean definition profiles
3.8. c: namespace for more concise constructor injection
3.9. Support for injection against non-standard JavaBeans
setters
3.10. Support for Servlet 3 code-based configuration of
Servlet Container
3.11. Support for Servlet 3 MultipartResolver
3.12. JPA EntityManagerFactory bootstrapping without
persistence.xml
3.13. New HandlerMethod-based Support Classes For
Annotated Controller Processing
3.14. "consumes" and "produces" conditions in
@RequestMapping
3.15. Flash Attributes and RedirectAttributes

3.16. URI Template Variable Enhancements
3.17. @Valid On @RequestBody Controller Method
Arguments
3.18. @RequestPart Annotation On Controller Method
Arguments
3.19. UriComponentsBuilder and UriComponents

Framework 3.2
4.1. Support for Servlet 3 based asynchronous request
processing
4.2. Spring MVC Test framework
4.3. Content negotiation improvements
4.4. @ControllerAdvice annotation
4.5. Matrix variables
4.6. Abstract base class for code-based Servlet 3+
container initialization
4.7. ResponseEntityExceptionHandler class
4.8. Support for generic types in the RestTemplate and in
@RequestBody arguments
4.9. Jackson JSON 2 and related improvements
4.10. Tiles 3
4.11. @RequestBody improvements
4.12. HTTP PATCH method

4.13. Excluded patterns in mapped interceptors
4.14. Using meta-annotations for injection points and for
bean definition methods
4.15. Initial support for JCache 0.5
4.16. Support for @DateTimeFormat without Joda Time
4.17. Global date & time formatting
4.18. New Testing Features
4.19. Concurrency refinements across the framework
4.20. New Gradle-based build and move to GitHub
4.21. Refined Java SE 7 / OpenJDK 7 support
III. Core Technologies

5. The IoC container
5.1. Introduction to the Spring IoC container and beans
5.2. Container overview
5.2.1. Configuration metadata

5.2.2. Instantiating a container
Composing XML-based configuration metadata
5.2.3. Using the container
5.3. Bean overview
5.3.1. Naming beans

Aliasing a bean outside the bean definition
5.3.2. Instantiating beans
Instantiation with a constructor
Instantiation with a static factory method
Instantiation using an instance factory method
5.4. Dependencies
5.4.1. Dependency injection

Constructor-based dependency injection
Setter-based dependency injection
Dependency resolution process
Examples of dependency injection
5.4.2. Dependencies and configuration in detail
Straight values (primitives, Strings, and so on)
References to other beans (collaborators)
Inner beans
Collections
Null and empty string values
XML shortcut with the p-namespace
XML shortcut with the c-namespace
Compound property names
5.4.3. Using depends-on
5.4.4. Lazy-initialized beans
5.4.5. Autowiring collaborators
Limitations and disadvantages of autowiring
Excluding a bean from autowiring
5.4.6. Method injection
Lookup method injection
Arbitrary method replacement
5.5. Bean scopes
5.5.1. The singleton scope

5.5.2. The prototype scope
5.5.3. Singleton beans with prototype-bean dependencies
5.5.4. Request, session, and global session scopes
Initial web configuration
Request scope
Session scope
Global session scope
Scoped beans as dependencies
5.5.5. Custom scopes
Creating a custom scope
Using a custom scope
5.6. Customizing the nature of a bean
5.6.1. Lifecycle callbacks

Initialization callbacks
Destruction callbacks
Default initialization and destroy methods
Combining lifecycle mechanisms
Startup and shutdown callbacks
Shutting down the Spring IoC container gracefully in non-web
applications
5.6.2. ApplicationContextAware and BeanNameAware
5.6.3. Other Aware interfaces
5.7. Bean definition inheritance

5.8. Container Extension Points
5.8.1. Customizing beans using a BeanPostProcessor

Example: Hello World, BeanPostProcessor-style
Example: The RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor
5.8.2. Customizing configuration metadata with a
BeanFactoryPostProcessor
Example: the PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer
Example: the PropertyOverrideConfigurer
5.8.3. Customizing instantiation logic with a FactoryBean
5.9. Annotation-based container configuration
5.9.1. @Required
5.9.2. @Autowired
5.9.3. Fine-tuning annotation-based autowiring with qualifiers
5.9.4. CustomAutowireConfigurer
5.9.5. @Resource
5.9.6. @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy
5.10. Classpath scanning and managed components
5.10.1. @Component and further stereotype annotations

5.10.2. Automatically detecting classes and registering bean definitions
5.10.3. Using filters to customize scanning
5.10.4. Defining bean metadata within components
5.10.5. Naming autodetected components
5.10.6. Providing a scope for autodetected components
5.10.7. Providing qualifier metadata with annotations
5.11. Using JSR 330 Standard Annotations
5.11.1. Dependency Injection with @Inject and @Named

5.11.2. @Named: a standard equivalent to the @Component annotation
5.11.3. Limitations of the standard approach
5.12. Java-based container configuration
5.12.1. Basic concepts: @Bean and @Configuration

5.12.2. Instantiating the Spring container using
AnnotationConfigApplicationContext
Simple construction
Building the container programmatically using
register(Class<?>...)
Enabling component scanning with scan(String...)
Support for web applications with
AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext
5.12.3. Using the @Bean annotation
Declaring a bean
Receiving lifecycle callbacks
Specifying bean scope
Customizing bean naming
Bean aliasing
5.12.4. Using the @Configuration annotation
Injecting inter-bean dependencies
Further information about how Java-based configuration works
internally
5.12.5. Composing Java-based configurations
Using the @Import annotation
Combining Java and XML configuration
5.13. Registering a LoadTimeWeaver

5.14. Additional Capabilities of the ApplicationContext
5.14.1. Internationalization using MessageSource
5.14.2. Standard and Custom Events
5.14.3. Convenient access to low-level resources
5.14.4. Convenient ApplicationContext instantiation for web
applications
5.14.5. Deploying a Spring ApplicationContext as a J2EE RAR file
5.15. The BeanFactory
5.15.1. BeanFactory or ApplicationContext?

5.15.2. Glue code and the evil singleton
6. Resources
6.1. Introduction
6.2. The Resource interface
6.3. Built-in Resource implementations
6.3.1. UrlResource
6.3.2. ClassPathResource
6.3.3. FileSystemResource
6.3.4. ServletContextResource
6.3.5. InputStreamResource
6.3.6. ByteArrayResource
6.4. The ResourceLoader

6.5. The ResourceLoaderAware interface
6.6. Resources as dependencies
6.7. Application contexts and Resource paths
6.7.1. Constructing application contexts

Constructing ClassPathXmlApplicationContext instances shortcuts
6.7.2. Wildcards in application context constructor resource paths
Ant-style Patterns
The classpath*: prefix
Other notes relating to wildcards
6.7.3. FileSystemResource caveats
7. Validation, Data Binding, and Type Conversion

7.1. Introduction
7.2. Validation using Spring's Validator interface
7.3. Resolving codes to error messages
7.4. Bean manipulation and the BeanWrapper
7.4.1. Setting and getting basic and nested properties

7.4.2. Built-in PropertyEditor implementations
Registering additional custom PropertyEditors
7.5. Spring 3 Type Conversion
7.5.1. Converter SPI

7.5.2. ConverterFactory
7.5.3. GenericConverter
ConditionalGenericConverter
7.5.4. ConversionService API
7.5.5. Configuring a ConversionService
7.5.6. Using a ConversionService programmatically
7.6. Spring 3 Field Formatting
7.6.1. Formatter SPI

7.6.2. Annotation-driven Formatting
Format Annotation API
7.6.3. FormatterRegistry SPI
7.6.4. FormatterRegistrar SPI
7.6.5. Configuring Formatting in Spring MVC
7.7. Configuring a global date & time format

7.8. Spring 3 Validation
7.8.1. Overview of the JSR-303 Bean Validation API

7.8.2. Configuring a Bean Validation Implementation
Injecting a Validator
Configuring Custom Constraints
Additional Configuration Options
7.8.3. Configuring a DataBinder
7.8.4. Spring MVC 3 Validation
Triggering @Controller Input Validation
Configuring a Validator for use by Spring MVC
Configuring a JSR-303 Validator for use by Spring MVC
8. Spring Expression Language (SpEL)
8.1. Introduction
8.2. Feature Overview
8.3. Expression Evaluation using Spring's Expression
Interface
8.3.1. The EvaluationContext interface
Type Conversion
8.4. Expression support for defining bean definitions

8.4.1. XML based configuration
8.4.2. Annotation-based configuration
8.5. Language Reference
8.5.1. Literal expressions

8.5.2. Properties, Arrays, Lists, Maps, Indexers
8.5.3. Inline lists
8.5.4. Array construction
8.5.5. Methods
8.5.6. Operators
Relational operators
Logical operators
Mathematical operators
8.5.7. Assignment
8.5.8. Types
8.5.9. Constructors
8.5.10. Variables
The #this and #root variables
8.5.11. Functions
8.5.12. Bean references
8.5.13. Ternary Operator (If-Then-Else)
8.5.14. The Elvis Operator
8.5.15. Safe Navigation operator
8.5.16. Collection Selection
8.5.17. Collection Projection
8.5.18. Expression templating
8.6. Classes used in the examples
9. Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring

9.1. Introduction
9.1.1. AOP concepts

9.1.2. Spring AOP capabilities and goals
9.1.3. AOP Proxies
9.2. @AspectJ support
9.2.1. Enabling @AspectJ Support

Enabling @AspectJ Support with Java configuration
Enabling @AspectJ Support with XML configuration
9.2.2. Declaring an aspect
9.2.3. Declaring a pointcut
Supported Pointcut Designators
Combining pointcut expressions
Sharing common pointcut definitions
Examples
Writing good pointcuts
9.2.4. Declaring advice
Before advice
After returning advice
After throwing advice
After (finally) advice
Around advice
Advice parameters
Advice ordering
9.2.5. Introductions
9.2.6. Aspect instantiation models
9.2.7. Example
9.3. Schema-based AOP support

9.3.1. Declaring an aspect
9.3.2. Declaring a pointcut
9.3.3. Declaring advice
Before advice
Around advice
Advice parameters
Advice ordering
Advice ordering
9.3.4. Introductions
9.3.5. Aspect instantiation models
9.3.6. Advisors
9.3.7. Example
9.4. Choosing which AOP declaration style to use

9.4.1. Spring AOP or full AspectJ?
9.4.2. @AspectJ or XML for Spring AOP?
9.5. Mixing aspect types

9.6. Proxying mechanisms
9.6.1. Understanding AOP proxies
9.7. Programmatic creation of @AspectJ Proxies

9.8. Using AspectJ with Spring applications
9.8.1. Using AspectJ to dependency inject domain objects with Spring

Unit testing @Configurable objects
Working with multiple application contexts
9.8.2. Other Spring aspects for AspectJ
9.8.3. Configuring AspectJ aspects using Spring IoC
9.8.4. Load-time weaving with AspectJ in the Spring Framework
A first example
Aspects
'META-INF/aop.xml'
Required libraries (JARS)
Spring configuration
Environment-specific configuration
9.9. Further Resources
10. Spring AOP APIs

10.1. Introduction
10.2. Pointcut API in Spring
10.2.1. Concepts
10.2.2. Operations on pointcuts
10.2.3. AspectJ expression pointcuts
10.2.4. Convenience pointcut implementations
Static pointcuts
Dynamic pointcuts
10.2.5. Pointcut superclasses
10.2.6. Custom pointcuts
10.3. Advice API in Spring
10.3.1. Advice lifecycles

10.3.2. Advice types in Spring
Interception around advice
Before advice
Throws advice
After Returning advice
Introduction advice
10.4. Advisor API in Spring

10.5. Using the ProxyFactoryBean to create AOP proxies
10.5.1. Basics
10.5.2. JavaBean properties
10.5.3. JDK- and CGLIB-based proxies
10.5.4. Proxying interfaces
10.5.5. Proxying classes
10.5.6. Using 'global' advisors
10.6. Concise proxy definitions

10.7. Creating AOP proxies programmatically with the
ProxyFactory
10.8. Manipulating advised objects
10.9. Using the "auto-proxy" facility
10.9.1. Autoproxy bean definitions

BeanNameAutoProxyCreator
DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator
AbstractAdvisorAutoProxyCreator
10.9.2. Using metadata-driven auto-proxying
10.10. Using TargetSources
10.10.1. Hot swappable target sources

10.10.2. Pooling target sources
10.10.2. Pooling target sources

10.10.3. Prototype target sources
10.10.4. ThreadLocal target sources
10.11. Defining new Advice types

10.12. Further resources
11. Testing
11.1. Introduction to Spring Testing
11.2. Unit Testing
11.2.1. Mock Objects

Environment
JNDI
Servlet API
Portlet API
11.2.2. Unit Testing support Classes
General utilities
Spring MVC
11.3. Integration Testing
11.3.1. Overview
11.3.2. Goals of Integration Testing
Context management and caching
Dependency Injection of test fixtures
Transaction management
Support classes for integration testing
11.3.3. JDBC Testing Support
11.3.4. Annotations
Spring Testing Annotations
Standard Annotation Support
Spring JUnit Testing Annotations
11.3.5. Spring TestContext Framework
Key abstractions
Context management
Dependency injection of test fixtures
Testing request and session scoped beans
TestContext Framework support classes
11.3.6. Spring MVC Test Framework
Server-Side Tests
Client-Side REST Tests
11.3.7. PetClinic Example
IV. Data Access

12. Transaction Management
12.1. Introduction to Spring Framework transaction
management
12.2. Advantages of the Spring Framework's transaction
support model
12.2.1. Global transactions
12.2.2. Local transactions
12.2.3. Spring Framework's consistent programming model
12.3. Understanding the Spring Framework transaction

abstraction
12.4. Synchronizing resources with transactions
12.4.1. High-level synchronization approach
12.4.2. Low-level synchronization approach
12.4.3. TransactionAwareDataSourceProxy
12.5. Declarative transaction management
12.5.1. Understanding the Spring Framework's declarative transaction

implementation
12.5.2. Example of declarative transaction implementation
12.5.3. Rolling back a declarative transaction
12.5.4. Configuring different transactional semantics for different beans
12.5.5. <tx:advice/> settings
12.5.6. Using @Transactional
@Transactional settings
Multiple Transaction Managers with @Transactional

Custom shortcut annotations
12.5.7. Transaction propagation
Required
RequiresNew
Nested
12.5.8. Advising transactional operations
12.5.9. Using @Transactional with AspectJ
12.6. Programmatic transaction management

12.6.1. Using the TransactionTemplate
Specifying transaction settings
12.6.2. Using the PlatformTransactionManager
12.7. Choosing between programmatic and declarative

transaction management
12.8. Application server-specific integration
12.8.1. IBM WebSphere
12.8.2. BEA WebLogic Server
12.8.3. Oracle OC4J
12.9. Solutions to common problems
12.9.1. Use of the wrong transaction manager for a specific DataSource
13. DAO support

13.1. Introduction
13.2. Consistent exception hierarchy
13.3. Annotations used for configuring DAO or Repository
classes
14. Data access with JDBC

14.1. Introduction to Spring Framework JDBC
14.1.1. Choosing an approach for JDBC database access

14.1.2. Package hierarchy
14.2. Using the JDBC core classes to control basic JDBC

processing and error handling
14.2.1. JdbcTemplate
Examples of JdbcTemplate class usage
JdbcTemplate best practices
14.2.2. NamedParameterJdbcTemplate
14.2.3. SQLExceptionTranslator
14.2.4. Executing statements
14.2.5. Running queries
14.2.6. Updating the database
14.2.7. Retrieving auto-generated keys
14.3. Controlling database connections
14.3.1. DataSource
14.3.2. DataSourceUtils
14.3.3. SmartDataSource
14.3.4. AbstractDataSource
14.3.5. SingleConnectionDataSource
14.3.6. DriverManagerDataSource
14.3.7. TransactionAwareDataSourceProxy
14.3.8. DataSourceTransactionManager
14.3.9. NativeJdbcExtractor
14.4. JDBC batch operations
14.4.1. Basic batch operations with the JdbcTemplate

14.4.2. Batch operations with a List of objects
14.4.3. Batch operations with multiple batches
14.5. Simplifying JDBC operations with the SimpleJdbc

classes
14.5.1. Inserting data using SimpleJdbcInsert
14.5.2. Retrieving auto-generated keys using SimpleJdbcInsert
14.5.3. Specifying columns for a SimpleJdbcInsert
14.5.4. Using SqlParameterSource to provide parameter values
14.5.5. Calling a stored procedure with SimpleJdbcCall
14.5.6. Explicitly declaring parameters to use for a SimpleJdbcCall
14.5.7. How to define SqlParameters
14.5.8. Calling a stored function using SimpleJdbcCall
14.5.8. Calling a stored function using SimpleJdbcCall

14.5.9. Returning ResultSet/REF Cursor from a SimpleJdbcCall
14.6. Modeling JDBC operations as Java objects

14.6.1. SqlQuery
14.6.2. MappingSqlQuery
14.6.3. SqlUpdate
14.6.4. StoredProcedure
14.7. Common problems with parameter and data value

handling
14.7.1. Providing SQL type information for parameters
14.7.2. Handling BLOB and CLOB objects
14.7.3. Passing in lists of values for IN clause
14.7.4. Handling complex types for stored procedure calls
14.8. Embedded database support
14.8.1. Why use an embedded database?

14.8.2. Creating an embedded database instance using Spring XML
14.8.3. Creating an embedded database instance programmatically
14.8.4. Extending the embedded database support
14.8.5. Using HSQL
14.8.6. Using H2
14.8.7. Using Derby
14.8.8. Testing data access logic with an embedded database
14.9. Initializing a DataSource
14.9.1. Initializing a database instance using Spring XML

Initialization of Other Components that Depend on the Database
15. Object Relational Mapping (ORM) Data Access

15.1. Introduction to ORM with Spring
15.2. General ORM integration considerations
15.2.1. Resource and transaction management
15.2.2. Exception translation
15.3. Hibernate
15.3.1. SessionFactory setup in a Spring container

15.3.2. Implementing DAOs based on plain Hibernate 3 API
15.3.3. Declarative transaction demarcation
15.3.4. Programmatic transaction demarcation
15.3.5. Transaction management strategies
15.3.6. Comparing container-managed and locally defined resources
15.3.7. Spurious application server warnings with Hibernate
15.4. JDO
15.4.1. PersistenceManagerFactory setup

15.4.2. Implementing DAOs based on the plain JDO API
15.4.3. Transaction management
15.4.4. JdoDialect
15.5. JPA
15.5.1. Three options for JPA setup in a Spring environment

LocalEntityManagerFactoryBean
Obtaining an EntityManagerFactory from JNDI
LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean
Dealing with multiple persistence units
15.5.2. Implementing DAOs based on plain JPA
15.5.3. Transaction Management
15.5.4. JpaDialect
15.6. iBATIS SQL Maps
15.6.1. Setting up the SqlMapClient

15.6.2. Using SqlMapClientTemplate and
SqlMapClientDaoSupport
15.6.3. Implementing DAOs based on plain iBATIS API
16. Marshalling XML using O/X Mappers

16.1. Introduction
16.2. Marshaller and Unmarshaller
16.2.1. Marshaller
16.2.2. Unmarshaller
16.2.3. XmlMappingException
16.3. Using Marshaller and Unmarshaller

16.4. XML Schema-based Configuration
16.5. JAXB
16.5.1. Jaxb2Marshaller
XML Schema-based Configuration
16.6. Castor
16.6.1. CastorMarshaller
16.6.2. Mapping
16.7. XMLBeans
16.7.1. XmlBeansMarshaller
16.8. JiBX
16.8.1. JibxMarshaller
16.9. XStream
16.9.1. XStreamMarshaller
V. The Web
17. Web MVC framework
17.1. Introduction to Spring Web MVC framework
17.1.1. Features of Spring Web MVC
17.1.2. Pluggability of other MVC implementations
17.2. The DispatcherServlet
17.2.1. Special Bean Types In the WebApplicationContext

17.2.2. Default DispatcherServlet Configuration
17.2.3. DispatcherServlet Processing Sequence
17.3. Implementing Controllers
17.3.1. Defining a controller with @Controller

17.3.2. Mapping Requests With @RequestMapping
New Support Classes for @RequestMapping methods in Spring
MVC 3.1
URI Template Patterns
URI Template Patterns with Regular Expressions
Path Patterns
Patterns with Placeholders
Matrix Variables
Consumable Media Types
Producible Media Types
Request Parameters and Header Values
17.3.3. Defining @RequestMapping handler methods
Supported method argument types
Supported method return types
Binding request parameters to method parameters with
@RequestParam
Mapping the request body with the @RequestBody annotation
Mapping the response body with the @ResponseBody annotation
Using HttpEntity<?>
Using @ModelAttribute on a method
Using @ModelAttribute on a method argument
Using @SessionAttributes to store model attributes in the
HTTP session between requests
Specifying redirect and flash attributes
Working with "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
data
Mapping cookie values with the @CookieValue annotation
Mapping request header attributes with the @RequestHeader
annotation
Method Parameters And Type Conversion
Customizing WebDataBinder initialization
Support for the 'Last-Modified' Response Header To Facilitate
Content Caching
17.3.4. Asynchronous Request Processing
Exception Handling for Async Requests
Intercepting Async Requests
Configuration for Async Request Processing
17.3.5. Testing Controllers
17.4. Handler mappings
17.4.1. Intercepting requests with a HandlerInterceptor
17.5. Resolving views
17.5. Resolving views
17.5.1. Resolving views with the ViewResolver interface

17.5.2. Chaining ViewResolvers
17.5.3. Redirecting to views
RedirectView
The redirect: prefix
The forward: prefix
17.5.4. ContentNegotiatingViewResolver
17.6. Using flash attributes

17.7. Building URIs
17.8. Using locales
17.8.1. AcceptHeaderLocaleResolver
17.8.2. CookieLocaleResolver
17.8.3. SessionLocaleResolver
17.8.4. LocaleChangeInterceptor
17.9. Using themes
17.9.1. Overview of themes

17.9.2. Defining themes
17.9.3. Theme resolvers
17.10. Spring's multipart (file upload) support
17.10.1. Introduction
17.10.2. Using a MultipartResolver with Commons FileUpload
17.10.3. Using a MultipartResolver with Servlet 3.0
17.10.4. Handling a file upload in a form
17.10.5. Handling a file upload request from programmatic clients
17.11. Handling exceptions
17.11.1. HandlerExceptionResolver
17.11.2. @ExceptionHandler
17.11.3. Handling Standard Spring MVC Exceptions
17.11.4. Annotating Business Exceptions With @ResponseStatus
17.11.5. Customizing the Default Servlet Container Error Page
17.12. Convention over configuration support
17.12.1. The Controller ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping

17.12.2. The Model ModelMap (ModelAndView)
17.12.3. The View - RequestToViewNameTranslator
17.13. ETag support

17.14. Code-based Servlet container initialization
17.15. Configuring Spring MVC
17.15.1. Enabling the MVC Java Config or the MVC XML Namespace
17.15.2. Customizing the Provided Configuration
17.15.3. Configuring Interceptors
17.15.4. Configuring Content Negotiation
17.15.5. Configuring View Controllers
17.15.6. Configuring Serving of Resources
17.15.7. mvc:default-servlet-handler
17.15.8. More Spring Web MVC Resources
17.15.9. Advanced Customizations with MVC Java Config
17.15.10. Advanced Customizations with the MVC Namespace
18. View technologies

18.1. Introduction
18.2. JSP & JSTL
18.2.1. View resolvers

18.2.2. 'Plain-old' JSPs versus JSTL
18.2.3. Additional tags facilitating development
18.2.4. Using Spring's form tag library
Configuration
The form tag
The input tag
The checkbox tag
The checkboxes tag
The radiobutton tag
The radiobuttons tag
The password tag
The select tag
The option tag
The options tag
The textarea tag
The hidden tag
The hidden tag

The errors tag
HTTP Method Conversion
HTML5 Tags
18.3. Tiles
18.3.1. Dependencies
18.3.2. How to integrate Tiles
UrlBasedViewResolver
ResourceBundleViewResolver
SimpleSpringPreparerFactory and
SpringBeanPreparerFactory
18.4. Velocity & FreeMarker
18.4.2. Context configuration
18.4.3. Creating templates
18.4.4. Advanced configuration
velocity.properties
FreeMarker
18.4.5. Bind support and form handling
The bind macros
Simple binding
Form input generation macros
HTML escaping and XHTML compliance
18.5. XSLT
18.5.1. My First Words

Bean definitions
Standard MVC controller code
Convert the model data to XML
Defining the view properties
Document transformation
18.5.2. Summary
18.6. Document views (PDF/Excel)

18.6.1. Introduction
18.6.2. Configuration and setup
Document view definitions
Controller code
Subclassing for Excel views
Subclassing for PDF views
18.7. JasperReports
18.7.2. Configuration
Configuring the ViewResolver
Configuring the Views
About Report Files
Using JasperReportsMultiFormatView
18.7.3. Populating the ModelAndView
18.7.4. Working with Sub-Reports
Configuring Sub-Report Files
Configuring Sub-Report Data Sources
18.7.5. Configuring Exporter Parameters
18.8. Feed Views

18.9. XML Marshalling View
18.10. JSON Mapping View
19. Integrating with other web frameworks

19.1. Introduction
19.2. Common configuration
19.3. JavaServer Faces 1.1 and 1.2
19.3.1. DelegatingVariableResolver (JSF 1.1/1.2)

19.3.2. SpringBeanVariableResolver (JSF 1.1/1.2)
19.3.3. SpringBeanFacesELResolver (JSF 1.2+)
19.3.4. FacesContextUtils
19.4. Apache Struts 1.x and 2.x

19.4.1. ContextLoaderPlugin
DelegatingRequestProcessor
DelegatingActionProxy
19.4.2. ActionSupport Classes
19.5. WebWork 2.x
19.6. Tapestry 3.x and 4.x
19.6.1. Injecting Spring-managed beans

Dependency Injecting Spring Beans into Tapestry pages
Component definition files
Adding abstract accessors
Dependency Injecting Spring Beans into Tapestry pages - Tapestry
4.x style
20. Portlet MVC Framework

20.1. Introduction
20.1.1. Controllers - The C in MVC

20.1.2. Views - The V in MVC
20.1.3. Web-scoped beans
20.2. The DispatcherPortlet

20.3. The ViewRendererServlet
20.4. Controllers
20.4.1. AbstractController and PortletContentGenerator

20.4.2. Other simple controllers
20.4.3. Command Controllers
20.4.4. PortletWrappingController
20.5. Handler mappings
20.5.1. PortletModeHandlerMapping
20.5.2. ParameterHandlerMapping
20.5.3. PortletModeParameterHandlerMapping
20.5.4. Adding HandlerInterceptors
20.5.5. HandlerInterceptorAdapter
20.5.6. ParameterMappingInterceptor
20.6. Views and resolving them

20.7. Multipart (file upload) support
20.7.1. Using the PortletMultipartResolver

20.7.2. Handling a file upload in a form
20.8. Handling exceptions

20.9. Annotation-based controller configuration
20.9.1. Setting up the dispatcher for annotation support

20.9.2. Defining a controller with @Controller
20.9.3. Mapping requests with @RequestMapping
20.9.4. Supported handler method arguments
20.9.5. Binding request parameters to method parameters with
@RequestParam
20.9.6. Providing a link to data from the model with @ModelAttribute
20.9.7. Specifying attributes to store in a Session with
@SessionAttributes
20.9.8. Customizing WebDataBinder initialization
Customizing data binding with @InitBinder
Configuring a custom WebBindingInitializer
20.10. Portlet application deployment
VI. Integration
21. Remoting and web services using Spring
21.1. Introduction
21.2. Exposing services using RMI
21.2.1. Exporting the service using the RmiServiceExporter

21.2.2. Linking in the service at the client
21.3. Using Hessian or Burlap to remotely call services via

HTTP
21.3.1. Wiring up the DispatcherServlet for Hessian and co.
21.3.2. Exposing your beans by using the HessianServiceExporter
21.3.3. Linking in the service on the client
21.3.4. Using Burlap
21.3.5. Applying HTTP basic authentication to a service exposed through
Hessian or Burlap
21.4. Exposing services using HTTP invokers

21.4.1. Exposing the service object
21.4.2. Linking in the service at the client
21.5. Web services
21.5.1. Exposing servlet-based web services using JAX-RPC

21.5.2. Accessing web services using JAX-RPC
21.5.3. Registering JAX-RPC Bean Mappings
21.5.4. Registering your own JAX-RPC Handler
21.5.5. Exposing servlet-based web services using JAX-WS
21.5.6. Exporting standalone web services using JAX-WS
21.5.7. Exporting web services using the JAX-WS RI's Spring support
21.5.8. Accessing web services using JAX-WS
21.6. JMS
21.6.1. Server-side configuration

21.6.2. Client-side configuration
21.7. Auto-detection is not implemented for remote

interfaces
21.8. Considerations when choosing a technology
21.9. Accessing RESTful services on the Client
21.9.1. RestTemplate
Working with the URI
Dealing with request and response headers
21.9.2. HTTP Message Conversion
StringHttpMessageConverter
FormHttpMessageConverter
ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter
MarshallingHttpMessageConverter
MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter (or
MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter with Jackson 1.x)
SourceHttpMessageConverter
BufferedImageHttpMessageConverter
22. Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) integration

22.1. Introduction
22.2. Accessing EJBs
22.2.1. Concepts
22.2.2. Accessing local SLSBs
22.2.3. Accessing remote SLSBs
22.2.4. Accessing EJB 2.x SLSBs versus EJB 3 SLSBs
22.3. Using Spring's EJB implementation support classes

22.3.1. EJB 2.x base classes
22.3.2. EJB 3 injection interceptor
23. JMS (Java Message Service)

23.1. Introduction
23.2. Using Spring JMS
23.2.1. JmsTemplate
23.2.2. Connections
Caching Messaging Resources
SingleConnectionFactory
CachingConnectionFactory
23.2.3. Destination Management
23.2.4. Message Listener Containers
SimpleMessageListenerContainer
DefaultMessageListenerContainer
23.2.5. Transaction management
23.3. Sending a Message
23.3.1. Using Message Converters

23.3.2. SessionCallback and ProducerCallback
23.4. Receiving a message
23.4.1. Synchronous Reception

23.4.2. Asynchronous Reception - Message-Driven POJOs
23.4.3. The SessionAwareMessageListener interface
23.4.4. The MessageListenerAdapter
23.4.5. Processing messages within transactions
23.5. Support for JCA Message Endpoints
23.6. JMS Namespace Support
24. JMX
24.1. Introduction
24.2. Exporting your beans to JMX
24.2.1. Creating an MBeanServer

24.2.2. Reusing an existing MBeanServer
24.2.3. Lazy-initialized MBeans
24.2.4. Automatic registration of MBeans
24.2.5. Controlling the registration behavior
24.3. Controlling the management interface of your beans

24.3.1. The MBeanInfoAssembler Interface
24.3.2. Using Source-Level Metadata (JDK 5.0 annotations)
24.3.3. Source-Level Metadata Types
24.3.4. The AutodetectCapableMBeanInfoAssembler interface
24.3.5. Defining management interfaces using Java interfaces
24.3.6. Using MethodNameBasedMBeanInfoAssembler
24.4. Controlling the ObjectNames for your beans

24.4.1. Reading ObjectNames from Properties
24.4.2. Using the MetadataNamingStrategy
24.4.3. Configuring annotation based MBean export
24.5. JSR-160 Connectors
24.5.1. Server-side Connectors

24.5.2. Client-side Connectors
24.5.3. JMX over Burlap/Hessian/SOAP
24.6. Accessing MBeans via Proxies

24.7. Notifications
24.7.1. Registering Listeners for Notifications

24.7.2. Publishing Notifications
25. JCA CCI

25.1. Introduction
25.2. Configuring CCI
25.2.1. Connector configuration

25.2.2. ConnectionFactory configuration in Spring
25.2.3. Configuring CCI connections
25.2.4. Using a single CCI connection
25.3. Using Spring's CCI access support
25.3.1. Record conversion

25.3.2. The CciTemplate
25.3.3. DAO support
25.3.4. Automatic output record generation
25.3.5. Summary
25.3.6. Using a CCI Connection and Interaction directly
25.3.7. Example for CciTemplate usage
25.4. Modeling CCI access as operation objects
25.4.1. MappingRecordOperation
25.4.2. MappingCommAreaOperation
25.4.3. Automatic output record generation
25.4.4. Summary
25.4.5. Example for MappingRecordOperation usage
25.4.6. Example for MappingCommAreaOperation usage
25.5. Transactions
26. Email
26.1. Introduction
26.2. Usage
26.2.1. Basic MailSender and SimpleMailMessage usage

26.2.2. Using the JavaMailSender and the
MimeMessagePreparator
26.3. Using the JavaMail MimeMessageHelper

26.3.1. Sending attachments and inline resources
Attachments
Attachments
Inline resources
26.3.2. Creating email content using a templating library
A Velocity-based example
27. Task Execution and Scheduling

27.1. Introduction
27.2. The Spring TaskExecutor abstraction
27.2.1. TaskExecutor types
27.2.2. Using a TaskExecutor
27.3. The Spring TaskScheduler abstraction

27.3.1. The Trigger interface
27.3.2. Trigger implementations
27.3.3. TaskScheduler implementations
27.4. Annotation Support for Scheduling and

Asynchronous Execution
27.4.1. Enable scheduling annotations
27.4.2. The @Scheduled Annotation
27.4.3. The @Async Annotation
27.4.4. Executor qualification with @Async
27.5. The Task Namespace
27.5.1. The 'scheduler' element

27.5.2. The 'executor' element
27.5.3. The 'scheduled-tasks' element
27.6. Using the Quartz Scheduler
27.6.1. Using the JobDetailBean

27.6.2. Using the MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean
27.6.3. Wiring up jobs using triggers and the SchedulerFactoryBean
28. Dynamic language support

28.1. Introduction
28.2. A first example
28.3. Defining beans that are backed by dynamic
languages
28.3.1. Common concepts

The <lang:language/> element
Refreshable beans
Inline dynamic language source files
Understanding Constructor Injection in the context of dynamiclanguage-backed beans
28.3.2. JRuby beans
28.3.3. Groovy beans
Customising Groovy objects via a callback
28.3.4. BeanShell beans
28.4. Scenarios
28.4.1. Scripted Spring MVC Controllers

28.4.2. Scripted Validators
28.5. Bits and bobs
28.5.1. AOP - advising scripted beans

28.5.2. Scoping
29. Cache Abstraction

29.1. Introduction
29.2. Understanding the cache abstraction
29.3. Declarative annotation-based caching
29.3.1. @Cacheable annotation
Default Key Generation
Custom Key Generation Declaration
Conditional caching
Available caching SpEL evaluation context
29.3.2. @CachePut annotation
29.3.3. @CacheEvict annotation
29.3.4. @Caching annotation
29.3.5. Enable caching annotations
29.3.6. Using custom annotations
29.4. Declarative XML-based caching

29.5. Configuring the cache storage
29.5.1. JDK ConcurrentMap-based Cache

29.5.2. EhCache-based Cache
29.5.3. GemFire-based Cache
29.5.4. Dealing with caches without a backing store
29.6. Plugging-in different back-end caches

29.7. How can I set the TTL/TTI/Eviction policy/XXX
feature?
VII. Appendices
A. Classic Spring Usage
A.1. Classic ORM usage
A.1.1. Hibernate
The HibernateTemplate
Implementing Spring-based DAOs without callbacks
A.1.2. JDO
JdoTemplate and JdoDaoSupport
A.1.3. JPA
JpaTemplate and JpaDaoSupport
A.2. Classic Spring MVC

A.3. JMS Usage
A.3.1. JmsTemplate
A.3.2. Asynchronous Message Reception
A.3.3. Connections
A.3.4. Transaction Management
B. Classic Spring AOP Usage
B.1. Pointcut API in Spring
B.1.1. Concepts
B.1.2. Operations on pointcuts
B.1.3. AspectJ expression pointcuts
B.1.4. Convenience pointcut implementations
Static pointcuts
Dynamic pointcuts
B.1.5. Pointcut superclasses
B.1.6. Custom pointcuts
B.2. Advice API in Spring
B.2.1. Advice lifecycles

B.2.2. Advice types in Spring
Before advice
Throws advice
Introduction advice
B.3. Advisor API in Spring

B.4. Using the ProxyFactoryBean to create AOP proxies
B.4.1. Basics
B.4.2. JavaBean properties
B.4.3. JDK- and CGLIB-based proxies
B.4.4. Proxying interfaces
B.4.5. Proxying classes
B.4.6. Using 'global' advisors
B.5. Concise proxy definitions

B.6. Creating AOP proxies programmatically with the
ProxyFactory
B.7. Manipulating advised objects
B.8. Using the "autoproxy" facility
B.8.1. Autoproxy bean definitions

B.8.2. Using metadata-driven auto-proxying
B.9. Using TargetSources
B.9.1. Hot swappable target sources
B.9.1. Hot swappable target sources

B.9.2. Pooling target sources
B.9.3. Prototype target sources
B.9.4. ThreadLocal target sources
B.10. Defining new Advice types

B.11. Further resources
C. Migrating to Spring Framework 3.1
C.1. Component scanning against the "org" base package
D. Migrating to Spring Framework 3.2
D.1. Newly optional dependencies

D.2. EHCache support moved to spring-context-support
D.3. Inlining of spring-asm jar
D.4. Explicit CGLIB dependency no longer required
D.5. For OSGi users
D.6. MVC Java Config and MVC Namespace
D.7. Decoding of URI Variable Values
D.8. HTTP PATCH method
D.9. Tiles 3
D.10. Spring MVC Test standalone project
D.11. Spring Test Dependencies
D.12. Public API changes
D.12.1. JDiff reports

D.12.2. Deprecations
E. XML Schema-based configuration
E.1. Introduction
E.2. XML Schema-based configuration
E.2.1. Referencing the schemas

E.2.2. The util schema
<util:constant/>
<util:property-path/>
<util:properties/>
<util:list/>
<util:map/>
<util:set/>
E.2.3. The jee schema
<jee:jndi-lookup/> (simple)
<jee:jndi-lookup/> (with single JNDI environment setting)
<jee:jndi-lookup/> (with multiple JNDI environment settings)
<jee:jndi-lookup/> (complex)
<jee:local-slsb/> (simple)
<jee:local-slsb/> (complex)
<jee:remote-slsb/>
E.2.4. The lang schema
E.2.5. The jms schema
E.2.6. The tx (transaction) schema
E.2.7. The aop schema
E.2.8. The context schema
<property-placeholder/>
<annotation-config/>
<component-scan/>
<load-time-weaver/>
<spring-configured/>
<mbean-export/>
E.2.9. The tool schema
E.2.10. The jdbc schema
E.2.11. The cache schema
E.2.12. The beans schema
F. Extensible XML authoring
F.1. Introduction
F.2. Authoring the schema
F.3. Coding a NamespaceHandler
F.4. Coding a BeanDefinitionParser
F.5. Registering the handler and the schema

F.5.1. 'META-INF/spring.handlers'
F.5.2. 'META-INF/spring.schemas'
F.6. Using a custom extension in your Spring XML

configuration
F.7. Meatier examples
F.7.1. Nesting custom tags within custom tags

F.7.2. Custom attributes on 'normal' elements
F.8. Further Resources
G. spring.tld
G.1. Introduction
G.2. The bind tag
G.3. The escapeBody tag
G.4. The hasBindErrors tag
G.5. The htmlEscape tag
G.6. The message tag
G.7. The nestedPath tag
G.8. The theme tag
G.9. The transform tag
G.10. The url tag
G.11. The eval tag
H. spring-form.tld
H.1. Introduction
H.2. The checkbox tag
H.3. The checkboxes tag
H.4. The errors tag
H.5. The form tag
H.6. The hidden tag
H.7. The input tag
H.8. The label tag
H.9. The option tag
H.10. The options tag
H.11. The password tag
H.12. The radiobutton tag
H.13. The radiobuttons tag
H.14. The select tag
H.15. The textarea tag
Part I. Overview of Spring Framework

The Spring Framework is a lightweight solution and a potential one-stop-shop for building
your enterprise-ready applications. However, Spring is modular, allowing you to use only
those parts that you need, without having to bring in the rest. You can use the IoC
container, with Struts on top, but you can also use only the Hibernate integration code or
the JDBC abstraction layer. The Spring Framework supports declarative transaction
management, remote access to your logic through RMI or web services, and various
options for persisting your data. It offers a full-featured MVC framework, and enables you to
integrate AOP transparently into your software.
Spring is designed to be non-intrusive, meaning that your domain logic code generally has
no dependencies on the framework itself. In your integration layer (such as the data access
layer), some dependencies on the data access technology and the Spring libraries will
exist. However, it should be easy to isolate these dependencies from the rest of your code
base.
This document is a reference guide to Spring Framework features. If you have any
requests, comments, or questions on this document, please post them on the user mailing
list or on the support forums at http://forum.springsource.org/.
1. Introduction to Spring Framework

Spring Framework is a Java platform that provides comprehensive infrastructure support
for developing Java applications. Spring handles the infrastructure so you can focus on
your application.
Spring enables you to build applications from plain old Java objects (POJOs) and to
apply enterprise services non-invasively to POJOs. This capability applies to the Java SE
programming model and to full and partial Java EE.
Examples of how you, as an application developer, can use the Spring platform
advantage:
Make a Java method execute in a database transaction without having to deal with
transaction APIs.
Make a local Java method a remote procedure without having to deal with remote
APIs.
Make a local Java method a management operation without having to deal with JMX
APIs.
Make a local Java method a message handler without having to deal with JMS APIs.
1.1 Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control

Java applications -- a loose term that runs the
gamut from constrained applets to n-tier serverside enterprise applications -- typically consist of
objects that collaborate to form the application
proper. Thus the objects in an application have
dependencies on each other.
Although the Java platform provides a wealth of
application development functionality, it lacks the
means to organize the basic building blocks into a
coherent whole, leaving that task to architects and
developers. True, you can use design patterns
such as Factory, Abstract Factory, Builder,
Background
The question is, what aspect of
control are [they] inverting?
Martin Fowler posed this
question about Inversion of
Control (IoC) on his site in 2004.
Fowler suggested renaming the
principle to make it more selfexplanatory and came up with
Dependency Injection.
For insight into IoC and DI, refer
to Fowler's article at
http://martinfowler.com/articles/injection.html.
Decorator, and Service Locator to compose the

various classes and object instances that make up
an application. However, these patterns are simply that: best practices given a name, with
a description of what the pattern does, where to apply it, the problems it addresses, and so
forth. Patterns are formalized best practices that you must implement yourself in your
application.
The Spring Framework Inversion of Control (IoC) component addresses this concern by
providing a formalized means of composing disparate components into a fully working
application ready for use. The Spring Framework codifies formalized design patterns as
first-class objects that you can integrate into your own application(s). Numerous
organizations and institutions use the Spring Framework in this manner to engineer robust,
maintainable applications.
1.2 Modules
The Spring Framework consists of features organized into about 20 modules. These
modules are grouped into Core Container, Data Access/Integration, Web, AOP (Aspect
Oriented Programming), Instrumentation, and Test, as shown in the following diagram.
Overview of the Spring Framework
1.2.1 Core Container

The Core Container consists of the Core, Beans, Context, and Expression Language
modules.
The Core and Beans modules provide the fundamental parts of the framework, including
the IoC and Dependency Injection features. The BeanFactory is a sophisticated
implementation of the factory pattern. It removes the need for programmatic singletons and
allows you to decouple the configuration and specification of dependencies from your
actual program logic.
The Context module builds on the solid base provided by the Core and Beans modules: it
is a means to access objects in a framework-style manner that is similar to a JNDI registry.
The Context module inherits its features from the Beans module and adds support for
internationalization (using, for example, resource bundles), event-propagation, resourceloading, and the transparent creation of contexts by, for example, a servlet container. The
Context module also supports Java EE features such as EJB, JMX ,and basic remoting.
The ApplicationContext interface is the focal point of the Context module.
The Expression Language module provides a powerful expression language for querying
and manipulating an object graph at runtime. It is an extension of the unified expression
language (unified EL) as specified in the JSP 2.1 specification. The language supports
setting and getting property values, property assignment, method invocation, accessing the
context of arrays, collections and indexers, logical and arithmetic operators, named
variables, and retrieval of objects by name from Spring's IoC container. It also supports list
projection and selection as well as common list aggregations.
1.2.2 Data Access/Integration

The Data Access/Integration layer consists of the JDBC, ORM, OXM, JMS and Transaction
modules.
The JDBC module provides a JDBC-abstraction layer that removes the need to do tedious
JDBC coding and parsing of database-vendor specific error codes.
The ORM module provides integration layers for popular object-relational mapping APIs,
including JPA, JDO, Hibernate, and iBatis. Using the ORM package you can use all of
these O/R-mapping frameworks in combination with all of the other features Spring offers,
such as the simple declarative transaction management feature mentioned previously.
The OXM module provides an abstraction layer that supports Object/XML mapping
implementations for JAXB, Castor, XMLBeans, JiBX and XStream.
The Java Messaging Service (JMS) module contains features for producing and
consuming messages.
The Transaction module supports programmatic and declarative transaction management
for classes that implement special interfaces and for all your POJOs (plain old Java
objects).
1.2.3 Web
The Web layer consists of the Web, Web-Servlet, Web-Struts, and Web-Portlet modules.
Spring's Web module provides basic web-oriented integration features such as multipart
file-upload functionality and the initialization of the IoC container using servlet listeners
and a web-oriented application context. It also contains the web-related parts of Spring's
remoting support.
The Web-Servlet module contains Spring's model-view-controller (MVC) implementation
for web applications. Spring's MVC framework provides a clean separation between
domain model code and web forms, and integrates with all the other features of the Spring
Framework.
The Web-Struts module contains the support classes for integrating a classic Struts web
tier within a Spring application. Note that this support is now deprecated as of Spring 3.0.
Consider migrating your application to Struts 2.0 and its Spring integration or to a Spring
MVC solution.
The Web-Portlet module provides the MVC implementation to be used in a portlet
environment and mirrors the functionality of Web-Servlet module.
1.2.4 AOP and Instrumentation

Spring's AOP module provides an AOP Alliance-compliant aspect-oriented programming
implementation allowing you to define, for example, method-interceptors and pointcuts to
cleanly decouple code that implements functionality that should be separated. Using
source-level metadata functionality, you can also incorporate behavioral information into
your code, in a manner similar to that of .NET attributes.
The separate Aspects module provides integration with AspectJ.
The Instrumentation module provides class instrumentation support and classloader
implementations to be used in certain application servers.
1.2.5 Test
The Test module supports the testing of Spring components with JUnit or TestNG. It
provides consistent loading of Spring ApplicationContexts and caching of those contexts. It
also provides mock objects that you can use to test your code in isolation.
1.3 Usage scenarios

The building blocks described previously make Spring a logical choice in many scenarios,
from applets to full-fledged enterprise applications that use Spring's transaction
management functionality and web framework integration.
Typical full-fledged Spring web application

Spring's declarative transaction management features make the web application fully
transactional, just as it would be if you used EJB container-managed transactions. All your
custom business logic can be implemented with simple POJOs and managed by Spring's
IoC container. Additional services include support for sending email and validation that is
independent of the web layer, which lets you choose where to execute validation rules.
Spring's ORM support is integrated with JPA, Hibernate, JDO and iBatis; for example,
when using Hibernate, you can continue to use your existing mapping files and standard
Hibernate SessionFactory configuration. Form controllers seamlessly integrate the
web-layer with the domain model, removing the need for ActionForms or other classes
that transform HTTP parameters to values for your domain model.
Spring middle-tier using a third-party web framework

Sometimes circumstances do not allow you to completely switch to a different framework.
The Spring Framework does not force you to use everything within it; it is not an all-ornothing solution. Existing front-ends built with WebWork, Struts, Tapestry, or other UI
frameworks can be integrated with a Spring-based middle-tier, which allows you to use
Spring transaction features. You simply need to wire up your business logic using an
ApplicationContext and use a WebApplicationContext to integrate your web
layer.
Remoting usage scenario

When you need to access existing code through web services, you can use Spring's
Hessian-, Burlap-, Rmi- or JaxRpcProxyFactory classes. Enabling remote
access to existing applications is not difficult.
EJBs - Wrapping existing POJOs

The Spring Framework also provides an access and abstraction layer for Enterprise
JavaBeans, enabling you to reuse your existing POJOs and wrap them in stateless
session beans for use in scalable, fail-safe web applications that might need declarative
security.
1.3.1 Dependency Management and Naming Conventions

Dependency management and dependency injection are different things. To get those nice
features of Spring into your application (like dependency injection) you need to assemble
all the libraries needed (jar files) and get them onto your classpath at runtime, and possibly
at compile time. These dependencies are not virtual components that are injected, but
physical resources in a file system (typically). The process of dependency management
involves locating those resources, storing them and adding them to classpaths.
Dependencies can be direct (e.g. my application depends on Spring at runtime), or indirect
(e.g. my application depends on commons-dbcp which depends on commons-pool).
The indirect dependencies are also known as "transitive" and it is those dependencies that
are hardest to identify and manage.
If you are going to use Spring you need to get a copy of the jar libraries that comprise the
pieces of Spring that you need. To make this easier Spring is packaged as a set of
modules that separate the dependencies as much as possible, so for example if you don't
want to write a web application you don't need the spring-web modules. To refer to Spring
library modules in this guide we use a shorthand naming convention spring-* or
spring-*.jar, where "*" represents the short name for the module (e.g. springcore, spring-webmvc, spring-jms, etc.). The actual jar file name that you use may
be in this form (see below) or it may not, and normally it also has a version number in the
file name (e.g. spring-core-3.0.0.RELEASE.jar).
In general, Spring publishes its artifacts to four different places:
On the community download site http://www.springsource.org/download/community.
Here you find all the Spring jars bundled together into a zip file for easy download. The
names of the jars here since version 3.0 are in the form org.springframework.*<version>.jar.
Maven Central, which is the default repository that Maven queries, and does not
require any special configuration to use. Many of the common libraries that Spring
depends on also are available from Maven Central and a large section of the Spring
community uses Maven for dependency management, so this is convenient for them.
The names of the jars here are in the form spring-*-<version>.jar and the
Maven groupId is org.springframework.
The Enterprise Bundle Repository (EBR), which is run by SpringSource and also
hosts all the libraries that integrate with Spring. Both Maven and Ivy repositories are
available here for all Spring jars and their dependencies, plus a large number of other
common libraries that people use in applications with Spring. Both full releases and
also milestones and development snapshots are deployed here. The names of the jar
files are in the same form as the community download (org.springframework.*<version>.jar), and the dependencies are also in this "long" form, with external
libraries (not from SpringSource) having the prefix com.springsource. See the
FAQ for more information.
In a public Maven repository hosted on Amazon S3 for development snapshots and
milestone releases (a copy of the final releases is also held here). The jar file names
are in the same form as Maven Central, so this is a useful place to get development
versions of Spring to use with other libraries deployed in Maven Central.
So the first thing you need to decide is how to manage your dependencies: most people
use an automated system like Maven or Ivy, but you can also do it manually by
downloading all the jars yourself. When obtaining Spring with Maven or Ivy you have then
to decide which place you'll get it from. In general, if you care about OSGi, use the EBR,
since it houses OSGi compatible artifacts for all of Spring's dependencies, such as
Hibernate and Freemarker. If OSGi does not matter to you, either place works, though there
are some pros and cons between them. In general, pick one place or the other for your
project; do not mix them. This is particularly important since EBR artifacts necessarily use
a different naming convention than Maven Central artifacts.
Table 1.1. Comparison of Maven Central and SpringSource EBR Repositories
Feature
Maven Central
EBR
OSGi
Compatible
Not explicit
Yes
Number of
Artifacts
Tens of thousands; all

kinds
Hundreds; those that Spring integrates

with
Consistent
Naming
Conventions
No
Yes
Naming
Convention:
GroupId
Varies. Newer artifacts

often use domain name,
Domain name of origin or main
e.g. org.slf4j. Older
package root, e.g. org.springframework
ones often just use the
artifact name, e.g. log4j.
Naming
Convention:
ArtifactId
Varies. Generally the

project or module
name, using a hyphen
"-" separator, e.g.
spring-core, logj4.
Bundle Symbolic Name, derived from

the main package root, e.g.
org.springframework.beans. If the jar
had to be patched to ensure OSGi
compliance then com.springsource is
appended, e.g.
com.springsource.org.apache.log4j
Naming
Convention:
Version
Varies. Many new

artifacts use m.m.m or
m.m.m.X (with m=digit,
X=text). Older ones use
m.m. Some neither.
Ordering is defined but
not often relied on, so
not strictly reliable.
OSGi version number m.m.m.X, e.g.

3.0.0.RC3. The text qualifier imposes
alphabetic ordering on versions with
the same numeric values.
Publishing
Usually automatic via

rsync or source control
updates. Project
authors can upload
individual jars to JIRA.
Manual (JIRA processed by

SpringSource)
Quality
Assurance
By policy. Accuracy is
responsibility of
authors.
Extensive for OSGi manifest, Maven

POM and Ivy metadata. QA performed
by Spring team.
Hosting
Contegix. Funded by
Sonatype with several
mirrors.
S3 funded by SpringSource.
Search
Utilities
Various
http://www.springsource.com/repository
Integration
with
SpringSource
Tools
Integration through STS

with Maven
dependency
management
Extensive integration through STS with

Maven, Roo, CloudFoundry
Spring Dependencies and Depending on Spring

Although Spring provides integration and support for a huge range of enterprise and other
external tools, it intentionally keeps its mandatory dependencies to an absolute minimum:
you shouldn't have to locate and download (even automatically) a large number of jar
libraries in order to use Spring for simple use cases. For basic dependency injection there
is only one mandatory external dependency, and that is for logging (see below for a more
detailed description of logging options).
Next we outline the basic steps needed to configure an application that depends on
Spring, first with Maven and then with Ivy. In all cases, if anything is unclear, refer to the
documentation of your dependency management system, or look at some sample code Spring itself uses Ivy to manage dependencies when it is building, and our samples mostly
use Maven.
Maven Dependency Management

If you are using Maven for dependency management you don't even need to supply the
logging dependency explicitly. For example, to create an application context and use
dependency injection to configure an application, your Maven dependencies will look like
this:
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
<version>3.0.0.RELEASE</version>
<scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
That's it. Note the scope can be declared as runtime if you don't need to compile against
Spring APIs, which is typically the case for basic dependency injection use cases.
We used the Maven Central naming conventions in the example above, so that works with
Maven Central or the SpringSource S3 Maven repository. To use the S3 Maven repository
(e.g. for milestones or developer snapshots), you need to specify the repository location in
your Maven configuration. For full releases:
<repositories>
<repository>
<id>com.springsource.repository.maven.release</id>
<url>http://repo.springsource.org/release/</url>
<snapshots><enabled>false</enabled></snapshots>
</repository>
</repositories>
For milestones:
<repositories>
<repository>
<id>com.springsource.repository.maven.milestone</id>
<url>http://repo.springsource.org/milestone/</url>
<snapshots><enabled>false</enabled></snapshots>
</repository>
</repositories>
And for snapshots:

<repositories>
<repository>
<id>com.springsource.repository.maven.snapshot</id>
<url>http://repo.springsource.org/snapshot/</url>
<snapshots><enabled>true</enabled></snapshots>
</repository>
</repositories>
To use the SpringSource EBR you would need to use a different naming convention for the
dependencies. The names are usually easy to guess, e.g. in this case it is:
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<artifactId>org.springframework.context</artifactId>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
You also need to declare the location of the repository explicitly (only the URL is
important):
<repositories>
<repository>
<id>com.springsource.repository.bundles.release</id>
<url>http://repository.springsource.com/maven/bundles/release/</url>
</repository>
</repositories>
If you are managing your dependencies by hand, the URL in the repository declaration
above is not browsable, but there is a user interface at

http://www.springsource.com/repository that can be used to search for and download
dependencies. It also has handy snippets of Maven and Ivy configuration that you can
copy and paste if you are using those tools.
Ivy Dependency Management

If you prefer to use Ivy to manage dependencies then there are similar names and
configuration options.
To configure Ivy to point to the SpringSource EBR add the following resolvers to your
ivysettings.xml:
<resolvers>
<url name="com.springsource.repository.bundles.release">
<ivy pattern="http://repository.springsource.com/ivy/bundles/release/
[organisation]/[module]/[revision]/[artifact]-[revision].[ext]" />
<artifact pattern="http://repository.springsource.com/ivy/bundles/release/
</url>
<url name="com.springsource.repository.bundles.external">
<ivy pattern="http://repository.springsource.com/ivy/bundles/external/
<artifact pattern="http://repository.springsource.com/ivy/bundles/external/
</url>
</resolvers>
The XML above is not valid because the lines are too long - if you copy-paste then remove
the extra line endings in the middle of the url patterns.
Once Ivy is configured to look in the EBR adding a dependency is easy. Simply pull up the
details page for the bundle in question in the repository browser and you'll find an Ivy
snippet ready for you to include in your dependencies section. For example (in ivy.xml):
<dependency org="org.springframework"
name="org.springframework.core" rev="3.0.0.RELEASE" conf="compile->runtime"/>
1.3.2 Logging
Logging is a very important dependency for Spring because a) it is the only mandatory
external dependency, b) everyone likes to see some output from the tools they are using,
and c) Spring integrates with lots of other tools all of which have also made a choice of
logging dependency. One of the goals of an application developer is often to have unified
logging configured in a central place for the whole application, including all external
components. This is more difficult than it might have been since there are so many choices
of logging framework.
The mandatory logging dependency in Spring is the Jakarta Commons Logging API (JCL).
We compile against JCL and we also make JCL Log objects visible for classes that extend
the Spring Framework. It's important to users that all versions of Spring use the same
logging library: migration is easy because backwards compatibility is preserved even with
applications that extend Spring. The way we do this is to make one of the modules in
Spring depend explicitly on commons-logging (the canonical implementation of JCL),
and then make all the other modules depend on that at compile time. If you are using
Maven for example, and wondering where you picked up the dependency on commonslogging, then it is from Spring and specifically from the central module called springcore.
The nice thing about commons-logging is that you don't need anything else to make
your application work. It has a runtime discovery algorithm that looks for other logging
frameworks in well known places on the classpath and uses one that it thinks is
appropriate (or you can tell it which one if you need to). If nothing else is available you get
pretty nice looking logs just from the JDK (java.util.logging or JUL for short). You should
find that your Spring application works and logs happily to the console out of the box in
most situations, and that's important.
Not Using Commons Logging

Unfortunately, the runtime discovery algorithm in commons-logging, while convenient
for the end-user, is problematic. If we could turn back the clock and start Spring now as a
new project it would use a different logging dependency. The first choice would probably
be the Simple Logging Facade for Java (SLF4J), which is also used by a lot of other tools
that people use with Spring inside their applications.
Switching off commons-logging is easy: just make sure it isn't on the classpath at
runtime. In Maven terms you exclude the dependency, and because of the way that the
Spring dependencies are declared, you only have to do that once.
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
Now this application is probably broken because there is no implementation of the JCL
API on the classpath, so to fix it a new one has to be provided. In the next section we show
you how to provide an alternative implementation of JCL using SLF4J as an example.
Using SLF4J
SLF4J is a cleaner dependency and more efficient at runtime than commons-logging
because it uses compile-time bindings instead of runtime discovery of the other logging
frameworks it integrates. This also means that you have to be more explicit about what you
want to happen at runtime, and declare it or configure it accordingly. SLF4J provides
bindings to many common logging frameworks, so you can usually choose one that you
already use, and bind to that for configuration and management.
SLF4J provides bindings to many common logging frameworks, including JCL, and it also
does the reverse: bridges between other logging frameworks and itself. So to use SLF4J
with Spring you need to replace the commons-logging dependency with the SLF4J-JCL
bridge. Once you have done that then logging calls from within Spring will be translated
into logging calls to the SLF4J API, so if other libraries in your application use that API,
then you have a single place to configure and manage logging.
A common choice might be to bridge Spring to SLF4J, and then provide explicit binding
from SLF4J to Log4J. You need to supply 4 dependencies (and exclude the existing
commons-logging): the bridge, the SLF4J API, the binding to Log4J, and the Log4J
implementation itself. In Maven you would do that like this
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
<artifactId>jcl-over-slf4j</artifactId>
<version>1.5.8</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<artifactId>slf4j-log4j12</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>log4j</groupId>
<artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
That might seem like a lot of dependencies just to get some logging. Well it is, but it is
optional, and it should behave better than the vanilla commons-logging with respect to
classloader issues, notably if you are in a strict container like an OSGi platform. Allegedly
there is also a performance benefit because the bindings are at compile-time not runtime.
A more common choice amongst SLF4J users, which uses fewer steps and generates
fewer dependencies, is to bind directly to Logback. This removes the extra binding step
because Logback implements SLF4J directly, so you only need to depend on two libraries
not four (jcl-over-slf4j and logback). If you do that you might also need to exclude
the slf4j-api dependency from other external dependencies (not Spring), because you only
want one version of that API on the classpath.
Using Log4J
Many people use Log4j as a logging framework for configuration and management
purposes. It's efficient and well-established, and in fact it's what we use at runtime when
we build and test Spring. Spring also provides some utilities for configuring and initializing
Log4j, so it has an optional compile-time dependency on Log4j in some modules.
To make Log4j work with the default JCL dependency (commons-logging) all you need
to do is put Log4j on the classpath, and provide it with a configuration file
(log4j.properties or log4j.xml in the root of the classpath). So for Maven users
this is your dependency declaration:
<dependencies>
<dependency>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>log4j</groupId>
<artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
And here's a sample log4j.properties for logging to the console:

log4j.rootCategory=INFO, stdout
log4j.appender.stdout=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.stdout.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.stdout.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{ABSOLUTE} %5p %t %c{2}:%L - %m%n
log4j.category.org.springframework.beans.factory=DEBUG
Runtime Containers with Native JCL
Many people run their Spring applications in a container that itself provides an
implementation of JCL. IBM Websphere Application Server (WAS) is the archetype. This
often causes problems, and unfortunately there is no silver bullet solution; simply
excluding commons-logging from your application is not enough in most situations.
To be clear about this: the problems reported are usually not with JCL per se, or even with
commons-logging: rather they are to do with binding commons-logging to another
framework (often Log4J). This can fail because commons-logging changed the way
they do the runtime discovery in between the older versions (1.0) found in some containers
and the modern versions that most people use now (1.1). Spring does not use any unusual
parts of the JCL API, so nothing breaks there, but as soon as Spring or your application
tries to do any logging you can find that the bindings to Log4J are not working.
In such cases with WAS the easiest thing to do is to invert the class loader hierarchy (IBM
calls it "parent last") so that the application controls the JCL dependency, not the container.
That option isn't always open, but there are plenty of other suggestions in the public
domain for alternative approaches, and your mileage may vary depending on the exact
version and feature set of the container.
Part II. What's New in Spring 3

Framework 3.0
If you have been using the Spring Framework for some time, you will be aware that Spring
has undergone two major revisions: Spring 2.0, released in October 2006, and Spring 2.5,
released in November 2007. It is now time for a third overhaul resulting in Spring
Framework 3.0.
Java SE and Java EE Support

The Spring Framework is now
based on Java 5, and Java 6 is
fully supported.
Furthermore, Spring is
compatible with J2EE 1.4 and
Java EE 5, while at the same
time introducing some early
support for Java EE 6.
2.1 Java 5
The entire framework code has been revised to take advantage of Java 5 features like
generics, varargs and other language improvements. We have done our best to still keep
the code backwards compatible. We now have consistent use of generic Collections and
Maps, consistent use of generic FactoryBeans, and also consistent resolution of bridge
methods in the Spring AOP API. Generic ApplicationListeners automatically receive
specific event types only. All callback interfaces such as TransactionCallback and
HibernateCallback declare a generic result value now. Overall, the Spring core codebase
is now freshly revised and optimized for Java 5.
Spring's TaskExecutor abstraction has been updated for close integration with Java 5's
java.util.concurrent facilities. We provide first-class support for Callables and Futures now,
as well as ExecutorService adapters, ThreadFactory integration, etc. This has been
aligned with JSR-236 (Concurrency Utilities for Java EE 6) as far as possible.
Furthermore, we provide support for asynchronous method invocations through the use of
the new @Async annotation (or EJB 3.1's @Asynchronous annotation).
2.2 Improved documentation

The Spring reference documentation has also substantially been updated to reflect all of
the changes and new features for Spring Framework 3.0. While every effort has been
made to ensure that there are no errors in this documentation, some errors may
nevertheless have crept in. If you do spot any typos or even more serious errors, and you
can spare a few cycles during lunch, please do bring the error to the attention of the Spring
team by raising an issue.
2.3 New articles and tutorials

There are many excellent articles and tutorials that show how to get started with Spring
Framework 3 features. Read them at the Spring Documentation page.
The samples have been improved and updated to take advantage of the new features in
Spring Framework 3. Additionally, the samples have been moved out of the source tree
into a dedicated SVN repository available at:
https://anonsvn.springframework.org/svn/spring-samples/
As such, the samples are no longer distributed alongside Spring Framework 3 and need to
be downloaded separately from the repository mentioned above. However, this
documentation will continue to refer to some samples (in particular Petclinic) to illustrate
various features.
Note
For more information on Subversion (or in short SVN), see the project
homepage at: http://subversion.apache.org/
2.4 New module organization and build system

The framework modules have been revised and are now managed separately with one
source-tree per module jar:
org.springframework.aop
org.springframework.beans
org.springframework.context
org.springframework.context.support
org.springframework.expression
org.springframework.instrument
org.springframework.jdbc
org.springframework.jms
org.springframework.orm
org.springframework.oxm
org.springframework.test
org.springframework.transaction
org.springframework.web
org.springframework.web.portlet
org.springframework.web.servlet
org.springframework.web.struts
We are now using a new Spring build system as
known from Spring Web Flow 2.0. This gives us:
Ivy-based "Spring Build" system
consistent deployment procedure
consistent dependency management
consistent generation of OSGi manifests
Note:
The spring.jar artifact that
contained almost the entire
framework is no longer provided.
2.5 Overview of new features

This is a list of new features for Spring Framework 3.0. We will cover these features in
more detail later in this section.
Spring Expression Language
IoC enhancements/Java based bean metadata
General-purpose type conversion system and field formatting system
Object to XML mapping functionality (OXM) moved from Spring Web Services project
@MVC additions
Declarative model validation
Early support for Java EE 6
Embedded database support
2.5.1 Core APIs updated for Java 5

BeanFactory interface returns typed bean instances as far as possible:
T getBean(Class<T> requiredType)
T getBean(String name, Class<T> requiredType)
Map<String, T> getBeansOfType(Class<T> type)
Spring's TaskExecutor interface now extends java.util.concurrent.Executor:
extended AsyncTaskExecutor supports standard Callables with Futures
New Java 5 based converter API and SPI:
stateless ConversionService and Converters
superseding standard JDK PropertyEditors
Typed ApplicationListener<E>
2.5.2 Spring Expression Language

Spring introduces an expression language which is similar to Unified EL in its syntax but
offers significantly more features. The expression language can be used when defining
XML and Annotation based bean definitions and also serves as the foundation for
expression language support across the Spring portfolio. Details of this new functionality
can be found in the chapter Spring Expression Language (SpEL).
The Spring Expression Language was created to provide the Spring community a single,
well supported expression language that can be used across all the products in the Spring
portfolio. Its language features are driven by the requirements of the projects in the Spring
portfolio, including tooling requirements for code completion support within the Eclipse
based SpringSource Tool Suite.
The following is an example of how the Expression Language can be used to configure
some properties of a database setup
<bean class="mycompany.RewardsTestDatabase">
<property name="databaseName"
value="#{systemProperties.databaseName}"/>
<property name="keyGenerator"
value="#{strategyBean.databaseKeyGenerator}"/>
</bean>
This functionality is also available if you prefer to configure your components using
annotations:
@Repository
public class RewardsTestDatabase {
@Value("#{systemProperties.databaseName}")
public void setDatabaseName(String dbName) { }

@Value("#{strategyBean.databaseKeyGenerator}")
public void setKeyGenerator(KeyGenerator kg) { }
}
2.5.3 The Inversion of Control (IoC) container

Java based bean metadata
Some core features from the JavaConfig project have been added to the Spring
Framework now. This means that the following annotations are now directly supported:
@Configuration
@Bean
@DependsOn
@Primary
@Lazy
@Import
@ImportResource
@Value
Here is an example of a Java class providing basic configuration using the new
JavaConfig features:
package org.example.config;
@Configuration
public class AppConfig {
private @Value("#{jdbcProperties.url}") String jdbcUrl;
private @Value("#{jdbcProperties.username}") String username;
private @Value("#{jdbcProperties.password}") String password;
@Bean
public FooService fooService() {
return new FooServiceImpl(fooRepository());
}
@Bean
public FooRepository fooRepository() {
return new HibernateFooRepository(sessionFactory());
}
@Bean
public SessionFactory sessionFactory() {
// wire up a session factory
AnnotationSessionFactoryBean asFactoryBean =
new AnnotationSessionFactoryBean();
asFactoryBean.setDataSource(dataSource());
// additional config
return asFactoryBean.getObject();
}
@Bean
public DataSource dataSource() {
return new DriverManagerDataSource(jdbcUrl, username, password);
}
}
To get this to work you need to add the following component scanning entry in your
minimal application context XML file.
<context:component-scan base-package="org.example.config"/>
<util:properties id="jdbcProperties" location="classpath:org/example/config/jdbc.properties"/>
Or you can bootstrap a @Configuration class directly using

AnnotationConfigApplicationContext:
public static void main(String[] args) {
ApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(AppConfig.class);
FooService fooService = ctx.getBean(FooService.class);
fooService.doStuff();
}
See Section 5.12.2, Instantiating the Spring container using

AnnotationConfigApplicationContext for full information on
AnnotationConfigApplicationContext.
Defining bean metadata within components

@Bean annotated methods are also supported inside Spring components. They contribute
a factory bean definition to the container. See Defining bean metadata within components
for more information
2.5.4 General purpose type conversion system and field formatting

system
A general purpose type conversion system has been introduced. The system is currently
used by SpEL for type conversion, and may also be used by a Spring Container and
DataBinder when binding bean property values.
In addition, a formatter SPI has been introduced for formatting field values. This SPI
provides a simpler and more robust alternative to JavaBean PropertyEditors for use in
client environments such as Spring MVC.
2.5.5 The Data Tier

Object to XML mapping functionality (OXM) from the Spring Web Services project has
been moved to the core Spring Framework now. The functionality is found in the
org.springframework.oxm package. More information on the use of the OXM module
can be found in the Marshalling XML using O/X Mappers chapter.
2.5.6 The Web Tier

The most exciting new feature for the Web Tier is the support for building RESTful web
services and web applications. There are also some new annotations that can be used in
any web application.

Server-side support for building RESTful applications has been provided as an extension
of the existing annotation driven MVC web framework. Client-side support is provided by
the RestTemplate class in the spirit of other template classes such as JdbcTemplate
and JmsTemplate. Both server and client side REST functionality make use of
HttpConverters to facilitate the conversion between objects and their representation in
HTTP requests and responses.
The MarshallingHttpMessageConverter uses the Object to XML mapping
functionality mentioned earlier.
Refer to the sections on MVC and the RestTemplate for more information.
@MVC additions
A mvc namespace has been introduced that greatly simplifies Spring MVC configuration.
Additional annotations such as @CookieValue and @RequestHeaders have been
added. See Mapping cookie values with the @CookieValue annotation and Mapping
request header attributes with the @RequestHeader annotation for more information.
2.5.7 Declarative model validation

Several validation enhancements, including JSR 303 support that uses Hibernate
Validator as the default provider.
2.5.8 Early support for Java EE 6
We provide support for asynchronous method invocations through the use of the new
@Async annotation (or EJB 3.1's @Asynchronous annotation).
JSR 303, JSF 2.0, JPA 2.0, etc
2.5.9 Support for embedded databases

Convenient support for embedded Java database engines, including HSQL, H2, and
Derby, is now provided.

Framework 3.1
This is a list of new features for Spring Framework 3.1. A number of features do not have
dedicated reference documentation but do have complete Javadoc. In such cases, fullyqualified class names are given. See also Appendix C, Migrating to Spring Framework 3.1
3.1 Cache Abstraction

Chapter 29, Cache Abstraction
Cache Abstraction (SpringSource team blog)
3.2 Bean Definition Profiles

XML profiles (SpringSource Team Blog)
Introducing @Profile (SpringSource Team Blog)
See org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration Javadoc
See org.springframework.context.annotation.Profile Javadoc
3.3 Environment Abstraction

Environment Abstraction (SpringSource Team Blog)
See org.springframework.core.env.Environment Javadoc
3.4 PropertySource Abstraction

Unified Property Management (SpringSource Team Blog)
See org.springframework.core.env.Environment Javadoc
See org.springframework.core.env.PropertySource Javadoc
See org.springframework.context.annotation.PropertySource Javadoc
3.5 Code equivalents for Spring's XML namespaces

Code-based equivalents to popular Spring XML namespace elements
<context:component-scan/>, <tx:annotation-driven/> and <mvc:annotation-driven> have
been developed, most in the form of @Enable annotations. These are designed for use in
conjunction with Spring's @Configuration classes, which were introduced in Spring
Framework 3.0.
See org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration Javadoc
See org.springframework.context.annotation.ComponentScan Javadoc
See org.springframework.transaction.annotation.EnableTransactionManagement
Javadoc
See org.springframework.cache.annotation.EnableCaching Javadoc
See org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.EnableWebMvc Javadoc
See org.springframework.scheduling.annotation.EnableScheduling Javadoc
See org.springframework.scheduling.annotation.EnableAsync Javadoc
See org.springframework.context.annotation.EnableAspectJAutoProxy Javadoc
See org.springframework.context.annotation.EnableLoadTimeWeaving Javadoc
See org.springframework.beans.factory.aspectj.EnableSpringConfigured Javadoc
3.6 Support for Hibernate 4.x

See Javadoc for classes within the new org.springframework.orm.hibernate4 package
3.7 TestContext framework support for @Configuration

classes and bean definition profiles
The @ContextConfiguration annotation now supports supplying @Configuration
classes for configuring the Spring TestContext. In addition, a new @ActiveProfiles
annotation has been introduced to support declarative configuration of active bean
definition profiles in ApplicationContext integration tests.
Spring 3.1 M2: Testing with @Configuration Classes and Profiles (SpringSource
Team Blog)
See Section 11.3.5, Spring TestContext Framework
See the section called Context configuration with annotated classes and
org.springframework.test.context.ContextConfiguration Javadoc
See org.springframework.test.context.ActiveProfiles Javadoc
See org.springframework.test.context.SmartContextLoader Javadoc
See
org.springframework.test.context.support.DelegatingSmartContextLoader
Javadoc
See
org.springframework.test.context.support.AnnotationConfigContextLoader
Javadoc
3.8 c: namespace for more concise constructor

injection
the section called XML shortcut with the c-namespace
3.9 Support for injection against non-standard

JavaBeans setters
Prior to Spring Framework 3.1, in order to inject against a property method it had to
conform strictly to JavaBeans property signature rules, namely that any 'setter' method
must be void-returning. It is now possible in Spring XML to specify setter methods that
return any object type. This is useful when considering designing APIs for methodchaining, where setter methods return a reference to 'this'.
3.10 Support for Servlet 3 code-based configuration of

Servlet Container
The new WebApplicationInitializer builds atop Servlet 3.0's
ServletContainerInitializer support to provide a programmatic alternative to the
traditional web.xml.
See org.springframework.web.WebApplicationInitializer Javadoc
Diff from Spring's Greenhouse reference application demonstrating migration from
web.xml to WebApplicationInitializer
3.11 Support for Servlet 3 MultipartResolver

See org.springframework.web.multipart.support.StandardServletMultipartResolver
Javadoc
3.12 JPA EntityManagerFactory bootstrapping without

persistence.xml
In standard JPA, persistence units get defined through META-INF/persistence.xml
files in specific jar files which will in turn get searched for @Entity classes. In many
cases, persistence.xml does not contain more than a unit name and relies on defaults
and/or external setup for all other concerns (such as the DataSource to use, etc). For that
reason, Spring Framework 3.1 provides an alternative:
LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean accepts a 'packagesToScan'
property, specifying base packages to scan for @Entity classes. This is analogous to
AnnotationSessionFactoryBean's property of the same name for native Hibernate
setup, and also to Spring's component-scan feature for regular Spring beans. Effectively,
this allows for XML-free JPA setup at the mere expense of specifying a base package for
entity scanning: a particularly fine match for Spring applications which rely on component
scanning for Spring beans as well, possibly even bootstrapped using a code-based
Servlet 3.0 initializer.
3.13 New HandlerMethod-based Support Classes For

Annotated Controller Processing
Spring Framework 3.1 introduces a new set of support classes for processing requests
with annotated controllers:
RequestMappingHandlerMapping
RequestMappingHandlerAdapter
ExceptionHandlerExceptionResolver
These classes are a replacement for the existing:
DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping
AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter
AnnotationMethodHandlerExceptionResolver
The new classes were developed in response to many requests to make annotation
controller support classes more customizable and open for extension. Whereas previously
you could configure a custom annotated controller method argument resolver, with the new
support classes you can customize the processing for any supported method argument or
return value type.
See org.springframework.web.method.support.HandlerMethodArgumentResolver
Javadoc
See org.springframework.web.method.support.HandlerMethodReturnValueHandler
Javadoc
A second notable difference is the introduction of a HandlerMethod abstraction to
represent an @RequestMapping method. This abstraction is used throughout by the new
support classes as the handler instance. For example a HandlerInterceptor can
cast the handler from Object to HandlerMethod and get access to the target
controller method, its annotations, etc.
The new classes are enabled by default by the MVC namespace and by Java-based
configuration via @EnableWebMvc. The existing classes will continue to be available but
use of the new classes is recommended going forward.
See the section called New Support Classes for @RequestMapping methods in Spring
MVC 3.1 for additional details and a list of features not available with the new support
classes.
3.14 "consumes" and "produces" conditions in

@RequestMapping
Improved support for specifying media types consumed by a method through the
'Content-Type' header as well as for producible types specified through the
'Accept' header. See the section called Consumable Media Types and the section
called Producible Media Types
3.15 Flash Attributes and RedirectAttributes

Flash attributes can now be stored in a FlashMap and saved in the HTTP session to
survive a redirect. For an overview of the general support for flash attributes in Spring MVC
see Section 17.6, Using flash attributes.
In annotated controllers, an @RequestMapping method can add flash attributes by
declaring a method argument of type RedirectAttributes. This method argument can
now also be used to get precise control over the attributes used in a redirect scenario. See
the section called Specifying redirect and flash attributes for more details.
3.16 URI Template Variable Enhancements

URI template variables from the current request are used in more places:
URI template variables are used in addition to request parameters when binding a
request to @ModelAttribute method arguments.
@PathVariable method argument values are merged into the model before rendering,
except in views that generate content in an automated fashion such as JSON
serialization or XML marshalling.
A redirect string can contain placeholders for URI variables (e.g.
"redirect:/blog/{year}/{month}"). When expanding the placeholders, URI
template variables from the current request are automatically considered.
An @ModelAttribute method argument can be instantiated from a URI template
variable provided there is a registered Converter or PropertyEditor to convert from a
String to the target object type.
3.17 @Valid On @RequestBody Controller Method

Arguments
An @RequestBody method argument can be annotated with @Valid to invoke automatic
validation similar to the support for @ModelAttribute method arguments. A resulting
MethodArgumentNotValidException is handled in the
DefaultHandlerExceptionResolver and results in a 400 response code.
3.18 @RequestPart Annotation On Controller Method

Arguments
This new annotation provides access to the content of a "multipart/form-data" request part.
See Section 17.10.5, Handling a file upload request from programmatic clients and
Section 17.10, Spring's multipart (file upload) support.
3.19 UriComponentsBuilder and UriComponents

A new UriComponents class has been added, which is an immutable container of URI
components providing access to all contained URI components. A new
UriComponentsBuilder class is also provided to help create UriComponents
instances. Together the two classes give fine-grained control over all aspects of preparing
a URI including construction, expansion from URI template variables, and encoding.
In most cases the new classes can be used as a more flexible alternative to the existing
UriTemplate especially since UriTemplate relies on those same classes internally.
A ServletUriComponentsBuilder sub-class provides static factory methods to copy
information from a Servlet request. See Section 17.7, Building URIs.

Framework 3.2
This section covers what's new in Spring Framework 3.2. See also Appendix D, Migrating
to Spring Framework 3.2
4.1 Support for Servlet 3 based asynchronous request

processing
The Spring MVC programming model now provides explicit Servlet 3 async support.
@RequestMapping methods can return one of:
java.util.concurrent.Callable to complete processing in a separate thread
managed by a task executor within Spring MVC.
org.springframework.web.context.request.async.DeferredResult
to complete processing at a later time from a thread not known to Spring MVC for
example, in response to some external event (JMS, AMQP, etc.)
org.springframework.web.context.request.async.AsyncTask to wrap
a Callable and customize the timeout value or the task executor to use.
See Section 17.3.4, Asynchronous Request Processing.
4.2 Spring MVC Test framework

First-class support for testing Spring MVC applications with a fluent API and without a
Servlet container. Server-side tests involve use of the DispatcherServlet while clientside REST tests rely on the RestTemplate. See Section 11.3.6, Spring MVC Test
Framework.
4.3 Content negotiation improvements

A ContentNegotiationStrategy is now available for resolving the requested media
types from an incoming request. The available implementations are based on the file
extension, query parameter, the 'Accept' header, or a fixed content type. Equivalent options
were previously available only in the ContentNegotiatingViewResolver but are now
available throughout.
ContentNegotiationManager is the central class to use when configuring content
negotiation options. For more details see Section 17.15.4, Configuring Content
Negotiation.
The introduction of ContentNegotiationManger also enables selective suffix pattern
matching for incoming requests. For more details, see the Javadoc of
RequestMappingHandlerMapping.setUseRegisteredSuffixPatternMatch.
4.4 @ControllerAdvice annotation

Classes annotated with @ControllerAdvice can contain @ExceptionHandler,
@InitBinder, and @ModelAttribute methods and those will apply to
@RequestMapping methods across controller hierarchies as opposed to the controller
hierarchy within which they are declared. @ControllerAdvice is a component
annotation allowing implementation classes to be auto-detected through classpath
scanning.
4.5 Matrix variables

A new @MatrixVariable annotation adds support for extracting matrix variables from
the request URI. For more details see the section called Matrix Variables.
4.6 Abstract base class for code-based Servlet 3+

container initialization
An abstract base class implementation of the WebApplicationInitializer interface
is provided to simplify code-based registration of a DispatcherServlet and filters mapped to
it. The new class is named AbstractDispatcherServletInitializer and its subclass AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer can be
used with Java-based Spring configuration. For more details see Section 17.14, Codebased Servlet container initialization.
4.7 ResponseEntityExceptionHandler class

A convenient base class with an @ExceptionHandler method that handles standard
Spring MVC exceptions and returns a ResponseEntity that allowing customizing and
writing the response with HTTP message converters. This serves as an alternative to the
DefaultHandlerExceptionResolver, which does the same but returns a
ModelAndView instead.
See the revised Section 17.11, Handling exceptions including information on customizing
the default Servlet container error page.
4.8 Support for generic types in the RestTemplate and

in @RequestBody arguments
The RestTemplate can now read an HTTP response to a generic type (e.g.
List<Account>). There are three new exchange() methods that accept
ParameterizedTypeReference, a new class that enables capturing and passing
generic type info.
In support of this feature, the HttpMessageConverter is extended by
GenericHttpMessageConverter adding a method for reading content given a
specified parameterized type. The new interface is implemented by the
MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter and also by a new
Jaxb2CollectionHttpMessageConverter that can read read a generic
Collection where the generic type is a JAXB type annotated with @XmlRootElement
or @XmlType.
4.9 Jackson JSON 2 and related improvements

The Jackson JSON 2 library is now supported. Due to packaging changes in the Jackson
library, there are separate classes in Spring MVC as well. Those are
MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter and MappingJackson2JsonView.
Other related configuration improvements include support for pretty printing as well as a
JacksonObjectMapperFactoryBean for convenient customization of an
ObjectMapper in XML configuration.
4.10 Tiles 3
Tiles 3 is now supported in addition to Tiles 2.x. Configuring it should be very similar to the
Tiles 2 configuration, i.e. the combination of TilesConfigurer, TilesViewResolver
and TilesView except using the tiles3 instead of the tiles2 package.
Also note that besides the version number change, the tiles dependencies have also
changed. You will need to have a subset or all of tiles-request-api, tiles-api,
tiles-core, tiles-servlet, tiles-jsp, tiles-el.
4.11 @RequestBody improvements

An @RequestBody or an @RequestPart argument can now be followed by an Errors
argument making it possible to handle validation errors (as a result of an @Valid
annotation) locally within the @RequestMapping method. @RequestBody now also
supports a required flag.
4.12 HTTP PATCH method

The HTTP request method PATCH may now be used in @RequestMapping methods as
well as in the RestTemplate in conjunction with Apache HttpComponents HttpClient
version 4.2 or later. The JDK HttpURLConnection does not support the PATCH method.
4.13 Excluded patterns in mapped interceptors

Mapped interceptors now support URL patterns to be excluded. The MVC namespace and
the MVC JavaConfig both expose these options.
4.14 Using meta-annotations for injection points and

for bean definition methods
As of 3.2, Spring allows for @Autowired and @Value to be used as meta-annotations,
e.g. to build custom injection annotations in combination with specific qualifiers.
Analogously, you may build custom @Bean definition annotations for @Configuration
classes, e.g. in combination with specific qualifiers, @Lazy, @Primary, etc.
4.15 Initial support for JCache 0.5

Spring provides a CacheManager adapter for JCache, building against the JCache 0.5
preview release. Full JCache support is coming next year, along with Java EE 7 final.
4.16 Support for @DateTimeFormat without Joda Time

The @DateTimeFormat annotation can now be used without needing a dependency on
the Joda Time library. If Joda Time is not present the JDK SimpleDateFormat will be
used to parse and print date patterns. When Joda Time is present it will continue to be
used in preference to SimpleDateFormat.
4.17 Global date & time formatting

It is now possible to define global formats that will be used when parsing and printing date
and time types. See Section 7.7, Configuring a global date & time format for details.
4.18 New Testing Features

In addition to the aforementioned inclusion of the Spring MVC Test Framework in the
spring-test module, the Spring TestContext Framework has been revised with support
for integration testing web applications as well as configuring application contexts with
context initializers. For further details, consult the following.
Configuring and loading a WebApplicationContext in integration tests
Configuring context hierarchies in integration tests
Improvements to Servlet API mocks
Configuring test application contexts with ApplicationContextInitializers
4.19 Concurrency refinements across the framework

Spring Framework 3.2 includes fine-tuning of concurrent data structures in many parts of
the framework, minimizing locks and generally improving the arrangements for highly
concurrent creation of scoped/prototype beans.
4.20 New Gradle-based build and move to GitHub

Building and contributing to the framework has never been simpler with our move to a
Gradle-based build system and source control at GitHub. See the building from source
section of the README and the contributor guidelines for complete details.
4.21 Refined Java SE 7 / OpenJDK 7 support

Last but not least, Spring Framework 3.2 comes with refined Java 7 support within the
framework as well as through upgraded third-party dependencies: specifically, CGLIB 3.0,
ASM 4.0 (both of which come as inlined dependencies with Spring now) and AspectJ 1.7
support (next to the existing AspectJ 1.6 support).
Part III. Core Technologies

This part of the reference documentation covers all of those technologies that are
absolutely integral to the Spring Framework.
Foremost amongst these is the Spring Framework's Inversion of Control (IoC) container. A
thorough treatment of the Spring Framework's IoC container is closely followed by
comprehensive coverage of Spring's Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) technologies.
The Spring Framework has its own AOP framework, which is conceptually easy to
understand, and which successfully addresses the 80% sweet spot of AOP requirements
in Java enterprise programming.
Coverage of Spring's integration with AspectJ (currently the richest - in terms of features and certainly most mature AOP implementation in the Java enterprise space) is also
provided.
Finally, the adoption of the test-driven-development (TDD) approach to software
development is certainly advocated by the Spring team, and so coverage of Spring's
support for integration testing is covered (alongside best practices for unit testing). The
Spring team has found that the correct use of IoC certainly does make both unit and
integration testing easier (in that the presence of setter methods and appropriate
constructors on classes makes them easier to wire together in a test without having to set
up service locator registries and suchlike)... the chapter dedicated solely to testing will
hopefully convince you of this as well.
Chapter 5, The IoC container
Chapter 6, Resources
Chapter 7, Validation, Data Binding, and Type Conversion
Chapter 8, Spring Expression Language (SpEL)
Chapter 9, Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring
Chapter 10, Spring AOP APIs
Chapter 11, Testing
5. The IoC container

5.1 Introduction to the Spring IoC container and beans
This chapter covers the Spring Framework implementation of the Inversion of Control (IoC)
[1] principle. IoC
is also known as dependency injection (DI). It is a process whereby
objects define their dependencies, that is, the other objects they work with, only through
constructor arguments, arguments to a factory method, or properties that are set on the
object instance after it is constructed or returned from a factory method. The container then
injects those dependencies when it creates the bean. This process is fundamentally the
inverse, hence the name Inversion of Control (IoC), of the bean itself controlling the
instantiation or location of its dependencies by using direct construction of classes, or a
mechanism such as the Service Locator pattern.
The org.springframework.beans and org.springframework.context
packages are the basis for Spring Framework's IoC container. The BeanFactory
interface provides an advanced configuration mechanism capable of managing any type of
object. ApplicationContext is a sub-interface of BeanFactory. It adds easier
integration with Spring's AOP features; message resource handling (for use in
internationalization), event publication; and application-layer specific contexts such as the
WebApplicationContext for use in web applications.
In short, the BeanFactory provides the configuration framework and basic functionality,
and the ApplicationContext adds more enterprise-specific functionality. The
ApplicationContext is a complete superset of the BeanFactory, and is used
exclusively in this chapter in descriptions of Spring's IoC container. For more information
on using the BeanFactory instead of the ApplicationContext, refer to
Section 5.15, The BeanFactory.
In Spring, the objects that form the backbone of your application and that are managed by
the Spring IoC container are called beans. A bean is an object that is instantiated,
assembled, and otherwise managed by a Spring IoC container. Otherwise, a bean is
simply one of many objects in your application. Beans, and the dependencies among
them, are reflected in the configuration metadata used by a container.
5.2 Container overview

The interface org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext represents
the Spring IoC container and is responsible for instantiating, configuring, and assembling
the aforementioned beans. The container gets its instructions on what objects to
instantiate, configure, and assemble by reading configuration metadata. The configuration
metadata is represented in XML, Java annotations, or Java code. It allows you to express
the objects that compose your application and the rich interdependencies between such
objects.
Several implementations of the ApplicationContext interface are supplied out-of-thebox with Spring. In standalone applications it is common to create an instance of
ClassPathXmlApplicationContext or FileSystemXmlApplicationContext.
While XML has been the traditional format for defining configuration metadata you can
instruct the container to use Java annotations or code as the metadata format by providing
a small amount of XML configuration to declaratively enable support for these additional
metadata formats.
In most application scenarios, explicit user code is not required to instantiate one or more
instances of a Spring IoC container. For example, in a web application scenario, a simple
eight (or so) lines of boilerplate J2EE web descriptor XML in the web.xml file of the
application will typically suffice (see Section 5.14.4, Convenient ApplicationContext
instantiation for web applications). If you are using the SpringSource Tool Suite Eclipsepowered development environment or Spring Roo this boilerplate configuration can be
easily created with few mouse clicks or keystrokes.
The following diagram is a high-level view of how Spring works. Your application classes
are combined with configuration metadata so that after the ApplicationContext is
created and initialized, you have a fully configured and executable system or application.
The Spring IoC container
5.2.1 Configuration metadata

As the preceding diagram shows, the Spring IoC container consumes a form of
configuration metadata; this configuration metadata represents how you as an application
developer tell the Spring container to instantiate, configure, and assemble the objects in
your application.
Configuration metadata is traditionally supplied in a simple and intuitive XML format, which
is what most of this chapter uses to convey key concepts and features of the Spring IoC
container.
Note
XML-based metadata is not the only allowed form of configuration
metadata. The Spring IoC container itself is totally decoupled from the
format in which this configuration metadata is actually written.
For information about using other forms of metadata with the Spring container, see:
Annotation-based configuration: Spring 2.5 introduced support for annotation-based
configuration metadata.
Java-based configuration: Starting with Spring 3.0, many features provided by the
Spring JavaConfig project became part of the core Spring Framework. Thus you can
define beans external to your application classes by using Java rather than XML files.
To use these new features, see the @Configuration, @Bean, @Import and
@DependsOn annotations.
Spring configuration consists of at least one and typically more than one bean definition
that the container must manage. XML-based configuration metadata shows these beans
configured as <bean/> elements inside a top-level <beans/> element.
These bean definitions correspond to the actual objects that make up your application.
Typically you define service layer objects, data access objects (DAOs), presentation
objects such as Struts Action instances, infrastructure objects such as Hibernate
SessionFactories, JMS Queues, and so forth. Typically one does not configure finegrained domain objects in the container, because it is usually the responsibility of DAOs
and business logic to create and load domain objects. However, you can use Spring's
integration with AspectJ to configure objects that have been created outside the control of
an IoC container. See Using AspectJ to dependency-inject domain objects with Spring.
The following example shows the basic structure of XML-based configuration metadata:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">
<bean id="..." class="...">

</bean>

</bean>

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

Instantiating a Spring IoC container is straightforward. The location path or paths supplied
to an ApplicationContext constructor are actually resource strings that allow the
container to load configuration metadata from a variety of external resources such as the
local file system, from the Java CLASSPATH, and so on.
ApplicationContext context =
new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(new String[] {"services.xml", "daos.xml"});
Note
After you learn about Spring's IoC container, you may want to know
more about Spring's Resource abstraction, as described in Chapter 6,
Resources, which provides a convenient mechanism for reading an
InputStream from locations defined in a URI syntax. In particular,
Resource paths are used to construct applications contexts as
described in Section 6.7, Application contexts and Resource paths.
The following example shows the service layer objects (services.xml) configuration
file:

<bean id="petStore"
class="org.springframework.samples.jpetstore.services.PetStoreServiceImpl">
<property name="accountDao" ref="accountDao"/>
<property name="itemDao" ref="itemDao"/>

</bean>

</beans>
The following example shows the data access objects daos.xml file:
<bean id="accountDao"
class="org.springframework.samples.jpetstore.dao.ibatis.SqlMapAccountDao">
</bean>
<bean id="itemDao" class="org.springframework.samples.jpetstore.dao.ibatis.SqlMapItemDao">
</bean>

</beans>
In the preceding example, the service layer consists of the class

PetStoreServiceImpl, and two data access objects of the type SqlMapAccountDao
and SqlMapItemDao are based on the iBatis Object/Relational mapping framework. The
property name element refers to the name of the JavaBean property, and the ref
element refers to the name of another bean definition. This linkage between id and ref
elements expresses the dependency between collaborating objects. For details of
configuring an object's dependencies, see Dependencies.
Composing XML-based configuration metadata

It can be useful to have bean definitions span multiple XML files. Often each individual
XML configuration file represents a logical layer or module in your architecture.
You can use the application context constructor to load bean definitions from all these XML
fragments. This constructor takes multiple Resource locations, as was shown in the
previous section. Alternatively, use one or more occurrences of the <import/> element
to load bean definitions from another file or files. For example:
<beans>
<import resource="services.xml"/>
<import resource="resources/messageSource.xml"/>
<import resource="/resources/themeSource.xml"/>
<bean id="bean1" class="..."/>
<bean id="bean2" class="..."/>
</beans>
In the preceding example, external bean definitions are loaded from three files,
services.xml, messageSource.xml, and themeSource.xml. All location paths
are relative to the definition file doing the importing, so services.xml must be in the
same directory or classpath location as the file doing the importing, while
messageSource.xml and themeSource.xml must be in a resources location
below the location of the importing file. As you can see, a leading slash is ignored, but
given that these paths are relative, it is better form not to use the slash at all. The contents
of the files being imported, including the top level <beans/> element, must be valid XML
bean definitions according to the Spring Schema or DTD.
Note
It is possible, but not recommended, to reference files in parent
directories using a relative "../" path. Doing so creates a dependency
on a file that is outside the current application. In particular, this
reference is not recommended for "classpath:" URLs (for example,
"classpath:../services.xml"), where the runtime resolution process
chooses the "nearest" classpath root and then looks into its parent
directory. Classpath configuration changes may lead to the choice of a
different, incorrect directory.
You can always use fully qualified resource locations instead of
relative paths: for example, "file:C:/config/services.xml" or
"classpath:/config/services.xml". However, be aware that you are
coupling your application's configuration to specific absolute locations.
It is generally preferable to keep an indirection for such absolute
locations, for example, through "${...}" placeholders that are resolved
against JVM system properties at runtime.
5.2.3 Using the container

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

your beans.
The ApplicationContext enables you to read bean definitions and access them as
follows:
// create and configure beans
ApplicationContext context =
new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(new String[] {"services.xml", "daos.xml"});
// retrieve configured instance
PetStoreServiceImpl service = context.getBean("petStore", PetStoreServiceImpl.class);
// use configured instance
List userList = service.getUsernameList();
You use getBean() to retrieve instances of your beans. The ApplicationContext

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

A Spring IoC container manages one or more beans. These beans are created with the
configuration metadata that you supply to the container, for example, in the form of XML
<bean/> definitions.
Within the container itself, these bean definitions are represented as BeanDefinition
objects, which contain (among other information) the following metadata:
A package-qualified class name: typically the actual implementation class of the bean
being defined.
Bean behavioral configuration elements, which state how the bean should behave in
the container (scope, lifecycle callbacks, and so forth).
References to other beans that are needed for the bean to do its work; these
references are also called collaborators or dependencies.
Other configuration settings to set in the newly created object, for example, the number
of connections to use in a bean that manages a connection pool, or the size limit of the
pool.
This metadata translates to a set of properties that make up each bean definition.
Table 5.1. The bean definition

Property
Explained in...
class
Section 5.3.2, Instantiating beans
name
Section 5.3.1, Naming beans
scope
Section 5.5, Bean scopes
constructor arguments
Section 5.4.1, Dependency injection
properties
Section 5.4.1, Dependency injection
autowiring mode
Section 5.4.5, Autowiring collaborators
lazy-initialization mode
Section 5.4.4, Lazy-initialized beans
initialization method
the section called Initialization callbacks
destruction method
the section called Destruction callbacks
In addition to bean definitions that contain information on how to create a specific bean, the
ApplicationContext implementations also permit the registration of existing objects
that are created outside the container, by users. This is done by accessing the
ApplicationContext's BeanFactory via the method getBeanFactory() which returns the
BeanFactory implementation DefaultListableBeanFactory.
DefaultListableBeanFactory supports this registration through the methods
registerSingleton(..) and registerBeanDefinition(..). However, typical
applications work solely with beans defined through metadata bean definitions.
5.3.1 Naming beans

Every bean has one or more identifiers. These identifiers must be unique within the
container that hosts the bean. A bean usually has only one identifier, but if it requires more
than one, the extra ones can be considered aliases.
In XML-based configuration metadata, you use the id and/or name attributes to specify the
bean identifier(s). The id attribute allows you to specify exactly one id. Conventionally
these names are alphanumeric ('myBean', 'fooService', etc), but may special characters as
well. If you want to introduce other aliases to the bean, you can also specify them in the
name attribute, separated by a comma (,), semicolon (;), or white space. As a historical
note, in versions prior to Spring 3.1, the id attribute was typed as an xsd:ID, which
constrained possible characters. As of 3.1, it is now xsd:string. Note that bean id
uniqueness is still enforced by the container, though no longer by XML parsers.
You are not required to supply a name or id for a bean. If no name or id is supplied
explicitly, the container generates a unique name for that bean. However, if you want to
refer to that bean by name, through the use of the ref element or Service Locator style
lookup, you must provide a name. Motivations for not supplying a name are related to
using inner beans and autowiring collaborators.
Aliasing a bean outside the bean

definition
In a bean definition itself, you can supply more
than one name for the bean, by using a
combination of up to one name specified by the id
attribute, and any number of other names in the
name attribute. These names can be equivalent
aliases to the same bean, and are useful for some
situations, such as allowing each component in an
application to refer to a common dependency by
using a bean name that is specific to that
component itself.
Specifying all aliases where the bean is actually
defined is not always adequate, however. It is
sometimes desirable to introduce an alias for a
bean that is defined elsewhere. This is commonly
the case in large systems where configuration is
split amongst each subsystem, each subsystem
Bean naming conventions

The convention is to use the
standard Java convention for
instance field names when
naming beans. That is, bean
names start with a lowercase
letter, and are camel-cased from
then on. Examples of such
names would be (without quotes)
'accountManager',
'accountService',
'userDao',
'loginController', and
so forth.
Naming beans consistently
makes your configuration easier
to read and understand, and if
you are using Spring AOP it
helps a lot when applying advice
to a set of beans related by
name.
having its own set of object definitions. In XMLbased configuration metadata, you can use the
<alias/> element to accomplish this.
<alias name="fromName" alias="toName"/>
In this case, a bean in the same container which is named fromName, may also after the
use of this alias definition, be referred to as toName.
For example, the configuration metadata for subsystem A may refer to a DataSource via
the name 'subsystemA-dataSource. The configuration metadata for subsystem B may refer
to a DataSource via the name 'subsystemB-dataSource'. When composing the main
application that uses both these subsystems the main application refers to the DataSource
via the name 'myApp-dataSource'. To have all three names refer to the same object you
add to the MyApp configuration metadata the following aliases definitions:
<alias name="subsystemA-dataSource" alias="subsystemB-dataSource"/>
<alias name="subsystemA-dataSource" alias="myApp-dataSource" />
Now each component and the main application can refer to the dataSource through a
name that is unique and guaranteed not to clash with any other definition (effectively
creating a namespace), yet they refer to the same bean.
5.3.2 Instantiating beans

A bean definition essentially is a recipe for creating one or more objects. The container
looks at the recipe for a named bean when asked, and uses the configuration metadata
encapsulated by that bean definition to create (or acquire) an actual object.
If you use XML-based configuration metadata, you specify the type (or class) of object that
is to be instantiated in the class attribute of the <bean/> element. This class attribute,
which internally is a Class property on a BeanDefinition instance, is usually
mandatory. (For exceptions, see the section called Instantiation using an instance factory
method and Section 5.7, Bean definition inheritance.) You use the Class property in
one of two ways:
Typically, to specify the bean class to be constructed in the case where the container
itself directly creates the bean by calling its constructor reflectively, somewhat
equivalent to Java code using the new operator.
To specify the actual class containing the static factory method that will be invoked
to create the object, in the less common case where the container invokes a static,
factory method on a class to create the bean. The object type returned from the
invocation of the static factory method may be the same class or another class
entirely.
Instantiation with a constructor

When you create a bean by the constructor
approach, all normal classes are usable by and
compatible with Spring. That is, the class being
developed does not need to implement any
specific interfaces or to be coded in a specific
fashion. Simply specifying the bean class should
suffice. However, depending on what type of IoC
you use for that specific bean, you may need a
default (empty) constructor.
The Spring IoC container can manage virtually
any class you want it to manage; it is not limited to
managing true JavaBeans. Most Spring users
prefer actual JavaBeans with only a default (noargument) constructor and appropriate setters and
getters modeled after the properties in the
container. You can also have more exotic non-
Inner class names

If you want to configure a bean
definition for a static nested
class, you have to use the binary
name of the inner class.
For example, if you have a class
called Foo in the
com.example package, and

this Foo class has a static
inner class called Bar , the value
of the 'class' attribute on a
bean definition would be...
com.example.Foo$Bar
Notice the use of the $ character
in the name to separate the inner
class name from the outer class
name.
bean-style classes in your container. If, for

example, you need to use a legacy connection
pool that absolutely does not adhere to the JavaBean specification, Spring can manage it
as well.
With XML-based configuration metadata you can specify your bean class as follows:
<bean id="exampleBean" class="examples.ExampleBean"/>

<bean name="anotherExample" class="examples.ExampleBeanTwo"/>
For details about the mechanism for supplying arguments to the constructor (if required)
and setting object instance properties after the object is constructed, see Injecting
Dependencies.
Instantiation with a static factory method

When defining a bean that you create with a static factory method, you use the class
attribute to specify the class containing the static factory method and an attribute named
factory-method to specify the name of the factory method itself. You should be able to
call this method (with optional arguments as described later) and return a live object, which
subsequently is treated as if it had been created through a constructor. One use for such a
bean definition is to call static factories in legacy code.
The following bean definition specifies that the bean will be created by calling a factorymethod. The definition does not specify the type (class) of the returned object, only the
class containing the factory method. In this example, the createInstance() method
must be a static method.
<bean id="clientService"
class="examples.ClientService"
factory-method="createInstance"/>
public class ClientService {
private static ClientService clientService = new ClientService();
private ClientService() {}
public static ClientService createInstance() {
return clientService;
}
}
For details about the mechanism for supplying (optional) arguments to the factory method
and setting object instance properties after the object is returned from the factory, see
Dependencies and configuration in detail.
Instantiation using an instance factory method

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

<bean id="serviceLocator" class="examples.DefaultServiceLocator">

</bean>

factory-bean="serviceLocator"
factory-method="createClientServiceInstance"/>
public class DefaultServiceLocator {
private static ClientService clientService = new ClientServiceImpl();
private DefaultServiceLocator() {}
public ClientService createClientServiceInstance() {
}
}
One factory class can also hold more than one factory method as shown here:
<bean id="serviceLocator" class="examples.DefaultServiceLocator">

</bean>
factory-method="createClientServiceInstance"/>
<bean id="accountService"
factory-method="createAccountServiceInstance"/>
public class DefaultServiceLocator {
private static ClientService clientService = new ClientServiceImpl();
private static AccountService accountService = new AccountServiceImpl();
private DefaultServiceLocator() {}
public ClientService createClientServiceInstance() {
}
public AccountService createAccountServiceInstance() {
return accountService;
}
}
This approach shows that the factory bean itself can be managed and configured through
dependency injection (DI). See Dependencies and configuration in detail.
Note
In Spring documentation, factory bean refers to a bean that is
configured in the Spring container that will create objects through an
instance or static factory method. By contrast, FactoryBean (notice
the capitalization) refers to a Spring-specific FactoryBean .
5.4 Dependencies
A typical enterprise application does not consist of a single object (or bean in the Spring
parlance). Even the simplest application has a few objects that work together to present
what the end-user sees as a coherent application. This next section explains how you go
from defining a number of bean definitions that stand alone to a fully realized application
where objects collaborate to achieve a goal.
5.4.1 Dependency injection

Dependency injection (DI) is a process whereby objects define their dependencies, that is,
the other objects they work with, only through constructor arguments, arguments to a
factory method, or properties that are set on the object instance after it is constructed or
returned from a factory method. The container then injects those dependencies when it
creates the bean. This process is fundamentally the inverse, hence the name Inversion of
Control (IoC), of the bean itself controlling the instantiation or location of its dependencies
on its own by using direct construction of classes, or the Service Locator pattern.
Code is cleaner with the DI principle and decoupling is more effective when objects are
provided with their dependencies. The object does not look up its dependencies, and does
not know the location or class of the dependencies. As such, your classes become easier
to test, in particular when the dependencies are on interfaces or abstract base classes,
which allow for stub or mock implementations to be used in unit tests.
DI exists in two major variants, Constructor-based dependency injection and Setter-based
dependency injection.
Constructor-based dependency injection

Constructor-based DI is accomplished by the container invoking a constructor with a
number of arguments, each representing a dependency. Calling a static factory method
with specific arguments to construct the bean is nearly equivalent, and this discussion
treats arguments to a constructor and to a static factory method similarly. The following
example shows a class that can only be dependency-injected with constructor injection.
Notice that there is nothing special about this class, it is a POJO that has no dependencies
on container specific interfaces, base classes or annotations.

public class SimpleMovieLister {
// the SimpleMovieLister has a dependency on a MovieFinder
private MovieFinder movieFinder;
// a constructor so that the Spring container can 'inject' a MovieFinder
public SimpleMovieLister(MovieFinder movieFinder) {
this.movieFinder = movieFinder;
}
// business logic that actually 'uses' the injected MovieFinder is omitted...
}
Constructor argument resolution

Constructor argument resolution matching occurs using the argument's type. If no potential
ambiguity exists in the constructor arguments of a bean definition, then the order in which
the constructor arguments are defined in a bean definition is the order in which those
arguments are supplied to the appropriate constructor when the bean is being instantiated.
Consider the following class:
package x.y;
public class Foo {
public Foo(Bar bar, Baz baz) {
// ...
}
}
No potential ambiguity exists, assuming that Bar and Baz classes are not related by
inheritance. Thus the following configuration works fine, and you do not need to specify the
constructor argument indexes and/or types explicitly in the <constructor-arg/>
element.
<beans>
<bean id="foo" class="x.y.Foo">
<constructor-arg ref="bar"/>
<constructor-arg ref="baz"/>
</bean>
<bean id="bar" class="x.y.Bar"/>
<bean id="baz" class="x.y.Baz"/>
</beans>
When another bean is referenced, the type is known, and matching can occur (as was the
case with the preceding example). When a simple type is used, such as
<value>true<value>, Spring cannot determine the type of the value, and so cannot
match by type without help. Consider the following class:
package examples;
public class ExampleBean {
// No. of years to the calculate the Ultimate Answer
private int years;
// The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
private String ultimateAnswer;
public ExampleBean(int years, String ultimateAnswer) {
this.years = years;
this.ultimateAnswer = ultimateAnswer;
}
}
Constructor argument type matching

In the preceding scenario, the container can use type matching with simple types if you
explicitly specify the type of the constructor argument using the type attribute. For
example:
<bean id="exampleBean" class="examples.ExampleBean">
<constructor-arg type="int" value="7500000"/>

<constructor-arg type="java.lang.String" value="42"/>
</bean>
Constructor argument index

Use the index attribute to specify explicitly the index of constructor arguments. For
example:
<constructor-arg index="0" value="7500000"/>
<constructor-arg index="1" value="42"/>
</bean>
In addition to resolving the ambiguity of multiple simple values, specifying an index

resolves ambiguity where a constructor has two arguments of the same type. Note that the
index is 0 based.
Constructor argument name

As of Spring 3.0 you can also use the constructor parameter name for value
disambiguation:
<constructor-arg name="years" value="7500000"/>
<constructor-arg name="ultimateanswer" value="42"/>
</bean>
Keep in mind that to make this work out of the box your code must be compiled with the
debug flag enabled so that Spring can look up the parameter name from the constructor. If
you can't compile your code with debug flag (or don't want to) you can use
@ConstructorProperties JDK annotation to explicitly name your constructor
arguments. The sample class would then have to look as follows:
package examples;
// Fields omitted
@ConstructorProperties({"years", "ultimateAnswer"})
public ExampleBean(int years, String ultimateAnswer) {
this.years = years;
this.ultimateAnswer = ultimateAnswer;
}
}
Setter-based dependency injection

Setter-based DI is accomplished by the container calling setter methods on your beans
after invoking a no-argument constructor or no-argument static factory method to
instantiate your bean.
The following example shows a class that can only be dependency-injected using pure
setter injection. This class is conventional Java. It is a POJO that has no dependencies on
container specific interfaces, base classes or annotations.
// the SimpleMovieLister has a dependency on the MovieFinder
// a setter method so that the Spring container can 'inject' a MovieFinder
public void setMovieFinder(MovieFinder movieFinder) {
}
// business logic that actually 'uses' the injected MovieFinder is omitted...
}
The ApplicationContext supports constructor- and setter-based DI for the beans it

manages. It also supports setter-based DI after some dependencies are already injected
through the constructor approach. You configure the dependencies in the form of a
BeanDefinition, which you use with PropertyEditor instances to convert

properties from one format to another. However, most Spring users do not work with these
classes directly (programmatically), but rather with an XML definition file that is then
converted internally into instances of these classes, and used to load an entire Spring IoC
container instance.
Dependency resolution process

The container performs bean dependency
resolution as follows:
1. The ApplicationContext is created and
initialized with configuration metadata that
describes all the beans. Configuration
metadata can be specified via XML, Java
code or annotations.
2. For each bean, its dependencies are
expressed in the form of properties,
constructor arguments, or arguments to the
static-factory method if you are using that
instead of a normal constructor. These
dependencies are provided to the bean, when
the bean is actually created.
3. Each property or constructor argument is an
actual definition of the value to set, or a
reference to another bean in the container.
4. Each property or constructor argument which
is a value is converted from its specified
format to the actual type of that property or
constructor argument. By default Spring can
convert a value supplied in string format to all
built-in types, such as int, long, String,
boolean, etc.
The Spring container validates the configuration of
each bean as the container is created, including
the validation of whether bean reference
properties refer to valid beans. However, the bean
properties themselves are not set until the bean is
actually created. Beans that are singleton-scoped
and set to be pre-instantiated (the default) are
created when the container is created. Scopes are
defined in Section 5.5, Bean scopes Otherwise,
Constructor-based or setterbased DI?

Since you can mix both,
Constructor- and Setter-based
DI, it is a good rule of thumb to
use constructor arguments for
mandatory dependencies and
setters for optional
dependencies. Note that the use
of a @Required annotation on a
setter can be used to make
setters required dependencies.
The Spring team generally
advocates setter injection,
because large numbers of
constructor arguments can get
unwieldy, especially when
properties are optional. Setter
methods also make objects of
that class amenable to
reconfiguration or re-injection
later. Management through JMX
MBeans is a compelling use
case.
Some purists favor constructorbased injection. Supplying all
object dependencies means that
the object is always returned to
client (calling) code in a totally
initialized state. The
disadvantage is that the object
becomes less amenable to
reconfiguration and re-injection.
Use the DI that makes the most
sense for a particular class.
Sometimes, when dealing with
third-party classes to which you
do not have the source, the
choice is made for you. A legacy
class may not expose any setter
methods, and so constructor
injection is the only available DI.
the bean is created only when it is requested.

Creation of a bean potentially causes a graph of
beans to be created, as the bean's dependencies and its dependencies' dependencies
(and so on) are created and assigned.
You can generally trust Spring to do the right thing.
It detects configuration problems, such as
references to non-existent beans and circular
dependencies, at container load-time. Spring sets
properties and resolves dependencies as late as
possible, when the bean is actually created. This
means that a Spring container which has loaded
correctly can later generate an exception when
you request an object if there is a problem creating
that object or one of its dependencies. For
example, the bean throws an exception as a result
Circular dependencies
If you use predominantly
constructor injection, it is
possible to create an
unresolvable circular
dependency scenario.
For example: Class A requires
an instance of class B through
constructor injection, and class B
requires an instance of class A
through constructor injection. If
example, the bean throws an exception as a result

of a missing or invalid property. This potentially
delayed visibility of some configuration issues is
why ApplicationContext implementations by
default pre-instantiate singleton beans. At the cost
of some upfront time and memory to create these
beans before they are actually needed, you
discover configuration issues when the
ApplicationContext is created, not later. You
can still override this default behavior so that
singleton beans will lazy-initialize, rather than be
pre-instantiated.
If no circular dependencies exist, when one or
more collaborating beans are being injected into a
dependent bean, each collaborating bean is totally
configured prior to being injected into the
dependent bean. This means that if bean A has a
dependency on bean B, the Spring IoC container
completely configures bean B prior to invoking the
setter method on bean A. In other words, the bean
you configure beans for classes

A and B to be injected into each
other, the Spring IoC container
detects this circular reference at
runtime, and throws a
BeanCurrentlyInCreationException.
One possible solution is to edit
the source code of some classes
to be configured by setters rather
than constructors. Alternatively,
avoid constructor injection and
use setter injection only. In other
words, although it is not
recommended, you can
configure circular dependencies
with setter injection.
Unlike the typical case (with no
circular dependencies), a circular
dependency between bean A
and bean B forces one of the
beans to be injected into the
other prior to being fully
initialized itself (a classic
chicken/egg scenario).
is instantiated (if not a pre-instantiated singleton),

its dependencies are set, and the relevant lifecycle
methods (such as a configured init method or the InitializingBean callback method) are
invoked.
Examples of dependency injection

The following example uses XML-based configuration metadata for setter-based DI. A
small part of a Spring XML configuration file specifies some bean definitions:

<property name="beanOne"><ref bean="anotherExampleBean"/></property>

<property name="beanTwo" ref="yetAnotherBean"/>
<property name="integerProperty" value="1"/>
</bean>
<bean id="anotherExampleBean" class="examples.AnotherBean"/>
<bean id="yetAnotherBean" class="examples.YetAnotherBean"/>
private AnotherBean beanOne;
private YetAnotherBean beanTwo;
private int i;
public void setBeanOne(AnotherBean beanOne) {
this.beanOne = beanOne;
}
public void setBeanTwo(YetAnotherBean beanTwo) {
this.beanTwo = beanTwo;
}
public void setIntegerProperty(int i) {
this.i = i;
}
}
In the preceding example, setters are declared to match against the properties specified in
the XML file. The following example uses constructor-based DI:

<constructor-arg>
<ref bean="anotherExampleBean"/>
</constructor-arg>

<constructor-arg ref="yetAnotherBean"/>
<constructor-arg type="int" value="1"/>
</bean>
private AnotherBean beanOne;
private YetAnotherBean beanTwo;
private int i;
public ExampleBean(
AnotherBean anotherBean, YetAnotherBean yetAnotherBean, int i) {
this.beanOne = anotherBean;
this.beanTwo = yetAnotherBean;
this.i = i;
}
}
The constructor arguments specified in the bean definition will be used as arguments to
the constructor of the ExampleBean.
Now consider a variant of this example, where instead of using a constructor, Spring is told
to call a static factory method to return an instance of the object:
<bean id="exampleBean" class="examples.ExampleBean"
factory-method="createInstance">
<constructor-arg ref="anotherExampleBean"/>
<constructor-arg ref="yetAnotherBean"/>
<constructor-arg value="1"/>
</bean>
// a private constructor
private ExampleBean(...) {
...
}
// a static factory method; the arguments to this method can be
// considered the dependencies of the bean that is returned,
// regardless of how those arguments are actually used.
public static ExampleBean createInstance (
AnotherBean anotherBean, YetAnotherBean yetAnotherBean, int i) {
ExampleBean eb = new ExampleBean (...);
// some other operations...
return eb;
}
}
Arguments to the static factory method are supplied via <constructor-arg/>

elements, exactly the same as if a constructor had actually been used. The type of the
class being returned by the factory method does not have to be of the same type as the
class that contains the static factory method, although in this example it is. An instance
(non-static) factory method would be used in an essentially identical fashion (aside from
the use of the factory-bean attribute instead of the class attribute), so details will not
be discussed here.
5.4.2 Dependencies and configuration in detail

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

The value attribute of the <property/> element specifies a property or constructor
argument as a human-readable string representation. As mentioned previously,
JavaBeans PropertyEditors are used to convert these string values from a String to
the actual type of the property or argument.

<bean id="myDataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">

<property name="driverClassName" value="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"/>
<property name="url" value="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mydb"/>
<property name="username" value="root"/>
<property name="password" value="masterkaoli"/>
</bean>
The following example uses the p-namespace for even more succinct XML configuration.
xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
<bean id="myDataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource"
destroy-method="close"
p:driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
p:url="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mydb"
p:username="root"
p:password="masterkaoli"/>
</beans>
The preceding XML is more succinct; however, typos are discovered at runtime rather than
design time, unless you use an IDE such as IntelliJ IDEA or the SpringSource Tool Suite
(STS) that support automatic property completion when you create bean definitions. Such
IDE assistance is highly recommended.
You can also configure a java.util.Properties instance as:
<bean id="mappings"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">

<property name="properties">
<value>
jdbc.driver.className=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
jdbc.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mydb
</value>
</property>
</bean>
The Spring container converts the text inside the <value/> element into a
java.util.Properties instance by using the JavaBeans PropertyEditor
mechanism. This is a nice shortcut, and is one of a few places where the Spring team do
favor the use of the nested <value/> element over the value attribute style.
The idref element

The idref element is simply an error-proof way to pass the id (string value - not a
reference) of another bean in the container to a <constructor-arg/> or
<property/> element.
<bean id="theTargetBean" class="..."/>
<bean id="theClientBean" class="...">
<property name="targetName">
<idref bean="theTargetBean" />
</property>
</bean>
The above bean definition snippet is exactly equivalent (at runtime) to the following
snippet:
<bean id="theTargetBean" class="..." />
<bean id="client" class="...">
<property name="targetName" value="theTargetBean" />
</bean>
The first form is preferable to the second, because using the idref tag allows the
container to validate at deployment time that the referenced, named bean actually exists. In
the second variation, no validation is performed on the value that is passed to the
targetName property of the client bean. Typos are only discovered (with most likely
fatal results) when the client bean is actually instantiated. If the client bean is a
prototype bean, this typo and the resulting exception may only be discovered long after the
container is deployed.
Additionally, if the referenced bean is in the same XML unit, and the bean name is the
bean id, you can use the local attribute, which allows the XML parser itself to validate the
bean id earlier, at XML document parse time.
<property name="targetName">

<idref local="theTargetBean"/>
</property>
A common place (at least in versions earlier than Spring 2.0) where the <idref/> element
brings value is in the configuration of AOP interceptors in a ProxyFactoryBean bean
definition. Using <idref/> elements when you specify the interceptor names prevents you
from misspelling an interceptor id.
References to other beans (collaborators)

The ref element is the final element inside a <constructor-arg/> or <property/>
definition element. Here you set the value of the specified property of a bean to be a
reference to another bean (a collaborator) managed by the container. The referenced bean
is a dependency of the bean whose property will be set, and it is initialized on demand as
needed before the property is set. (If the collaborator is a singleton bean, it may be
initialized already by the container.) All references are ultimately a reference to another
object. Scoping and validation depend on whether you specify the id/name of the other
object through the bean,local, or parent attributes.
Specifying the target bean through the bean attribute of the <ref/> tag is the most
general form, and allows creation of a reference to any bean in the same container or
parent container, regardless of whether it is in the same XML file. The value of the bean
attribute may be the same as the id attribute of the target bean, or as one of the values in
the name attribute of the target bean.
<ref bean="someBean"/>
Specifying the target bean through the local attribute leverages the ability of the XML
parser to validate XML id references within the same file. The value of the local attribute
must be the same as the id attribute of the target bean. The XML parser issues an error if
no matching element is found in the same file. As such, using the local variant is the best
choice (in order to know about errors as early as possible) if the target bean is in the same
XML file.
<ref local="someBean"/>
Specifying the target bean through the parent attribute creates a reference to a bean that
is in a parent container of the current container. The value of the parent attribute may be
the same as either the id attribute of the target bean, or one of the values in the name
attribute of the target bean, and the target bean must be in a parent container of the current
one. You use this bean reference variant mainly when you have a hierarchy of containers
and you want to wrap an existing bean in a parent container with a proxy that will have the
same name as the parent bean.

<bean id="accountService" class="com.foo.SimpleAccountService">

</bean>


<bean id="accountService" <-- bean name is the same as the parent bean -->
class="org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="target">
<ref parent="accountService"/> 
</property>

</bean>
Inner beans
A <bean/> element inside the <property/> or <constructor-arg/> elements
defines a so-called inner bean.
<bean id="outer" class="...">

<bean class="com.example.Person"> 
<property name="name" value="Fiona Apple"/>
<property name="age" value="25"/>
</bean>
</property>
</bean>
An inner bean definition does not require a defined id or name; the container ignores these
values. It also ignores the scope flag. Inner beans are always anonymous and they are
always created with the outer bean. It is not possible to inject inner beans into
collaborating beans other than into the enclosing bean.
Collections
In the <list/>, <set/>, <map/>, and <props/> elements, you set the properties and
arguments of the Java Collection types List, Set, Map, and Properties,
respectively.
<bean id="moreComplexObject" class="example.ComplexObject">

<property name="adminEmails">
<props>
<prop key="administrator">administrator@example.org</prop>
<prop key="support">support@example.org</prop>
<prop key="development">development@example.org</prop>
</props>
</property>

<property name="someList">
<list>
<value>a list element followed by a reference</value>
<ref bean="myDataSource" />
</list>
</property>

<property name="someMap">
<map>
<entry key="an entry" value="just some string"/>
<entry key ="a ref" value-ref="myDataSource"/>
</map>
</property>

<property name="someSet">
<set>
<value>just some string</value>
<ref bean="myDataSource" />
</set>
</property>
</bean>
The value of a map key or value, or a set value, can also again be any of the following
elements:
bean | ref | idref | list | set | map | props | value | null
Collection merging
As of Spring 2.0, the container supports the merging of collections. An application
developer can define a parent-style <list/>, <map/>, <set/> or <props/> element,
and have child-style <list/>, <map/>, <set/> or <props/> elements inherit and
override values from the parent collection. That is, the child collection's values are the
result of merging the elements of the parent and child collections, with the child's collection
elements overriding values specified in the parent collection.
This section on merging discusses the parent-child bean mechanism. Readers unfamiliar
with parent and child bean definitions may wish to read the relevant section before
continuing.
The following example demonstrates collection merging:
<beans>
<bean id="parent" abstract="true" class="example.ComplexObject">
<props>
<prop key="administrator">administrator@example.com</prop>
<prop key="support">support@example.com</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="child" parent="parent">

<props merge="true">
<prop key="sales">sales@example.com</prop>
<prop key="support">support@example.co.uk</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
<beans>
Notice the use of the merge=true attribute on the <props/> element of the
adminEmails property of the child bean definition. When the child bean is resolved
and instantiated by the container, the resulting instance has an adminEmails
Properties collection that contains the result of the merging of the child's
adminEmails collection with the parent's adminEmails collection.
administrator=administrator@example.com
sales=sales@example.com
support=support@example.co.uk
The child Properties collection's value set inherits all property elements from the parent
<props/>, and the child's value for the support value overrides the value in the parent
collection.
This merging behavior applies similarly to the <list/>, <map/>, and <set/> collection
types. In the specific case of the <list/> element, the semantics associated with the
List collection type, that is, the notion of an ordered collection of values, is maintained;
the parent's values precede all of the child list's values. In the case of the Map, Set, and
Properties collection types, no ordering exists. Hence no ordering semantics are in
effect for the collection types that underlie the associated Map, Set, and Properties
implementation types that the container uses internally.
Limitations of collection merging

You cannot merge different collection types (such as a Map and a List), and if you do
attempt to do so an appropriate Exception is thrown. The merge attribute must be
specified on the lower, inherited, child definition; specifying the merge attribute on a
parent collection definition is redundant and will not result in the desired merging. The
merging feature is available only in Spring 2.0 and later.
Strongly-typed collection (Java 5+ only)

In Java 5 and later, you can use strongly typed collections (using generic types). That is, it
is possible to declare a Collection type such that it can only contain String elements
(for example). If you are using Spring to dependency-inject a strongly-typed Collection
into a bean, you can take advantage of Spring's type-conversion support such that the
elements of your strongly-typed Collection instances are converted to the appropriate
type prior to being added to the Collection.
public class Foo {

private Map<String, Float> accounts;
public void setAccounts(Map<String, Float> accounts) {
this.accounts = accounts;
}
}
<beans>
<property name="accounts">
<map>
<entry key="one" value="9.99"/>
<entry key="two" value="2.75"/>
<entry key="six" value="3.99"/>
</map>
</property>
</bean>
</beans>
When the accounts property of the foo bean is prepared for injection, the generics
information about the element type of the strongly-typed Map<String, Float> is
available by reflection. Thus Spring's type conversion infrastructure recognizes the various
value elements as being of type Float, and the string values 9.99, 2.75, and 3.99
are converted into an actual Float type.
Null and empty string values

Spring treats empty arguments for properties and the like as empty Strings. The
following XML-based configuration metadata snippet sets the email property to the empty
String value ("")
<bean class="ExampleBean">
<property name="email" value=""/>
</bean>
The preceding example is equivalent to the following Java code:

exampleBean.setEmail(""). The <null/> element handles null values. For
example:
<bean class="ExampleBean">
<property name="email"><null/></property>
</bean>
The above configuration is equivalent to the following Java code:

exampleBean.setEmail(null).
XML shortcut with the p-namespace

The p-namespace enables you to use the bean element's attributes, instead of nested
<property/> elements, to describe your property values and/or collaborating beans.
Spring 2.0 and later supports extensible configuration formats with namespaces, which are
based on an XML Schema definition. The beans configuration format discussed in this
chapter is defined in an XML Schema document. However, the p-namespace is not
defined in an XSD file and exists only in the core of Spring.
The following example shows two XML snippets that resolve to the same result: The first
uses standard XML format and the second uses the p-namespace.
<bean name="classic" class="com.example.ExampleBean">
<property name="email" value="foo@bar.com"/>
</bean>
<bean name="p-namespace" class="com.example.ExampleBean"
p:email="foo@bar.com"/>
</beans>
The example shows an attribute in the p-namespace called email in the bean definition.
This tells Spring to include a property declaration. As previously mentioned, the pnamespace does not have a schema definition, so you can set the name of the attribute to
the property name.
This next example includes two more bean definitions that both have a reference to
another bean:
<bean name="john-classic" class="com.example.Person">
<property name="name" value="John Doe"/>
<property name="spouse" ref="jane"/>
</bean>
<bean name="john-modern"
class="com.example.Person"
p:name="John Doe"
p:spouse-ref="jane"/>
<bean name="jane" class="com.example.Person">
<property name="name" value="Jane Doe"/>
</bean>
</beans>
As you can see, this example includes not only a property value using the p-namespace,
but also uses a special format to declare property references. Whereas the first bean
definition uses <property name="spouse" ref="jane"/> to create a reference
from bean john to bean jane, the second bean definition uses p:spouseref="jane" as an attribute to do the exact same thing. In this case spouse is the
property name, whereas the -ref part indicates that this is not a straight value but rather a
reference to another bean.
Note
The p-namespace is not as flexible as the standard XML format. For
example, the format for declaring property references clashes with
properties that end in Ref, whereas the standard XML format does not.
We recommend that you choose your approach carefully and
communicate this to your team members, to avoid producing XML
documents that use all three approaches at the same time.
XML shortcut with the c-namespace

Similar to the the section called XML shortcut with the p-namespace, the c-namespace,
newly introduced in Spring 3.1, allows usage of inlined attributes for configuring the
constructor arguments rather then nested constructor-arg elements.
Let's review the examples from the section called Constructor-based dependency
injection with the c namespace:
xmlns:c="http://www.springframework.org/schema/c"
<bean id="bar" class="x.y.Bar"/>
<bean id="baz" class="x.y.Baz"/>
<-- 'traditional' declaration -->
<constructor-arg ref="bar"/>
<constructor-arg ref="baz"/>
<constructor-arg value="foo@bar.com"/>
</bean>
<-- 'c-namespace' declaration -->
<bean id="foo" class="x.y.Foo" c:bar-ref="bar" c:baz-ref="baz" c:email="foo@bar.com">
</beans>
The c: namespace uses the same conventions as the p: one (trailing -ref for bean
references) for setting the constructor arguments by their names. And just as well, it needs
to be declared even though it is not defined in an XSD schema (but it exists inside the
Spring core).
For the rare cases where the constructor argument names are not available (usually if the
bytecode was compiled without debugging information), one can use fallback to the
argument indexes:
<-- 'c-namespace' index declaration -->
<bean id="foo" class="x.y.Foo" c:_0-ref="bar" c:_1-ref="baz">
Note
Due to the XML grammar, the index notation requires the presence of
the leading _ as XML attribute names cannot start with a number (even
though some IDE allow it).
In practice, the constructor resolution mechanism is quite efficient in matching arguments
so unless one really needs to, we recommend using the name notation through-out your
configuration.
Compound property names

You can use compound or nested property names when you set bean properties, as long
as all components of the path except the final property name are not null. Consider the
following bean definition.
<bean id="foo" class="foo.Bar">
<property name="fred.bob.sammy" value="123" />
</bean>
The foo bean has a fred property, which has a bob property, which has a sammy
property, and that final sammy property is being set to the value 123. In order for this to
work, the fred property of foo, and the bob property of fred must not be null after the
bean is constructed, or a NullPointerException is thrown.
5.4.3 Using depends-on

If a bean is a dependency of another that usually means that one bean is set as a property
of another. Typically you accomplish this with the <ref/> element in XML-based
configuration metadata. However, sometimes dependencies between beans are less
direct; for example, a static initializer in a class needs to be triggered, such as database
driver registration. The depends-on attribute can explicitly force one or more beans to be
initialized before the bean using this element is initialized. The following example uses the
depends-on attribute to express a dependency on a single bean:
<bean id="beanOne" class="ExampleBean" depends-on="manager"/>
<bean id="manager" class="ManagerBean" />
To express a dependency on multiple beans, supply a list of bean names as the value of
the depends-on attribute, with commas, whitespace and semicolons, used as valid
delimiters:
<bean id="beanOne" class="ExampleBean" depends-on="manager,accountDao">
<property name="manager" ref="manager" />
</bean>
<bean id="manager" class="ManagerBean" />
<bean id="accountDao" class="x.y.jdbc.JdbcAccountDao" />
Note
The depends-on attribute in the bean definition can specify both an
initialization time dependency and, in the case of singleton beans only,

a corresponding destroy time dependency. Dependent beans that
define a depends-on relationship with a given bean are destroyed
first, prior to the given bean itself being destroyed. Thus depends-on
can also control shutdown order.
5.4.4 Lazy-initialized beans

By default, ApplicationContext implementations eagerly create and configure all
singleton beans as part of the initialization process. Generally, this pre-instantiation is
desirable, because errors in the configuration or surrounding environment are discovered
immediately, as opposed to hours or even days later. When this behavior is not desirable,
you can prevent pre-instantiation of a singleton bean by marking the bean definition as
lazy-initialized. A lazy-initialized bean tells the IoC container to create a bean instance
when it is first requested, rather than at startup.
In XML, this behavior is controlled by the lazy-init attribute on the <bean/> element;
for example:
<bean id="lazy" class="com.foo.ExpensiveToCreateBean" lazy-init="true"/>
<bean name="not.lazy" class="com.foo.AnotherBean"/>
When the preceding configuration is consumed by an ApplicationContext, the bean

named lazy is not eagerly pre-instantiated when the ApplicationContext is starting
up, whereas the not.lazy bean is eagerly pre-instantiated.
However, when a lazy-initialized bean is a dependency of a singleton bean that is not lazyinitialized, the ApplicationContext creates the lazy-initialized bean at startup,
because it must satisfy the singleton's dependencies. The lazy-initialized bean is injected
into a singleton bean elsewhere that is not lazy-initialized.
You can also control lazy-initialization at the container level by using the defaultlazy-init attribute on the <beans/> element; for example:
<beans default-lazy-init="true">

</beans>
5.4.5 Autowiring collaborators

The Spring container can autowire relationships between collaborating beans. You can
allow Spring to resolve collaborators (other beans) automatically for your bean by
inspecting the contents of the ApplicationContext. Autowiring has the following
advantages:
Autowiring can significantly reduce the need to specify properties or constructor
arguments. (Other mechanisms such as a bean template discussed elsewhere in this
chapter are also valuable in this regard.)
Autowiring can update a configuration as your objects evolve. For example, if you
need to add a dependency to a class, that dependency can be satisfied automatically
without you needing to modify the configuration. Thus autowiring can be especially
useful during development, without negating the option of switching to explicit wiring
when the code base becomes more stable.
When using XML-based configuration metadata[2], you specify autowire mode for a bean
definition with the autowire attribute of the <bean/> element. The autowiring
functionality has five modes. You specify autowiring per bean and thus can choose which
ones to autowire.
Table 5.2. Autowiring modes
Mode
Explanation
no
(Default) No autowiring. Bean references must be defined via a ref

element. Changing the default setting is not recommended for larger
deployments, because specifying collaborators explicitly gives
greater control and clarity. To some extent, it documents the
structure of a system.
byName
Autowiring by property name. Spring looks for a bean with the same
name as the property that needs to be autowired. For example, if a
bean definition is set to autowire by name, and it contains a master
property (that is, it has a setMaster(..) method), Spring looks for a
bean definition named master, and uses it to set the property.
byType
Allows a property to be autowired if exactly one bean of the property

type exists in the container. If more than one exists, a fatal exception
is thrown, which indicates that you may not use byType autowiring
for that bean. If there are no matching beans, nothing happens; the
property is not set.
Analogous to byType, but applies to constructor arguments. If there

constructor is not exactly one bean of the constructor argument type in the
container, a fatal error is raised.
With byType or constructor autowiring mode, you can wire arrays and typed-collections. In
such cases all autowire candidates within the container that match the expected type are
provided to satisfy the dependency. You can autowire strongly-typed Maps if the expected
key type is String. An autowired Maps values will consist of all bean instances that
match the expected type, and the Maps keys will contain the corresponding bean names.
You can combine autowire behavior with dependency checking, which is performed after
autowiring completes.
Limitations and disadvantages of autowiring

Autowiring works best when it is used consistently across a project. If autowiring is not
used in general, it might be confusing to developers to use it to wire only one or two bean
definitions.
Consider the limitations and disadvantages of autowiring:
Explicit dependencies in property and constructor-arg settings always
override autowiring. You cannot autowire so-called simple properties such as
primitives, Strings, and Classes (and arrays of such simple properties). This
limitation is by-design.
Autowiring is less exact than explicit wiring. Although, as noted in the above table,
Spring is careful to avoid guessing in case of ambiguity that might have unexpected
results, the relationships between your Spring-managed objects are no longer
documented explicitly.
Wiring information may not be available to tools that may generate documentation from
a Spring container.
Multiple bean definitions within the container may match the type specified by the
setter method or constructor argument to be autowired. For arrays, collections, or
Maps, this is not necessarily a problem. However for dependencies that expect a
single value, this ambiguity is not arbitrarily resolved. If no unique bean definition is
available, an exception is thrown.
In the latter scenario, you have several options:
Abandon autowiring in favor of explicit wiring.
Avoid autowiring for a bean definition by setting its autowire-candidate attributes
to false as described in the next section.
Designate a single bean definition as the primary candidate by setting the primary
attribute of its <bean/> element to true.
If you are using Java 5 or later, implement the more fine-grained control available with
annotation-based configuration, as described in Section 5.9, Annotation-based
container configuration.
Excluding a bean from autowiring

On a per-bean basis, you can exclude a bean from autowiring. In Spring's XML format, set
the autowire-candidate attribute of the <bean/> element to false; the container
makes that specific bean definition unavailable to the autowiring infrastructure (including
annotation style configurations such as @Autowired).
You can also limit autowire candidates based on pattern-matching against bean names.
The top-level <beans/> element accepts one or more patterns within its defaultautowire-candidates attribute. For example, to limit autowire candidate status to any
bean whose name ends with Repository, provide a value of *Repository. To provide
multiple patterns, define them in a comma-separated list. An explicit value of true or
false for a bean definitions autowire-candidate attribute always takes precedence,
and for such beans, the pattern matching rules do not apply.
These techniques are useful for beans that you never want to be injected into other beans
by autowiring. It does not mean that an excluded bean cannot itself be configured using
autowiring. Rather, the bean itself is not a candidate for autowiring other beans.
5.4.6 Method injection

In most application scenarios, most beans in the container are singletons. When a
singleton bean needs to collaborate with another singleton bean, or a non-singleton bean
needs to collaborate with another non-singleton bean, you typically handle the
dependency by defining one bean as a property of the other. A problem arises when the
bean lifecycles are different. Suppose singleton bean A needs to use non-singleton
(prototype) bean B, perhaps on each method invocation on A. The container only creates
the singleton bean A once, and thus only gets one opportunity to set the properties. The
container cannot provide bean A with a new instance of bean B every time one is needed.
A solution is to forego some inversion of control. You can make bean A aware of the
container by implementing the ApplicationContextAware interface, and by making a
getBean("B") call to the container ask for (a typically new) bean B instance every time
bean A needs it. The following is an example of this approach:
// a class that uses a stateful Command-style class to perform some processing
package fiona.apple;
// Spring-API imports
import org.springframework.beans.BeansException;
import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextAware;
public class CommandManager implements ApplicationContextAware {
private ApplicationContext applicationContext;
public Object process(Map commandState) {
// grab a new instance of the appropriate Command
Command command = createCommand();
// set the state on the (hopefully brand new) Command instance
command.setState(commandState);
return command.execute();
}
protected Command createCommand() {
// notice the Spring API dependency!
return this.applicationContext.getBean("command", Command.class);
}
public void setApplicationContext(ApplicationContext applicationContext)
throws BeansException {
this.applicationContext = applicationContext;
}
}
The preceding is not desirable, because the business code is aware of and coupled to the
Spring Framework. Method Injection, a somewhat advanced feature of the Spring IoC
container, allows this use case to be handled in a clean fashion.

Lookup method injection is the ability of the
container to override methods on container
You can read more about the

motivation for Method Injection in
this blog entry.
managed beans, to return the lookup result for

another named bean in the container. The lookup
typically involves a prototype bean as in the scenario described in the preceding section.
The Spring Framework implements this method injection by using bytecode generation
from the CGLIB library to generate dynamically a subclass that overrides the method.
Note
For this dynamic subclassing to work, the class that the Spring
container will subclass cannot be final, and the method to be
overridden cannot be final either. Also, testing a class that has an
abstract method requires you to subclass the class yourself and to
supply a stub implementation of the abstract method. Finally,
objects that have been the target of method injection cannot be
serialized. As of Spring 3.2 it is no longer necessary to add CGLIB to
your classpath, because CGLIB classes are repackaged under
org.springframework and distributed within the spring-core JAR. This is
done both for convenience as well as to avoid potential conflicts with
other projects that use differing versions of CGLIB.
Looking at the CommandManager class in the previous code snippet, you see that the
Spring container will dynamically override the implementation of the createCommand()
method. Your CommandManager class will not have any Spring dependencies, as can be
seen in the reworked example:
package fiona.apple;
// no more Spring imports!
public abstract class CommandManager {
public Object process(Object commandState) {
// grab a new instance of the appropriate Command interface
}
// okay... but where is the implementation of this method?
protected abstract Command createCommand();
}
In the client class containing the method to be injected (the CommandManager in this
case), the method to be injected requires a signature of the following form:
<public|protected> [abstract] <return-type> theMethodName(no-arguments);
If the method is abstract, the dynamically-generated subclass implements the method.

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

<bean id="command" class="fiona.apple.AsyncCommand" scope="prototype">

</bean>

<bean id="commandManager" class="fiona.apple.CommandManager">
<lookup-method name="createCommand" bean="command"/>
</bean>
The bean identified as commandManager calls its own method createCommand()

whenever it needs a new instance of the command bean. You must be careful to deploy
the command bean as a prototype, if that is actually what is needed. If it is deployed as a
singleton, the same instance of the command bean is returned each time.
Tip
The interested reader may also find the
ServiceLocatorFactoryBean (in the
org.springframework.beans.factory.config package) to
be of use. The approach used in ServiceLocatorFactoryBean is similar
to that of another utility class,
ObjectFactoryCreatingFactoryBean, but it allows you to
specify your own lookup interface as opposed to a Spring-specific
lookup interface. Consult the JavaDocs for these classes as well as
this blog entry for additional information ServiceLocatorFactoryBean.
Arbitrary method replacement

A less useful form of method injection than lookup method Injection is the ability to replace
arbitrary methods in a managed bean with another method implementation. Users may
safely skip the rest of this section until the functionality is actually needed.
With XML-based configuration metadata, you can use the replaced-method element to
replace an existing method implementation with another, for a deployed bean. Consider
the following class, with a method computeValue, which we want to override:
public class MyValueCalculator {
public String computeValue(String input) {
// some real code...
}
// some other methods...
}
A class implementing the

org.springframework.beans.factory.support.MethodReplacer interface
provides the new method definition.
/** meant to be used to override the existing computeValue(String)
implementation in MyValueCalculator
*/
public class ReplacementComputeValue implements MethodReplacer {
public Object reimplement(Object o, Method m, Object[] args) throws Throwable {
// get the input value, work with it, and return a computed result
String input = (String) args[0];
...
return ...;
}
}
The bean definition to deploy the original class and specify the method override would
look like this:
<bean id="myValueCalculator" class="x.y.z.MyValueCalculator">

<replaced-method name="computeValue" replacer="replacementComputeValue">
<arg-type>String</arg-type>
</replaced-method>
</bean>
<bean id="replacementComputeValue" class="a.b.c.ReplacementComputeValue"/>
You can use one or more contained <arg-type/> elements within the <replacedmethod/> element to indicate the method signature of the method being overridden. The
signature for the arguments is necessary only if the method is overloaded and multiple
variants exist within the class. For convenience, the type string for an argument may be a
substring of the fully qualified type name. For example, the following all match
java.lang.String:
java.lang.String
String
Str
Because the number of arguments is often enough to distinguish between each possible
choice, this shortcut can save a lot of typing, by allowing you to type only the shortest string
that will match an argument type.
5.5 Bean scopes

When you create a bean definition, you create a recipe for creating actual instances of the
class defined by that bean definition. The idea that a bean definition is a recipe is
important, because it means that, as with a class, you can create many object instances
from a single recipe.
You can control not only the various dependencies and configuration values that are to be
plugged into an object that is created from a particular bean definition, but also the scope
of the objects created from a particular bean definition. This approach is powerful and
flexible in that you can choose the scope of the objects you create through configuration
instead of having to bake in the scope of an object at the Java class level. Beans can be
defined to be deployed in one of a number of scopes: out of the box, the Spring Framework
supports five scopes, three of which are available only if you use a web-aware
ApplicationContext.
The following scopes are supported out of the box. You can also create a custom scope.
Table 5.3. Bean scopes

Scope
singleton
Description
(Default) Scopes a single bean definition to a single object instance
per Spring IoC container.
prototype Scopes a single bean definition to any number of object instances.
request
Scopes a single bean definition to the lifecycle of a single HTTP

request; that is, each HTTP request has its own instance of a bean
created off the back of a single bean definition. Only valid in the
context of a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.
session
Scopes a single bean definition to the lifecycle of an HTTP Session.

Only valid in the context of a web-aware Spring
ApplicationContext.
global
session
Scopes a single bean definition to the lifecycle of a global HTTP

Session. Typically only valid when used in a portlet context. Only
valid in the context of a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.
Thread-scoped beans
As of Spring 3.0, a thread scope is available, but is not registered by
default. For more information, see the documentation for
SimpleThreadScope. For instructions on how to register this or any
other custom scope, see the section called Using a custom scope.
5.5.1 The singleton scope

Only one shared instance of a singleton bean is managed, and all requests for beans with
an id or ids matching that bean definition result in that one specific bean instance being
returned by the Spring container.
To put it another way, when you define a bean definition and it is scoped as a singleton,
the Spring IoC container creates exactly one instance of the object defined by that bean
definition. This single instance is stored in a cache of such singleton beans, and all
subsequent requests and references for that named bean return the cached object.
Spring's concept of a singleton bean differs from the Singleton pattern as defined in the
Gang of Four (GoF) patterns book. The GoF Singleton hard-codes the scope of an object
such that one and only one instance of a particular class is created per ClassLoader.
The scope of the Spring singleton is best described as per container and per bean. This
means that if you define one bean for a particular class in a single Spring container, then
the Spring container creates one and only one instance of the class defined by that bean
definition. The singleton scope is the default scope in Spring. To define a bean as a
singleton in XML, you would write, for example:
<bean id="accountService" class="com.foo.DefaultAccountService"/>

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

The non-singleton, prototype scope of bean deployment results in the creation of a new
bean instance every time a request for that specific bean is made. That is, the bean is
injected into another bean or you request it through a getBean() method call on the
container. As a rule, use the prototype scope for all stateful beans and the singleton scope
for stateless beans.
The following diagram illustrates the Spring prototype scope. A data access object (DAO)
is not typically configured as a prototype, because a typical DAO does not hold any
conversational state; it was just easier for this author to reuse the core of the singleton
diagram.
The following example defines a bean as a prototype in XML:


<bean id="accountService" class="com.foo.DefaultAccountService" scope="prototype"/>
In contrast to the other scopes, Spring does not manage the complete lifecycle of a
prototype bean: the container instantiates, configures, and otherwise assembles a
prototype object, and hands it to the client, with no further record of that prototype instance.
Thus, although initialization lifecycle callback methods are called on all objects regardless
of scope, in the case of prototypes, configured destruction lifecycle callbacks are not
called. The client code must clean up prototype-scoped objects and release expensive
resources that the prototype bean(s) are holding. To get the Spring container to release
resources held by prototype-scoped beans, try using a custom bean post-processor, which
holds a reference to beans that need to be cleaned up.
In some respects, the Spring container's role in regard to a prototype-scoped bean is a
replacement for the Java new operator. All lifecycle management past that point must be
handled by the client. (For details on the lifecycle of a bean in the Spring container, see
Section 5.6.1, Lifecycle callbacks.)
5.5.3 Singleton beans with prototype-bean dependencies

When you use singleton-scoped beans with dependencies on prototype beans, be aware
that dependencies are resolved at instantiation time. Thus if you dependency-inject a
prototype-scoped bean into a singleton-scoped bean, a new prototype bean is instantiated
and then dependency-injected into the singleton bean. The prototype instance is the sole
instance that is ever supplied to the singleton-scoped bean.
However, suppose you want the singleton-scoped bean to acquire a new instance of the
prototype-scoped bean repeatedly at runtime. You cannot dependency-inject a prototypescoped bean into your singleton bean, because that injection occurs only once, when the
Spring container is instantiating the singleton bean and resolving and injecting its
dependencies. If you need a new instance of a prototype bean at runtime more than once,
see Section 5.4.6, Method injection
5.5.4 Request, session, and global session scopes

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

To support the scoping of beans at the request, session, and global session
levels (web-scoped beans), some minor initial configuration is required before you define
your beans. (This initial setup is not required for the standard scopes, singleton and
prototype.)
How you accomplish this initial setup depends on your particular Servlet environment..
If you access scoped beans within Spring Web MVC, in effect, within a request that is
processed by the Spring DispatcherServlet, or DispatcherPortlet, then no
special setup is necessary: DispatcherServlet and DispatcherPortlet already
expose all relevant state.
If you use a Servlet 2.4+ web container, with requests processed outside of Spring's
DispatcherServlet (for example, when using JSF or Struts), you need to add the following
javax.servlet.ServletRequestListener to the declarations in your web
applications web.xml file:
<web-app>
...
<listener>
<listener-class>
org.springframework.web.context.request.RequestContextListener
</listener-class>
</listener>
...
</web-app>
If you use an older web container (Servlet 2.3), use the provided
javax.servlet.Filter implementation. The following snippet of XML configuration
must be included in the web.xml file of your web application if you want to access webscoped beans in requests outside of Spring's DispatcherServlet on a Servlet 2.3 container.
(The filter mapping depends on the surrounding web application configuration, so you
must change it as appropriate.)
<web-app>
..
<filter>
<filter-name>requestContextFilter</filter-name>
<filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.RequestContextFilter</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>requestContextFilter</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>
...
</web-app>
DispatcherServlet, RequestContextListener and RequestContextFilter

all do exactly the same thing, namely bind the HTTP request object to the Thread that is
servicing that request. This makes beans that are request- and session-scoped available
further down the call chain.
Request scope
Consider the following bean definition:
<bean id="loginAction" class="com.foo.LoginAction" scope="request"/>
The Spring container creates a new instance of the LoginAction bean by using the
loginAction bean definition for each and every HTTP request. That is, the
loginAction bean is scoped at the HTTP request level. You can change the internal
state of the instance that is created as much as you want, because other instances created
from the same loginAction bean definition will not see these changes in state; they are
particular to an individual request. When the request completes processing, the bean that
is scoped to the request is discarded.
Session scope
<bean id="userPreferences" class="com.foo.UserPreferences" scope="session"/>
The Spring container creates a new instance of the UserPreferences bean by using
the userPreferences bean definition for the lifetime of a single HTTP Session. In
other words, the userPreferences bean is effectively scoped at the HTTP Session
level. As with request-scoped beans, you can change the internal state of the instance
that is created as much as you want, knowing that other HTTP Session instances that are
also using instances created from the same userPreferences bean definition do not
see these changes in state, because they are particular to an individual HTTP Session.
When the HTTP Session is eventually discarded, the bean that is scoped to that
particular HTTP Session is also discarded.
Global session scope

<bean id="userPreferences" class="com.foo.UserPreferences" scope="globalSession"/>
The global session scope is similar to the standard HTTP Session scope
(described above), and applies only in the context of portlet-based web applications. The
portlet specification defines the notion of a global Session that is shared among all
portlets that make up a single portlet web application. Beans defined at the global
session scope are scoped (or bound) to the lifetime of the global portlet Session.
If you write a standard Servlet-based web application and you define one or more beans
as having global session scope, the standard HTTP Session scope is used, and no
error is raised.
Scoped beans as dependencies

The Spring IoC container manages not only the instantiation of your objects (beans), but
also the wiring up of collaborators (or dependencies). If you want to inject (for example) an
HTTP request scoped bean into another bean, you must inject an AOP proxy in place of
the scoped bean. That is, you need to inject a proxy object that exposes the same public
interface as the scoped object but that can also retrieve the real, target object from the
relevant scope (for example, an HTTP request) and delegate method calls onto the real
object.
Note
You do not need to use the <aop:scoped-proxy/> in conjunction
with beans that are scoped as singletons or prototypes.
The configuration in the following example is only one line, but it is important to understand
the why as well as the how behind it.
xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop
http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop.xsd">

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

<aop:scoped-proxy/>
</bean>

<bean id="userService" class="com.foo.SimpleUserService">


<property name="userPreferences" ref="userPreferences"/>
</bean>
</beans>
To create such a proxy, you insert a child <aop:scoped-proxy/> element into a

scoped bean definition. See the section called Choosing the type of proxy to create and
Appendix E, XML Schema-based configuration.) Why do definitions of beans scoped at the
request, session, globalSession and custom-scope levels require the
<aop:scoped-proxy/> element ? Let's examine the following singleton bean definition
and contrast it with what you need to define for the aforementioned scopes. (The following
userPreferences bean definition as it stands is incomplete.)
<bean id="userPreferences" class="com.foo.UserPreferences" scope="session"/>
<bean id="userManager" class="com.foo.UserManager">
</bean>
In the preceding example, the singleton bean userManager is injected with a reference
to the HTTP Session-scoped bean userPreferences. The salient point here is that
the userManager bean is a singleton: it will be instantiated exactly once per container,
and its dependencies (in this case only one, the userPreferences bean) are also
injected only once. This means that the userManager bean will only operate on the exact
same userPreferences object, that is, the one that it was originally injected with.
This is not the behavior you want when injecting a shorter-lived scoped bean into a longerlived scoped bean, for example injecting an HTTP Session-scoped collaborating bean
as a dependency into singleton bean. Rather, you need a single userManager object,
and for the lifetime of an HTTP Session, you need a userPreferences object that is
specific to said HTTP Session. Thus the container creates an object that exposes the
exact same public interface as the UserPreferences class (ideally an object that is a
UserPreferences instance) which can fetch the real UserPreferences object from
the scoping mechanism (HTTP request, Session, etc.). The container injects this proxy
object into the userManager bean, which is unaware that this UserPreferences
reference is a proxy. In this example, when a UserManager instance invokes a method
on the dependency-injected UserPreferences object, it actually is invoking a method
on the proxy. The proxy then fetches the real UserPreferences object from (in this
case) the HTTP Session, and delegates the method invocation onto the retrieved real
UserPreferences object.
Thus you need the following, correct and complete, configuration when injecting
request-, session-, and globalSession-scoped beans into collaborating objects:
<bean id="userPreferences" class="com.foo.UserPreferences" scope="session">
<aop:scoped-proxy/>
</bean>
</bean>
Choosing the type of proxy to create

By default, when the Spring container creates a proxy for a bean that is marked up with the
<aop:scoped-proxy/> element, a CGLIB-based class proxy is created.
Note: CGLIB proxies only intercept public method calls! Do not call non-public methods on
such a proxy; they will not be delegated to the scoped target object.
Alternatively, you can configure the Spring container to create standard JDK interfacebased proxies for such scoped beans, by specifying false for the value of the proxytarget-class attribute of the <aop:scoped-proxy/> element. Using JDK interface-
based proxies means that you do not need additional libraries in your application
classpath to effect such proxying. However, it also means that the class of the scoped bean
must implement at least one interface, and that all collaborators into which the scoped
bean is injected must reference the bean through one of its interfaces.

<bean id="userPreferences" class="com.foo.DefaultUserPreferences" scope="session">
<aop:scoped-proxy proxy-target-class="false"/>
</bean>
</bean>
For more detailed information about choosing class-based or interface-based proxying,

see Section 9.6, Proxying mechanisms.
5.5.5 Custom scopes

As of Spring 2.0, the bean scoping mechanism is extensible. You can define your own
scopes, or even redefine existing scopes, although the latter is considered bad practice
and you cannot override the built-in singleton and prototype scopes.
Creating a custom scope

To integrate your custom scope(s) into the Spring container, you need to implement the
org.springframework.beans.factory.config.Scope interface, which is
described in this section. For an idea of how to implement your own scopes, see the
Scope implementations that are supplied with the Spring Framework itself and the Scope
Javadoc, which explains the methods you need to implement in more detail.
The Scope interface has four methods to get objects from the scope, remove them from the
scope, and allow them to be destroyed.
The following method returns the object from the underlying scope. The session scope
implementation, for example, returns the session-scoped bean (and if it does not exist, the
method returns a new instance of the bean, after having bound it to the session for future
reference).
Object get(String name, ObjectFactory objectFactory)
The following method removes the object from the underlying scope. The session scope
implementation for example, removes the session-scoped bean from the underlying
session. The object should be returned, but you can return null if the object with the
specified name is not found.
Object remove(String name)
The following method registers the callbacks the scope should execute when it is
destroyed or when the specified object in the scope is destroyed. Refer to the Javadoc or a
Spring scope implementation for more information on destruction callbacks.
void registerDestructionCallback(String name, Runnable destructionCallback)
The following method obtains the conversation identifier for the underlying scope. This
identifier is different for each scope. For a session scoped implementation, this identifier
can be the session identifier.
String getConversationId()
Using a custom scope

After you write and test one or more custom Scope implementations, you need to make the
Spring container aware of your new scope(s). The following method is the central method
to register a new Scope with the Spring container:
void registerScope(String scopeName, Scope scope);
This method is declared on the ConfigurableBeanFactory interface, which is

available on most of the concrete ApplicationContext implementations that ship with
Spring via the BeanFactory property.
The first argument to the registerScope(..) method is the unique name associated
with a scope; examples of such names in the Spring container itself are singleton and
prototype. The second argument to the registerScope(..) method is an actual
instance of the custom Scope implementation that you wish to register and use.
Suppose that you write your custom Scope implementation, and then register it as below.
Note
The example below uses SimpleThreadScope which is included
with Spring, but not registered by default. The instructions would be the
same for your own custom Scope implementations.
Scope threadScope = new SimpleThreadScope();

beanFactory.registerScope("thread", threadScope);
You then create bean definitions that adhere to the scoping rules of your custom Scope:
<bean id="..." class="..." scope="thread">
With a custom Scope implementation, you are not limited to programmatic registration of
the scope. You can also do the Scope registration declaratively, using the
CustomScopeConfigurer class:
<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.CustomScopeConfigurer">
<property name="scopes">
<map>
<entry key="thread">
<bean class="org.springframework.context.support.SimpleThreadScope"/>
</entry>
</map>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="bar" class="x.y.Bar" scope="thread">
<property name="name" value="Rick"/>
<aop:scoped-proxy/>
</bean>
<property name="bar" ref="bar"/>
</bean>
</beans>
Note
When you place <aop:scoped-proxy/> in a FactoryBean
implementation, it is the factory bean itself that is scoped, not the object
returned from getObject().
5.6 Customizing the nature of a bean

5.6.1 Lifecycle callbacks
To interact with the container's management of the bean lifecycle, you can implement the
Spring InitializingBean and DisposableBean interfaces. The container calls

afterPropertiesSet() for the former and destroy() for the latter to allow the bean
to perform certain actions upon initialization and destruction of your beans.
Tip
The JSR-250 @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy annotations are
generally considered best practice for receiving lifecycle callbacks in a
modern Spring application. Using these annotations means that your
beans are not coupled to Spring specific interfaces. For details see
Section 5.9.6, @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy.
If you don't want to use the JSR-250 annotations but you are still
looking to remove coupling consider the use of init-method and
destroy-method object definition metadata.
Internally, the Spring Framework uses BeanPostProcessor implementations to process
any callback interfaces it can find and call the appropriate methods. If you need custom
features or other lifecycle behavior Spring does not offer out-of-the-box, you can implement
a BeanPostProcessor yourself. For more information, see Section 5.8, Container
Extension Points.
In addition to the initialization and destruction callbacks, Spring-managed objects may also
implement the Lifecycle interface so that those objects can participate in the startup
and shutdown process as driven by the container's own lifecycle.
The lifecycle callback interfaces are described in this section.
Initialization callbacks
The org.springframework.beans.factory.InitializingBean interface
allows a bean to perform initialization work after all necessary properties on the bean have
been set by the container. The InitializingBean interface specifies a single method:
void afterPropertiesSet() throws Exception;
It is recommended that you do not use the InitializingBean interface because it

unnecessarily couples the code to Spring. Alternatively, use the @PostConstruct
annotation or specify a POJO initialization method. In the case of XML-based configuration
metadata, you use the init-method attribute to specify the name of the method that has
a void no-argument signature. For example, the following definition:
<bean id="exampleInitBean" class="examples.ExampleBean" init-method="init"/>
public void init() {
// do some initialization work
}
}
...is exactly the same as...

<bean id="exampleInitBean" class="examples.AnotherExampleBean"/>
public class AnotherExampleBean implements InitializingBean {
public void afterPropertiesSet() {
// do some initialization work
}
}
... but does not couple the code to Spring.
Destruction callbacks
Implementing the org.springframework.beans.factory.DisposableBean
interface allows a bean to get a callback when the container containing it is destroyed. The
DisposableBean interface specifies a single method:

void destroy() throws Exception;
It is recommended that you do not use the DisposableBean callback interface because
it unnecessarily couples the code to Spring. Alternatively, use the @PreDestroy
annotation or specify a generic method that is supported by bean definitions. With XMLbased configuration metadata, you use the destroy-method attribute on the <bean/>.
For example, the following definition:
<bean id="exampleInitBean" class="examples.ExampleBean" destroy-method="cleanup"/>

public void cleanup() {
// do some destruction work (like releasing pooled connections)
}
}
...is exactly the same as...

<bean id="exampleInitBean" class="examples.AnotherExampleBean"/>
public class AnotherExampleBean implements DisposableBean {
public void destroy() {
// do some destruction work (like releasing pooled connections)
}
}
... but does not couple the code to Spring.
Default initialization and destroy methods

When you write initialization and destroy method callbacks that do not use the Springspecific InitializingBean and DisposableBean callback interfaces, you typically
write methods with names such as init(), initialize(), dispose(), and so on.
Ideally, the names of such lifecycle callback methods are standardized across a project so
that all developers use the same method names and ensure consistency.
You can configure the Spring container to look for named initialization and destroy
callback method names on every bean. This means that you, as an application developer,
can write your application classes and use an initialization callback called init(),
without having to configure an init-method="init" attribute with each bean
definition. The Spring IoC container calls that method when the bean is created (and in
accordance with the standard lifecycle callback contract described previously). This
feature also enforces a consistent naming convention for initialization and destroy method
callbacks.
Suppose that your initialization callback methods are named init() and destroy callback
methods are named destroy(). Your class will resemble the class in the following
example.
public class DefaultBlogService implements BlogService {
private BlogDao blogDao;
public void setBlogDao(BlogDao blogDao) {
this.blogDao = blogDao;
}
// this is (unsurprisingly) the initialization callback method
if (this.blogDao == null) {
throw new IllegalStateException("The [blogDao] property must be set.");
}
}
}
<beans default-init-method="init">
<bean id="blogService" class="com.foo.DefaultBlogService">
<property name="blogDao" ref="blogDao" />
</bean>
</beans>
The presence of the default-init-method attribute on the top-level <beans/>

element attribute causes the Spring IoC container to recognize a method called init on
beans as the initialization method callback. When a bean is created and assembled, if the
bean class has such a method, it is invoked at the appropriate time.
You configure destroy method callbacks similarly (in XML, that is) by using the defaultdestroy-method attribute on the top-level <beans/> element.
Where existing bean classes already have callback methods that are named at variance
with the convention, you can override the default by specifying (in XML, that is) the method
name using the init-method and destroy-method attributes of the <bean/> itself.
The Spring container guarantees that a configured initialization callback is called
immediately after a bean is supplied with all dependencies. Thus the initialization callback
is called on the raw bean reference, which means that AOP interceptors and so forth are
not yet applied to the bean. A target bean is fully created first, then an AOP proxy (for
example) with its interceptor chain is applied. If the target bean and the proxy are defined
separately, your code can even interact with the raw target bean, bypassing the proxy.
Hence, it would be inconsistent to apply the interceptors to the init method, because doing
so would couple the lifecycle of the target bean with its proxy/interceptors and leave
strange semantics when your code interacts directly to the raw target bean.
Combining lifecycle mechanisms

As of Spring 2.5, you have three options for controlling bean lifecycle behavior: the
InitializingBean and DisposableBean callback interfaces; custom init() and
destroy() methods; and the @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy annotations. You
can combine these mechanisms to control a given bean.
Note
If multiple lifecycle mechanisms are configured for a bean, and each
mechanism is configured with a different method name, then each
configured method is executed in the order listed below. However, if
the same method name is configured - for example, init() for an
initialization method - for more than one of these lifecycle mechanisms,
that method is executed once, as explained in the preceding section.
Multiple lifecycle mechanisms configured for the same bean, with different initialization
methods, are called as follows:
Methods annotated with @PostConstruct
afterPropertiesSet() as defined by the InitializingBean callback
interface
A custom configured init() method
Destroy methods are called in the same order:
Methods annotated with @PreDestroy
destroy() as defined by the DisposableBean callback interface
A custom configured destroy() method
Startup and shutdown callbacks

The Lifecycle interface defines the essential methods for any object that has its own
lifecycle requirements (e.g. starts and stops some background process):
public interface Lifecycle {

void start();
void stop();
boolean isRunning();
}
Any Spring-managed object may implement that interface. Then, when the
ApplicationContext itself starts and stops, it will cascade those calls to all Lifecycle
implementations defined within that context. It does this by delegating to a
LifecycleProcessor:
public interface LifecycleProcessor extends Lifecycle {
void onRefresh();
void onClose();
}
Notice that the LifecycleProcessor is itself an extension of the Lifecycle interface.

It also adds two other methods for reacting to the context being refreshed and closed.
The order of startup and shutdown invocations can be important. If a "depends-on"
relationship exists between any two objects, the dependent side will start after its
dependency, and it will stop before its dependency. However, at times the direct
dependencies are unknown. You may only know that objects of a certain type should start
prior to objects of another type. In those cases, the SmartLifecycle interface defines
another option, namely the getPhase() method as defined on its super-interface,
Phased.
public interface Phased {
int getPhase();
}
public interface SmartLifecycle extends Lifecycle, Phased {
boolean isAutoStartup();
void stop(Runnable callback);
}
When starting, the objects with the lowest phase start first, and when stopping, the reverse
order is followed. Therefore, an object that implements SmartLifecycle and whose
getPhase() method returns Integer.MIN_VALUE would be among the first to start and
the last to stop. At the other end of the spectrum, a phase value of Integer.MAX_VALUE
would indicate that the object should be started last and stopped first (likely because it
depends on other processes to be running). When considering the phase value, it's also
important to know that the default phase for any "normal" Lifecycle object that does not
implement SmartLifecycle would be 0. Therefore, any negative phase value would
indicate that an object should start before those standard components (and stop after
them), and vice versa for any positive phase value.
As you can see the stop method defined by SmartLifecycle accepts a callback. Any
implementation must invoke that callback's run() method after that implementation's
shutdown process is complete. That enables asynchronous shutdown where necessary
since the default implementation of the LifecycleProcessor interface,
DefaultLifecycleProcessor, will wait up to its timeout value for the group of objects
within each phase to invoke that callback. The default per-phase timeout is 30 seconds.
You can override the default lifecycle processor instance by defining a bean named
"lifecycleProcessor" within the context. If you only want to modify the timeout, then defining
the following would be sufficient:
<bean id="lifecycleProcessor" class="org.springframework.context.support.DefaultLifecycleProcessor">


<property name="timeoutPerShutdownPhase" value="10000"/>
</bean>
As mentioned, the LifecycleProcessor interface defines callback methods for the

refreshing and closing of the context as well. The latter will simply drive the shutdown
process as if stop() had been called explicitly, but it will happen when the context is
closing. The 'refresh' callback on the other hand enables another feature of
SmartLifecycle beans. When the context is refreshed (after all objects have been
instantiated and initialized), that callback will be invoked, and at that point the default
lifecycle processor will check the boolean value returned by each SmartLifecycle
object's isAutoStartup() method. If "true", then that object will be started at that point
rather than waiting for an explicit invocation of the context's or its own start() method (unlike
the context refresh, the context start does not happen automatically for a standard context
implementation). The "phase" value as well as any "depends-on" relationships will
determine the startup order in the same way as described above.
Shutting down the Spring IoC container gracefully in non-web applications

Note
This section applies only to non-web applications. Spring's web-based
ApplicationContext implementations already have code in place
to shut down the Spring IoC container gracefully when the relevant web
application is shut down.
If you are using Spring's IoC container in a non-web application environment; for example,
in a rich client desktop environment; you register a shutdown hook with the JVM. Doing so
ensures a graceful shutdown and calls the relevant destroy methods on your singleton
beans so that all resources are released. Of course, you must still configure and implement
these destroy callbacks correctly.
To register a shutdown hook, you call the registerShutdownHook() method that is
declared on the AbstractApplicationContext class:
import org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;
public final class Boot {
public static void main(final String[] args) throws Exception {
AbstractApplicationContext ctx
= new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(new String []{"beans.xml"});
// add a shutdown hook for the above context...
ctx.registerShutdownHook();
// app runs here...
// main method exits, hook is called prior to the app shutting down...
}
}
5.6.2 ApplicationContextAware and BeanNameAware

When an ApplicationContext creates a class that implements the
org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextAware interface, the
class is provided with a reference to that ApplicationContext.
public interface ApplicationContextAware {
void setApplicationContext(ApplicationContext applicationContext) throws BeansException;
}
Thus beans can manipulate programmatically the ApplicationContext that created

them, through the ApplicationContext interface, or by casting the reference to a
known subclass of this interface, such as ConfigurableApplicationContext,
which exposes additional functionality. One use would be the programmatic retrieval of
other beans. Sometimes this capability is useful; however, in general you should avoid it,
because it couples the code to Spring and does not follow the Inversion of Control style,
where collaborators are provided to beans as properties. Other methods of the
ApplicationContext provide access to file resources, publishing application events, and
accessing a MessageSource. These additional features are described in Section 5.14,
Additional Capabilities of the ApplicationContext
As of Spring 2.5, autowiring is another alternative to obtain reference to the
ApplicationContext. The "traditional" constructor and byType autowiring
modes (as described in Section 5.4.5, Autowiring collaborators) can provide a
dependency of type ApplicationContext for a constructor argument or setter method
parameter, respectively. For more flexibility, including the ability to autowire fields and
multiple parameter methods, use the new annotation-based autowiring features. If you do,
the ApplicationContext is autowired into a field, constructor argument, or method
parameter that is expecting the ApplicationContext type if the field, constructor, or
method in question carries the @Autowired annotation. For more information, see
Section 5.9.2, @Autowired.
When an ApplicationContext creates a class that implements the
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanNameAware interface, the class is
provided with a reference to the name defined in its associated object definition.
public interface BeanNameAware {
void setBeanName(string name) throws BeansException;
}
The callback is invoked after population of normal bean properties but before an
initialization callback such as InitializingBeans afterPropertiesSet or a custom initmethod.
5.6.3 Other Aware interfaces

Besides ApplicationContextAware and BeanNameAware discussed above, Spring
offers a range of Aware interfaces that allow beans to indicate to the container that they
require a certain infrastructure dependency. The most important Aware interfaces are
summarized below - as a general rule, the name is a good indication of the dependency
type:
Table 5.4. Aware interfaces

Name
ApplicationContextAware
Injected Dependency
Explained in...
Declaring
ApplicationContext
Section 5.6.2,
and BeanNameAware
Event publisher of the

ApplicationEventPublisherAware enclosing
ApplicationContext
Section 5.14, Additional

Capabilities of the
ApplicationContext
BeanClassLoaderAware
Class loader used to load

the bean classes.
Section 5.3.2, Instantiating

beans
BeanFactoryAware
Declaring BeanFactory
Section 5.6.2,
and BeanNameAware
BeanNameAware
Name of the declaring

bean
Section 5.6.2,
and BeanNameAware
Resource adapter
BootstrapContext the
BootstrapContextAware
container runs in.

Chapter 25, JCA CCI
Typically available only in
JCA aware
ApplicationContexts
LoadTimeWeaverAware
Defined weaver for

Section 9.8.4, Load-time
processing class definition weaving with AspectJ in the
at load time
Spring Framework
MessageSourceAware
Configured strategy for

resolving messages (with
support for
parametrization and
internationalization)
Section 5.14, Additional

Capabilities of the
ApplicationContext
NotificationPublisherAware
Spring JMX notification

publisher
Section 24.7, Notifications
PortletConfigAware
Current PortletConfig
the container runs in.
Valid only in a web-aware
Spring
ApplicationContext
Chapter 20, Portlet MVC

Framework
PortletContextAware
Current
PortletContext the
container runs in. Valid
only in a web-aware
Spring
ApplicationContext
Chapter 20, Portlet MVC

Framework
ResourceLoaderAware
Configured loader for lowlevel access to resources
Chapter 6, Resources
ServletConfigAware
Current ServletConfig
the container runs in.
Valid only in a web-aware
Spring
ApplicationContext
Chapter 17, Web MVC

framework
ServletContextAware
Current
ServletContext the
container runs in. Valid
only in a web-aware
Spring
ApplicationContext
Chapter 17, Web MVC

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

A bean definition can contain a lot of configuration information, including constructor
arguments, property values, and container-specific information such as initialization
method, static factory method name, and so on. A child bean definition inherits
configuration data from a parent definition. The child definition can override some values,
or add others, as needed. Using parent and child bean definitions can save a lot of typing.
Effectively, this is a form of templating.
If you work with an ApplicationContext interface programmatically, child bean
definitions are represented by the ChildBeanDefinition class. Most users do not
work with them on this level, instead configuring bean definitions declaratively in
something like the ClassPathXmlApplicationContext. When you use XML-based
configuration metadata, you indicate a child bean definition by using the parent attribute,
specifying the parent bean as the value of this attribute.
<bean id="inheritedTestBean" abstract="true"
class="org.springframework.beans.TestBean">
<property name="name" value="parent"/>
</bean>
<bean id="inheritsWithDifferentClass"
class="org.springframework.beans.DerivedTestBean"
parent="inheritedTestBean" init-method="initialize">
<property name="name" value="override"/>

</bean>
A child bean definition uses the bean class from the parent definition if none is specified,
but can also override it. In the latter case, the child bean class must be compatible with the
parent, that is, it must accept the parent's property values.
A child bean definition inherits constructor argument values, property values, and method
overrides from the parent, with the option to add new values. Any initialization method,
destroy method, and/or static factory method settings that you specify will override the
corresponding parent settings.
The remaining settings are always taken from the child definition: depends on, autowire
mode, dependency check, singleton, scope, lazy init.
The preceding example explicitly marks the parent bean definition as abstract by using the
abstract attribute. If the parent definition does not specify a class, explicitly marking the
parent bean definition as abstract is required, as follows:
<bean id="inheritedTestBeanWithoutClass" abstract="true">
<property name="name" value="parent"/>
</bean>
<bean id="inheritsWithClass" class="org.springframework.beans.DerivedTestBean"
parent="inheritedTestBeanWithoutClass" init-method="initialize">
<property name="name" value="override"/>

</bean>
The parent bean cannot be instantiated on its own because it is incomplete, and it is also
explicitly marked as abstract. When a definition is abstract like this, it is usable only
as a pure template bean definition that serves as a parent definition for child definitions.
Trying to use such an abstract parent bean on its own, by referring to it as a ref property
of another bean or doing an explicit getBean() call with the parent bean id, returns an
error. Similarly, the container's internal preInstantiateSingletons() method
ignores bean definitions that are defined as abstract.
Note
ApplicationContext pre-instantiates all singletons by default.
Therefore, it is important (at least for singleton beans) that if you have a
(parent) bean definition which you intend to use only as a template, and
this definition specifies a class, you must make sure to set the abstract
attribute to true, otherwise the application context will actually (attempt
to) pre-instantiate the abstract bean.
5.8 Container Extension Points

Typically, an application developer does not need to subclass ApplicationContext
implementation classes. Instead, the Spring IoC container can be extended by plugging in
implementations of special integration interfaces. The next few sections describe these
integration interfaces.
5.8.1 Customizing beans using a BeanPostProcessor

The BeanPostProcessor interface defines callback methods that you can implement to
provide your own (or override the container's default) instantiation logic, dependency-
resolution logic, and so forth. If you want to implement some custom logic after the Spring
container finishes instantiating, configuring, and initializing a bean, you can plug in one or
more BeanPostProcessor implementations.
You can configure multiple BeanPostProcessor instances, and you can control the
order in which these BeanPostProcessors execute by setting the order property. You
can set this property only if the BeanPostProcessor implements the Ordered
interface; if you write your own BeanPostProcessor you should consider implementing
the Ordered interface too. For further details, consult the Javadoc for the
BeanPostProcessor and Ordered interfaces. See also the note below on
programmatic registration of BeanPostProcessors
Note
BeanPostProcessors operate on bean (or object) instances; that is
to say, the Spring IoC container instantiates a bean instance and then
BeanPostProcessors do their work.
BeanPostProcessors are scoped per-container. This is only
relevant if you are using container hierarchies. If you define a
BeanPostProcessor in one container, it will only post-process the
beans in that container. In other words, beans that are defined in one
container are not post-processed by a BeanPostProcessor defined
in another container, even if both containers are part of the same
hierarchy.
To change the actual bean definition (i.e., the blueprint that defines the
bean), you instead need to use a BeanFactoryPostProcessor as
described in Section 5.8.2, Customizing configuration metadata with a
BeanFactoryPostProcessor.
The org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanPostProcessor
interface consists of exactly two callback methods. When such a class is registered as a
post-processor with the container, for each bean instance that is created by the container,
the post-processor gets a callback from the container both before container initialization
methods (such as InitializingBean's afterPropertiesSet() and any declared init method) are
called as well as after any bean initialization callbacks. The post-processor can take any
action with the bean instance, including ignoring the callback completely. A bean postprocessor typically checks for callback interfaces or may wrap a bean with a proxy. Some
Spring AOP infrastructure classes are implemented as bean post-processors in order to
provide proxy-wrapping logic.
An ApplicationContext automatically detects any beans that are defined in the
configuration metadata which implement the BeanPostProcessor interface. The
ApplicationContext registers these beans as post-processors so that they can be
called later upon bean creation. Bean post-processors can be deployed in the container
just like any other beans.
Programmatically registering BeanPostProcessors
While the recommended approach for BeanPostProcessor
registration is through ApplicationContext auto-detection (as
described above), it is also possible to register them programmatically
against a ConfigurableBeanFactory using the
addBeanPostProcessor method. This can be useful when needing
to evaluate conditional logic before registration, or even for copying
bean post processors across contexts in a hierarchy. Note however that
BeanPostProcessors added programmatically do not respect the
Ordered interface. Here it is the order of registration that dictates the
order of execution. Note also that BeanPostProcessors registered
programmatically are always processed before those registered
through auto-detection, regardless of any explicit ordering.
BeanPostProcessors and AOP auto-proxying
Classes that implement the BeanPostProcessor interface are

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

This first example illustrates basic usage. The example shows a custom
BeanPostProcessor implementation that invokes the toString() method of each
bean as it is created by the container and prints the resulting string to the system console.
Find below the custom BeanPostProcessor implementation class definition:
package scripting;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanPostProcessor;
import org.springframework.beans.BeansException;
public class InstantiationTracingBeanPostProcessor implements BeanPostProcessor {
// simply return the instantiated bean as-is
public Object postProcessBeforeInitialization(Object bean, String beanName)
return bean; // we could potentially return any object reference here...
}
public Object postProcessAfterInitialization(Object bean, String beanName)
System.out.println("Bean '" + beanName + "' created : " + bean.toString());
return bean;
}
}

xmlns:lang="http://www.springframework.org/schema/lang"
http://www.springframework.org/schema/lang
http://www.springframework.org/schema/lang/spring-lang.xsd">
<lang:groovy id="messenger"
script-source="classpath:org/springframework/scripting/groovy/Messenger.groovy">
<lang:property name="message" value="Fiona Apple Is Just So Dreamy."/>
</lang:groovy>
<!-when the above bean (messenger) is instantiated, this custom
BeanPostProcessor implementation will output the fact to the system console
-->
<bean class="scripting.InstantiationTracingBeanPostProcessor"/>
</beans>
Notice how the InstantiationTracingBeanPostProcessor is simply defined. It

does not even have a name, and because it is a bean it can be dependency-injected just
like any other bean. (The preceding configuration also defines a bean that is backed by a
Groovy script. The Spring 2.0 dynamic language support is detailed in the chapter entitled
Chapter 28, Dynamic language support.)
The following simple Java application executes the preceding code and configuration:
import org.springframework.scripting.Messenger;
ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("scripting/beans.xml");
Messenger messenger = (Messenger) ctx.getBean("messenger");
System.out.println(messenger);
}
}
The output of the preceding application resembles the following:

Bean 'messenger' created : org.springframework.scripting.groovy.GroovyMessenger@272961
org.springframework.scripting.groovy.GroovyMessenger@272961
Example: The RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor

Using callback interfaces or annotations in conjunction with a custom
BeanPostProcessor implementation is a common means of extending the Spring IoC
container. An example is Spring's RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor a
BeanPostProcessor implementation that ships with the Spring distribution which
ensures that JavaBean properties on beans that are marked with an (arbitrary) annotation
are actually (configured to be) dependency-injected with a value.
5.8.2 Customizing configuration metadata with a

BeanFactoryPostProcessor
The next extension point that we will look at is the
org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanFactoryPostProcessor.
The semantics of this interface are similar to those of the BeanPostProcessor, with one
major difference: BeanFactoryPostProcessors operate on the bean configuration
metadata; that is, the Spring IoC container allows BeanFactoryPostProcessors to
read the configuration metadata and potentially change it before the container instantiates
any beans other than BeanFactoryPostProcessors.
You can configure multiple BeanFactoryPostProcessors, and you can control the
order in which these BeanFactoryPostProcessors execute by setting the order
property. However, you can only set this property if the BeanFactoryPostProcessor
implements the Ordered interface. If you write your own
BeanFactoryPostProcessor, you should consider implementing the Ordered
interface too. Consult the Javadoc for the BeanFactoryPostProcessor and Ordered
interfaces for more details.
Note
If you want to change the actual bean instances (i.e., the objects that
are created from the configuration metadata), then you instead need to
use a BeanPostProcessor (described above in Section 5.8.1,
Customizing beans using a BeanPostProcessor). While it is
technically possible to work with bean instances within a
BeanFactoryPostProcessor (e.g., using
BeanFactory.getBean()), doing so causes premature bean

instantiation, violating the standard container lifecycle. This may cause
negative side effects such as bypassing bean post processing.
Also, BeanFactoryPostProcessors are scoped per-container.
This is only relevant if you are using container hierarchies. If you define
a BeanFactoryPostProcessor in one container, it will only be
applied to the bean definitions in that container. Bean definitions in one
container will not be post-processed by
BeanFactoryPostProcessors in another container, even if both
containers are part of the same hierarchy.
A bean factory post-processor is executed automatically when it is declared inside an
ApplicationContext, in order to apply changes to the configuration metadata that
define the container. Spring includes a number of predefined bean factory post-processors,
such as PropertyOverrideConfigurer and
PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer. A custom BeanFactoryPostProcessor can
also be used, for example, to register custom property editors.
An ApplicationContext automatically detects any beans that are deployed into it that
implement the BeanFactoryPostProcessor interface. It uses these beans as bean
factory post-processors, at the appropriate time. You can deploy these post-processor
beans as you would any other bean.
Note
As with BeanPostProcessors, you typically do not want to configure
BeanFactoryPostProcessors for lazy initialization. If no other
bean references a Bean(Factory)PostProcessor, that postprocessor will not get instantiated at all. Thus, marking it for lazy
initialization will be ignored, and the
Bean(Factory)PostProcessor will be instantiated eagerly even
if you set the default-lazy-init attribute to true on the
declaration of your <beans /> element.
Example: the PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer

You use the PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer to externalize property values from a
bean definition in a separate file using the standard Java Properties format. Doing so
enables the person deploying an application to customize environment-specific properties
such as database URLs and passwords, without the complexity or risk of modifying the
main XML definition file or files for the container.
Consider the following XML-based configuration metadata fragment, where a
DataSource with placeholder values is defined. The example shows properties
configured from an external Properties file. At runtime, a
PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer is applied to the metadata that will replace some
properties of the DataSource. The values to replace are specified as placeholders of the
form ${property-name} which follows the Ant / log4j / JSP EL style.
<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="locations" value="classpath:com/foo/jdbc.properties"/>
</bean>
<bean id="dataSource" destroy-method="close"
class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource">
<property name="driverClassName" value="${jdbc.driverClassName}"/>
<property name="url" value="${jdbc.url}"/>
<property name="username" value="${jdbc.username}"/>
<property name="password" value="${jdbc.password}"/>
</bean>
The actual values come from another file in the standard Java Properties format:
jdbc.driverClassName=org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver
jdbc.url=jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://production:9002
jdbc.username=sa
jdbc.password=root
Therefore, the string ${jdbc.username} is replaced at runtime with the value 'sa', and
the same applies for other placeholder values that match keys in the properties file. The
PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer checks for placeholders in most properties and
attributes of a bean definition. Furthermore, the placeholder prefix and suffix can be
customized.
With the context namespace introduced in Spring 2.5, it is possible to configure property
placeholders with a dedicated configuration element. One or more locations can be
provided as a comma-separated list in the location attribute.
<context:property-placeholder location="classpath:com/foo/jdbc.properties"/>
The PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer not only looks for properties in the

Properties file you specify. By default it also checks against the Java System
properties if it cannot find a property in the specified properties files. You can customize
this behavior by setting the systemPropertiesMode property of the configurer with one
of the following three supported integer values:
never (0): Never check system properties
fallback (1): Check system properties if not resolvable in the specified properties files.
This is the default.
override (2): Check system properties first, before trying the specified properties files.
This allows system properties to override any other property source.
Consult the Javadoc for the PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer for more information.
Class name substitution
You can use the PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer to substitute class names, which is
sometimes useful when you have to pick a particular implementation class at runtime. For example:
<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="locations">
<value>classpath:com/foo/strategy.properties</value>
</property>
<property name="properties">
<value>custom.strategy.class=com.foo.DefaultStrategy</value>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="serviceStrategy" class="${custom.strategy.class}"/>
If the class cannot be resolved at runtime to a valid class, resolution of the bean fails when it is
about to be created, which is during the preInstantiateSingletons() phase of an
ApplicationContext for a non-lazy-init bean.
Example: the PropertyOverrideConfigurer

The PropertyOverrideConfigurer, another bean factory post-processor, resembles
the PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer, but unlike the latter, the original definitions
can have default values or no values at all for bean properties. If an overriding
Properties file does not have an entry for a certain bean property, the default context
definition is used.
Note that the bean definition is not aware of being overridden, so it is not immediately
obvious from the XML definition file that the override configurer is being used. In case of
multiple PropertyOverrideConfigurer instances that define different values for the
same bean property, the last one wins, due to the overriding mechanism.
Properties file configuration lines take this format:
beanName.property=value
For example:
dataSource.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
dataSource.url=jdbc:mysql:mydb
This example file can be used with a container definition that contains a bean called
dataSource, which has driver and url properties.
Compound property names are also supported, as long as every component of the path
except the final property being overridden is already non-null (presumably initialized by the
constructors). In this example...
foo.fred.bob.sammy=123
... the sammy property of the bob property of the fred property of the foo bean is set to
the scalar value 123.
Note
Specified override values are always literal values; they are not
translated into bean references. This convention also applies when the
original value in the XML bean definition specifies a bean reference.
With the context namespace introduced in Spring 2.5, it is possible to configure property
overriding with a dedicated configuration element:
<context:property-override location="classpath:override.properties"/>
5.8.3 Customizing instantiation logic with a FactoryBean

Implement the org.springframework.beans.factory.FactoryBean interface
for objects that are themselves factories.
The FactoryBean interface is a point of pluggability into the Spring IoC container's
instantiation logic. If you have complex initialization code that is better expressed in Java
as opposed to a (potentially) verbose amount of XML, you can create your own
FactoryBean, write the complex initialization inside that class, and then plug your
custom FactoryBean into the container.
The FactoryBean interface provides three methods:
Object getObject(): returns an instance of the object this factory creates. The
instance can possibly be shared, depending on whether this factory returns singletons
or prototypes.
boolean isSingleton(): returns true if this FactoryBean returns singletons,
false otherwise.
Class getObjectType(): returns the object type returned by the getObject()
method or null if the type is not known in advance.
The FactoryBean concept and interface is used in a number of places within the Spring
Framework; more than 50 implementations of the FactoryBean interface ship with
Spring itself.
When you need to ask a container for an actual FactoryBean instance itself instead of
the bean it produces, preface the bean's id with the ampersand symbol (&) when calling
the getBean() method of the ApplicationContext. So for a given FactoryBean
with an id of myBean, invoking getBean("myBean") on the container returns the
product of the FactoryBean; whereas, invoking getBean("&myBean") returns the
FactoryBean instance itself.
5.9 Annotation-based container configuration

An alternative to XML setups is provided by
annotation-based configuration which rely on the
Are annotations better than
annotation-based configuration which rely on the

bytecode metadata for wiring up components
instead of angle-bracket declarations. Instead of
using XML to describe a bean wiring, the
developer moves the configuration into the
component class itself by using annotations on the
relevant class, method, or field declaration. As
mentioned in the section called Example: The
XML for configuring Spring?

The introduction of annotationbased configurations raised the
question of whether this
approach is 'better' than XML.
The short answer is it depends.
The long answer is that each
approach has its pros and cons,
and usually it is up to the
developer to decide which
strategy suits her better. Due to
the way they are defined,
annotations provide a lot of
context in their declaration,
leading to shorter and more
concise configuration. However,
XML excels at wiring up
components without touching
their source code or recompiling
them. Some developers prefer
having the wiring close to the
source while others argue that
annotated classes are no longer
POJOs and, furthermore, that
the configuration becomes
decentralized and harder to
control.
No matter the choice, Spring can
accommodate both styles and
even mix them together. It's
worth pointing out that through
its JavaConfig option, Spring
allows annotations to be used in
a non-invasive way, without
touching the target components
source code and that in terms of
tooling, all configuration styles
are supported by the
SpringSource Tool Suite.
RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor, using a BeanPostProcessor in

conjunction with annotations is a common means of extending the Spring IoC container.
For example, Spring 2.0 introduced the possibility of enforcing required properties with the
@Required annotation. Spring 2.5 made it possible to follow that same general approach
to drive Spring's dependency injection. Essentially, the @Autowired annotation provides
the same capabilities as described in Section 5.4.5, Autowiring collaborators but with
more fine-grained control and wider applicability. Spring 2.5 also added support for JSR250 annotations such as @PostConstruct, and @PreDestroy. Spring 3.0 added
support for JSR-330 (Dependency Injection for Java) annotations contained in the
javax.inject package such as @Inject and @Named. Details about those annotations can
be found in the relevant section.
Note
Annotation injection is performed before XML injection, thus the latter
configuration will override the former for properties wired through both
approaches.
As always, you can register them as individual bean definitions, but they can also be
implicitly registered by including the following tag in an XML-based Spring configuration
(notice the inclusion of the context namespace):
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">
<context:annotation-config/>
</beans>
(The implicitly registered post-processors include

AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor,
CommonAnnotationBeanPostProcessor,
PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor, as well as the aforementioned
RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.)
Note
<context:annotation-config/> only looks for annotations on
beans in the same application context in which it is defined. This
means that, if you put <context:annotation-config/> in a
WebApplicationContext for a DispatcherServlet, it only
checks for @Autowired beans in your controllers, and not your
services. See Section 17.2, The DispatcherServlet for more
information.
5.9.1 @Required
The @Required annotation applies to bean property setter methods, as in the following
example:
@Required
}
// ...
}
This annotation simply indicates that the affected bean property must be populated at
configuration time, through an explicit property value in a bean definition or through
autowiring. The container throws an exception if the affected bean property has not been
populated; this allows for eager and explicit failure, avoiding NullPointerExceptions
or the like later on. It is still recommended that you put assertions into the bean class itself,
for example, into an init method. Doing so enforces those required references and values
even when you use the class outside of a container.
5.9.2 @Autowired
As expected, you can apply the @Autowired annotation to "traditional" setter methods:
@Autowired
}
// ...
}
Note
JSR 330's @Inject annotation can be used in place of Spring's
@Autowired annotation in the examples below. See here for more
details
You can also apply the annotation to methods with arbitrary names and/or multiple
arguments:
public class MovieRecommender {
private MovieCatalog movieCatalog;
private CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao;
@Autowired
public void prepare(MovieCatalog movieCatalog,
CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao) {
this.movieCatalog = movieCatalog;
this.customerPreferenceDao = customerPreferenceDao;
}
// ...
}
You can apply @Autowired to constructors and fields:

@Autowired
@Autowired
public MovieRecommender(CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao) {
}
// ...
}
It is also possible to provide all beans of a particular type from the

ApplicationContext by adding the annotation to a field or method that expects an
array of that type:
@Autowired
private MovieCatalog[] movieCatalogs;
// ...
}
The same applies for typed collections:

private Set<MovieCatalog> movieCatalogs;
@Autowired
public void setMovieCatalogs(Set<MovieCatalog> movieCatalogs) {
this.movieCatalogs = movieCatalogs;
}
// ...
}
Even typed Maps can be autowired as long as the expected key type is String. The Map
values will contain all beans of the expected type, and the keys will contain the
corresponding bean names:
private Map<String, MovieCatalog> movieCatalogs;
@Autowired
public void setMovieCatalogs(Map<String, MovieCatalog> movieCatalogs) {
this.movieCatalogs = movieCatalogs;
}
// ...
}
By default, the autowiring fails whenever zero candidate beans are available; the default
behavior is to treat annotated methods, constructors, and fields as indicating required
dependencies. This behavior can be changed as demonstrated below.

@Autowired(required=false)
}
// ...
}
Note
Only one annotated constructor per-class can be marked as required,
but multiple non-required constructors can be annotated. In that case,
each is considered among the candidates and Spring uses the
greediest constructor whose dependencies can be satisfied, that is the
constructor that has the largest number of arguments.
@Autowired's required attribute is recommended over the
@Required annotation. The required attribute indicates that the
property is not required for autowiring purposes, the property is ignored
if it cannot be autowired. @Required, on the other hand, is stronger in
that it enforces the property that was set by any means supported by
the container. If no value is injected, a corresponding exception is
raised.
You can also use @Autowired for interfaces that are well-known resolvable
dependencies: BeanFactory, ApplicationContext, Environment,
ResourceLoader, ApplicationEventPublisher, and MessageSource. These
interfaces and their extended interfaces, such as
ConfigurableApplicationContext or ResourcePatternResolver, are
automatically resolved, with no special setup necessary.
@Autowired
private ApplicationContext context;
public MovieRecommender() {
}
// ...
}
Note
@Autowired, @Inject, @Resource, and @Value annotations are
handled by a Spring BeanPostProcessor implementations which in
turn means that you cannot apply these annotations within your own
BeanPostProcessor or BeanFactoryPostProcessor types (if
any). These types must be 'wired up' explicitly via XML or using a
Spring @Bean method.
5.9.3 Fine-tuning annotation-based autowiring with qualifiers

Because autowiring by type may lead to multiple candidates, it is often necessary to have
more control over the selection process. One way to accomplish this is with Spring's
@Qualifier annotation. You can associate qualifier values with specific arguments,
narrowing the set of type matches so that a specific bean is chosen for each argument. In
the simplest case, this can be a plain descriptive value:
@Autowired
@Qualifier("main")
// ...
}
The @Qualifier annotation can also be specified on individual constructor arguments or
method parameters:
@Autowired
public void prepare(@Qualifier("main") MovieCatalog movieCatalog,
CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao) {
this.movieCatalog = movieCatalog;
}
// ...
}
The corresponding bean definitions appear as follows. The bean with qualifier value
"main" is wired with the constructor argument that is qualified with the same value.
<bean class="example.SimpleMovieCatalog">
<qualifier value="main"/>

</bean>
<qualifier value="action"/>
</bean>
<bean id="movieRecommender" class="example.MovieRecommender"/>
</beans>
For a fallback match, the bean name is considered a default qualifier value. Thus you can
define the bean with an id "main" instead of the nested qualifier element, leading to the
same matching result. However, although you can use this convention to refer to specific
beans by name, @Autowired is fundamentally about type-driven injection with optional
semantic qualifiers. This means that qualifier values, even with the bean name fallback,
always have narrowing semantics within the set of type matches; they do not semantically
express a reference to a unique bean id. Good qualifier values are "main" or "EMEA" or
"persistent", expressing characteristics of a specific component that are independent from
the bean id, which may be auto-generated in case of an anonymous bean definition like
the one in the preceding example.
Qualifiers also apply to typed collections, as discussed above, for example, to
Set<MovieCatalog>. In this case, all matching beans according to the declared
qualifiers are injected as a collection. This implies that qualifiers do not have to be unique;
they rather simply constitute filtering criteria. For example, you can define multiple
MovieCatalog beans with the same qualifier value "action"; all of which would be
injected into a Set<MovieCatalog> annotated with @Qualifier("action").
Tip
If you intend to express annotation-driven injection by name, do not
primarily use @Autowired, even if is technically capable of referring
to a bean name through @Qualifier values. Instead, use the JSR250 @Resource annotation, which is semantically defined to identify a
specific target component by its unique name, with the declared type
being irrelevant for the matching process.
As a specific consequence of this semantic difference, beans that are
themselves defined as a collection or map type cannot be injected
through @Autowired, because type matching is not properly
applicable to them. Use @Resource for such beans, referring to the

specific collection or map bean by unique name.
@Autowired applies to fields, constructors, and multi-argument
methods, allowing for narrowing through qualifier annotations at the
parameter level. By contrast, @Resource is supported only for fields
and bean property setter methods with a single argument. As a
consequence, stick with qualifiers if your injection target is a
constructor or a multi-argument method.
You can create your own custom qualifier annotations. Simply define an annotation and
provide the @Qualifier annotation within your definition:
@Target({ElementType.FIELD, ElementType.PARAMETER})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Qualifier
public @interface Genre {
String value();
}
Then you can provide the custom qualifier on autowired fields and parameters:
@Autowired
@Genre("Action")
private MovieCatalog actionCatalog;
private MovieCatalog comedyCatalog;
@Autowired
public void setComedyCatalog(@Genre("Comedy") MovieCatalog comedyCatalog) {
this.comedyCatalog = comedyCatalog;
}
// ...
}
Next, provide the information for the candidate bean definitions. You can add
<qualifier/> tags as sub-elements of the <bean/> tag and then specify the type and
value to match your custom qualifier annotations. The type is matched against the fullyqualified class name of the annotation. Or, as a convenience if no risk of conflicting names
exists, you can use the short class name. Both approaches are demonstrated in the
following example.
<qualifier type="Genre" value="Action"/>
</bean>
<qualifier type="example.Genre" value="Comedy"/>
</bean>
<bean id="movieRecommender" class="example.MovieRecommender"/>
</beans>
In Section 5.10, Classpath scanning and managed components, you will see an
annotation-based alternative to providing the qualifier metadata in XML. Specifically, see
Section 5.10.7, Providing qualifier metadata with annotations.
In some cases, it may be sufficient to use an annotation without a value. This may be
useful when the annotation serves a more generic purpose and can be applied across
several different types of dependencies. For example, you may provide an offline catalog
several different types of dependencies. For example, you may provide an offline catalog
that would be searched when no Internet connection is available. First define the simple
annotation:
@Qualifier
public @interface Offline {
}
Then add the annotation to the field or property to be autowired:

@Autowired
@Offline
private MovieCatalog offlineCatalog;
// ...
}
Now the bean definition only needs a qualifier type:

<qualifier type="Offline"/>
</bean>
You can also define custom qualifier annotations that accept named attributes in addition
to or instead of the simple value attribute. If multiple attribute values are then specified on
a field or parameter to be autowired, a bean definition must match all such attribute values
to be considered an autowire candidate. As an example, consider the following annotation
definition:
@Qualifier
public @interface MovieQualifier {
String genre();
Format format();
}
In this case Format is an enum:

public enum Format {
VHS, DVD, BLURAY
}
The fields to be autowired are annotated with the custom qualifier and include values for
both attributes: genre and format.
@Autowired
@MovieQualifier(format=Format.VHS, genre="Action")
private MovieCatalog actionVhsCatalog;
@Autowired
@MovieQualifier(format=Format.VHS, genre="Comedy")
private MovieCatalog comedyVhsCatalog;
@Autowired
@MovieQualifier(format=Format.DVD, genre="Action")
private MovieCatalog actionDvdCatalog;
@Autowired
@MovieQualifier(format=Format.BLURAY, genre="Comedy")
private MovieCatalog comedyBluRayCatalog;
// ...
}
Finally, the bean definitions should contain matching qualifier values. This example also
demonstrates that bean meta attributes may be used instead of the <qualifier/> subelements. If available, the <qualifier/> and its attributes take precedence, but the
autowiring mechanism falls back on the values provided within the <meta/> tags if no
such qualifier is present, as in the last two bean definitions in the following example.
<qualifier type="MovieQualifier">
<attribute key="format" value="VHS"/>
<attribute key="genre" value="Action"/>
</qualifier>
</bean>
<qualifier type="MovieQualifier">
<attribute key="format" value="VHS"/>
<attribute key="genre" value="Comedy"/>
</qualifier>
</bean>
<meta key="format" value="DVD"/>
<meta key="genre" value="Action"/>
</bean>
<meta key="format" value="BLURAY"/>
<meta key="genre" value="Comedy"/>
</bean>
</beans>
5.9.4 CustomAutowireConfigurer
The CustomAutowireConfigurer is a BeanFactoryPostProcessor that enables
you to register your own custom qualifier annotation types even if they are not annotated
with Spring's @Qualifier annotation.
<bean id="customAutowireConfigurer"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.CustomAutowireConfigurer">
<property name="customQualifierTypes">
<set>
<value>example.CustomQualifier</value>
</set>
</property>
</bean>
The particular implementation of AutowireCandidateResolver that is activated for

the application context depends on the Java version. In versions earlier than Java 5, the
qualifier annotations are not supported, and therefore autowire candidates are solely
determined by the autowire-candidate value of each bean definition as well as by
any default-autowire-candidates pattern(s) available on the <beans/> element.
In Java 5 or later, the presence of @Qualifier annotations and any custom annotations
registered with the CustomAutowireConfigurer will also play a role.
Regardless of the Java version, when multiple beans qualify as autowire candidates, the
determination of a "primary" candidate is the same: if exactly one bean definition among
the candidates has a primary attribute set to true, it will be selected.
5.9.5 @Resource
Spring also supports injection using the JSR-250 @Resource annotation on fields or
bean property setter methods. This is a common pattern in Java EE 5 and 6, for example in
JSF 1.2 managed beans or JAX-WS 2.0 endpoints. Spring supports this pattern for Springmanaged objects as well.
@Resource takes a name attribute, and by default Spring interprets that value as the bean
name to be injected. In other words, it follows by-name semantics, as demonstrated in this
example:
@Resource(name="myMovieFinder")
}
}
If no name is specified explicitly, the default name is derived from the field name or setter
method. In case of a field, it takes the field name; in case of a setter method, it takes the
bean property name. So the following example is going to have the bean with name
"movieFinder" injected into its setter method:
@Resource
}
}
Note
The name provided with the annotation is resolved as a bean name by
the ApplicationContext of which the
CommonAnnotationBeanPostProcessor is aware. The names
can be resolved through JNDI if you configure Spring's
SimpleJndiBeanFactory explicitly. However, it is recommended
that you rely on the default behavior and simply use Spring's JNDI
lookup capabilities to preserve the level of indirection.
In the exclusive case of @Resource usage with no explicit name specified, and similar to
@Autowired, @Resource finds a primary type match instead of a specific named bean
and resolves well-known resolvable dependencies: the BeanFactory,
ApplicationContext, ResourceLoader, ApplicationEventPublisher,
and MessageSource interfaces.
Thus in the following example, the customerPreferenceDao field first looks for a bean
named customerPreferenceDao, then falls back to a primary type match for the type
CustomerPreferenceDao. The "context" field is injected based on the known
resolvable dependency type ApplicationContext.
@Resource
@Resource
private ApplicationContext context;
public MovieRecommender() {
}
// ...
}
5.9.6 @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy

The CommonAnnotationBeanPostProcessor not only recognizes the @Resource
annotation but also the JSR-250 lifecycle annotations. Introduced in Spring 2.5, the
support for these annotations offers yet another alternative to those described in
initialization callbacks and destruction callbacks. Provided that the
CommonAnnotationBeanPostProcessor is registered within the Spring
ApplicationContext, a method carrying one of these annotations is invoked at the

same point in the lifecycle as the corresponding Spring lifecycle interface method or
explicitly declared callback method. In the example below, the cache will be pre-populated
upon initialization and cleared upon destruction.
public class CachingMovieLister {
@PostConstruct
public void populateMovieCache() {
// populates the movie cache upon initialization...
}
@PreDestroy
public void clearMovieCache() {
// clears the movie cache upon destruction...
}
}
Note
For details about the effects of combining various lifecycle
mechanisms, see the section called Combining lifecycle
mechanisms.
5.10 Classpath scanning and managed components

Most examples in this chapter use XML to specify the configuration metadata that produces
each BeanDefinition within the Spring container. The previous section (Section 5.9,
Annotation-based container configuration) demonstrates how to provide a lot of the
configuration metadata through source-level annotations. Even in those examples,
however, the "base" bean definitions are explicitly defined in the XML file, while the
annotations only drive the dependency injection. This section describes an option for
implicitly detecting the candidate components by scanning the classpath. Candidate
components are classes that match against a filter criteria and have a corresponding bean
definition registered with the container. This removes the need to use XML to perform bean
registration, instead you can use annotations (for example @Component), AspectJ type
expressions, or your own custom filter criteria to select which classes will have bean
definitions registered with the container.
Note
Starting with Spring 3.0, many features provided by the Spring
JavaConfig project are part of the core Spring Framework. This allows
you to define beans using Java rather than using the traditional XML
files. Take a look at the @Configuration, @Bean, @Import, and
@DependsOn annotations for examples of how to use these new
features.
5.10.1 @Component and further stereotype annotations

In Spring 2.0 and later, the @Repository annotation is a marker for any class that fulfills
the role or stereotype (also known as Data Access Object or DAO) of a repository. Among
the uses of this marker is the automatic translation of exceptions as described in
Section 15.2.2, Exception translation.
Spring 2.5 introduces further stereotype annotations: @Component, @Service, and
@Controller. @Component is a generic stereotype for any Spring-managed
component. @Repository, @Service, and @Controller are specializations of
@Component for more specific use cases, for example, in the persistence, service, and
presentation layers, respectively. Therefore, you can annotate your component classes
with @Component, but by annotating them with @Repository, @Service, or
@Controller instead, your classes are more properly suited for processing by tools or
associating with aspects. For example, these stereotype annotations make ideal targets for
pointcuts. It is also possible that @Repository, @Service, and @Controller may
carry additional semantics in future releases of the Spring Framework. Thus, if you are
choosing between using @Component or @Service for your service layer, @Service is
clearly the better choice. Similarly, as stated above, @Repository is already supported
as a marker for automatic exception translation in your persistence layer.
5.10.2 Automatically detecting classes and registering bean

definitions
Spring can automatically detect stereotyped classes and register corresponding
BeanDefinitions with the ApplicationContext. For example, the following two
classes are eligible for such autodetection:
@Service
@Autowired
public SimpleMovieLister(MovieFinder movieFinder) {
}
}
@Repository
public class JpaMovieFinder implements MovieFinder {
// implementation elided for clarity
}
To autodetect these classes and register the corresponding beans, you need to include the
following element in XML, where the base-package element is a common parent package
for the two classes. (Alternatively, you can specify a comma-separated list that includes the
parent package of each class.)
<context:component-scan base-package="org.example"/>
</beans>
Tip
The use of <context:component-scan> implicitly enables the
functionality of <context:annotation-config>. There is usually
no need to include the <context:annotation-config> element
when using <context:component-scan>.
Note
The scanning of classpath packages requires the presence of
corresponding directory entries in the classpath. When you build JARs
with Ant, make sure that you do not activate the files-only switch of the
JAR task.
Furthermore, the AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor and
CommonAnnotationBeanPostProcessor are both included implicitly when you use
the component-scan element. That means that the two components are autodetected and
wired together - all without any bean configuration metadata provided in XML.
Note
You can disable the registration of
AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor and
CommonAnnotationBeanPostProcessor by including the
annotation-config attribute with a value of false.
5.10.3 Using filters to customize scanning

By default, classes annotated with @Component, @Repository, @Service,
@Controller, or a custom annotation that itself is annotated with @Component are the
only detected candidate components. However, you can modify and extend this behavior
simply by applying custom filters. Add them as include-filter or exclude-filter sub-elements
of the component-scan element. Each filter element requires the type and
expression attributes. The following table describes the filtering options.
Table 5.5. Filter Types

Filter
Type
Example Expression
annotation
org.example.SomeAnnotation
Description
An annotation to be present at the type
level in target components.
assignable org.example.SomeClass
A class (or interface) that the target

components are assignable to
(extend/implement).
aspectj
org.example..*Service+
An AspectJ type expression to be

matched by the target components.
regex
org\.example\.Default.*
A regex expression to be matched by the

target components class names.
custom
org.example.MyTypeFilter
A custom implementation of the

org.springframework.core.type
.TypeFilter interface.
The following example shows the XML configuration ignoring all @Repository
annotations and using "stub" repositories instead.
<beans>
<context:component-scan base-package="org.example">
<context:include-filter type="regex" expression=".*Stub.*Repository"/>
<context:exclude-filter type="annotation"
expression="org.springframework.stereotype.Repository"/>
</context:component-scan>
</beans>
Note
You can also disable the default filters by providing use-defaultfilters="false" as an attribute of the <component-scan/> element. This
will in effect disable automatic detection of classes annotated with
@Component, @Repository, @Service, or @Controller.
5.10.4 Defining bean metadata within components

Spring components can also contribute bean definition metadata to the container. You do
this with the same @Bean annotation used to define bean metadata within
@Configuration annotated classes. Here is a simple example:
@Component
public class FactoryMethodComponent {
@Bean @Qualifier("public")
public TestBean publicInstance() {
return new TestBean("publicInstance");
}
public void doWork() {
// Component method implementation omitted
}
}
This class is a Spring component that has application-specific code contained in its
doWork() method. However, it also contributes a bean definition that has a factory
method referring to the method publicInstance(). The @Bean annotation identifies
the factory method and other bean definition properties, such as a qualifier value through
the @Qualifier annotation. Other method level annotations that can be specified are
@Scope, @Lazy, and custom qualifier annotations. Autowired fields and methods are
supported as previously discussed, with additional support for autowiring of @Bean
methods:
@Component
public class FactoryMethodComponent {
private static int i;
@Bean @Qualifier("public")
public TestBean publicInstance() {
return new TestBean("publicInstance");
}
// use of a custom qualifier and autowiring of method parameters
@Bean
protected TestBean protectedInstance(@Qualifier("public") TestBean spouse,
@Value("#{privateInstance.age}") String country) {
TestBean tb = new TestBean("protectedInstance", 1);
tb.setSpouse(tb);
tb.setCountry(country);
return tb;
}
@Bean @Scope(BeanDefinition.SCOPE_SINGLETON)
private TestBean privateInstance() {
return new TestBean("privateInstance", i++);
}
@Bean @Scope(value = WebApplicationContext.SCOPE_SESSION,
proxyMode = ScopedProxyMode.TARGET_CLASS)
public TestBean requestScopedInstance() {
return new TestBean("requestScopedInstance", 3);
}
}
The example autowires the String method parameter country to the value of the Age
property on another bean named privateInstance. A Spring Expression Language
element defines the value of the property through the notation #{ <expression> }. For
@Value annotations, an expression resolver is preconfigured to look for bean names
when resolving expression text.
The @Bean methods in a Spring component are processed differently than their
counterparts inside a Spring @Configuration class. The difference is that
@Component classes are not enhanced with CGLIB to intercept the invocation of methods
and fields. CGLIB proxying is the means by which invoking methods or fields within
@Configuration classes @Bean methods create bean metadata references to
collaborating objects. Methods are not invoked with normal Java semantics. In contrast,
calling a method or field within a @Component classes @Bean method has standard Java
semantics.
5.10.5 Naming autodetected components

When a component is autodetected as part of the scanning process, its bean name is
generated by the BeanNameGenerator strategy known to that scanner. By default, any
Spring stereotype annotation (@Component, @Repository, @Service, and
@Controller) that contains a name value will thereby provide that name to the
corresponding bean definition.
If such an annotation contains no name value or for any other detected component (such
as those discovered by custom filters), the default bean name generator returns the
uncapitalized non-qualified class name. For example, if the following two components
were detected, the names would be myMovieLister and movieFinderImpl:

@Service("myMovieLister")
// ...
}
@Repository
public class MovieFinderImpl implements MovieFinder {
// ...
}
Note
If you do not want to rely on the default bean-naming strategy, you can
provide a custom bean-naming strategy. First, implement the
BeanNameGenerator interface, and be sure to include a default noarg constructor. Then, provide the fully-qualified class name when
configuring the scanner:
<beans>
<context:component-scan base-package="org.example"
name-generator="org.example.MyNameGenerator" />
</beans>
As a general rule, consider specifying the name with the annotation whenever other
components may be making explicit references to it. On the other hand, the auto-generated
names are adequate whenever the container is responsible for wiring.
5.10.6 Providing a scope for autodetected components

As with Spring-managed components in general, the default and most common scope for
autodetected components is singleton. However, sometimes you need other scopes, which
Spring 2.5 provides with a new @Scope annotation. Simply provide the name of the scope
within the annotation:
@Scope("prototype")
@Repository
public class MovieFinderImpl implements MovieFinder {
// ...
}
Note
To provide a custom strategy for scope resolution rather than relying on
the annotation-based approach, implement the
ScopeMetadataResolver interface, and be sure to include a
default no-arg constructor. Then, provide the fully-qualified class name
when configuring the scanner:
<beans>
scope-resolver="org.example.MyScopeResolver" />
</beans>
When using certain non-singleton scopes, it may be necessary to generate proxies for the
scoped objects. The reasoning is described in the section called Scoped beans as
dependencies. For this purpose, a scoped-proxy attribute is available on the componentscan element. The three possible values are: no, interfaces, and targetClass. For example,
the following configuration will result in standard JDK dynamic proxies:
<beans>
scoped-proxy="interfaces" />
</beans>
5.10.7 Providing qualifier metadata with annotations

The @Qualifier annotation is discussed in Section 5.9.3, Fine-tuning annotation-based
autowiring with qualifiers. The examples in that section demonstrate the use of the
@Qualifier annotation and custom qualifier annotations to provide fine-grained control
when you resolve autowire candidates. Because those examples were based on XML
bean definitions, the qualifier metadata was provided on the candidate bean definitions
using the qualifier or meta sub-elements of the bean element in the XML. When
relying upon classpath scanning for autodetection of components, you provide the qualifier
metadata with type-level annotations on the candidate class. The following three examples
demonstrate this technique:
@Component
@Qualifier("Action")
public class ActionMovieCatalog implements MovieCatalog {
// ...
}
@Component
@Genre("Action")
public class ActionMovieCatalog implements MovieCatalog {
// ...
}
@Component
@Offline
public class CachingMovieCatalog implements MovieCatalog {
// ...
}
Note
As with most annotation-based alternatives, keep in mind that the
annotation metadata is bound to the class definition itself, while the use
of XML allows for multiple beans of the same type to provide variations
in their qualifier metadata, because that metadata is provided perinstance rather than per-class.
5.11 Using JSR 330 Standard Annotations

Starting with Spring 3.0, Spring offers support for JSR-330 standard annotations
(Dependency Injection). Those annotations are scanned in the same way as the Spring
annotations. You just need to have the relevant jars in your classpath.
Note
If you are using Maven, the javax.inject artifact is available in the
standard Maven repository
(http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/javax/inject/javax.inject/1/). You can
add the following dependency to your file pom.xml:
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.inject</groupId>
<artifactId>javax.inject</artifactId>
<version>1</version>
</dependency>
5.11.1 Dependency Injection with @Inject and @Named

Instead of @Autowired, @javax.inject.Inject may be used as follows:
import javax.inject.Inject;
@Inject
}
// ...
}
As with @Autowired, it is possible to use @Inject at the class-level, field-level, methodlevel and constructor-argument level. If you would like to use a qualified name for the
dependency that should be injected, you should use the @Named annotation as follows:
import javax.inject.Named;
@Inject
public void setMovieFinder(@Named("main") MovieFinder movieFinder) {
}
// ...
}
5.11.2 @Named: a standard equivalent to the @Component

annotation
Instead of @Component, @javax.inject.Named may be used as follows:
@Named("movieListener")
@Inject
}
// ...
}
It is very common to use @Component without specifying a name for the component.
@Named can be used in a similar fashion:
@Named
@Inject
}
// ...
}
When using @Named, it is possible to use component-scanning in the exact same way as
when using Spring annotations:
<beans>
<context:component-scan base-package="org.example"/>
</beans>
5.11.3 Limitations of the standard approach

When working with standard annotations, it is important to know that some significant
features are not available as shown in the table below:
Table 5.6. Spring annotations vs. standard annotations

Spring
javax.inject.*
javax.inject restrictions / comments
@Autowired
@Inject
@Inject has no 'required' attribute
@Component
@Named
@Scope("singleton") @Singleton
The JSR-330 default scope is like

Spring's prototype. However, in order
to keep it consistent with Spring's
general defaults, a JSR-330 bean
declared in the Spring container is a
singleton by default. In order to use a
scope other than singleton, you
should use Spring's @Scope annotation.
javax.inject also provides a
@Scope annotation. Nevertheless, this
one is only intended to be used for
creating your own annotations.
@Qualifier
@Named
@Value
no equivalent
@Required
no equivalent
@Lazy
no equivalent
5.12 Java-based container configuration

5.12.1 Basic concepts: @Bean and @Configuration
The central artifacts in Spring's new Javaconfiguration support are @Configurationannotated classes and @Bean-annotated
Full @Configuration vs 'lite'

@Beans mode?
methods.
When @Bean methods are
The @Bean annotation is used to indicate that a
declared within classes that are

not annotated with
@Configuration they are
method instantiates, configures and initializes a

new object to be managed by the Spring IoC
container. For those familiar with Spring's
<beans/> XML configuration the @Bean
annotation plays the same role as the <bean/>
element. You can use @Bean annotated methods
with any Spring @Component, however, they are
most often used with @Configuration beans.
Annotating a class with @Configuration
indicates that its primary purpose is as a source of
bean definitions. Furthermore, @Configuration
classes allow inter-bean dependencies to be
defined by simply calling other @Bean methods in
the same class. The simplest possible
@Configuration class would read as follows:
referred to as being processed in

a 'lite' mode. For example, bean
methods declared in a
@Component or even in a
plain old class will be considered
'lite'.
Unlike full @Configuration ,
lite @Bean methods cannot
easily declare inter-bean
dependencies. Usually one
@Bean method should not
invoke another @Bean method
when operating in 'lite' mode.
Only using @Bean methods
within @Configuration
classes is a recommended
approach of ensuring that 'full'
mode is always used. This will
prevent the same @Bean
method from accidentally being
invoked multiple times and helps
to reduce subtle bugs that can
be hard to track down when
operating in 'lite' mode.
@Configuration
@Bean
public MyService myService() {
return new MyServiceImpl();
}
}
The AppConfig class above would be equivalent to the following Spring <beans/>
XML:
<beans>
<bean id="myService" class="com.acme.services.MyServiceImpl"/>
</beans>
The @Bean and @Configuration annotations will be discussed in depth in the sections
below. First, however, we'll cover the various ways of creating a spring container using
Java-based configuration.
5.12.2 Instantiating the Spring container using

AnnotationConfigApplicationContext
The sections below document Spring's AnnotationConfigApplicationContext,
new in Spring 3.0. This versatile ApplicationContext implementation is capable of
accepting not only @Configuration classes as input, but also plain @Component
classes and classes annotated with JSR-330 metadata.
When @Configuration classes are provided as input, the @Configuration class
itself is registered as a bean definition, and all declared @Bean methods within the class
are also registered as bean definitions.
When @Component and JSR-330 classes are provided, they are registered as bean
definitions, and it is assumed that DI metadata such as @Autowired or @Inject are
used within those classes where necessary.
Simple construction
In much the same way that Spring XML files are used as input when instantiating a
ClassPathXmlApplicationContext, @Configuration classes may be used as
input when instantiating an AnnotationConfigApplicationContext. This allows
for completely XML-free usage of the Spring container:
MyService myService = ctx.getBean(MyService.class);
myService.doStuff();
}
As mentioned above, AnnotationConfigApplicationContext is not limited to

working only with @Configuration classes. Any @Component or JSR-330 annotated
class may be supplied as input to the constructor. For example:
ApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(MyServiceImpl.class, Dependency1.class, Dependency2.
}
The above assumes that MyServiceImpl, Dependency1 and Dependency2 use

Spring dependency injection annotations such as @Autowired.
Building the container programmatically using register(Class<?>...)

An AnnotationConfigApplicationContext may be instantiated using a no-arg
constructor and then configured using the register() method. This approach is
particularly useful when programmatically building an
AnnotationConfigApplicationContext.
AnnotationConfigApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext();
ctx.register(AppConfig.class, OtherConfig.class);
ctx.register(AdditionalConfig.class);
ctx.refresh();
}
Enabling component scanning with scan(String...)

Experienced Spring users will be familiar with the following commonly-used XML
declaration from Spring's context: namespace
<beans>
<context:component-scan base-package="com.acme"/>
</beans>
In the example above, the com.acme package will be scanned, looking for any
@Component-annotated classes, and those classes will be registered as Spring bean
definitions within the container. AnnotationConfigApplicationContext exposes
the scan(String...) method to allow for the same component-scanning functionality:
AnnotationConfigApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext();
ctx.scan("com.acme");
ctx.refresh();
}
Note
Remember that @Configuration classes are meta-annotated with
@Component, so they are candidates for component-scanning! In the
example above, assuming that AppConfig is declared within the
com.acme package (or any package underneath), it will be picked up
during the call to scan(), and upon refresh() all its @Bean
methods will be processed and registered as bean definitions within
the container.
Support for web applications with

AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext
A WebApplicationContext variant of AnnotationConfigApplicationContext
is available with AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext. This implementation
may be used when configuring the Spring ContextLoaderListener servlet listener,
Spring MVC DispatcherServlet, etc. What follows is a web.xml snippet that
configures a typical Spring MVC web application. Note the use of the contextClass
context-param and init-param:
<web-app>

<context-param>
<param-name>contextClass</param-name>
<param-value>
org.springframework.web.context.support.AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext
</param-value>
</context-param>

<context-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>com.acme.AppConfig</param-value>
</context-param>

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

<servlet>
<servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>

<init-param>
<param-name>contextClass</param-name>
<param-value>
org.springframework.web.context.support.AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext
</param-value>
</init-param>

<init-param>
<param-value>com.acme.web.MvcConfig</param-value>
</init-param>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/app/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
</web-app>
5.12.3 Using the @Bean annotation

@Bean is a method-level annotation and a direct analog of the XML <bean/> element.
The annotation supports some of the attributes offered by <bean/>, such as: initmethod, destroy-method, autowiring and name.
You can use the @Bean annotation in a @Configuration-annotated or in a
@Component-annotated class.
Declaring a bean
To declare a bean, simply annotate a method with the @Bean annotation. You use this
method to register a bean definition within an ApplicationContext of the type
specified as the method's return value. By default, the bean name will be the same as the
method name. The following is a simple example of a @Bean method declaration:
@Configuration
@Bean
public TransferService transferService() {
return new TransferServiceImpl();
}
}
The preceding configuration is exactly equivalent to the following Spring XML:

<beans>
<bean id="transferService" class="com.acme.TransferServiceImpl"/>
</beans>
Both declarations make a bean named transferService available in the

ApplicationContext, bound to an object instance of type TransferServiceImpl:
transferService -> com.acme.TransferServiceImpl
Receiving lifecycle callbacks

Any classes defined with the @Bean annotation support the regular lifecycle callbacks and
can use the @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy annotations from JSR-250, see JSR250 annotations for further details.
The regular Spring lifecycle callbacks are fully supported as well. If a bean implements
InitializingBean, DisposableBean, or Lifecycle, their respective methods are
called by the container.
The standard set of *Aware interfaces such as BeanFactoryAware, BeanNameAware,
MessageSourceAware, ApplicationContextAware, and so on are also fully
supported.
The @Bean annotation supports specifying arbitrary initialization and destruction callback
methods, much like Spring XML's init-method and destroy-method attributes on

the bean element:
public class Foo {
// initialization logic
}
}
public class Bar {
public void cleanup() {
// destruction logic
}
}
@Configuration
@Bean(initMethod = "init")
public Foo foo() {
return new Foo();
}
@Bean(destroyMethod = "cleanup")
public Bar bar() {
return new Bar();
}
}
Of course, in the case of Foo above, it would be equally as valid to call the init()
method directly during construction:
@Configuration
@Bean
public Foo foo() {
Foo foo = new Foo();
foo.init();
return foo;
}
// ...
}
Tip
When you work directly in Java, you can do anything you like with your
objects and do not always need to rely on the container lifecycle!
Specifying bean scope

Using the @Scope annotation
You can specify that your beans defined with the @Bean annotation should have a specific
scope. You can use any of the standard scopes specified in the Bean Scopes section.
The default scope is singleton, but you can override this with the @Scope annotation:
@Configuration
public class MyConfiguration {
@Bean
@Scope("prototype")
public Encryptor encryptor() {
// ...
}
}
@Scope and scoped-proxy

Spring offers a convenient way of working with scoped dependencies through scoped
proxies. The easiest way to create such a proxy when using the XML configuration is the
<aop:scoped-proxy/> element. Configuring your beans in Java with a @Scope
annotation offers equivalent support with the proxyMode attribute. The default is no proxy
(ScopedProxyMode.NO), but you can specify ScopedProxyMode.TARGET_CLASS or
ScopedProxyMode.INTERFACES.
If you port the scoped proxy example from the XML reference documentation (see
preceding link) to our @Bean using Java, it would look like the following:
// an HTTP Session-scoped bean exposed as a proxy

@Bean
@Scope(value = "session", proxyMode = ScopedProxyMode.TARGET_CLASS)
public UserPreferences userPreferences() {
return new UserPreferences();
}
@Bean
public Service userService() {
UserService service = new SimpleUserService();
// a reference to the proxied userPreferences bean
service.setUserPreferences(userPreferences());
return service;
}
Customizing bean naming

By default, configuration classes use a @Bean method's name as the name of the resulting
bean. This functionality can be overridden, however, with the name attribute.
@Configuration
@Bean(name = "myFoo")
public Foo foo() {
return new Foo();
}
}
Bean aliasing
As discussed in Section 5.3.1, Naming beans, it is sometimes desirable to give a single
bean multiple names, otherwise known as bean aliasing. The name attribute of the @Bean
annotation accepts a String array for this purpose.
@Configuration
@Bean(name = { "dataSource", "subsystemA-dataSource", "subsystemB-dataSource" })
// instantiate, configure and return DataSource bean...
}
}
5.12.4 Using the @Configuration annotation

@Configuration is a class-level annotation indicating that an object is a source of bean
definitions. @Configuration classes declare beans via public @Bean annotated
methods. Calls to @Bean methods on @Configuration classes can also be used to
define inter-bean dependencies. See Section 5.12.1, Basic concepts: @Bean and
@Configuration for a general introduction.
Injecting inter-bean dependencies

When @Beans have dependencies on one another, expressing that dependency is as
simple as having one bean method call another:
@Configuration
@Bean
public Foo foo() {
return new Foo(bar());
}
@Bean
public Bar bar() {
return new Bar();
}
}
In the example above, the foo bean receives a reference to bar via constructor injection.
Note
This method of declaring inter-bean dependencies only works when
the @Bean method is declared within a @Configuration class. You
cannot declare inter-bean dependencies using plain @Component
classes.

As noted earlier, lookup method injection is an advanced feature that you should use
rarely. It is useful in cases where a singleton-scoped bean has a dependency on a
prototype-scoped bean. Using Java for this type of configuration provides a natural means
for implementing this pattern.
public abstract class CommandManager {
public Object process(Object commandState) {
// grab a new instance of the appropriate Command interface
}
// okay... but where is the implementation of this method?
protected abstract Command createCommand();
}
Using Java-configuration support , you can create a subclass of CommandManager where

the abstract createCommand() method is overridden in such a way that it looks up a
new (prototype) command object:
@Bean
@Scope("prototype")
public AsyncCommand asyncCommand() {
AsyncCommand command = new AsyncCommand();
// inject dependencies here as required
return command;
}
@Bean
public CommandManager commandManager() {
// return new anonymous implementation of CommandManager with command() overridden
// to return a new prototype Command object
return new CommandManager() {
protected Command createCommand() {
return asyncCommand();
}
}
}
Further information about how Java-based configuration works internally

The following example shows a @Bean annotated method being called twice:
@Configuration
@Bean
public ClientService clientService1() {
ClientServiceImpl clientService = new ClientServiceImpl();
clientService.setClientDao(clientDao());
}
@Bean
public ClientService clientService2() {
ClientServiceImpl clientService = new ClientServiceImpl();
clientService.setClientDao(clientDao());
}
@Bean
public ClientDao clientDao() {
return new ClientDaoImpl();
}
}
clientDao() has been called once in clientService1() and once in
clientService2(). Since this method creates a new instance of ClientDaoImpl

and returns it, you would normally expect having 2 instances (one for each service). That
definitely would be problematic: in Spring, instantiated beans have a singleton scope
by default. This is where the magic comes in: All @Configuration classes are
subclassed at startup-time with CGLIB. In the subclass, the child method checks the
container first for any cached (scoped) beans before it calls the parent method and creates
a new instance. Note that as of Spring 3.2, it is no longer necessary to add CGLIB to your
classpath because CGLIB classes have been repackaged under org.springframework and
included directly within the spring-core JAR.
Note
The behavior could be different according to the scope of your bean.
We are talking about singletons here.
Note
There are a few restrictions due to the fact that CGLIB dynamically
adds features at startup-time:
Configuration classes should not be final
They should have a constructor with no arguments
5.12.5 Composing Java-based configurations

Using the @Import annotation
Much as the <import/> element is used within Spring XML files to aid in modularizing
configurations, the @Import annotation allows for loading @Bean definitions from another
configuration class:
@Configuration
public class ConfigA {
public @Bean A a() { return new A(); }
}
@Configuration
@Import(ConfigA.class)
public class ConfigB {
public @Bean B b() { return new B(); }
}
Now, rather than needing to specify both ConfigA.class and ConfigB.class when
instantiating the context, only ConfigB needs to be supplied explicitly:
ApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(ConfigB.class);
// now both beans A and B will be available...
A a = ctx.getBean(A.class);
B b = ctx.getBean(B.class);
}
This approach simplifies container instantiation, as only one class needs to be dealt with,
rather than requiring the developer to remember a potentially large number of
@Configuration classes during construction.
Injecting dependencies on imported @Bean definitions

The example above works, but is simplistic. In most practical scenarios, beans will have
dependencies on one another across configuration classes. When using XML, this is not
an issue, per se, because there is no compiler involved, and one can simply declare
ref="someBean" and trust that Spring will work it out during container initialization. Of
course, when using @Configuration classes, the Java compiler places constraints on
the configuration model, in that references to other beans must be valid Java syntax.
Fortunately, solving this problem is simple. Remember that @Configuration classes

are ultimately just another bean in the container - this means that they can take advantage
of @Autowired injection metadata just like any other bean!
Let's consider a more real-world scenario with several @Configuration classes, each
depending on beans declared in the others:
@Configuration
public class ServiceConfig {
private @Autowired AccountRepository accountRepository;
public @Bean TransferService transferService() {
return new TransferServiceImpl(accountRepository);
}
}
@Configuration
public class RepositoryConfig {
private @Autowired DataSource dataSource;
public @Bean AccountRepository accountRepository() {
return new JdbcAccountRepository(dataSource);
}
}
@Configuration
@Import({ServiceConfig.class, RepositoryConfig.class})
public class SystemTestConfig {
public @Bean DataSource dataSource() { /* return new DataSource */ }
}
ApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(SystemTestConfig.class);
// everything wires up across configuration classes...
TransferService transferService = ctx.getBean(TransferService.class);
transferService.transfer(100.00, "A123", "C456");
}
Fully-qualifying imported beans for ease of navigation

In the scenario above, using @Autowired works well and provides the desired
modularity, but determining exactly where the autowired bean definitions are declared is
still somewhat ambiguous. For example, as a developer looking at ServiceConfig, how
do you know exactly where the @Autowired AccountRepository bean is declared?
It's not explicit in the code, and this may be just fine. Remember that the SpringSource
Tool Suite provides tooling that can render graphs showing how everything is wired up that may be all you need. Also, your Java IDE can easily find all declarations and uses of
the AccountRepository type, and will quickly show you the location of @Bean
methods that return that type.
In cases where this ambiguity is not acceptable and you wish to have direct navigation
from within your IDE from one @Configuration class to another, consider autowiring
the configuration classes themselves:
@Configuration
private @Autowired RepositoryConfig repositoryConfig;
// navigate 'through' the config class to the @Bean method!
return new TransferServiceImpl(repositoryConfig.accountRepository());
}
}
In the situation above, it is completely explicit where AccountRepository is defined.

However, ServiceConfig is now tightly coupled to RepositoryConfig; that's the
tradeoff. This tight coupling can be somewhat mitigated by using interface-based or
abstract class-based @Configuration classes. Consider the following:
@Configuration
private @Autowired RepositoryConfig repositoryConfig;
return new TransferServiceImpl(repositoryConfig.accountRepository());
}
}
@Configuration
public interface RepositoryConfig {
@Bean AccountRepository accountRepository();
}
@Configuration
public class DefaultRepositoryConfig implements RepositoryConfig {
return new JdbcAccountRepository(...);
}
}
@Configuration
@Import({ServiceConfig.class, DefaultRepositoryConfig.class}) // import the concrete config!
public class SystemTestConfig {
public @Bean DataSource dataSource() { /* return DataSource */ }
}
ApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(SystemTestConfig.class);
transferService.transfer(100.00, "A123", "C456");
}
Now ServiceConfig is loosely coupled with respect to the concrete

DefaultRepositoryConfig, and built-in IDE tooling is still useful: it will be easy for
the developer to get a type hierarchy of RepositoryConfig implementations. In this
way, navigating @Configuration classes and their dependencies becomes no different
than the usual process of navigating interface-based code.
Combining Java and XML configuration

Spring's @Configuration class support does not aim to be a 100% complete
replacement for Spring XML. Some facilities such as Spring XML namespaces remain an
ideal way to configure the container. In cases where XML is convenient or necessary, you
have a choice: either instantiate the container in an "XML-centric" way using, for example,
ClassPathXmlApplicationContext, or in a "Java-centric" fashion using
AnnotationConfigApplicationContext and the @ImportResource annotation
to import XML as needed.
XML-centric use of @Configuration classes

It may be preferable to bootstrap the Spring container from XML and include
@Configuration classes in an ad-hoc fashion. For example, in a large existing
codebase that uses Spring XML, it will be easier to create @Configuration classes on
an as-needed basis and include them from the existing XML files. Below you'll find the
options for using @Configuration classes in this kind of "XML-centric" situation.
Declaring @Configuration classes as plain Spring <bean/> elements

Remember that @Configuration classes are ultimately just bean definitions in the
container. In this example, we create a @Configuration class named AppConfig and
include it within system-test-config.xml as a <bean/>definition. Because
<context:annotation-config/> is switched on, the container will recognize the
@Configuration annotation, and process the @Bean methods declared in AppConfig
properly.
@Configuration
private @Autowired DataSource dataSource;
}
return new TransferService(accountRepository());
}
}
system-test-config.xml
<beans>

<context:property-placeholder location="classpath:/com/acme/jdbc.properties"/>
<bean class="com.acme.AppConfig"/>
<bean class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
</bean>
</beans>
jdbc.properties
jdbc.url=jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost/xdb
jdbc.username=sa
jdbc.password=
ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("classpath:/com/acme/system-test-config.xml");
// ...
}
Note
In system-test-config.xml above, the AppConfig<bean/>
does not declare an id element. While it would be acceptable to do so,
it is unnecessary given that no other bean will ever refer to it, and it is
unlikely that it will be explicitly fetched from the container by name.
Likewise with the DataSource bean - it is only ever autowired by
type, so an explicit bean id is not strictly required.
Using <context:component-scan/> to pick up @Configuration

classes
Because @Configuration is meta-annotated with @Component, @Configurationannotated classes are automatically candidates for component scanning. Using the same
scenario as above, we can redefine system-test-config.xml to take advantage of
component-scanning. Note that in this case, we don't need to explicitly declare
<context:annotation-config/>, because <context:component-scan/>
enables all the same functionality.
system-test-config.xml
<beans>

<context:component-scan base-package="com.acme"/>
<bean class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
</bean>
</beans>
@Configuration class-centric use of XML with @ImportResource

In applications where @Configuration classes are the primary mechanism for
configuring the container, it will still likely be necessary to use at least some XML. In these
scenarios, simply use @ImportResource and define only as much XML as is needed.
Doing so achieves a "Java-centric" approach to configuring the container and keeps XML
to a bare minimum.
@Configuration
@ImportResource("classpath:/com/acme/properties-config.xml")
private @Value("${jdbc.url}") String url;
private @Value("${jdbc.username}") String username;
private @Value("${jdbc.password}") String password;
public @Bean DataSource dataSource() {
return new DriverManagerDataSource(url, username, password);

}
}
properties-config.xml
<beans>
</beans>
jdbc.properties
jdbc.url=jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost/xdb
jdbc.username=sa
jdbc.password=
// ...
}
5.13 Registering a LoadTimeWeaver

The LoadTimeWeaver is used by Spring to dynamically transform classes as they are
loaded into the Java virtual machine (JVM).
To enable load-time weaving add the @EnableLoadTimeWeaving to one of your
@Configuration classes:
@Configuration
@EnableLoadTimeWeaving
}
Alternatively for XML configuration use the context:load-time-weaver element:

<beans>
<context:load-time-weaver/>
</beans>
Once configured for the ApplicationContext. Any bean within that

ApplicationContext may implement LoadTimeWeaverAware, thereby receiving a
reference to the load-time weaver instance. This is particularly useful in combination with
Spring's JPA support where load-time weaving may be necessary for JPA class
transformation. Consult the LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean Javadoc
for more detail. For more on AspectJ load-time weaving, see Section 9.8.4, Load-time
weaving with AspectJ in the Spring Framework.
5.14 Additional Capabilities of the

ApplicationContext
As was discussed in the chapter introduction, the
org.springframework.beans.factory package provides basic functionality for
managing and manipulating beans, including in a programmatic way. The
org.springframework.context package adds the ApplicationContext
interface, which extends the BeanFactory interface, in addition to extending other
interfaces to provide additional functionality in a more application framework-oriented style.
Many people use the ApplicationContext in a completely declarative fashion, not
even creating it programmatically, but instead relying on support classes such as
ContextLoader to automatically instantiate an ApplicationContext as part of the
normal startup process of a J2EE web application.
To enhance BeanFactory functionality in a more framework-oriented style the context
package also provides the following functionality:
Access to messages in i18n-style, through the MessageSource interface.
Access to resources, such as URLs and files, through the ResourceLoader

interface.
Event publication to beans implementing the ApplicationListener interface,
through the use of the ApplicationEventPublisher interface.
Loading of multiple (hierarchical) contexts, allowing each to be focused on one
particular layer, such as the web layer of an application, through the
HierarchicalBeanFactory interface.
5.14.1 Internationalization using MessageSource

The ApplicationContext interface extends an interface called MessageSource, and
therefore provides internationalization (i18n) functionality. Spring also provides the
interface HierarchicalMessageSource, which can resolve messages hierarchically.
Together these interfaces provide the foundation upon which Spring effects message
resolution. The methods defined on these interfaces include:
String getMessage(String code, Object[] args, String default,
Locale loc): The basic method used to retrieve a message from the
MessageSource. When no message is found for the specified locale, the default
message is used. Any arguments passed in become replacement values, using the
MessageFormat functionality provided by the standard library.
String getMessage(String code, Object[] args, Locale loc):
Essentially the same as the previous method, but with one difference: no default
message can be specified; if the message cannot be found, a
NoSuchMessageException is thrown.
String getMessage(MessageSourceResolvable resolvable, Locale
locale): All properties used in the preceding methods are also wrapped in a class
named MessageSourceResolvable, which you can use with this method.
When an ApplicationContext is loaded, it automatically searches for a
MessageSource bean defined in the context. The bean must have the name
messageSource. If such a bean is found, all calls to the preceding methods are
delegated to the message source. If no message source is found, the
ApplicationContext attempts to find a parent containing a bean with the same name.
If it does, it uses that bean as the MessageSource. If the ApplicationContext
cannot find any source for messages, an empty DelegatingMessageSource is
instantiated in order to be able to accept calls to the methods defined above.
Spring provides two MessageSource implementations,
ResourceBundleMessageSource and StaticMessageSource. Both implement
HierarchicalMessageSource in order to do nested messaging. The
StaticMessageSource is rarely used but provides programmatic ways to add
messages to the source. The ResourceBundleMessageSource is shown in the
following example:
<beans>
<bean id="messageSource"
class="org.springframework.context.support.ResourceBundleMessageSource">
<property name="basenames">
<list>
<value>format</value>
<value>exceptions</value>
<value>windows</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
</beans>
In the example it is assumed you have three resource bundles defined in your classpath
called format, exceptions and windows. Any request to resolve a message will be
handled in the JDK standard way of resolving messages through ResourceBundles. For
the purposes of the example, assume the contents of two of the above resource bundle
files are...
# in format.properties
message=Alligators rock!
# in exceptions.properties
argument.required=The '{0}' argument is required.
A program to execute the MessageSource functionality is shown in the next example.

Remember that all ApplicationContext implementations are also MessageSource
implementations and so can be cast to the MessageSource interface.
MessageSource resources = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("beans.xml");
String message = resources.getMessage("message", null, "Default", null);
System.out.println(message);
}
The resulting output from the above program will be...

Alligators rock!
So to summarize, the MessageSource is defined in a file called beans.xml, which

exists at the root of your classpath. The messageSource bean definition refers to a
number of resource bundles through its basenames property. The three files that are
passed in the list to the basenames property exist as files at the root of your classpath and
are called format.properties, exceptions.properties, and
windows.properties respectively.
The next example shows arguments passed to the message lookup; these arguments will
be converted into Strings and inserted into placeholders in the lookup message.
<beans>

<bean id="messageSource" class="org.springframework.context.support.ResourceBundleMessageSource">
<property name="basename" value="exceptions"/>
</bean>

<bean id="example" class="com.foo.Example">
<property name="messages" ref="messageSource"/>
</bean>
</beans>
public class Example {

private MessageSource messages;
public void setMessages(MessageSource messages) {
this.messages = messages;
}
public void execute() {
String message = this.messages.getMessage("argument.required",
new Object [] {"userDao"}, "Required", null);
}
}
The resulting output from the invocation of the execute() method will be...
The userDao argument is required.
With regard to internationalization (i18n), Spring's various MessageResource

implementations follow the same locale resolution and fallback rules as the standard JDK
ResourceBundle. In short, and continuing with the example messageSource defined
previously, if you want to resolve messages against the British (en-GB) locale, you would
create files called format_en_GB.properties, exceptions_en_GB.properties,
and windows_en_GB.properties respectively.
Typically, locale resolution is managed by the surrounding environment of the application.

In this example, the locale against which (British) messages will be resolved is specified
manually.
# in exceptions_en_GB.properties
argument.required=Ebagum lad, the '{0}' argument is required, I say, required.
public static void main(final String[] args) {

MessageSource resources = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("beans.xml");
String message = resources.getMessage("argument.required",
new Object [] {"userDao"}, "Required", Locale.UK);
}
The resulting output from the running of the above program will be...
Ebagum lad, the 'userDao' argument is required, I say, required.
You can also use the MessageSourceAware interface to acquire a reference to any
MessageSource that has been defined. Any bean that is defined in an
ApplicationContext that implements the MessageSourceAware interface is
injected with the application context's MessageSource when the bean is created and
configured.
Note
As an alternative to ResourceBundleMessageSource, Spring
provides a ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource class.
This variant supports the same bundle file format but is more flexible
than the standard JDK based ResourceBundleMessageSource
implementation. In particular, it allows for reading files from any Spring
resource location (not just from the classpath) and supports hot
reloading of bundle property files (while efficiently caching them in
between). Check out the
ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource javadoc for
details.
5.14.2 Standard and Custom Events

Event handling in the ApplicationContext is provided through the
ApplicationEvent class and ApplicationListener interface. If a bean that
implements the ApplicationListener interface is deployed into the context, every
time an ApplicationEvent gets published to the ApplicationContext, that bean
is notified. Essentially, this is the standard Observer design pattern. Spring provides the
following standard events:
Table 5.7. Built-in Events

Event
Explanation
Published when the ApplicationContext is

initialized or refreshed, for example, using the
refresh() method on the
ConfigurableApplicationContext
interface. "Initialized" here means that all beans
are loaded, post-processor beans are detected
and activated, singletons are pre-instantiated,
and the ApplicationContext object is ready
ContextRefreshedEvent
for use. As long as the context has not been
closed, a refresh can be triggered multiple times,
provided that the chosen
ApplicationContext actually supports such
"hot" refreshes. For example,
XmlWebApplicationContext supports hot
refreshes, but GenericApplicationContext
does not.
ContextStartedEvent

started, using the start() method on the
interface. "Started" here means that all
Lifecycle beans receive an explicit start
signal. Typically this signal is used to restart
beans after an explicit stop, but it may also be
used to start components that have not been
configured for autostart , for example,
components that have not already started on
initialization.
ContextStoppedEvent

stopped, using the stop() method on the
interface. "Stopped" here means that all
Lifecycle beans receive an explicit stop
signal. A stopped context may be restarted
through a start() call.
ContextClosedEvent

closed, using the close() method on the
interface. "Closed" here means that all singleton
beans are destroyed. A closed context reaches its
end of life; it cannot be refreshed or restarted.
RequestHandledEvent
A web-specific event telling all beans that an

HTTP request has been serviced. This event is
published after the request is complete. This
event is only applicable to web applications using
Spring's DispatcherServlet.
You can also create and publish your own custom events. This example demonstrates a
simple class that extends Spring's ApplicationEvent base class:
public class BlackListEvent extends ApplicationEvent {
private final String address;
private final String test;
public BlackListEvent(Object source, String address, String test) {
super(source);
this.address = address;
this.test = test;
}
// accessor and other methods...
}
To publish a custom ApplicationEvent, call the publishEvent() method on an

ApplicationEventPublisher. Typically this is done by creating a class that
implements ApplicationEventPublisherAware and registering it as a Spring bean.
The following example demonstrates such a class:
public class EmailService implements ApplicationEventPublisherAware {
private List<String> blackList;
private ApplicationEventPublisher publisher;
public void setBlackList(List<String> blackList) {
this.blackList = blackList;
}
public void setApplicationEventPublisher(ApplicationEventPublisher publisher) {
this.publisher = publisher;
}
public void sendEmail(String address, String text) {
if (blackList.contains(address)) {
BlackListEvent event = new BlackListEvent(this, address, text);
publisher.publishEvent(event);
return;
}
// send email...
}
}
At configuration time, the Spring container will detect that EmailService implements
ApplicationEventPublisherAware and will automatically call
setApplicationEventPublisher(). In reality, the parameter passed in will be the
Spring container itself; you're simply interacting with the application context via its
ApplicationEventPublisher interface.
To receive the custom ApplicationEvent, create a class that implements
ApplicationListener and register it as a Spring bean. The following example
demonstrates such a class:
public class BlackListNotifier implements ApplicationListener<BlackListEvent> {
private String notificationAddress;
public void setNotificationAddress(String notificationAddress) {
this.notificationAddress = notificationAddress;
}
public void onApplicationEvent(BlackListEvent event) {
// notify appropriate parties via notificationAddress...
}
}
Notice that ApplicationListener is generically parameterized with the type of your

custom event, BlackListEvent. This means that the onApplicationEvent()
method can remain type-safe, avoiding any need for downcasting. You may register as
many event listeners as you wish, but note that by default event listeners receive events
synchronously. This means the publishEvent() method blocks until all listeners have
finished processing the event. One advantage of this synchronous and single-threaded
approach is that when a listener receives an event, it operates inside the transaction
context of the publisher if a transaction context is available. If another strategy for event
publication becomes necessary, refer to the JavaDoc for Spring's
ApplicationEventMulticaster interface.
The following example shows the bean definitions used to register and configure each of
the classes above:
<bean id="emailService" class="example.EmailService">
<property name="blackList">
<list>
<value>known.spammer@example.org</value>
<value>known.hacker@example.org</value>
<value>john.doe@example.org</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="blackListNotifier" class="example.BlackListNotifier">
<property name="notificationAddress" value="blacklist@example.org"/>
</bean>
Putting it all together, when the sendEmail() method of the emailService bean is
called, if there are any emails that should be blacklisted, a custom event of type
BlackListEvent is published. The blackListNotifier bean is registered as an
ApplicationListener and thus receives the BlackListEvent, at which point it can
notify appropriate parties.
Note
Spring's eventing mechanism is designed for simple communication
between Spring beans within the same application context. However,
for more sophisticated enterprise integration needs, the separatelymaintained Spring Integration project provides complete support for
building lightweight, pattern-oriented, event-driven architectures that
build upon the well-known Spring programming model.
5.14.3 Convenient access to low-level resources

For optimal usage and understanding of application contexts, users should generally
familiarize themselves with Spring's Resource abstraction, as described in the chapter
Chapter 6, Resources.
An application context is a ResourceLoader, which can be used to load Resources. A
Resource is essentially a more feature rich version of the JDK class java.net.URL, in
fact, the implementations of the Resource wrap an instance of java.net.URL where
appropriate. A Resource can obtain low-level resources from almost any location in a
transparent fashion, including from the classpath, a filesystem location, anywhere
describable with a standard URL, and some other variations. If the resource location string
is a simple path without any special prefixes, where those resources come from is specific
and appropriate to the actual application context type.
You can configure a bean deployed into the application context to implement the special
callback interface, ResourceLoaderAware, to be automatically called back at
initialization time with the application context itself passed in as the ResourceLoader.
You can also expose properties of type Resource, to be used to access static resources;
they will be injected into it like any other properties. You can specify those Resource
properties as simple String paths, and rely on a special JavaBean PropertyEditor that
is automatically registered by the context, to convert those text strings to actual Resource
objects when the bean is deployed.
The location path or paths supplied to an ApplicationContext constructor are actually
resource strings, and in simple form are treated appropriately to the specific context
implementation. ClassPathXmlApplicationContext treats a simple location path as
a classpath location. You can also use location paths (resource strings) with special
prefixes to force loading of definitions from the classpath or a URL, regardless of the actual
context type.
5.14.4 Convenient ApplicationContext instantiation for web

applications
You can create ApplicationContext instances declaratively by using, for example, a
ContextLoader. Of course you can also create ApplicationContext instances
programmatically by using one of the ApplicationContext implementations.
The ContextLoader mechanism comes in two flavors: the ContextLoaderListener
and the ContextLoaderServlet. They have the same functionality but differ in that the
listener version is not reliable in Servlet 2.3 containers. In the Servlet 2.4 specification,
Servlet context listeners must execute immediately after the Servlet context for the web
application is created and is available to service the first request (and also when the
Servlet context is about to be shut down). As such a Servlet context listener is an ideal
place to initialize the Spring ApplicationContext. All things being equal, you should
probably prefer ContextLoaderListener; for more information on compatibility, have
a look at the Javadoc for the ContextLoaderServlet.
You can register an ApplicationContext using the ContextLoaderListener as
follows:
<context-param>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/daoContext.xml /WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml</param-value>
</context-param>
<listener>
</listener>

The listener inspects the contextConfigLocation parameter. If the parameter does

not exist, the listener uses /WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml as a default. When
the parameter does exist, the listener separates the String by using predefined delimiters
(comma, semicolon and whitespace) and uses the values as locations where application
contexts will be searched. Ant-style path patterns are supported as well. Examples are
/WEB-INF/*Context.xml for all files with names ending with "Context.xml", residing in
the "WEB-INF" directory, and /WEB-INF/**/*Context.xml, for all such files in any
subdirectory of "WEB-INF".
You can use ContextLoaderServlet instead of ContextLoaderListener. The
Servlet uses the contextConfigLocation parameter just as the listener does.
5.14.5 Deploying a Spring ApplicationContext as a J2EE RAR file

In Spring 2.5 and later, it is possible to deploy a Spring ApplicationContext as a RAR file,
encapsulating the context and all of its required bean classes and library JARs in a J2EE
RAR deployment unit. This is the equivalent of bootstrapping a standalone
ApplicationContext, just hosted in J2EE environment, being able to access the J2EE
servers facilities. RAR deployment is a more natural alternative to scenario of deploying a
headless WAR file, in effect, a WAR file without any HTTP entry points that is used only for
bootstrapping a Spring ApplicationContext in a J2EE environment.
RAR deployment is ideal for application contexts that do not need HTTP entry points but
rather consist only of message endpoints and scheduled jobs. Beans in such a context can
use application server resources such as the JTA transaction manager and JNDI-bound
JDBC DataSources and JMS ConnectionFactory instances, and may also register with the
platform's JMX server - all through Spring's standard transaction management and JNDI
and JMX support facilities. Application components can also interact with the application
server's JCA WorkManager through Spring's TaskExecutor abstraction.
Check out the JavaDoc of the SpringContextResourceAdapter class for the configuration
details involved in RAR deployment.
For a simple deployment of a Spring ApplicationContext as a J2EE RAR file: package all
application classes into a RAR file, which is a standard JAR file with a different file
extension. Add all required library JARs into the root of the RAR archive. Add a "METAINF/ra.xml" deployment descriptor (as shown in SpringContextResourceAdapters
JavaDoc) and the corresponding Spring XML bean definition file(s) (typically "METAINF/applicationContext.xml"), and drop the resulting RAR file into your application server's
deployment directory.
Note
Such RAR deployment units are usually self-contained; they do not
expose components to the outside world, not even to other modules of
the same application. Interaction with a RAR-based ApplicationContext
usually occurs through JMS destinations that it shares with other
modules. A RAR-based ApplicationContext may also, for example,
schedule some jobs, reacting to new files in the file system (or the like).
If it needs to allow synchronous access from the outside, it could for
example export RMI endpoints, which of course may be used by other
application modules on the same machine.
5.15 The BeanFactory

The BeanFactory provides the underlying basis for Spring's IoC functionality but it is
only used directly in integration with other third-party frameworks and is now largely
historical in nature for most users of Spring. The BeanFactory and related interfaces,
such as BeanFactoryAware, InitializingBean, DisposableBean, are still

present in Spring for the purposes of backward compatibility with the large number of thirdparty frameworks that integrate with Spring. Often third-party components that can not use
more modern equivalents such as @PostConstruct or @PreDestroy in order to
remain compatible with JDK 1.4 or to avoid a dependency on JSR-250.
This section provides additional background into the differences between the
BeanFactory and ApplicationContext and how one might access the IoC
container directly through a classic singleton lookup.
5.15.1 BeanFactory or ApplicationContext?

Use an ApplicationContext unless you have a good reason for not doing so.
Because the ApplicationContext includes all functionality of the BeanFactory, it is
generally recommended over the BeanFactory, except for a few situations such as in an
Applet where memory consumption might be critical and a few extra kilobytes might
make a difference. However, for most typical enterprise applications and systems, the
ApplicationContext is what you will want to use. Spring 2.0 and later makes heavy
use of the BeanPostProcessor extension point (to effect proxying and so on). If you use
only a plain BeanFactory, a fair amount of support such as transactions and AOP will
not take effect, at least not without some extra steps on your part. This situation could be
confusing because nothing is actually wrong with the configuration.
The following table lists features provided by the BeanFactory and
ApplicationContext interfaces and implementations.
Table 5.8. Feature Matrix

Feature
BeanFactory
ApplicationContext
Bean instantiation/wiring
Yes
Yes
Automatic
BeanPostProcessor
registration
No
Yes
Automatic
BeanFactoryPostProcessor No
registration
Yes
Convenient MessageSource
access (for i18n)
No
Yes
ApplicationEvent
publication
No
Yes
To explicitly register a bean post-processor with a BeanFactory implementation, you

must write code like this:
ConfigurableBeanFactory factory = new XmlBeanFactory(...);
// now register any needed BeanPostProcessor instances
MyBeanPostProcessor postProcessor = new MyBeanPostProcessor();
factory.addBeanPostProcessor(postProcessor);
// now start using the factory
To explicitly register a BeanFactoryPostProcessor when using a BeanFactory

implementation, you must write code like this:
XmlBeanFactory factory = new XmlBeanFactory(new FileSystemResource("beans.xml"));
// bring in some property values from a Properties file
PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer cfg = new PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer();
cfg.setLocation(new FileSystemResource("jdbc.properties"));
// now actually do the replacement

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

It is best to write most application code in a dependency-injection (DI) style, where that
code is served out of a Spring IoC container, has its own dependencies supplied by the
container when it is created, and is completely unaware of the container. However, for the
small glue layers of code that are sometimes needed to tie other code together, you
sometimes need a singleton (or quasi-singleton) style access to a Spring IoC container.
For example, third-party code may try to construct new objects directly
(Class.forName() style), without the ability to get these objects out of a Spring IoC
container. If the object constructed by the third-party code is a small stub or proxy, which
then uses a singleton style access to a Spring IoC container to get a real object to delegate
to, then inversion of control has still been achieved for the majority of the code (the object
coming out of the container). Thus most code is still unaware of the container or how it is
accessed, and remains decoupled from other code, with all ensuing benefits. EJBs may
also use this stub/proxy approach to delegate to a plain Java implementation object,
retrieved from a Spring IoC container. While the Spring IoC container itself ideally does not
have to be a singleton, it may be unrealistic in terms of memory usage or initialization times
(when using beans in the Spring IoC container such as a Hibernate SessionFactory)
for each bean to use its own, non-singleton Spring IoC container.
Looking up the application context in a service locator style is sometimes the only option
for accessing shared Spring-managed components, such as in an EJB 2.1 environment, or
when you want to share a single ApplicationContext as a parent to
WebApplicationContexts across WAR files. In this case you should look into using the
utility class ContextSingletonBeanFactoryLocator locator that is described in this
SpringSource team blog entry.
[1]
[2]
See Background
See Section 5.4.1, Dependency injection
6. Resources
6.1 Introduction
Java's standard java.net.URL class and standard handlers for various URL prefixes
unfortunately are not quite adequate enough for all access to low-level resources. For
example, there is no standardized URL implementation that may be used to access a
resource that needs to be obtained from the classpath, or relative to a ServletContext.
While it is possible to register new handlers for specialized URL prefixes (similar to existing
handlers for prefixes such as http:), this is generally quite complicated, and the URL
interface still lacks some desirable functionality, such as a method to check for the
existence of the resource being pointed to.
6.2 The Resource interface

Spring's Resource interface is meant to be a more capable interface for abstracting
access to low-level resources.
public interface Resource extends InputStreamSource {

boolean exists();
boolean isOpen();
URL getURL() throws IOException;
File getFile() throws IOException;
Resource createRelative(String relativePath) throws IOException;
String getFilename();
String getDescription();
}
public interface InputStreamSource {
InputStream getInputStream() throws IOException;
}
Some of the most important methods from the Resource interface are:
getInputStream(): locates and opens the resource, returning an InputStream
for reading from the resource. It is expected that each invocation returns a fresh
InputStream. It is the responsibility of the caller to close the stream.
exists(): returns a boolean indicating whether this resource actually exists in
physical form.
isOpen(): returns a boolean indicating whether this resource represents a handle
with an open stream. If true, the InputStream cannot be read multiple times, and
must be read once only and then closed to avoid resource leaks. Will be false for all
usual resource implementations, with the exception of InputStreamResource.
getDescription(): returns a description for this resource, to be used for error
output when working with the resource. This is often the fully qualified file name or the
actual URL of the resource.
Other methods allow you to obtain an actual URL or File object representing the resource
(if the underlying implementation is compatible, and supports that functionality).
The Resource abstraction is used extensively in Spring itself, as an argument type in
many method signatures when a resource is needed. Other methods in some Spring APIs
(such as the constructors to various ApplicationContext implementations), take a
String which in unadorned or simple form is used to create a Resource appropriate to
that context implementation, or via special prefixes on the String path, allow the caller to
specify that a specific Resource implementation must be created and used.
While the Resource interface is used a lot with Spring and by Spring, it's actually very
useful to use as a general utility class by itself in your own code, for access to resources,
even when your code doesn't know or care about any other parts of Spring. While this
couples your code to Spring, it really only couples it to this small set of utility classes,
which are serving as a more capable replacement for URL, and can be considered
equivalent to any other library you would use for this purpose.
It is important to note that the Resource abstraction does not replace functionality: it
wraps it where possible. For example, a UrlResource wraps a URL, and uses the
wrapped URL to do its work.
6.3 Built-in Resource implementations

There are a number of Resource implementations that come supplied straight out of the
box in Spring:
6.3.1 UrlResource
The UrlResource wraps a java.net.URL, and may be used to access any object that
is normally accessible via a URL, such as files, an HTTP target, an FTP target, etc. All
URLs have a standardized String representation, such that appropriate standardized
prefixes are used to indicate one URL type from another. This includes file: for
accessing filesystem paths, http: for accessing resources via the HTTP protocol, ftp:
for accessing resources via FTP, etc.
A UrlResource is created by Java code explicitly using the UrlResource constructor,
but will often be created implicitly when you call an API method which takes a String
argument which is meant to represent a path. For the latter case, a JavaBeans
PropertyEditor will ultimately decide which type of Resource to create. If the path
string contains a few well-known (to it, that is) prefixes such as classpath:, it will create
an appropriate specialized Resource for that prefix. However, if it doesn't recognize the
prefix, it will assume the this is just a standard URL string, and will create a
UrlResource.
6.3.2 ClassPathResource
This class represents a resource which should be obtained from the classpath. This uses
either the thread context class loader, a given class loader, or a given class for loading
resources.
This Resource implementation supports resolution as java.io.File if the class path
resource resides in the file system, but not for classpath resources which reside in a jar
and have not been expanded (by the servlet engine, or whatever the environment is) to the
filesystem. To address this the various Resource implementations always support
resolution as a java.net.URL.
A ClassPathResource is created by Java code explicitly using the
ClassPathResource constructor, but will often be created implicitly when you call an
API method which takes a String argument which is meant to represent a path. For the
latter case, a JavaBeans PropertyEditor will recognize the special prefix
classpath:on the string path, and create a ClassPathResource in that case.
6.3.3 FileSystemResource
This is a Resource implementation for java.io.File handles. It obviously supports
resolution as a File, and as a URL.
6.3.4 ServletContextResource
This is a Resource implementation for ServletContext resources, interpreting
relative paths within the relevant web application's root directory.
This always supports stream access and URL access, but only allows java.io.File
access when the web application archive is expanded and the resource is physically on
the filesystem. Whether or not it's expanded and on the filesystem like this, or accessed
directly from the JAR or somewhere else like a DB (it's conceivable) is actually dependent
on the Servlet container.
6.3.5 InputStreamResource
A Resource implementation for a given InputStream. This should only be used if no
specific Resource implementation is applicable. In particular, prefer
ByteArrayResource or any of the file-based Resource implementations where
possible.
In contrast to other Resource implementations, this is a descriptor for an already opened
resource - therefore returning true from isOpen(). Do not use it if you need to keep the
resource descriptor somewhere, or if you need to read a stream multiple times.
6.3.6 ByteArrayResource
This is a Resource implementation for a given byte array. It creates a
ByteArrayInputStream for the given byte array.
It's useful for loading content from any given byte array, without having to resort to a singleuse InputStreamResource.
6.4 The ResourceLoader

The ResourceLoader interface is meant to be implemented by objects that can return
(i.e. load) Resource instances.
public interface ResourceLoader {
Resource getResource(String location);
}
All application contexts implement the ResourceLoader interface, and therefore all
application contexts may be used to obtain Resource instances.
When you call getResource() on a specific application context, and the location path
specified doesn't have a specific prefix, you will get back a Resource type that is
appropriate to that particular application context. For example, assume the following
snippet of code was executed against a ClassPathXmlApplicationContext
instance:
Resource template = ctx.getResource("some/resource/path/myTemplate.txt");
What would be returned would be a ClassPathResource; if the same method was

executed against a FileSystemXmlApplicationContext instance, you'd get back a
FileSystemResource. For a WebApplicationContext, you'd get back a
ServletContextResource, and so on.
As such, you can load resources in a fashion appropriate to the particular application
context.
On the other hand, you may also force ClassPathResource to be used, regardless of
the application context type, by specifying the special classpath: prefix:
Resource template = ctx.getResource("classpath:some/resource/path/myTemplate.txt");
Similarly, one can force a UrlResource to be used by specifying any of the standard
java.net.URL prefixes:
Resource template = ctx.getResource("file:/some/resource/path/myTemplate.txt");
Resource template = ctx.getResource("http://myhost.com/resource/path/myTemplate.txt");
The following table summarizes the strategy for converting Strings to Resources:
Table 6.1. Resource strings

Prefix
Example
classpath: classpath:com/myapp/config.xml
file:
file:/data/config.xml
http:
http://myserver/logo.png
(none)
Explanation
Loaded from the
classpath.
Loaded as a URL, from
the filesystem. [1]
Loaded as a URL.
Depends on the
underlying
(none)
[1]
/data/config.xml
underlying
ApplicationContext.
But see also Section 6.7.3, FileSystemResource caveats.
6.5 The ResourceLoaderAware interface

The ResourceLoaderAware interface is a special marker interface, identifying objects
that expect to be provided with a ResourceLoader reference.
public interface ResourceLoaderAware {
void setResourceLoader(ResourceLoader resourceLoader);
}
When a class implements ResourceLoaderAware and is deployed into an application

context (as a Spring-managed bean), it is recognized as ResourceLoaderAware by the
application context. The application context will then invoke the
setResourceLoader(ResourceLoader), supplying itself as the argument
(remember, all application contexts in Spring implement the ResourceLoader interface).
Of course, since an ApplicationContext is a ResourceLoader, the bean could also
implement the ApplicationContextAware interface and use the supplied application
context directly to load resources, but in general, it's better to use the specialized
ResourceLoader interface if that's all that's needed. The code would just be coupled to
the resource loading interface, which can be considered a utility interface, and not the
whole Spring ApplicationContext interface.
As of Spring 2.5, you can rely upon autowiring of the ResourceLoader as an alternative
to implementing the ResourceLoaderAware interface. The "traditional" constructor
and byType autowiring modes (as described in Section 5.4.5, Autowiring collaborators)
are now capable of providing a dependency of type ResourceLoader for either a
constructor argument or setter method parameter respectively. For more flexibility
(including the ability to autowire fields and multiple parameter methods), consider using
the new annotation-based autowiring features. In that case, the ResourceLoader will be
autowired into a field, constructor argument, or method parameter that is expecting the
ResourceLoader type as long as the field, constructor, or method in question carries the
@Autowired annotation. For more information, see Section 5.9.2, @Autowired.
6.6 Resources as dependencies

If the bean itself is going to determine and supply the resource path through some sort of
dynamic process, it probably makes sense for the bean to use the ResourceLoader
interface to load resources. Consider as an example the loading of a template of some sort,
where the specific resource that is needed depends on the role of the user. If the resources
are static, it makes sense to eliminate the use of the ResourceLoader interface
completely, and just have the bean expose the Resource properties it needs, and expect
that they will be injected into it.
What makes it trivial to then inject these properties, is that all application contexts register
and use a special JavaBeans PropertyEditor which can convert String paths to
Resource objects. So if myBean has a template property of type Resource, it can be
configured with a simple string for that resource, as follows:
<bean id="myBean" class="...">
<property name="template" value="some/resource/path/myTemplate.txt"/>
</bean>
Note that the resource path has no prefix, so because the application context itself is going
to be used as the ResourceLoader, the resource itself will be loaded via a
ClassPathResource, FileSystemResource, or ServletContextResource (as

appropriate) depending on the exact type of the context.
If there is a need to force a specific Resource type to be used, then a prefix may be used.
The following two examples show how to force a ClassPathResource and a
UrlResource (the latter being used to access a filesystem file).
<property name="template" value="classpath:some/resource/path/myTemplate.txt">
<property name="template" value="file:/some/resource/path/myTemplate.txt"/>
6.7 Application contexts and Resource paths

6.7.1 Constructing application contexts
An application context constructor (for a specific application context type) generally takes a
string or array of strings as the location path(s) of the resource(s) such as XML files that
make up the definition of the context.
When such a location path doesn't have a prefix, the specific Resource type built from
that path and used to load the bean definitions, depends on and is appropriate to the
specific application context. For example, if you create a
ClassPathXmlApplicationContext as follows:
ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("conf/appContext.xml");
The bean definitions will be loaded from the classpath, as a ClassPathResource will
be used. But if you create a FileSystemXmlApplicationContext as follows:
ApplicationContext ctx =
new FileSystemXmlApplicationContext("conf/appContext.xml");
The bean definition will be loaded from a filesystem location, in this case relative to the
current working directory.
Note that the use of the special classpath prefix or a standard URL prefix on the location
path will override the default type of Resource created to load the definition. So this
FileSystemXmlApplicationContext...
new FileSystemXmlApplicationContext("classpath:conf/appContext.xml");
... will actually load its bean definitions from the classpath. However, it is still a
FileSystemXmlApplicationContext. If it is subsequently used as a
ResourceLoader, any unprefixed paths will still be treated as filesystem paths.
Constructing ClassPathXmlApplicationContext instances - shortcuts

The ClassPathXmlApplicationContext exposes a number of constructors to
enable convenient instantiation. The basic idea is that one supplies merely a string array
containing just the filenames of the XML files themselves (without the leading path
information), and one also supplies a Class; the
ClassPathXmlApplicationContext will derive the path information from the
supplied class.
An example will hopefully make this clear. Consider a directory layout that looks like this:
com/
foo/
services.xml
daos.xml
MessengerService.class
A ClassPathXmlApplicationContext instance composed of the beans defined in

the 'services.xml' and 'daos.xml' could be instantiated like so...
ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(
new String[] {"services.xml", "daos.xml"}, MessengerService.class);
Please do consult the Javadocs for the ClassPathXmlApplicationContext class for

details of the various constructors.
6.7.2 Wildcards in application context constructor resource paths

The resource paths in application context constructor values may be a simple path (as
shown above) which has a one-to-one mapping to a target Resource, or alternately may
contain the special "classpath*:" prefix and/or internal Ant-style regular expressions
(matched using Spring's PathMatcher utility). Both of the latter are effectively wildcards
One use for this mechanism is when doing component-style application assembly. All
components can 'publish' context definition fragments to a well-known location path, and
when the final application context is created using the same path prefixed via
classpath*:, all component fragments will be picked up automatically.
Note that this wildcarding is specific to use of resource paths in application context
constructors (or when using the PathMatcher utility class hierarchy directly), and is
resolved at construction time. It has nothing to do with the Resource type itself. It's not
possible to use the classpath*: prefix to construct an actual Resource, as a resource
points to just one resource at a time.
Ant-style Patterns
When the path location contains an Ant-style pattern, for example:
/WEB-INF/*-context.xml
com/mycompany/**/applicationContext.xml
file:C:/some/path/*-context.xml
classpath:com/mycompany/**/applicationContext.xml
... the resolver follows a more complex but defined procedure to try to resolve the wildcard.
It produces a Resource for the path up to the last non-wildcard segment and obtains a URL
from it. If this URL is not a "jar:" URL or container-specific variant (e.g. "zip:" in
WebLogic, "wsjar" in WebSphere, etc.), then a java.io.File is obtained from it and
used to resolve the wildcard by traversing the filesystem. In the case of a jar URL, the
resolver either gets a java.net.JarURLConnection from it or manually parses the jar
URL and then traverses the contents of the jar file to resolve the wildcards.
Implications on portability
If the specified path is already a file URL (either explicitly, or implicitly because the base
ResourceLoader is a filesystem one, then wildcarding is guaranteed to work in a
completely portable fashion.
If the specified path is a classpath location, then the resolver must obtain the last nonwildcard path segment URL via a Classloader.getResource() call. Since this is
just a node of the path (not the file at the end) it is actually undefined (in the
ClassLoader Javadocs) exactly what sort of a URL is returned in this case. In practice, it
is always a java.io.File representing the directory, where the classpath resource
resolves to a filesystem location, or a jar URL of some sort, where the classpath resource
resolves to a jar location. Still, there is a portability concern on this operation.
If a jar URL is obtained for the last non-wildcard segment, the resolver must be able to get
a java.net.JarURLConnection from it, or manually parse the jar URL, to be able to
walk the contents of the jar, and resolve the wildcard. This will work in most environments,
but will fail in others, and it is strongly recommended that the wildcard resolution of
resources coming from jars be thoroughly tested in your specific environment before you
rely on it.
The classpath*: prefix

When constructing an XML-based application context, a location string may use the
special classpath*: prefix:
new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("classpath*:conf/appContext.xml");
This special prefix specifies that all classpath resources that match the given name must
be obtained (internally, this essentially happens via a
ClassLoader.getResources(...) call), and then merged to form the final
application context definition.
Classpath*: portability
The wildcard classpath relies on the getResources() method of the underlying
classloader. As most application servers nowadays supply their own classloader
implementation, the behavior might differ especially when dealing with jar files. A simple test
to check if classpath* works is to use the classloader to load a file from within a jar on the
classpath:
getClass().getClassLoader().getResources("<someFileInsideTheJar>").
Try this test with files that have the same name but are placed inside two different locations. In
case an inappropriate result is returned, check the application server documentation for
settings that might affect the classloader behavior.
The "classpath*:" prefix can also be combined with a PathMatcher pattern in the
rest of the location path, for example "classpath*:META-INF/*-beans.xml". In this
case, the resolution strategy is fairly simple: a ClassLoader.getResources() call is used on
the last non-wildcard path segment to get all the matching resources in the class loader
hierarchy, and then off each resource the same PathMatcher resolution strategy described
above is used for the wildcard subpath.
Other notes relating to wildcards

Please note that "classpath*:" when combined with Ant-style patterns will only work
reliably with at least one root directory before the pattern starts, unless the actual target
files reside in the file system. This means that a pattern like "classpath*:*.xml" will
not retrieve files from the root of jar files but rather only from the root of expanded
directories. This originates from a limitation in the JDK's
ClassLoader.getResources() method which only returns file system locations for a
passed-in empty string (indicating potential roots to search).
Ant-style patterns with "classpath:" resources are not guaranteed to find matching
resources if the root package to search is available in multiple class path locations. This is
because a resource such as
com/mycompany/package1/service-context.xml
may be in only one location, but when a path such as

classpath:com/mycompany/**/service-context.xml
is used to try to resolve it, the resolver will work off the (first) URL returned by
getResource("com/mycompany");. If this base package node exists in multiple
classloader locations, the actual end resource may not be underneath. Therefore,
preferably, use "classpath*:" with the same Ant-style pattern in such a case, which will
search all class path locations that contain the root package.
6.7.3 FileSystemResource caveats

A FileSystemResource that is not attached to a
FileSystemApplicationContext (that is, a FileSystemApplicationContext

is not the actual ResourceLoader) will treat absolute vs. relative paths as you would
expect. Relative paths are relative to the current working directory, while absolute paths
are relative to the root of the filesystem.
For backwards compatibility (historical) reasons however, this changes when the
FileSystemApplicationContext is the ResourceLoader. The
FileSystemApplicationContext simply forces all attached
FileSystemResource instances to treat all location paths as relative, whether they start
with a leading slash or not. In practice, this means the following are equivalent:
new FileSystemXmlApplicationContext("conf/context.xml");
new FileSystemXmlApplicationContext("/conf/context.xml");
As are the following: (Even though it would make sense for them to be different, as one
case is relative and the other absolute.)
FileSystemXmlApplicationContext ctx = ...;
ctx.getResource("some/resource/path/myTemplate.txt");
FileSystemXmlApplicationContext ctx = ...;
ctx.getResource("/some/resource/path/myTemplate.txt");
In practice, if true absolute filesystem paths are needed, it is better to forgo the use of
absolute paths with FileSystemResource /
FileSystemXmlApplicationContext, and just force the use of a UrlResource, by
using the file: URL prefix.
// actual context type doesn't matter, the Resource will always be UrlResource
ctx.getResource("file:/some/resource/path/myTemplate.txt");
// force this FileSystemXmlApplicationContext to load its definition via a UrlResource

new FileSystemXmlApplicationContext("file:/conf/context.xml");
7. Validation, Data Binding, and Type Conversion

7.1 Introduction
There are pros and cons for considering validation
as business logic, and Spring offers a design for
validation (and data binding) that does not exclude
either one of them. Specifically validation should
not be tied to the web tier, should be easy to
localize and it should be possible to plug in any
validator available. Considering the above, Spring
has come up with a Validator interface that is
both basic ands eminently usable in every layer of
an application.
Data binding is useful for allowing user input to be
dynamically bound to the domain model of an
application (or whatever objects you use to
process user input). Spring provides the so-called
DataBinder to do exactly that. The Validator
and the DataBinder make up the validation
package, which is primarily used in but not limited
to the MVC framework.
JSR-303 Bean Validation

The Spring Framework supports
JSR-303 Bean Validation
adapting it to Spring's
Validator interface.
An application can choose to
enable JSR-303 Bean Validation
once globally, as described in
Section 7.8, Spring 3
Validation, and use it exclusively
for all validation needs.
An application can also register
additional Spring Validator
instances per DataBinder
instance, as described in
Section 7.8.3, Configuring a
DataBinder. This may be useful
for plugging in validation logic
without the use of annotations.
The BeanWrapper is a fundamental concept in

the Spring Framework and is used in a lot of places. However, you probably will not have
the need to use the BeanWrapper directly. Because this is reference documentation
however, we felt that some explanation might be in order. We will explain the
BeanWrapper in this chapter since, if you were going to use it at all, you would most
likely do so when trying to bind data to objects.
Spring's DataBinder and the lower-level BeanWrapper both use PropertyEditors to parse
and format property values. The PropertyEditor concept is part of the JavaBeans
specification, and is also explained in this chapter. Spring 3 introduces a "core.convert"
package that provides a general type conversion facility, as well as a higher-level "format"
package for formatting UI field values. These new packages may be used as simpler
alternatives to PropertyEditors, and will also be discussed in this chapter.
7.2 Validation using Spring's Validator interface

Spring features a Validator interface that you can use to validate objects. The
Validator interface works using an Errors object so that while validating, validators
can report validation failures to the Errors object.
Let's consider a small data object:
public class Person {
private String name;
private int age;
// the usual getters and setters...
}
We're going to provide validation behavior for the Person class by implementing the
following two methods of the org.springframework.validation.Validator
interface:
supports(Class) - Can this Validator validate instances of the supplied
Class?
validate(Object, org.springframework.validation.Errors) validates the given object and in case of validation errors, registers those with the
given Errors object
Implementing a Validator is fairly straightforward, especially when you know of the
ValidationUtils helper class that the Spring Framework also provides.
public class PersonValidator implements Validator {
/**
* This Validator validates *just* Person instances
*/
public boolean supports(Class clazz) {
return Person.class.equals(clazz);
}
public void validate(Object obj, Errors e) {
ValidationUtils.rejectIfEmpty(e, "name", "name.empty");
Person p = (Person) obj;
if (p.getAge() < 0) {
e.rejectValue("age", "negativevalue");
} else if (p.getAge() > 110) {
e.rejectValue("age", "too.darn.old");
}
}
}
As you can see, the static rejectIfEmpty(..) method on the ValidationUtils

class is used to reject the 'name' property if it is null or the empty string. Have a look at
the Javadoc for the ValidationUtils class to see what functionality it provides besides
the example shown previously.
While it is certainly possible to implement a single Validator class to validate each of
the nested objects in a rich object, it may be better to encapsulate the validation logic for
each nested class of object in its own Validator implementation. A simple example of a
'rich' object would be a Customer that is composed of two String properties (a first and
second name) and a complex Address object. Address objects may be used
independently of Customer objects, and so a distinct AddressValidator has been
implemented. If you want your CustomerValidator to reuse the logic contained within
the AddressValidator class without resorting to copy-and-paste, you can dependencyinject or instantiate an AddressValidator within your CustomerValidator, and use
it like so:
public class CustomerValidator implements Validator {
private final Validator addressValidator;
public CustomerValidator(Validator addressValidator) {
if (addressValidator == null) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException(
"The supplied [Validator] is required and must not be null.");
}
if (!addressValidator.supports(Address.class)) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException(
"The supplied [Validator] must support the validation of [Address] instances.");
}
this.addressValidator = addressValidator;
}
/**
* This Validator validates Customer instances, and any subclasses of Customer too
*/
public boolean supports(Class clazz) {
return Customer.class.isAssignableFrom(clazz);
}
public void validate(Object target, Errors errors) {
ValidationUtils.rejectIfEmptyOrWhitespace(errors, "firstName", "field.required");
ValidationUtils.rejectIfEmptyOrWhitespace(errors, "surname", "field.required");
Customer customer = (Customer) target;
try {
errors.pushNestedPath("address");
ValidationUtils.invokeValidator(this.addressValidator, customer.getAddress(), errors);
} finally {
errors.popNestedPath();
}
}
}
Validation errors are reported to the Errors object passed to the validator. In case of
Spring Web MVC you can use <spring:bind/> tag to inspect the error messages, but
of course you can also inspect the errors object yourself. More information about the
methods it offers can be found from the Javadoc.
7.3 Resolving codes to error messages

We've talked about databinding and validation. Outputting messages corresponding to
validation errors is the last thing we need to discuss. In the example we've shown above,
we rejected the name and the age field. If we're going to output the error messages by
using a MessageSource, we will do so using the error code we've given when rejecting
the field ('name' and 'age' in this case). When you call (either directly, or indirectly, using for
example the ValidationUtils class) rejectValue or one of the other reject
methods from the Errors interface, the underlying implementation will not only register
the code you've passed in, but also a number of additional error codes. What error codes it
registers is determined by the MessageCodesResolver that is used. By default, the
DefaultMessageCodesResolver is used, which for example not only registers a
message with the code you gave, but also messages that include the field name you
passed to the reject method. So in case you reject a field using rejectValue("age",
"too.darn.old"), apart from the too.darn.old code, Spring will also register
too.darn.old.age and too.darn.old.age.int (so the first will include the field
name and the second will include the type of the field); this is done as a convenience to aid
developers in targeting error messages and suchlike.
More information on the MessageCodesResolver and the default strategy can be found
online with the Javadocs for MessageCodesResolver and DefaultMessageCodesResolver
respectively.
7.4 Bean manipulation and the BeanWrapper

The org.springframework.beans package adheres to the JavaBeans standard
provided by Sun. A JavaBean is simply a class with a default no-argument constructor,
which follows a naming convention where (by way of an example) a property named
bingoMadness would have a setter method setBingoMadness(..) and a getter
method getBingoMadness(). For more information about JavaBeans and the
specification, please refer to Sun's website ( java.sun.com/products/javabeans).
One quite important class in the beans package is the BeanWrapper interface and its
corresponding implementation (BeanWrapperImpl). As quoted from the Javadoc, the
BeanWrapper offers functionality to set and get property values (individually or in bulk),
get property descriptors, and to query properties to determine if they are readable or
writable. Also, the BeanWrapper offers support for nested properties, enabling the setting
of properties on sub-properties to an unlimited depth. Then, the BeanWrapper supports
the ability to add standard JavaBeans PropertyChangeListeners and
VetoableChangeListeners, without the need for supporting code in the target class.
Last but not least, the BeanWrapper provides support for the setting of indexed
properties. The BeanWrapper usually isn't used by application code directly, but by the
DataBinder and the BeanFactory.
The way the BeanWrapper works is partly indicated by its name: it wraps a bean to
perform actions on that bean, like setting and retrieving properties.
7.4.1 Setting and getting basic and nested properties

Setting and getting properties is done using the setPropertyValue(s) and
getPropertyValue(s) methods that both come with a couple of overloaded variants.
They're all described in more detail in the Javadoc Spring comes with. What's important to
know is that there are a couple of conventions for indicating properties of an object. A
couple of examples:
Table 7.1. Examples of properties

Expression
Explanation
name
Indicates the property name corresponding to the

methods getName() or isName() and
setName(..)
account.name
Indicates the nested property name of the property

account corresponding e.g. to the methods
getAccount().setName() or
getAccount().getName()
account[2]
Indicates the third element of the indexed property

account. Indexed properties can be of type
array, list or other naturally ordered collection
Indicates the value of the map entry indexed by the

account[COMPANYNAME] key COMPANYNAME of the Map property
account
Below you'll find some examples of working with the BeanWrapper to get and set
properties.
(This next section is not vitally important to you if you're not planning to work with the
BeanWrapper directly. If you're just using the DataBinder and the BeanFactory and
their out-of-the-box implementation, you should skip ahead to the section about
PropertyEditors.)
Consider the following two classes:
public class Company {
private Employee managingDirector;
public String getName() {
return this.name;
}
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
public Employee getManagingDirector() {
return this.managingDirector;
}
public void setManagingDirector(Employee managingDirector) {
this.managingDirector = managingDirector;
}
}
public class Employee {
private float salary;
return this.name;
}
this.name = name;
}
public float getSalary() {
return salary;
}
public void setSalary(float salary) {
this.salary = salary;
}
}
The following code snippets show some examples of how to retrieve and manipulate some
of the properties of instantiated Companies and Employees:
BeanWrapper company = BeanWrapperImpl(new Company());
// setting the company name..
company.setPropertyValue("name", "Some Company Inc.");
// ... can also be done like this:
PropertyValue value = new PropertyValue("name", "Some Company Inc.");
company.setPropertyValue(value);
// ok, let's create the director and tie it to the company:
BeanWrapper jim = BeanWrapperImpl(new Employee());
jim.setPropertyValue("name", "Jim Stravinsky");
company.setPropertyValue("managingDirector", jim.getWrappedInstance());
// retrieving the salary of the managingDirector through the company
Float salary = (Float) company.getPropertyValue("managingDirector.salary");
7.4.2 Built-in PropertyEditor implementations

Spring uses the concept of PropertyEditors to effect the conversion between an
Object and a String. If you think about it, it sometimes might be handy to be able to
represent properties in a different way than the object itself. For example, a Date can be
represented in a human readable way (as the String '2007-14-09'), while we're still
able to convert the human readable form back to the original date (or even better: convert
any date entered in a human readable form, back to Date objects). This behavior can be
achieved by registering custom editors, of type java.beans.PropertyEditor.
Registering custom editors on a BeanWrapper or alternately in a specific IoC container
as mentioned in the previous chapter, gives it the knowledge of how to convert properties
to the desired type. Read more about PropertyEditors in the Javadoc of the
java.beans package provided by Sun.
A couple of examples where property editing is used in Spring:
setting properties on beans is done using PropertyEditors. When mentioning

java.lang.String as the value of a property of some bean you're declaring in
XML file, Spring will (if the setter of the corresponding property has a Classparameter) use the ClassEditor to try to resolve the parameter to a Class object.
parsing HTTP request parameters in Spring's MVC framework is done using all kinds
of PropertyEditors that you can manually bind in all subclasses of the
CommandController.
Spring has a number of built-in PropertyEditors to make life easy. Each of those is
listed below and they are all located in the
org.springframework.beans.propertyeditors package. Most, but not all (as
indicated below), are registered by default by BeanWrapperImpl. Where the property
editor is configurable in some fashion, you can of course still register your own variant to
override the default one:
Table 7.2. Built-in PropertyEditors

Class
Explanation
Editor for byte arrays. Strings will simply be

converted to their corresponding byte
ByteArrayPropertyEditor
representations. Registered by default by
BeanWrapperImpl.
ClassEditor
Parses Strings representing classes to actual

classes and the other way around. When a
class is not found, an
IllegalArgumentException is thrown.
Registered by default by BeanWrapperImpl.
CustomBooleanEditor
Customizable property editor for Boolean

properties. Registered by default by
BeanWrapperImpl, but, can be overridden
by registering custom instance of it as custom
editor.
CustomCollectionEditor
Property editor for Collections, converting any

source Collection to a given target
Collection type.
CustomDateEditor
Customizable property editor for java.util.Date,

supporting a custom DateFormat. NOT
registered by default. Must be user registered
as needed with appropriate format.
CustomNumberEditor
Customizable property editor for any Number

subclass like Integer, Long, Float,
Double. Registered by default by
BeanWrapperImpl, but can be overridden
by registering custom instance of it as a
custom editor.
FileEditor
Capable of resolving Strings to

java.io.File objects. Registered by
default by BeanWrapperImpl.
InputStreamEditor
One-way property editor, capable of taking a

text string and producing (via an intermediate
ResourceEditor and Resource) an
InputStream, so InputStream properties
may be directly set as Strings. Note that the
default usage will not close the
InputStream for you! Registered by default
by BeanWrapperImpl.
LocaleEditor
Capable of resolving Strings to Locale

objects and vice versa (the String format is
[language]_[country]_[variant], which is the
same thing the toString() method of Locale
provides). Registered by default by

BeanWrapperImpl.
PatternEditor
Capable of resolving Strings to JDK 1.5

Pattern objects and vice versa.
PropertiesEditor
Capable of converting Strings (formatted using

the format as defined in the Javadoc for the
java.lang.Properties class) to Properties
objects. Registered by default by
BeanWrapperImpl.
StringTrimmerEditor
Property editor that trims Strings. Optionally

allows transforming an empty string into a
null value. NOT registered by default; must
be user registered as needed.
URLEditor
Capable of resolving a String representation of

a URL to an actual URL object. Registered by
default by BeanWrapperImpl.
Spring uses the java.beans.PropertyEditorManager to set the search path for

property editors that might be needed. The search path also includes
sun.bean.editors, which includes PropertyEditor implementations for types
such as Font, Color, and most of the primitive types. Note also that the standard
JavaBeans infrastructure will automatically discover PropertyEditor classes (without
you having to register them explicitly) if they are in the same package as the class they
handle, and have the same name as that class, with 'Editor' appended; for example,
one could have the following class and package structure, which would be sufficient for the
FooEditor class to be recognized and used as the PropertyEditor for Foo-typed
properties.
com
chank
pop
Foo
FooEditor
// the PropertyEditor for the Foo class
Note that you can also use the standard BeanInfo JavaBeans mechanism here as well
(described in not-amazing-detail here). Find below an example of using the BeanInfo
mechanism for explicitly registering one or more PropertyEditor instances with the
properties of an associated class.
com
chank
pop
Foo
FooBeanInfo
// the BeanInfo for the Foo class
Here is the Java source code for the referenced FooBeanInfo class. This would
associate a CustomNumberEditor with the age property of the Foo class.
public class FooBeanInfo extends SimpleBeanInfo {
public PropertyDescriptor[] getPropertyDescriptors() {
try {
final PropertyEditor numberPE = new CustomNumberEditor(Integer.class, true);
PropertyDescriptor ageDescriptor = new PropertyDescriptor("age", Foo.class) {
public PropertyEditor createPropertyEditor(Object bean) {
return numberPE;
};
};
return new PropertyDescriptor[] { ageDescriptor };
}
catch (IntrospectionException ex) {
throw new Error(ex.toString());
}
}
}
Registering additional custom PropertyEditors

When setting bean properties as a string value, a Spring IoC container ultimately uses
standard JavaBeans PropertyEditors to convert these Strings to the complex type of
the property. Spring pre-registers a number of custom PropertyEditors (for example,
to convert a classname expressed as a string into a real Class object). Additionally,
Java's standard JavaBeans PropertyEditor lookup mechanism allows a
PropertyEditor for a class simply to be named appropriately and placed in the same
package as the class it provides support for, to be found automatically.
If there is a need to register other custom PropertyEditors, there are several
mechanisms available. The most manual approach, which is not normally convenient or
recommended, is to simply use the registerCustomEditor() method of the
ConfigurableBeanFactory interface, assuming you have a BeanFactory
reference. Another, slightly more convenient, mechanism is to use a special bean factory
post-processor called CustomEditorConfigurer. Although bean factory postprocessors can be used with BeanFactory implementations, the
CustomEditorConfigurer has a nested property setup, so it is strongly recommended
that it is used with the ApplicationContext, where it may be deployed in similar
fashion to any other bean, and automatically detected and applied.
Note that all bean factories and application contexts automatically use a number of built-in
property editors, through their use of something called a BeanWrapper to handle property
conversions. The standard property editors that the BeanWrapper registers are listed in
the previous section. Additionally, ApplicationContexts also override or add an
additional number of editors to handle resource lookups in a manner appropriate to the
specific application context type.
Standard JavaBeans PropertyEditor instances are used to convert property values
expressed as strings to the actual complex type of the property.
CustomEditorConfigurer, a bean factory post-processor, may be used to
conveniently add support for additional PropertyEditor instances to an
ApplicationContext.
Consider a user class ExoticType, and another class DependsOnExoticType which
needs ExoticType set as a property:
package example;
public class ExoticType {
public ExoticType(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
}
public class DependsOnExoticType {
private ExoticType type;
public void setType(ExoticType type) {
this.type = type;
}
}
When things are properly set up, we want to be able to assign the type property as a string,
which a PropertyEditor will behind the scenes convert into an actual ExoticType
instance:
<bean id="sample" class="example.DependsOnExoticType">
<property name="type" value="aNameForExoticType"/>
</bean>
The PropertyEditor implementation could look similar to this:

// converts string representation to ExoticType object
package example;
public class ExoticTypeEditor extends PropertyEditorSupport {
public void setAsText(String text) {
setValue(new ExoticType(text.toUpperCase()));
}
}
Finally, we use CustomEditorConfigurer to register the new PropertyEditor

with the ApplicationContext, which will then be able to use it as needed:
<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.CustomEditorConfigurer">
<property name="customEditors">
<map>
<entry key="example.ExoticType" value="example.ExoticTypeEditor"/>
</map>
</property>
</bean>
Using PropertyEditorRegistrars
Another mechanism for registering property editors with the Spring container is to create
and use a PropertyEditorRegistrar. This interface is particularly useful when you
need to use the same set of property editors in several different situations: write a
corresponding registrar and reuse that in each case. PropertyEditorRegistrars
work in conjunction with an interface called PropertyEditorRegistry, an interface
that is implemented by the Spring BeanWrapper (and DataBinder).
PropertyEditorRegistrars are particularly convenient when used in conjunction
with the CustomEditorConfigurer (introduced here), which exposes a property called
setPropertyEditorRegistrars(..): PropertyEditorRegistrars added to a
CustomEditorConfigurer in this fashion can easily be shared with DataBinder
and Spring MVC Controllers. Furthermore, it avoids the need for synchronization on
custom editors: a PropertyEditorRegistrar is expected to create fresh
PropertyEditor instances for each bean creation attempt.
Using a PropertyEditorRegistrar is perhaps best illustrated with an example. First
off, you need to create your own PropertyEditorRegistrar implementation:
package com.foo.editors.spring;
public final class CustomPropertyEditorRegistrar implements PropertyEditorRegistrar {
public void registerCustomEditors(PropertyEditorRegistry registry) {
// it is expected that new PropertyEditor instances are created
registry.registerCustomEditor(ExoticType.class, new ExoticTypeEditor());
// you could register as many custom property editors as are required here...
}
}
See also the

org.springframework.beans.support.ResourceEditorRegistrar for an
example PropertyEditorRegistrar implementation. Notice how in its
implementation of the registerCustomEditors(..) method it creates new instances
of each property editor.
Next we configure a CustomEditorConfigurer and inject an instance of our
CustomPropertyEditorRegistrar into it:
<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.CustomEditorConfigurer">
<property name="propertyEditorRegistrars">
<list>
<ref bean="customPropertyEditorRegistrar"/>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="customPropertyEditorRegistrar"
class="com.foo.editors.spring.CustomPropertyEditorRegistrar"/>
Finally, and in a bit of a departure from the focus of this chapter, for those of you using
Spring's MVC web framework, using PropertyEditorRegistrars in conjunction with
data-binding Controllers (such as SimpleFormController) can be very
convenient. Find below an example of using a PropertyEditorRegistrar in the
implementation of an initBinder(..) method:
public final class RegisterUserController extends SimpleFormController {
private final PropertyEditorRegistrar customPropertyEditorRegistrar;
public RegisterUserController(PropertyEditorRegistrar propertyEditorRegistrar) {
this.customPropertyEditorRegistrar = propertyEditorRegistrar;
}
protected void initBinder(HttpServletRequest request, ServletRequestDataBinder binder)
throws Exception {
this.customPropertyEditorRegistrar.registerCustomEditors(binder);
}
// other methods to do with registering a User
}
This style of PropertyEditor registration can lead to concise code (the implementation
of initBinder(..) is just one line long!), and allows common PropertyEditor
registration code to be encapsulated in a class and then shared amongst as many
Controllers as needed.
7.5 Spring 3 Type Conversion

Spring 3 introduces a core.convert package that provides a general type conversion
system. The system defines an SPI to implement type conversion logic, as well as an API
to execute type conversions at runtime. Within a Spring container, this system can be used
as an alternative to PropertyEditors to convert externalized bean property value strings to
required property types. The public API may also be used anywhere in your application
where type conversion is needed.
7.5.1 Converter SPI

The SPI to implement type conversion logic is simple and strongly typed:
package org.springframework.core.convert.converter;
public interface Converter<S, T> {
T convert(S source);
}
To create your own Converter, simply implement the interface above. Parameterize S as
the type you are converting from, and T as the type you are converting to. For each call to
convert(S), the source argument is guaranteed to be NOT null. Your Converter may throw
any Exception if conversion fails. An IllegalArgumentException should be thrown to report
an invalid source value. Take care to ensure your Converter implementation is thread-safe.
Several converter implementations are provided in the core.convert.support
package as a convenience. These include converters from Strings to Numbers and other
common types. Consider StringToInteger as an example Converter implementation:
package org.springframework.core.convert.support;
final class StringToInteger implements Converter<String, Integer> {
public Integer convert(String source) {
return Integer.valueOf(source);
}
}
7.5.2 ConverterFactory
When you need to centralize the conversion logic for an entire class hierarchy, for
example, when converting from String to java.lang.Enum objects, implement
ConverterFactory:
public interface ConverterFactory<S, R> {
<T extends R> Converter<S, T> getConverter(Class<T> targetType);
}
Parameterize S to be the type you are converting from and R to be the base type defining
the range of classes you can convert to. Then implement getConverter(Class<T>), where T
is a subclass of R.
Consider the StringToEnum ConverterFactory as an example:
package org.springframework.core.convert.support;
final class StringToEnumConverterFactory implements ConverterFactory<String, Enum> {
public <T extends Enum> Converter<String, T> getConverter(Class<T> targetType) {
return new StringToEnumConverter(targetType);
}
private final class StringToEnumConverter<T extends Enum> implements Converter<String, T> {
private Class<T> enumType;
public StringToEnumConverter(Class<T> enumType) {
this.enumType = enumType;
}
public T convert(String source) {
return (T) Enum.valueOf(this.enumType, source.trim());
}
}
}
7.5.3 GenericConverter
When you require a sophisticated Converter implementation, consider the
GenericConverter interface. With a more flexible but less strongly typed signature, a
GenericConverter supports converting between multiple source and target types. In
addition, a GenericConverter makes available source and target field context you can use
when implementing your conversion logic. Such context allows a type conversion to be
driven by a field annotation, or generic information declared on a field signature.
public interface GenericConverter {
public Set<ConvertiblePair> getConvertibleTypes();
Object convert(Object source, TypeDescriptor sourceType, TypeDescriptor targetType);
}
To implement a GenericConverter, have getConvertibleTypes() return the supported

source->target type pairs. Then implement convert(Object, TypeDescriptor,
TypeDescriptor) to implement your conversion logic. The source TypeDescriptor provides
access to the source field holding the value being converted. The target TypeDescriptor
provides access to the target field where the converted value will be set.
A good example of a GenericConverter is a converter that converts between a Java Array
and a Collection. Such an ArrayToCollectionConverter introspects the field that declares
the target Collection type to resolve the Collection's element type. This allows each
element in the source array to be converted to the Collection element type before the
Collection is set on the target field.
Note
Because GenericConverter is a more complex SPI interface, only use it
when you need it. Favor Converter or ConverterFactory for basic type
conversion needs.
ConditionalGenericConverter
Sometimes you only want a Converter to execute if a specific condition holds true. For
example, you might only want to execute a Converter if a specific annotation is present on
the target field. Or you might only want to execute a Converter if a specific method, such as
static valueOf method, is defined on the target class. ConditionalGenericConverter is an
subinterface of GenericConverter that allows you to define such custom matching criteria:
public interface ConditionalGenericConverter extends GenericConverter {
boolean matches(TypeDescriptor sourceType, TypeDescriptor targetType);
}
A good example of a ConditionalGenericConverter is an EntityConverter that converts

between an persistent entity identifier and an entity reference. Such a EntityConverter
might only match if the target entity type declares a static finder method e.g.
findAccount(Long). You would perform such a finder method check in the implementation
of matches(TypeDescriptor, TypeDescriptor).
7.5.4 ConversionService API

The ConversionService defines a unified API for executing type conversion logic at
runtime. Converters are often executed behind this facade interface:
package org.springframework.core.convert;
public interface ConversionService {
boolean canConvert(Class<?> sourceType, Class<?> targetType);
<T> T convert(Object source, Class<T> targetType);
boolean canConvert(TypeDescriptor sourceType, TypeDescriptor targetType);
Object convert(Object source, TypeDescriptor sourceType, TypeDescriptor targetType);
}
Most ConversionService implementations also implement ConverterRegistry, which

provides an SPI for registering converters. Internally, a ConversionService implementation
delegates to its registered converters to carry out type conversion logic.
A robust ConversionService implementation is provided in the
core.convert.support package. GenericConversionService is the generalpurpose implementation suitable for use in most environments.
ConversionServiceFactory provides a convenient factory for creating common
ConversionService configurations.
7.5.5 Configuring a ConversionService

A ConversionService is a stateless object designed to be instantiated at application
startup, then shared between multiple threads. In a Spring application, you typically
configure a ConversionService instance per Spring container (or ApplicationContext). That
ConversionService will be picked up by Spring and then used whenever a type conversion
needs to be performed by the framework. You may also inject this ConversionService into
any of your beans and invoke it directly.
Note
If no ConversionService is registered with Spring, the original
PropertyEditor-based system is used.

To register a default ConversionService with Spring, add the following bean definition with
id conversionService:
<bean id="conversionService"
class="org.springframework.context.support.ConversionServiceFactoryBean"/>
A default ConversionService can convert between strings, numbers, enums, collections,

maps, and other common types. To supplement or override the default converters with your
own custom converter(s), set the converters property. Property values may implement
either of the Converter, ConverterFactory, or GenericConverter interfaces.
class="org.springframework.context.support.ConversionServiceFactoryBean">
<property name="converters">
<list>
<bean class="example.MyCustomConverter"/>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
It is also common to use a ConversionService within a Spring MVC application. See

Section 7.6.5, Configuring Formatting in Spring MVC for details on use with
<mvc:annotation-driven/>.
In certain situations you may wish to apply formatting during conversion. See
Section 7.6.3, FormatterRegistry SPI for details on using
FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean.
7.5.6 Using a ConversionService programmatically

To work with a ConversionService instance programmatically, simply inject a reference to
it like you would for any other bean:
@Service
public class MyService {
@Autowired
public MyService(ConversionService conversionService) {
this.conversionService = conversionService;
}
public void doIt() {
this.conversionService.convert(...)
}
}
7.6 Spring 3 Field Formatting

As discussed in the previous section, core.convert is a general-purpose type
conversion system. It provides a unified ConversionService API as well as a strongly-typed
Converter SPI for implementing conversion logic from one type to another. A Spring
Container uses this system to bind bean property values. In addition, both the Spring
Expression Language (SpEL) and DataBinder use this system to bind field values. For
example, when SpEL needs to coerce a Short to a Long to complete an
expression.setValue(Object bean, Object value) attempt, the core.convert
system performs the coercion.
Now consider the type conversion requirements of a typical client environment such as a
web or desktop application. In such environments, you typically convert from String to
support the client postback process, as well as back to String to support the view rendering
process. In addition, you often need to localize String values. The more general
core.convert Converter SPI does not address such formatting requirements directly. To
directly address them, Spring 3 introduces a convenient Formatter SPI that provides a
simple and robust alternative to PropertyEditors for client environments.
In general, use the Converter SPI when you need to implement general-purpose type
conversion logic; for example, for converting between a java.util.Date and and
java.lang.Long. Use the Formatter SPI when you're working in a client environment, such
as a web application, and need to parse and print localized field values. The
ConversionService provides a unified type conversion API for both SPIs.
7.6.1 Formatter SPI

The Formatter SPI to implement field formatting logic is simple and strongly typed:
package org.springframework.format;
public interface Formatter<T> extends Printer<T>, Parser<T> {
}
Where Formatter extends from the Printer and Parser building-block interfaces:
public interface Printer<T> {
String print(T fieldValue, Locale locale);
}
import java.text.ParseException;
public interface Parser<T> {
T parse(String clientValue, Locale locale) throws ParseException;
}
To create your own Formatter, simply implement the Formatter interface above.
Parameterize T to be the type of object you wish to format, for example,
java.util.Date. Implement the print() operation to print an instance of T for display
in the client locale. Implement the parse() operation to parse an instance of T from the
formatted representation returned from the client locale. Your Formatter should throw a
ParseException or IllegalArgumentException if a parse attempt fails. Take care to ensure
your Formatter implementation is thread-safe.
Several Formatter implementations are provided in format subpackages as a
convenience. The number package provides a NumberFormatter, CurrencyFormatter, and
PercentFormatter to format java.lang.Number objects using a java.text.NumberFormat. The
datetime package provides a DateFormatter to format java.util.Date objects with a
java.text.DateFormat. The datetime.joda package provides comprehensive datetime
formatting support based on the Joda Time library.
Consider DateFormatter as an example Formatter implementation:
package org.springframework.format.datetime;
public final class DateFormatter implements Formatter<Date> {
private String pattern;
public DateFormatter(String pattern) {
this.pattern = pattern;
}
public String print(Date date, Locale locale) {
if (date == null) {
return "";
}
return getDateFormat(locale).format(date);
}
public Date parse(String formatted, Locale locale) throws ParseException {
if (formatted.length() == 0) {
return null;
}
return getDateFormat(locale).parse(formatted);
}
protected DateFormat getDateFormat(Locale locale) {
DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat(this.pattern, locale);
dateFormat.setLenient(false);
return dateFormat;
}
The Spring team welcomes community-driven Formatter contributions; see

http://jira.springframework.org to contribute.
7.6.2 Annotation-driven Formatting

As you will see, field formatting can be configured by field type or annotation. To bind an
Annotation to a formatter, implement AnnotationFormatterFactory:
public interface AnnotationFormatterFactory<A extends Annotation> {
Set<Class<?>> getFieldTypes();
Printer<?> getPrinter(A annotation, Class<?> fieldType);
Parser<?> getParser(A annotation, Class<?> fieldType);
}
Parameterize A to be the field annotationType you wish to associate formatting logic with,
for example org.springframework.format.annotation.DateTimeFormat.
Have getFieldTypes() return the types of fields the annotation may be used on. Have
getPrinter() return a Printer to print the value of an annotated field. Have
getParser() return a Parser to parse a clientValue for an annotated field.
The example AnnotationFormatterFactory implementation below binds the
@NumberFormat Annotation to a formatter. This annotation allows either a number style or
pattern to be specified:
public final class NumberFormatAnnotationFormatterFactory
implements AnnotationFormatterFactory<NumberFormat> {
public Set<Class<?>> getFieldTypes() {
return new HashSet<Class<?>>(asList(new Class<?>[] {
Short.class, Integer.class, Long.class, Float.class,
Double.class, BigDecimal.class, BigInteger.class }));
}
public Printer<Number> getPrinter(NumberFormat annotation, Class<?> fieldType) {
return configureFormatterFrom(annotation, fieldType);
}
public Parser<Number> getParser(NumberFormat annotation, Class<?> fieldType) {
return configureFormatterFrom(annotation, fieldType);
}
private Formatter<Number> configureFormatterFrom(NumberFormat annotation,
Class<?> fieldType) {
if (!annotation.pattern().isEmpty()) {
return new NumberFormatter(annotation.pattern());
} else {
Style style = annotation.style();
if (style == Style.PERCENT) {
return new PercentFormatter();
} else if (style == Style.CURRENCY) {
return new CurrencyFormatter();
} else {
return new NumberFormatter();
}
}
}
}
To trigger formatting, simply annotate fields with @NumberFormat:

public class MyModel {
@NumberFormat(style=Style.CURRENCY)
private BigDecimal decimal;
}
Format Annotation API
A portable format annotation API exists in the

org.springframework.format.annotation package. Use @NumberFormat to
format java.lang.Number fields. Use @DateTimeFormat to format java.util.Date,
java.util.Calendar, java.util.Long, or Joda Time fields.
The example below uses @DateTimeFormat to format a java.util.Date as a ISO Date
(yyyy-MM-dd):
public class MyModel {
@DateTimeFormat(iso=ISO.DATE)
private Date date;
}
7.6.3 FormatterRegistry SPI

The FormatterRegistry is an SPI for registering formatters and converters.
FormattingConversionService is an implementation of FormatterRegistry suitable
for most environments. This implementation may be configured programmatically or
declaratively as a Spring bean using
FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean. Because this implementation also
implements ConversionService, it can be directly configured for use with Spring's
DataBinder and the Spring Expression Language (SpEL).
Review the FormatterRegistry SPI below:
public interface FormatterRegistry extends ConverterRegistry {
void addFormatterForFieldType(Class<?> fieldType, Printer<?> printer, Parser<?> parser);
void addFormatterForFieldType(Class<?> fieldType, Formatter<?> formatter);
void addFormatterForFieldType(Formatter<?> formatter);
void addFormatterForAnnotation(AnnotationFormatterFactory<?, ?> factory);
}
As shown above, Formatters can be registered by fieldType or annotation.

The FormatterRegistry SPI allows you to configure Formatting rules centrally, instead of
duplicating such configuration across your Controllers. For example, you might want to
enforce that all Date fields are formatted a certain way, or fields with a specific annotation
are formatted in a certain way. With a shared FormatterRegistry, you define these rules
once and they are applied whenever formatting is needed.
7.6.4 FormatterRegistrar SPI

The FormatterRegistrar is an SPI for registering formatters and converters through the
FormatterRegistry:
public interface FormatterRegistrar {
void registerFormatters(FormatterRegistry registry);
}
A FormatterRegistrar is useful when registering multiple related converters and formatters

for a given formatting category, such as Date formatting. It can also be useful where
declarative registration is insufficient. For example when a formatter needs to be indexed
under a specific field type different from its own <T> or when registering a Printer/Parser
pair. The next section provides more information on converter and formatter registration.
7.6.5 Configuring Formatting in Spring MVC
In a Spring MVC application, you may configure a custom ConversionService instance

explicitly as an attribute of the annotation-driven element of the MVC namespace.
This ConversionService will then be used anytime a type conversion is required during
Controller model binding. If not configured explicitly, Spring MVC will automatically register
default formatters and converters for common types such as numbers and dates.
To rely on default formatting rules, no custom configuration is required in your Spring MVC
config XML:
xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd">
<mvc:annotation-driven/>
</beans>
With this one-line of configuration, default formatters for Numbers and Date types will be
installed, including support for the @NumberFormat and @DateTimeFormat annotations.
Full support for the Joda Time formatting library is also installed if Joda Time is present on
the classpath.
To inject a ConversionService instance with custom formatters and converters registered,
set the conversion-service attribute and then specify custom converters, formatters, or
FormatterRegistrars as properties of the FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean:
<mvc:annotation-driven conversion-service="conversionService"/>
class="org.springframework.format.support.FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean">
<property name="converters">
<set>
<bean class="org.example.MyConverter"/>
</set>
</property>
<property name="formatters">
<set>
<bean class="org.example.MyFormatter"/>
<bean class="org.example.MyAnnotationFormatterFactory"/>
</set>
</property>
<property name="formatterRegistrars">
<set>
<bean class="org.example.MyFormatterRegistrar"/>
</set>
</property>
</bean>
</beans>
Note
See Section 7.6.4, FormatterRegistrar SPI and the
FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean for more
information on when to use FormatterRegistrars.
7.7 Configuring a global date & time format

By default, date and time fields that are not annotated with @DateTimeFormat are
converted from strings using the the DateFormat.SHORT style. If you prefer, you can
change this by defining your own global format.

You will need to ensure that Spring does not register default formatters, and instead you
should register all formatters manually. Use the
org.springframework.format.datetime.joda.JodaTimeFormatterRegistrar
or org.springframework.format.datetime.DateFormatterRegistrar class
depending on whether you use the Joda Time library.
For example, the following Java configuration will register a global 'yyyyMMdd' format.
This example does not depend on the Joda Time library:
@Configuration
@Bean
public FormattingConversionService conversionService() {
// Use the DefaultFormattingConversionService but do not register defaults
DefaultFormattingConversionService conversionService = new DefaultFormattingConversionService(false);
// Ensure @NumberFormat is still supported
conversionService.addFormatterForFieldAnnotation(new NumberFormatAnnotationFormatterFactory());
// Register date conversion with a specific global format
DateFormatterRegistrar registrar = new DateFormatterRegistrar();
registrar.setFormatter(new DateFormatter("yyyyMMdd"));
registrar.registerFormatters(conversionService);
return conversionService;
}
}
If you prefer XML based configuration you can use a

FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean. Here is the same example, this time
using Joda Time:
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd>
<bean id="conversionService" class="org.springframework.format.support.FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean">
<property name="registerDefaultFormatters" value="false" />
<set>
<bean class="org.springframework.format.number.NumberFormatAnnotationFormatterFactory" />
</set>
</property>
<property name="formatterRegistrars">
<set>
<bean class="org.springframework.format.datetime.joda.JodaTimeFormatterRegistrar">
<property name="dateFormatter">
<bean class="org.springframework.format.datetime.joda.DateTimeFormatterFactoryBean">
<property name="pattern" value="yyyyMMdd"/>
</bean>
</property>
</bean>
</set>
</property>
</bean>
</beans>
Note
Joda Time provides separate distinct types to represent date, time
and date-time values. The dateFormatter, timeFormatter
and dateTimeFormatter properties of the
JodaTimeFormatterRegistrar should be used to configure the
different formats for each type. The
DateTimeFormatterFactoryBean provides a convenient way to
create formatters.
If you are using Spring MVC remember to explicitly configure the conversion service that is
used. For Java based @Configuration this means extending the
WebMvcConfigurationSupport class and overriding the
mvcConversionService() method. For XML you should use the 'conversionservice' attribute of the mvc:annotation-driven element. See Section 7.6.5,
Configuring Formatting in Spring MVC for details.
7.8 Spring 3 Validation

Spring 3 introduces several enhancements to its validation support. First, the JSR-303
Bean Validation API is now fully supported. Second, when used programmatically,
Spring's DataBinder can now validate objects as well as bind to them. Third, Spring MVC
now has support for declaratively validating @Controller inputs.
7.8.1 Overview of the JSR-303 Bean Validation API

JSR-303 standardizes validation constraint declaration and metadata for the Java platform.
Using this API, you annotate domain model properties with declarative validation
constraints and the runtime enforces them. There are a number of built-in constraints you
can take advantage of. You may also define your own custom constraints.
To illustrate, consider a simple PersonForm model with two properties:
public class PersonForm {
private int age;
}
JSR-303 allows you to define declarative validation constraints against such properties:
public class PersonForm {
@NotNull
@Size(max=64)
@Min(0)
private int age;
}
When an instance of this class is validated by a JSR-303 Validator, these constraints will
be enforced.
For general information on JSR-303, see the Bean Validation Specification. For
information on the specific capabilities of the default reference implementation, see the
Hibernate Validator documentation. To learn how to setup a JSR-303 implementation as a
Spring bean, keep reading.
7.8.2 Configuring a Bean Validation Implementation

Spring provides full support for the JSR-303 Bean Validation API. This includes
convenient support for bootstrapping a JSR-303 implementation as a Spring bean. This
allows for a javax.validation.ValidatorFactory or
javax.validation.Validator to be injected wherever validation is needed in your
application.
Use the LocalValidatorFactoryBean to configure a default JSR-303 Validator as a
Spring bean:
<bean id="validator"
class="org.springframework.validation.beanvalidation.LocalValidatorFactoryBean"/>
The basic configuration above will trigger JSR-303 to initialize using its default bootstrap
mechanism. A JSR-303 provider, such as Hibernate Validator, is expected to be present in
the classpath and will be detected automatically.
Injecting a Validator
LocalValidatorFactoryBean implements both

javax.validation.ValidatorFactory and javax.validation.Validator,
as well as Spring's org.springframework.validation.Validator. You may
inject a reference to either of these interfaces into beans that need to invoke validation
logic.
Inject a reference to javax.validation.Validator if you prefer to work with the
JSR-303 API directly:
import javax.validation.Validator;
@Service
@Autowired
private Validator validator;
Inject a reference to org.springframework.validation.Validator if your bean

requires the Spring Validation API:
import org.springframework.validation.Validator;
@Service
@Autowired
private Validator validator;
}
Configuring Custom Constraints

Each JSR-303 validation constraint consists of two parts. First, a @Constraint annotation
that declares the constraint and its configurable properties. Second, an implementation of
the javax.validation.ConstraintValidator interface that implements the
constraint's behavior. To associate a declaration with an implementation, each
@Constraint annotation references a corresponding ValidationConstraint implementation
class. At runtime, a ConstraintValidatorFactory instantiates the referenced
implementation when the constraint annotation is encountered in your domain model.
By default, the LocalValidatorFactoryBean configures a
SpringConstraintValidatorFactory that uses Spring to create
ConstraintValidator instances. This allows your custom ConstraintValidators to benefit
from dependency injection like any other Spring bean.
Shown below is an example of a custom @Constraint declaration, followed by an
associated ConstraintValidator implementation that uses Spring for dependency
injection:
@Target({ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.FIELD})
@Constraint(validatedBy=MyConstraintValidator.class)
public @interface MyConstraint {
}
import javax.validation.ConstraintValidator;
public class MyConstraintValidator implements ConstraintValidator {
@Autowired;
private Foo aDependency;
...
}
As you can see, a ConstraintValidator implementation may have its dependencies

@Autowired like any other Spring bean.
Additional Configuration Options

The default LocalValidatorFactoryBean configuration should prove sufficient for
most cases. There are a number of other configuration options for various JSR-303
constructs, from message interpolation to traversal resolution. See the JavaDocs of
LocalValidatorFactoryBean for more information on these options.
7.8.3 Configuring a DataBinder

Since Spring 3, a DataBinder instance can be configured with a Validator. Once
configured, the Validator may be invoked by calling binder.validate(). Any
validation Errors are automatically added to the binder's BindingResult.
When working with the DataBinder programmatically, this can be used to invoke validation
logic after binding to a target object:
Foo target = new Foo();
DataBinder binder = new DataBinder(target);
binder.setValidator(new FooValidator());
// bind to the target object
binder.bind(propertyValues);
// validate the target object
binder.validate();
// get BindingResult that includes any validation errors
BindingResult results = binder.getBindingResult();
A DataBinder can also be configured with multiple Validator instances via

dataBinder.addValidators and dataBinder.replaceValidators. This is
useful when combining globally configured JSR-303 Bean Validation with a Spring
Validator configured locally on a DataBinder instance. See the section called
Configuring a Validator for use by Spring MVC.
7.8.4 Spring MVC 3 Validation

Beginning with Spring 3, Spring MVC has the ability to automatically validate @Controller
inputs. In previous versions it was up to the developer to manually invoke validation logic.
Triggering @Controller Input Validation

To trigger validation of a @Controller input, simply annotate the input argument as @Valid:
@Controller
public class MyController {
@RequestMapping("/foo", method=RequestMethod.POST)
public void processFoo(@Valid Foo foo) { /* ... */ }
Spring MVC will validate a @Valid object after binding so-long as an appropriate Validator
has been configured.
Note
The @Valid annotation is part of the standard JSR-303 Bean
Validation API, and is not a Spring-specific construct.
Configuring a Validator for use by Spring MVC

The Validator instance invoked when a @Valid method argument is encountered may be
configured in two ways. First, you may call binder.setValidator(Validator) within a
@Controller's @InitBinder callback. This allows you to configure a Validator instance per
@Controller class:
@Controller
@InitBinder
protected void initBinder(WebDataBinder binder) {
binder.setValidator(new FooValidator());
}
@RequestMapping("/foo", method=RequestMethod.POST)
public void processFoo(@Valid Foo foo) { ... }

}
Second, you may call setValidator(Validator) on the global WebBindingInitializer. This

allows you to configure a Validator instance across all @Controllers. This can be achieved
easily by using the Spring MVC namespace:
<mvc:annotation-driven validator="globalValidator"/>
</beans>
To combine a global and a local validator, configure the global validator as shown above
and then add a local validator:
@Controller
@InitBinder
protected void initBinder(WebDataBinder binder) {
binder.addValidators(new FooValidator());
}
}
Configuring a JSR-303 Validator for use by Spring MVC

With JSR-303, a single javax.validation.Validator instance typically validates
all model objects that declare validation constraints. To configure a JSR-303-backed
Validator with Spring MVC, simply add a JSR-303 Provider, such as Hibernate Validator,
to your classpath. Spring MVC will detect it and automatically enable JSR-303 support
across all Controllers.
The Spring MVC configuration required to enable JSR-303 support is shown below:

<mvc:annotation-driven/>
</beans>
With this minimal configuration, anytime a @Valid @Controller input is encountered, it will
be validated by the JSR-303 provider. JSR-303, in turn, will enforce any constraints
declared against the input. Any ConstraintViolations will automatically be exposed as
errors in the BindingResult renderable by standard Spring MVC form tags.
8. Spring Expression Language (SpEL)

8.1 Introduction
The Spring Expression Language (SpEL for short) is a powerful expression language that
supports querying and manipulating an object graph at runtime. The language syntax is
similar to Unified EL but offers additional features, most notably method invocation and
basic string templating functionality.
While there are several other Java expression languages available, OGNL, MVEL, and
JBoss EL, to name a few, the Spring Expression Language was created to provide the
Spring community with a single well supported expression language that can be used
across all the products in the Spring portfolio. Its language features are driven by the
requirements of the projects in the Spring portfolio, including tooling requirements for code
completion support within the eclipse based SpringSource Tool Suite. That said, SpEL is
based on a technology agnostic API allowing other expression language implementations
to be integrated should the need arise.
While SpEL serves as the foundation for expression evaluation within the Spring portfolio,
it is not directly tied to Spring and can be used independently. In order to be self contained,
many of the examples in this chapter use SpEL as if it were an independent expression
language. This requires creating a few bootstrapping infrastructure classes such as the
parser. Most Spring users will not need to deal with this infrastructure and will instead only
author expression strings for evaluation. An example of this typical use is the integration of
SpEL into creating XML or annotated based bean definitions as shown in the section
Expression support for defining bean definitions.
This chapter covers the features of the expression language, its API, and its language
syntax. In several places an Inventor and Inventor's Society class are used as the target
objects for expression evaluation. These class declarations and the data used to populate
them are listed at the end of the chapter.
8.2 Feature Overview

The expression language supports the following functionality
Literal expressions
Boolean and relational operators
Regular expressions
Class expressions
Accessing properties, arrays, lists, maps
Method invocation
Assignment
Calling constructors
Bean references
Array construction
Inline lists
Ternary operator
Variables
User defined functions
Collection projection
Collection selection
Templated expressions
8.3 Expression Evaluation using Spring's Expression

Interface
This section introduces the simple use of SpEL interfaces and its expression language.
The complete language reference can be found in the section Language Reference.
The following code introduces the SpEL API to evaluate the literal string expression 'Hello
World'.
ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser();
Expression exp = parser.parseExpression("'Hello World'");
String message = (String) exp.getValue();
The value of the message variable is simply 'Hello World'.
The SpEL classes and interfaces you are most likely to use are located in the packages
org.springframework.expression and its sub packages and spel.support.
The interface ExpressionParser is responsible for parsing an expression string. In this
example the expression string is a string literal denoted by the surrounding single quotes.
The interface Expression is responsible for evaluating the previously defined
expression string. There are two exceptions that can be thrown, ParseException and
EvaluationException when calling 'parser.parseExpression' and
'exp.getValue' respectively.
SpEL supports a wide range of features, such as calling methods, accessing properties,
and calling constructors.
As an example of method invocation, we call the 'concat' method on the string literal.
Expression exp = parser.parseExpression("'Hello World'.concat('!')");
String message = (String) exp.getValue();
The value of message is now 'Hello World!'.

As an example of calling a JavaBean property, the String property 'Bytes' can be called as
shown below.
// invokes 'getBytes()'
Expression exp = parser.parseExpression("'Hello World'.bytes");
byte[] bytes = (byte[]) exp.getValue();
SpEL also supports nested properties using standard 'dot' notation, i.e. prop1.prop2.prop3
and the setting of property values
Public fields may also be accessed.
// invokes 'getBytes().length'
Expression exp = parser.parseExpression("'Hello World'.bytes.length");
int length = (Integer) exp.getValue();
The String's constructor can be called instead of using a string literal.

Expression exp = parser.parseExpression("new String('hello world').toUpperCase()");
String message = exp.getValue(String.class);
Note the use of the generic method public <T> T getValue(Class<T>

desiredResultType). Using this method removes the need to cast the value of the
expression to the desired result type. An EvaluationException will be thrown if the
value cannot be cast to the type T or converted using the registered type converter.
The more common usage of SpEL is to provide an expression string that is evaluated
against a specific object instance (called the root object). There are two options here and
which to choose depends on whether the object against which the expression is being
evaluated will be changing with each call to evaluate the expression. In the following
example we retrieve the name property from an instance of the Inventor class.
// Create and set a calendar
GregorianCalendar c = new GregorianCalendar();
c.set(1856, 7, 9);
// The constructor arguments are name, birthday, and nationality.
Inventor tesla = new Inventor("Nikola Tesla", c.getTime(), "Serbian");
Expression exp = parser.parseExpression("name");
EvaluationContext context = new StandardEvaluationContext(tesla);
String name = (String) exp.getValue(context);
In the last line, the value of the string variable 'name' will be set to "Nikola Tesla". The
class StandardEvaluationContext is where you can specify which object the "name"
property will be evaluated against. This is the mechanism to use if the root object is
unlikely to change, it can simply be set once in the evaluation context. If the root object is
likely to change repeatedly, it can be supplied on each call to getValue, as this next
example shows:
/ Create and set a calendar
GregorianCalendar c = new GregorianCalendar();
c.set(1856, 7, 9);
// The constructor arguments are name, birthday, and nationality.
Inventor tesla = new Inventor("Nikola Tesla", c.getTime(), "Serbian");
Expression exp = parser.parseExpression("name");
String name = (String) exp.getValue(tesla);
In this case the inventor tesla has been supplied directly to getValue and the
expression evaluation infrastructure creates and manages a default evaluation context
internally - it did not require one to be supplied.
The StandardEvaluationContext is relatively expensive to construct and during repeated
usage it builds up cached state that enables subsequent expression evaluations to be
performed more quickly. For this reason it is better to cache and reuse them where
possible, rather than construct a new one for each expression evaluation.
In some cases it can be desirable to use a configured evaluation context and yet still
supply a different root object on each call to getValue. getValue allows both to be
specified on the same call. In these situations the root object passed on the call is
considered to override any (which maybe null) specified on the evaluation context.
Note
In standalone usage of SpEL there is a need to create the parser, parse
expressions and perhaps provide evaluation contexts and a root
context object. However, more common usage is to provide only the
SpEL expression string as part of a configuration file, for example for
Spring bean or Spring Web Flow definitions. In this case, the parser,
evaluation context, root object and any predefined variables are all set
up implicitly, requiring the user to specify nothing other than the
expressions.
As a final introductory example, the use of a boolean operator is shown using the Inventor
object in the previous example.
Expression exp = parser.parseExpression("name == 'Nikola Tesla'");
boolean result = exp.getValue(context, Boolean.class); // evaluates to true
8.3.1 The EvaluationContext interface

The interface EvaluationContext is used when evaluating an expression to resolve
properties, methods, fields, and to help perform type conversion. The out-of-the-box
implementation, StandardEvaluationContext, uses reflection to manipulate the
object, caching java.lang.reflect's Method, Field, and Constructor instances for
increased performance.
The StandardEvaluationContext is where you may specify the root object to
evaluate against via the method setRootObject() or passing the root object into the
constructor. You can also specify variables and functions that will be used in the
expression using the methods setVariable() and registerFunction(). The use
of variables and functions are described in the language reference sections Variables and
Functions. The StandardEvaluationContext is also where you can register custom

ConstructorResolvers, MethodResolvers, and PropertyAccessors to extend
how SpEL evaluates expressions. Please refer to the JavaDoc of these classes for more
details.
Type Conversion
By default SpEL uses the conversion service available in Spring core
(org.springframework.core.convert.ConversionService). This conversion
service comes with many converters built in for common conversions but is also fully
extensible so custom conversions between types can be added. Additionally it has the key
capability that it is generics aware. This means that when working with generic types in
expressions, SpEL will attempt conversions to maintain type correctness for any objects it
encounters.
What does this mean in practice? Suppose assignment, using setValue(), is being
used to set a List property. The type of the property is actually List<Boolean>. SpEL
will recognize that the elements of the list need to be converted to Boolean before being
placed in it. A simple example:
class Simple {
public List<Boolean> booleanList = new ArrayList<Boolean>();
}
Simple simple = new Simple();
simple.booleanList.add(true);
StandardEvaluationContext simpleContext = new StandardEvaluationContext(simple);
// false is passed in here as a string. SpEL and the conversion service will
// correctly recognize that it needs to be a Boolean and convert it
parser.parseExpression("booleanList[0]").setValue(simpleContext, "false");
// b will be false
Boolean b = simple.booleanList.get(0);
8.4 Expression support for defining bean definitions

SpEL expressions can be used with XML or annotation based configuration metadata for
defining BeanDefinitions. In both cases the syntax to define the expression is of the form
#{ <expression string> }.
8.4.1 XML based configuration

A property or constructor-arg value can be set using expressions as shown below
<bean id="numberGuess" class="org.spring.samples.NumberGuess">
<property name="randomNumber" value="#{ T(java.lang.Math).random() * 100.0 }"/>

</bean>
The variable 'systemProperties' is predefined, so you can use it in your expressions as

shown below. Note that you do not have to prefix the predefined variable with the '#'
symbol in this context.
<bean id="taxCalculator" class="org.spring.samples.TaxCalculator">
<property name="defaultLocale" value="#{ systemProperties['user.region'] }"/>
</bean>
You can also refer to other bean properties by name, for example.
<bean id="numberGuess" class="org.spring.samples.NumberGuess">
<property name="randomNumber" value="#{ T(java.lang.Math).random() * 100.0 }"/>
</bean>
<bean id="shapeGuess" class="org.spring.samples.ShapeGuess">
<property name="initialShapeSeed" value="#{ numberGuess.randomNumber }"/>
</bean>
8.4.2 Annotation-based configuration

The @Value annotation can be placed on fields, methods and method/constructor
parameters to specify a default value.
Here is an example to set the default value of a field variable.
public static class FieldValueTestBean
@Value("#{ systemProperties['user.region'] }")
private String defaultLocale;
public void setDefaultLocale(String defaultLocale)
{
this.defaultLocale = defaultLocale;
}
public String getDefaultLocale()
{
return this.defaultLocale;
}
}
The equivalent but on a property setter method is shown below.

public static class PropertyValueTestBean
@Value("#{ systemProperties['user.region'] }")
public void setDefaultLocale(String defaultLocale)
{
}
public String getDefaultLocale()
{
return this.defaultLocale;
}
}
Autowired methods and constructors can also use the @Value annotation.
@Autowired
public void configure(MovieFinder movieFinder,
@Value("#{ systemProperties['user.region'] }") String defaultLocale) {
}
// ...
}

@Autowired
public MovieRecommender(CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao,
@Value("#{systemProperties['user.country']}") String defaultLocale) {
}
// ...
}
8.5 Language Reference

8.5.1 Literal expressions
The types of literal expressions supported are strings, dates, numeric values (int, real, and
hex), boolean and null. Strings are delimited by single quotes. To put a single quote itself
in a string use two single quote characters. The following listing shows simple usage of
literals. Typically they would not be used in isolation like this, but as part of a more
complex expression, for example using a literal on one side of a logical comparison
operator.
// evals to "Hello World"
String helloWorld = (String) parser.parseExpression("'Hello World'").getValue();
double avogadrosNumber
= (Double) parser.parseExpression("6.0221415E+23").getValue();
// evals to 2147483647
int maxValue = (Integer) parser.parseExpression("0x7FFFFFFF").getValue();
boolean trueValue = (Boolean) parser.parseExpression("true").getValue();
Object nullValue = parser.parseExpression("null").getValue();
Numbers support the use of the negative sign, exponential notation, and decimal points.
By default real numbers are parsed using Double.parseDouble().
8.5.2 Properties, Arrays, Lists, Maps, Indexers

Navigating with property references is easy, just use a period to indicate a nested property
value. The instances of Inventor class, pupin and tesla, were populated with data listed in
the section Classes used in the examples. To navigate "down" and get Tesla's year of birth
and Pupin's city of birth the following expressions are used.
// evals to 1856
int year = (Integer) parser.parseExpression("Birthdate.Year + 1900").getValue(context);
String city = (String) parser.parseExpression("placeOfBirth.City").getValue(context);
Case insensitivity is allowed for the first letter of property names. The contents of arrays
and lists are obtained using square bracket notation.
// Inventions Array
StandardEvaluationContext teslaContext = new StandardEvaluationContext(tesla);
// evaluates to "Induction motor"
String invention = parser.parseExpression("inventions[3]").getValue(teslaContext,
String.class);
// Members List
StandardEvaluationContext societyContext = new StandardEvaluationContext(ieee);
// evaluates to "Nikola Tesla"
String name = parser.parseExpression("Members[0].Name").getValue(societyContext, String.class);
// List and Array navigation
// evaluates to "Wireless communication"
String invention = parser.parseExpression("Members[0].Inventions[6]").getValue(societyContext,
String.class);
The contents of maps are obtained by specifying the literal key value within the brackets. In
this case, because keys for the Officers map are strings, we can specify string literals.
// Officer's Dictionary
Inventor pupin = parser.parseExpression("Officers['president']").getValue(societyContext,

Inventor.class);
// evaluates to "Idvor"
String city =
parser.parseExpression("Officers['president'].PlaceOfBirth.City").getValue(societyContext,
String.class);
// setting values
parser.parseExpression("Officers['advisors'][0].PlaceOfBirth.Country").setValue(societyContext,
"Croatia");
8.5.3 Inline lists

Lists can be expressed directly in an expression using {} notation.
// evaluates to a Java list containing the four numbers
List numbers = (List) parser.parseExpression("{1,2,3,4}").getValue(context);
List listOfLists = (List) parser.parseExpression("{{'a','b'},{'x','y'}}").getValue(context);
{} by itself means an empty list. For performance reasons, if the list is itself entirely
composed of fixed literals then a constant list is created to represent the expression, rather
than building a new list on each evaluation.
8.5.4 Array construction

Arrays can be built using the familiar Java syntax, optionally supplying an initializer to
have the array populated at construction time.
int[] numbers1 = (int[]) parser.parseExpression("new int[4]").getValue(context);
// Array with initializer
int[] numbers2 = (int[]) parser.parseExpression("new int[]{1,2,3}").getValue(context);
// Multi dimensional array
int[][] numbers3 = (int[][]) parser.parseExpression("new int[4][5]").getValue(context);
It is not currently allowed to supply an initializer when constructing a multi-dimensional

array.
8.5.5 Methods
Methods are invoked using typical Java programming syntax. You may also invoke
methods on literals. Varargs are also supported.
// string literal, evaluates to "bc"
String c = parser.parseExpression("'abc'.substring(2, 3)").getValue(String.class);
// evaluates to true
boolean isMember = parser.parseExpression("isMember('Mihajlo Pupin')").getValue(societyContext,
Boolean.class);
8.5.6 Operators
The relational operators; equal, not equal, less than, less than or equal, greater than, and
greater than or equal are supported using standard operator notation.
boolean trueValue = parser.parseExpression("2 == 2").getValue(Boolean.class);
// evaluates to false
boolean falseValue = parser.parseExpression("2 < -5.0").getValue(Boolean.class);
boolean trueValue = parser.parseExpression("'black' < 'block'").getValue(Boolean.class);
In addition to standard relational operators SpEL supports the 'instanceof' and regular
expression based 'matches' operator.
// evaluates to false
boolean falseValue = parser.parseExpression("'xyz' instanceof T(int)").getValue(Boolean.class);
boolean trueValue =
parser.parseExpression("'5.00' matches '^-?\\d+(\\.\\d{2})?$'").getValue(Boolean.class);
//evaluates to false
boolean falseValue =
parser.parseExpression("'5.0067' matches '^-?\\d+(\\.\\d{2})?$'").getValue(Boolean.class);
Each symbolic operator can also be specified as a purely alphabetic equivalent. This
avoids problems where the symbols used have special meaning for the document type in
which the expression is embedded (eg. an XML document). The textual equivalents are
shown here: lt ('<'), gt ('>'), le ('<='), ge ('>='), eq ('=='), ne ('!='), div ('/'), mod ('%'), not ('!').
These are case insensitive.
Logical operators
The logical operators that are supported are and, or, and not. Their use is demonstrated
below.
// -- AND -// evaluates to false
boolean falseValue = parser.parseExpression("true and false").getValue(Boolean.class);
String expression = "isMember('Nikola Tesla') and isMember('Mihajlo Pupin')";
boolean trueValue = parser.parseExpression(expression).getValue(societyContext, Boolean.class);
// -- OR -// evaluates to true
boolean trueValue = parser.parseExpression("true or false").getValue(Boolean.class);
String expression = "isMember('Nikola Tesla') or isMember('Albert Einstein')";
boolean trueValue = parser.parseExpression(expression).getValue(societyContext, Boolean.class);
// -- NOT -// evaluates to false
boolean falseValue = parser.parseExpression("!true").getValue(Boolean.class);
// -- AND and NOT -String expression = "isMember('Nikola Tesla') and !isMember('Mihajlo Pupin')";
boolean falseValue = parser.parseExpression(expression).getValue(societyContext, Boolean.class);
Mathematical operators
The addition operator can be used on numbers, strings and dates. Subtraction can be used
on numbers and dates. Multiplication and division can be used only on numbers. Other
mathematical operators supported are modulus (%) and exponential power (^). Standard
operator precedence is enforced. These operators are demonstrated below.
// Addition
int two = parser.parseExpression("1 + 1").getValue(Integer.class); // 2
String testString =
parser.parseExpression("'test' + ' ' + 'string'").getValue(String.class);
// 'test string'
// Subtraction
int four = parser.parseExpression("1 - -3").getValue(Integer.class); // 4
double d = parser.parseExpression("1000.00 - 1e4").getValue(Double.class); // -9000
// Multiplication
int six = parser.parseExpression("-2 * -3").getValue(Integer.class); // 6
double twentyFour = parser.parseExpression("2.0 * 3e0 * 4").getValue(Double.class); // 24.0
// Division
int minusTwo =
parser.parseExpression("6 / -3").getValue(Integer.class); // -2
double one = parser.parseExpression("8.0 / 4e0 / 2").getValue(Double.class); // 1.0

// Modulus
int three =
parser.parseExpression("7 % 4").getValue(Integer.class); // 3
int one = parser.parseExpression("8 / 5 % 2").getValue(Integer.class); // 1

// Operator precedence
int minusTwentyOne = parser.parseExpression("1+2-3*8").getValue(Integer.class); // -21
8.5.7 Assignment
Setting of a property is done by using the assignment operator. This would typically be
done within a call to setValue but can also be done inside a call to getValue.
Inventor inventor = new Inventor();
StandardEvaluationContext inventorContext = new StandardEvaluationContext(inventor);
parser.parseExpression("Name").setValue(inventorContext, "Alexander Seovic2");
// alternatively
String aleks = parser.parseExpression("Name = 'Alexandar Seovic'").getValue(inventorContext,
String.class);
8.5.8 Types
The special 'T' operator can be used to specify an instance of java.lang.Class (the 'type').
Static methods are invoked using this operator as well. The
StandardEvaluationContext uses a TypeLocator to find types and the
StandardTypeLocator (which can be replaced) is built with an understanding of the
java.lang package. This means T() references to types within java.lang do not need to be
fully qualified, but all other type references must be.
Class dateClass = parser.parseExpression("T(java.util.Date)").getValue(Class.class);
Class stringClass = parser.parseExpression("T(String)").getValue(Class.class);
boolean trueValue =
parser.parseExpression("T(java.math.RoundingMode).CEILING < T(java.math.RoundingMode).FLOOR")
.getValue(Boolean.class);
8.5.9 Constructors
Constructors can be invoked using the new operator. The fully qualified class name should
be used for all but the primitive type and String (where int, float, etc, can be used).
Inventor einstein =
p.parseExpression("new org.spring.samples.spel.inventor.Inventor('Albert Einstein',
'German')")
.getValue(Inventor.class);
//create new inventor instance within add method of List
p.parseExpression("Members.add(new org.spring.samples.spel.inventor.Inventor('Albert Einstein',
'German'))")
.getValue(societyContext);
8.5.10 Variables
Variables can be referenced in the expression using the syntax #variableName. Variables
are set using the method setVariable on the StandardEvaluationContext.
Inventor tesla = new Inventor("Nikola Tesla", "Serbian");
StandardEvaluationContext context = new StandardEvaluationContext(tesla);
context.setVariable("newName", "Mike Tesla");
parser.parseExpression("Name = #newName").getValue(context);
System.out.println(tesla.getName()) // "Mike Tesla"
The #this and #root variables
The variable #this is always defined and refers to the current evaluation object (against
which unqualified references are resolved). The variable #root is always defined and refers
to the root context object. Although #this may vary as components of an expression are
evaluated, #root always refers to the root.
// create an array of integers
List<Integer> primes = new ArrayList<Integer>();
primes.addAll(Arrays.asList(2,3,5,7,11,13,17));
// create parser and set variable 'primes' as the array of integers
StandardEvaluationContext context = new StandardEvaluationContext();
context.setVariable("primes",primes);
// all prime numbers > 10 from the list (using selection ?{...})
// evaluates to [11, 13, 17]
List<Integer> primesGreaterThanTen =
(List<Integer>) parser.parseExpression("#primes.?[#this>10]").getValue(context);
8.5.11 Functions
You can extend SpEL by registering user defined functions that can be called within the
expression string. The function is registered with the StandardEvaluationContext
using the method.
public void registerFunction(String name, Method m)
A reference to a Java Method provides the implementation of the function. For example, a
utility method to reverse a string is shown below.
public abstract class StringUtils {
public static String reverseString(String input) {
StringBuilder backwards = new StringBuilder();
for (int i = 0; i < input.length(); i++)
backwards.append(input.charAt(input.length() - 1 - i));
}
return backwards.toString();
}
}
This method is then registered with the evaluation context and can be used within an
expression string.
context.registerFunction("reverseString",
StringUtils.class.getDeclaredMethod("reverseString",
new Class[] { String.class }));
String helloWorldReversed =
parser.parseExpression("#reverseString('hello')").getValue(context, String.class);
8.5.12 Bean references

If the evaluation context has been configured with a bean resolver it is possible to lookup
beans from an expression using the (@) symbol.
context.setBeanResolver(new MyBeanResolver());
// This will end up calling resolve(context,"foo") on MyBeanResolver during evaluation
Object bean = parser.parseExpression("@foo").getValue(context);
8.5.13 Ternary Operator (If-Then-Else)

You can use the ternary operator for performing if-then-else conditional logic inside the
expression. A minimal example is:
String falseString =
parser.parseExpression("false ? 'trueExp' : 'falseExp'").getValue(String.class);
In this case, the boolean false results in returning the string value 'falseExp'. A more
realistic example is shown below.
parser.parseExpression("Name").setValue(societyContext, "IEEE");
societyContext.setVariable("queryName", "Nikola Tesla");
expression = "isMember(#queryName)? #queryName + ' is a member of the ' " +
"+ Name + ' Society' : #queryName + ' is not a member of the ' + Name + ' Society'";
String queryResultString =
parser.parseExpression(expression).getValue(societyContext, String.class);
// queryResultString = "Nikola Tesla is a member of the IEEE Society"
Also see the next section on the Elvis operator for an even shorter syntax for the ternary
operator.
8.5.14 The Elvis Operator

The Elvis operator is a shortening of the ternary operator syntax and is used in the Groovy
language. With the ternary operator syntax you usually have to repeat a variable twice, for
example:
String name = "Elvis Presley";
String displayName = name != null ? name : "Unknown";
Instead you can use the Elvis operator, named for the resemblance to Elvis' hair style.
String name = parser.parseExpression("null?:'Unknown'").getValue(String.class);
System.out.println(name);
// 'Unknown'
Here is a more complex example.

String name = parser.parseExpression("Name?:'Elvis Presley'").getValue(context, String.class);
System.out.println(name); // Nikola Tesla
tesla.setName(null);
name = parser.parseExpression("Name?:'Elvis Presley'").getValue(context, String.class);
System.out.println(name); // Elvis Presley
8.5.15 Safe Navigation operator

The Safe Navigation operator is used to avoid a NullPointerException and comes
from the Groovy language. Typically when you have a reference to an object you might
need to verify that it is not null before accessing methods or properties of the object. To
avoid this, the safe navigation operator will simply return null instead of throwing an
exception.
tesla.setPlaceOfBirth(new PlaceOfBirth("Smiljan"));
String city = parser.parseExpression("PlaceOfBirth?.City").getValue(context, String.class);
System.out.println(city); // Smiljan
tesla.setPlaceOfBirth(null);
city = parser.parseExpression("PlaceOfBirth?.City").getValue(context, String.class);
System.out.println(city); // null - does not throw NullPointerException!!!
Note
The Elvis operator can be used to apply default values in expressions,
e.g. in an @Value expression:
@Value("#{systemProperties['pop3.port'] ?: 25}")
This will inject a system property pop3.port if it is defined or 25 if not.
8.5.16 Collection Selection

Selection is a powerful expression language feature that allows you to transform some
source collection into another by selecting from its entries.
Selection uses the syntax ?[selectionExpression]. This will filter the collection and
return a new collection containing a subset of the original elements. For example, selection
would allow us to easily get a list of Serbian inventors:
List<Inventor> list = (List<Inventor>)
parser.parseExpression("Members.?[Nationality == 'Serbian']").getValue(societyContext);
Selection is possible upon both lists and maps. In the former case the selection criteria is
evaluated against each individual list element whilst against a map the selection criteria is
evaluated against each map entry (objects of the Java type Map.Entry). Map entries
have their key and value accessible as properties for use in the selection.
This expression will return a new map consisting of those elements of the original map
where the entry value is less than 27.
Map newMap = parser.parseExpression("map.?[value<27]").getValue();
In addition to returning all the selected elements, it is possible to retrieve just the first or the
last value. To obtain the first entry matching the selection the syntax is ^[...] whilst to
obtain the last matching selection the syntax is $[...].
8.5.17 Collection Projection

Projection allows a collection to drive the evaluation of a sub-expression and the result is a
new collection. The syntax for projection is ![projectionExpression]. Most easily
understood by example, suppose we have a list of inventors but want the list of cities
where they were born. Effectively we want to evaluate 'placeOfBirth.city' for every entry in
the inventor list. Using projection:
// returns [ 'Smiljan', 'Idvor' ]
List placesOfBirth = (List)parser.parseExpression("Members.![placeOfBirth.city]");
A map can also be used to drive projection and in this case the projection expression is
evaluated against each entry in the map (represented as a Java Map.Entry). The result
of a projection across a map is a list consisting of the evaluation of the projection
expression against each map entry.
8.5.18 Expression templating

Expression templates allow a mixing of literal text with one or more evaluation blocks.
Each evaluation block is delimited with prefix and suffix characters that you can define, a
common choice is to use #{ } as the delimiters. For example,
String randomPhrase =
parser.parseExpression("random number is #{T(java.lang.Math).random()}",
new TemplateParserContext()).getValue(String.class);
// evaluates to "random number is 0.7038186818312008"
The string is evaluated by concatenating the literal text 'random number is ' with the result
of evaluating the expression inside the #{ } delimiter, in this case the result of calling that
random() method. The second argument to the method parseExpression() is of the
type ParserContext. The ParserContext interface is used to influence how the
expression is parsed in order to support the expression templating functionality. The
definition of TemplateParserContext is shown below.
public class TemplateParserContext implements ParserContext {
public String getExpressionPrefix() {
return "#{";
}
public String getExpressionSuffix() {
return "}";
}
public boolean isTemplate() {
return true;
}
}
8.6 Classes used in the examples

Inventor.java
package org.spring.samples.spel.inventor;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.GregorianCalendar;
public class Inventor {
private
private
private
private
private
String name;
String nationality;
String[] inventions;
Date birthdate;
PlaceOfBirth placeOfBirth;
public Inventor(String name, String nationality)

{
GregorianCalendar c= new GregorianCalendar();
this.name = name;
this.nationality = nationality;
this.birthdate = c.getTime();
}
public Inventor(String name, Date birthdate, String nationality) {
this.name = name;
this.birthdate = birthdate;
}
public Inventor() {
}
return name;
}
this.name = name;
}
public String getNationality() {
return nationality;
}
public void setNationality(String nationality) {
}
public Date getBirthdate() {
return birthdate;
}
public void setBirthdate(Date birthdate) {
this.birthdate = birthdate;
}
public PlaceOfBirth getPlaceOfBirth() {
return placeOfBirth;
}
public void setPlaceOfBirth(PlaceOfBirth placeOfBirth) {
this.placeOfBirth = placeOfBirth;
}
public void setInventions(String[] inventions) {
this.inventions = inventions;
}
public String[] getInventions() {
return inventions;
}
}
PlaceOfBirth.java
public class PlaceOfBirth {
private String city;
private String country;
public PlaceOfBirth(String city) {
this.city=city;
}
public PlaceOfBirth(String city, String country)
{
this(city);
this.country = country;
}
public String getCity() {
return city;
}
public void setCity(String s) {
this.city = s;
}
public String getCountry() {
return country;
}
public void setCountry(String country) {
this.country = country;
}
Society.java
import java.util.*;
public class Society {
public static String Advisors = "advisors";
public static String President = "president";
private List<Inventor> members = new ArrayList<Inventor>();
private Map officers = new HashMap();
public List getMembers() {
return members;
}
public Map getOfficers() {
return officers;
}
return name;
}
this.name = name;
}
public boolean isMember(String name)
{
boolean found = false;
for (Inventor inventor : members) {
if (inventor.getName().equals(name))
{
found = true;
break;
}
}
return found;
}
9. Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring

9.1 Introduction
Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) complements Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)
by providing another way of thinking about program structure. The key unit of modularity in
OOP is the class, whereas in AOP the unit of modularity is the aspect. Aspects enable the
modularization of concerns such as transaction management that cut across multiple types
and objects. (Such concerns are often termed crosscutting concerns in AOP literature.)
One of the key components of Spring is the AOP framework. While the Spring IoC
container does not depend on AOP, meaning you do not need to use AOP if you don't want
to, AOP complements Spring IoC to provide a very capable middleware solution.
AOP is used in the Spring Framework to...
... provide declarative enterprise services,
especially as a replacement for EJB
declarative services. The most important such
service is declarative transaction
management.
... allow users to implement custom aspects,
complementing their use of OOP with AOP.
If you are interested only in generic declarative
services or other pre-packaged declarative
middleware services such as pooling, you do not
need to work directly with Spring AOP, and can
skip most of this chapter.
9.1.1 AOP concepts

Let us begin by defining some central AOP
Spring 2.0 AOP

Spring 2.0 introduces a simpler
and more powerful way of writing
custom aspects using either a
schema-based approach or the
@AspectJ annotation style. Both
of these styles offer fully typed
advice and use of the AspectJ
pointcut language, while still
using Spring AOP for weaving.
The Spring 2.0 schema- and
@AspectJ-based AOP support is
discussed in this chapter. Spring
2.0 AOP remains fully backwards
compatible with Spring 1.2 AOP,
and the lower-level AOP support
offered by the Spring 1.2 APIs is
discussed in the following
chapter.
concepts and terminology. These terms are not

Spring-specific... unfortunately, AOP terminology is not particularly intuitive; however, it
would be even more confusing if Spring used its own terminology.
Aspect: a modularization of a concern that cuts across multiple classes. Transaction
management is a good example of a crosscutting concern in enterprise Java
applications. In Spring AOP, aspects are implemented using regular classes (the
schema-based approach) or regular classes annotated with the @Aspect annotation
(the @AspectJ style).
Join point: a point during the execution of a program, such as the execution of a
method or the handling of an exception. In Spring AOP, a join point always represents
a method execution.
Advice: action taken by an aspect at a particular join point. Different types of advice
include "around," "before" and "after" advice. (Advice types are discussed below.)
Many AOP frameworks, including Spring, model an advice as an interceptor,
maintaining a chain of interceptors around the join point.
Pointcut: a predicate that matches join points. Advice is associated with a pointcut
expression and runs at any join point matched by the pointcut (for example, the
execution of a method with a certain name). The concept of join points as matched by
pointcut expressions is central to AOP, and Spring uses the AspectJ pointcut
expression language by default.
Introduction: declaring additional methods or fields on behalf of a type. Spring AOP
allows you to introduce new interfaces (and a corresponding implementation) to any
advised object. For example, you could use an introduction to make a bean implement
an IsModified interface, to simplify caching. (An introduction is known as an intertype declaration in the AspectJ community.)
Target object: object being advised by one or more aspects. Also referred to as the
advised object. Since Spring AOP is implemented using runtime proxies, this object
will always be a proxied object.
AOP proxy: an object created by the AOP framework in order to implement the aspect
contracts (advise method executions and so on). In the Spring Framework, an AOP
proxy will be a JDK dynamic proxy or a CGLIB proxy.
Weaving: linking aspects with other application types or objects to create an advised
object. This can be done at compile time (using the AspectJ compiler, for example),
load time, or at runtime. Spring AOP, like other pure Java AOP frameworks, performs
weaving at runtime.
Types of advice:
Before advice: Advice that executes before a join point, but which does not have the
ability to prevent execution flow proceeding to the join point (unless it throws an
exception).
After returning advice: Advice to be executed after a join point completes normally: for
example, if a method returns without throwing an exception.
After throwing advice: Advice to be executed if a method exits by throwing an
exception.
After (finally) advice: Advice to be executed regardless of the means by which a join
point exits (normal or exceptional return).
Around advice: Advice that surrounds a join point such as a method invocation. This is
the most powerful kind of advice. Around advice can perform custom behavior before
and after the method invocation. It is also responsible for choosing whether to proceed
to the join point or to shortcut the advised method execution by returning its own return
value or throwing an exception.
Around advice is the most general kind of advice. Since Spring AOP, like AspectJ,
provides a full range of advice types, we recommend that you use the least powerful
advice type that can implement the required behavior. For example, if you need only to
update a cache with the return value of a method, you are better off implementing an after
returning advice than an around advice, although an around advice can accomplish the
same thing. Using the most specific advice type provides a simpler programming model
with less potential for errors. For example, you do not need to invoke the proceed()
method on the JoinPoint used for around advice, and hence cannot fail to invoke it.
In Spring 2.0, all advice parameters are statically typed, so that you work with advice
parameters of the appropriate type (the type of the return value from a method execution for
example) rather than Object arrays.
The concept of join points, matched by pointcuts, is the key to AOP which distinguishes it
from older technologies offering only interception. Pointcuts enable advice to be targeted
independently of the Object-Oriented hierarchy. For example, an around advice providing
declarative transaction management can be applied to a set of methods spanning multiple
objects (such as all business operations in the service layer).
9.1.2 Spring AOP capabilities and goals

Spring AOP is implemented in pure Java. There is no need for a special compilation
process. Spring AOP does not need to control the class loader hierarchy, and is thus
suitable for use in a Servlet container or application server.
Spring AOP currently supports only method execution join points (advising the execution
of methods on Spring beans). Field interception is not implemented, although support for
field interception could be added without breaking the core Spring AOP APIs. If you need
to advise field access and update join points, consider a language such as AspectJ.
Spring AOP's approach to AOP differs from that of most other AOP frameworks. The aim is
not to provide the most complete AOP implementation (although Spring AOP is quite
capable); it is rather to provide a close integration between AOP implementation and
Spring IoC to help solve common problems in enterprise applications.
Thus, for example, the Spring Framework's AOP functionality is normally used in
conjunction with the Spring IoC container. Aspects are configured using normal bean
definition syntax (although this allows powerful "autoproxying" capabilities): this is a
crucial difference from other AOP implementations. There are some things you cannot do
easily or efficiently with Spring AOP, such as advise very fine-grained objects (such as
domain objects typically): AspectJ is the best choice in such cases. However, our
experience is that Spring AOP provides an excellent solution to most problems in
enterprise Java applications that are amenable to AOP.
Spring AOP will never strive to compete with AspectJ to provide a comprehensive AOP
solution. We believe that both proxy-based frameworks like Spring AOP and full-blown
frameworks such as AspectJ are valuable, and that they are complementary, rather than in
competition. Spring 2.0 seamlessly integrates Spring AOP and IoC with AspectJ, to enable
all uses of AOP to be catered for within a consistent Spring-based application architecture.
This integration does not affect the Spring AOP API or the AOP Alliance API: Spring AOP
remains backward-compatible. See the following chapter for a discussion of the Spring
AOP APIs.
Note
One of the central tenets of the Spring Framework is that of noninvasiveness; this is the idea that you should not be forced to introduce
framework-specific classes and interfaces into your business/domain
model. However, in some places the Spring Framework does give you
the option to introduce Spring Framework-specific dependencies into
your codebase: the rationale in giving you such options is because in
certain scenarios it might be just plain easier to read or code some
specific piece of functionality in such a way. The Spring Framework
(almost) always offers you the choice though: you have the freedom to
make an informed decision as to which option best suits your particular
use case or scenario.
One such choice that is relevant to this chapter is that of which AOP
framework (and which AOP style) to choose. You have the choice of
AspectJ and/or Spring AOP, and you also have the choice of either the
@AspectJ annotation-style approach or the Spring XML configurationstyle approach. The fact that this chapter chooses to introduce the
@AspectJ-style approach first should not be taken as an indication that
the Spring team favors the @AspectJ annotation-style approach over
the Spring XML configuration-style.
See Section 9.4, Choosing which AOP declaration style to use for a
more complete discussion of the whys and wherefores of each style.
9.1.3 AOP Proxies

Spring AOP defaults to using standard J2SE dynamic proxies for AOP proxies. This
enables any interface (or set of interfaces) to be proxied.
Spring AOP can also use CGLIB proxies. This is necessary to proxy classes, rather than
interfaces. CGLIB is used by default if a business object does not implement an interface.
As it is good practice to program to interfaces rather than classes, business classes
normally will implement one or more business interfaces. It is possible to force the use of
CGLIB, in those (hopefully rare) cases where you need to advise a method that is not
declared on an interface, or where you need to pass a proxied object to a method as a
concrete type.
It is important to grasp the fact that Spring AOP is proxy-based. See Section 9.6.1,
Understanding AOP proxies for a thorough examination of exactly what this
implementation detail actually means.
9.2 @AspectJ support

@AspectJ refers to a style of declaring aspects as regular Java classes annotated with
Java 5 annotations. The @AspectJ style was introduced by the AspectJ project as part of
the AspectJ 5 release. Spring 2.0 interprets the same annotations as AspectJ 5, using a
library supplied by AspectJ for pointcut parsing and matching. The AOP runtime is still
pure Spring AOP though, and there is no dependency on the AspectJ compiler or weaver.
Using the AspectJ compiler and weaver enables use of the full AspectJ language, and is
discussed in Section 9.8, Using AspectJ with Spring applications.
9.2.1 Enabling @AspectJ Support

To use @AspectJ aspects in a Spring configuration you need to enable Spring support for
configuring Spring AOP based on @AspectJ aspects, and autoproxying beans based on
whether or not they are advised by those aspects. By autoproxying we mean that if Spring
determines that a bean is advised by one or more aspects, it will automatically generate a
proxy for that bean to intercept method invocations and ensure that advice is executed as
needed.
The @AspectJ support can be enabled with XML or Java style configuration. In either case
you will also need to ensure that AspectJ's aspectjweaver.jar library is on the
classpath of your application (version 1.6.8 or later). This library is available in the 'lib'
directory of an AspectJ distribution or via the Maven Central repository.
Enabling @AspectJ Support with Java configuration

To enable @AspectJ support with Java @Configuration add the
@EnableAspectJAutoProxy annotation:
@Configuration
@EnableAspectJAutoProxy
}
Enabling @AspectJ Support with XML configuration

To enable @AspectJ support with XML based configuration use the aop:aspectjautoproxy element:
<aop:aspectj-autoproxy/>
This assumes that you are using schema support as described in Appendix E, XML
Schema-based configuration. See Section E.2.7, The aop schema for how to import the
tags in the aop namespace.
If you are using the DTD, it is still possible to enable @AspectJ support by adding the
following definition to your application context:
<bean class="org.springframework.aop.aspectj.annotation.AnnotationAwareAspectJAutoProxyCreator" />
9.2.2 Declaring an aspect

With the @AspectJ support enabled, any bean defined in your application context with a
class that is an @AspectJ aspect (has the @Aspect annotation) will be automatically
detected by Spring and used to configure Spring AOP. The following example shows the
minimal definition required for a not-very-useful aspect:
A regular bean definition in the application context, pointing to a bean class that has the
@Aspect annotation:
<bean id="myAspect" class="org.xyz.NotVeryUsefulAspect">


</bean>
And the NotVeryUsefulAspect class definition, annotated with

org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Aspect annotation;
package org.xyz;
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Aspect;
@Aspect
public class NotVeryUsefulAspect {
}
Aspects (classes annotated with @Aspect) may have methods and fields just like any
other class. They may also contain pointcut, advice, and introduction (inter-type)
declarations.
Autodetecting aspects through component scanning
You may register aspect classes as regular beans in your Spring XML
configuration, or autodetect them through classpath scanning - just like
any other Spring-managed bean. However, note that the @Aspect
annotation is not sufficient for autodetection in the classpath: For that
purpose, you need to add a separate @Component annotation (or
alternatively a custom stereotype annotation that qualifies, as per the
rules of Spring's component scanner).
Advising aspects with other aspects?
In Spring AOP, it is not possible to have aspects themselves be the
target of advice from other aspects. The @Aspect annotation on a class
marks it as an aspect, and hence excludes it from auto-proxying.
9.2.3 Declaring a pointcut

Recall that pointcuts determine join points of interest, and thus enable us to control when
advice executes. Spring AOP only supports method execution join points for Spring beans,
so you can think of a pointcut as matching the execution of methods on Spring beans. A
pointcut declaration has two parts: a signature comprising a name and any parameters,
and a pointcut expression that determines exactly which method executions we are
interested in. In the @AspectJ annotation-style of AOP, a pointcut signature is provided by
a regular method definition, and the pointcut expression is indicated using the @Pointcut
annotation (the method serving as the pointcut signature must have a void return type).
An example will help make this distinction between a pointcut signature and a pointcut
expression clear. The following example defines a pointcut named 'anyOldTransfer'
that will match the execution of any method named 'transfer':
@Pointcut("execution(* transfer(..))")// the pointcut expression
private void anyOldTransfer() {}// the pointcut signature
The pointcut expression that forms the value of the @Pointcut annotation is a regular
AspectJ 5 pointcut expression. For a full discussion of AspectJ's pointcut language, see
the AspectJ Programming Guide (and for Java 5 based extensions, the AspectJ 5
Developers Notebook) or one of the books on AspectJ such as Eclipse AspectJ by
Colyer et. al. or AspectJ in Action by Ramnivas Laddad.
Supported Pointcut Designators

Spring AOP supports the following AspectJ pointcut designators (PCD) for use in pointcut
expressions:
execution - for matching method execution
join points, this is the primary pointcut
Other pointcut types
designator you will use when working with

Spring AOP
within - limits matching to join points within
certain types (simply the execution of a
method declared within a matching type when
using Spring AOP)
this - limits matching to join points (the
execution of methods when using Spring
AOP) where the bean reference (Spring AOP
proxy) is an instance of the given type
target - limits matching to join points (the
AOP) where the target object (application
object being proxied) is an instance of the
given type
args - limits matching to join points (the
AOP) where the arguments are instances of
the given types
@target - limits matching to join points (the
The full AspectJ pointcut

language supports additional
pointcut designators that are not
supported in Spring. These are:
call, get, set,

preinitialization,
staticinitialization,
initialization,
handler,
adviceexecution,
withincode, cflow,
cflowbelow, if,
@this, and @withincode .
Use of these pointcut
designators in pointcut
expressions interpreted by
Spring AOP will result in an
IllegalArgumentException
being thrown.
The set of pointcut designators
supported by Spring AOP may
be extended in future releases to
support more of the AspectJ
pointcut designators.
AOP) where the class of the executing object

has an annotation of the given type
@args - limits matching to join points (the execution of methods when using Spring
AOP) where the runtime type of the actual arguments passed have annotations of the
given type(s)
@within - limits matching to join points within types that have the given annotation
(the execution of methods declared in types with the given annotation when using
Spring AOP)
@annotation - limits matching to join points where the subject of the join point (method
being executed in Spring AOP) has the given annotation
Because Spring AOP limits matching to only method execution join points, the discussion
of the pointcut designators above gives a narrower definition than you will find in the
AspectJ programming guide. In addition, AspectJ itself has type-based semantics and at
an execution join point both 'this' and 'target' refer to the same object - the object
executing the method. Spring AOP is a proxy-based system and differentiates between the
proxy object itself (bound to 'this') and the target object behind the proxy (bound to
'target').
Note
Due to the proxy-based nature of Spring's AOP framework, protected
methods are by definition not intercepted, neither for JDK proxies
(where this isn't applicable) nor for CGLIB proxies (where this is
technically possible but not recommendable for AOP purposes). As a
consequence, any given pointcut will be matched against public
methods only!
If your interception needs include protected/private methods or even
constructors, consider the use of Spring-driven native AspectJ weaving
instead of Spring's proxy-based AOP framework. This constitutes a
different mode of AOP usage with different characteristics, so be sure to
make yourself familiar with weaving first before making a decision.
Spring AOP also supports an additional PCD named 'bean'. This PCD allows you to limit
the matching of join points to a particular named Spring bean, or to a set of named Spring
beans (when using wildcards). The 'bean' PCD has the following form:
bean(idOrNameOfBean)
The 'idOrNameOfBean' token can be the name of any Spring bean: limited wildcard
support using the '*' character is provided, so if you establish some naming conventions
for your Spring beans you can quite easily write a 'bean' PCD expression to pick them out.
As is the case with other pointcut designators, the 'bean' PCD can be &&'ed, ||'ed, and !
(negated) too.
Note
Please note that the 'bean' PCD is only supported in Spring AOP - and
not in native AspectJ weaving. It is a Spring-specific extension to the
standard PCDs that AspectJ defines.
The 'bean' PCD operates at the instance level (building on the Spring
bean name concept) rather than at the type level only (which is what
weaving-based AOP is limited to). Instance-based pointcut designators
are a special capability of Spring's proxy-based AOP framework and its
close integration with the Spring bean factory, where it is natural and
straightforward to identify specific beans by name.
Combining pointcut expressions

Pointcut expressions can be combined using '&&', '||' and '!'. It is also possible to refer to
pointcut expressions by name. The following example shows three pointcut expressions:
anyPublicOperation (which matches if a method execution join point represents the
execution of any public method); inTrading (which matches if a method execution is in
the trading module), and tradingOperation (which matches if a method execution
represents any public method in the trading module).
@Pointcut("execution(public * *(..))")
private void anyPublicOperation() {}
@Pointcut("within(com.xyz.someapp.trading..*)")
private void inTrading() {}
@Pointcut("anyPublicOperation() && inTrading()")
private void tradingOperation() {}
It is a best practice to build more complex pointcut expressions out of smaller named
components as shown above. When referring to pointcuts by name, normal Java visibility
rules apply (you can see private pointcuts in the same type, protected pointcuts in the
hierarchy, public pointcuts anywhere and so on). Visibility does not affect pointcut
matching.
Sharing common pointcut definitions

When working with enterprise applications, you often want to refer to modules of the
application and particular sets of operations from within several aspects. We recommend
defining a "SystemArchitecture" aspect that captures common pointcut expressions for this
purpose. A typical such aspect would look as follows:
package com.xyz.someapp;
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Pointcut;
@Aspect
public class SystemArchitecture {
/**
* A join point is in the web layer if the method is defined
* in a type in the com.xyz.someapp.web package or any sub-package
* under that.
*/
@Pointcut("within(com.xyz.someapp.web..*)")
public void inWebLayer() {}
/**
* A join point is in the service layer if the method is defined
* in a type in the com.xyz.someapp.service package or any sub-package
* under that.
*/
@Pointcut("within(com.xyz.someapp.service..*)")
public void inServiceLayer() {}
/**
* A join point is in the data access layer if the method is defined
* in a type in the com.xyz.someapp.dao package or any sub-package
* under that.
*/
@Pointcut("within(com.xyz.someapp.dao..*)")
public void inDataAccessLayer() {}
/**
* A business service is the execution of any method defined on a service
* interface. This definition assumes that interfaces are placed in the
* "service" package, and that implementation types are in sub-packages.
*
* If you group service interfaces by functional area (for example,
* in packages com.xyz.someapp.abc.service and com.xyz.def.service) then
* the pointcut expression "execution(* com.xyz.someapp..service.*.*(..))"
* could be used instead.
*
* Alternatively, you can write the expression using the 'bean'
* PCD, like so "bean(*Service)". (This assumes that you have
* named your Spring service beans in a consistent fashion.)
*/
@Pointcut("execution(* com.xyz.someapp.service.*.*(..))")
public void businessService() {}
/**
* A data access operation is the execution of any method defined on a
* dao interface. This definition assumes that interfaces are placed in the
* "dao" package, and that implementation types are in sub-packages.
*/
@Pointcut("execution(* com.xyz.someapp.dao.*.*(..))")
public void dataAccessOperation() {}
}
The pointcuts defined in such an aspect can be referred to anywhere that you need a
pointcut expression. For example, to make the service layer transactional, you could write:
<aop:config>
<aop:advisor
pointcut="com.xyz.someapp.SystemArchitecture.businessService()"
advice-ref="tx-advice"/>
</aop:config>
<tx:advice id="tx-advice">
<tx:attributes>
<tx:method name="*" propagation="REQUIRED"/>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>
The <aop:config> and <aop:advisor> elements are discussed in Section 9.3,

Schema-based AOP support. The transaction elements are discussed in Chapter 12,
Transaction Management.
Examples
Spring AOP users are likely to use the execution pointcut designator the most often.
The format of an execution expression is:
execution(modifiers-pattern? ret-type-pattern declaring-type-pattern? name-pattern(param-pattern)
throws-pattern?)
All parts except the returning type pattern (ret-type-pattern in the snippet above), name
pattern, and parameters pattern are optional. The returning type pattern determines what
the return type of the method must be in order for a join point to be matched. Most
frequently you will use * as the returning type pattern, which matches any return type. A
fully-qualified type name will match only when the method returns the given type. The
name pattern matches the method name. You can use the * wildcard as all or part of a
name pattern. The parameters pattern is slightly more complex: () matches a method that
takes no parameters, whereas (..) matches any number of parameters (zero or more).
The pattern (*) matches a method taking one parameter of any type, (*,String)
matches a method taking two parameters, the first can be of any type, the second must be
a String. Consult the Language Semantics section of the AspectJ Programming Guide for
more information.
Some examples of common pointcut expressions are given below.
the execution of any public method:

execution(public * *(..))
the execution of any method with a name beginning with "set":

execution(* set*(..))
the execution of any method defined by the AccountService interface:

execution(* com.xyz.service.AccountService.*(..))
the execution of any method defined in the service package:

execution(* com.xyz.service.*.*(..))
the execution of any method defined in the service package or a sub-package:

execution(* com.xyz.service..*.*(..))
any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) within the service package:
within(com.xyz.service.*)
any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) within the service package or a
sub-package:
within(com.xyz.service..*)
any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) where the proxy implements the
AccountService interface:
this(com.xyz.service.AccountService)
'this' is more commonly used in a binding form :- see the following section on advice
for how to make the proxy object available in the advice body.
any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) where the target object
implements the AccountService interface:
target(com.xyz.service.AccountService)
'target' is more commonly used in a binding form :- see the following section on advice
for how to make the target object available in the advice body.
any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) which takes a single parameter,
and where the argument passed at runtime is Serializable:
args(java.io.Serializable)
'args' is more commonly used in a binding form :- see the following section on advice
for how to make the method arguments available in the advice body.
Note that the pointcut given in this example is different to execution(*
*(java.io.Serializable)): the args version matches if the argument passed at
runtime is Serializable, the execution version matches if the method signature
declares a single parameter of type Serializable.
any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) where the target object has an
@Transactional annotation:
@target(org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Transactional)
'@target' can also be used in a binding form :- see the following section on advice for
how to make the annotation object available in the advice body.
any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) where the declared type of the
target object has an @Transactional annotation:
@within(org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Transactional)
'@within' can also be used in a binding form :- see the following section on advice for
how to make the annotation object available in the advice body.
any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) where the executing method has
an @Transactional annotation:
@annotation(org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Transactional)
'@annotation' can also be used in a binding form :- see the following section on advice
for how to make the annotation object available in the advice body.
any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) which takes a single parameter,
and where the runtime type of the argument passed has the @Classified
annotation:
@args(com.xyz.security.Classified)
'@args' can also be used in a binding form :- see the following section on advice for
how to make the annotation object(s) available in the advice body.
any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) on a Spring bean named
'tradeService':
bean(tradeService)
any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) on Spring beans having names
that match the wildcard expression '*Service':
bean(*Service)
Writing good pointcuts

During compilation, AspectJ processes pointcuts in order to try and optimize matching
performance. Examining code and determining if each join point matches (statically or
dynamically) a given pointcut is a costly process. (A dynamic match means the match
cannot be fully determined from static analysis and a test will be placed in the code to
determine if there is an actual match when the code is running). On first encountering a
pointcut declaration, AspectJ will rewrite it into an optimal form for the matching process.
What does this mean? Basically pointcuts are rewritten in DNF (Disjunctive Normal Form)
and the components of the pointcut are sorted such that those components that are
cheaper to evaluate are checked first. This means you do not have to worry about
understanding the performance of various pointcut designators and may supply them in
any order in a pointcut declaration.
However, AspectJ can only work with what it is told, and for optimal performance of
matching you should think about what they are trying to achieve and narrow the search
space for matches as much as possible in the definition. The existing designators naturally
fall into one of three groups: kinded, scoping and context:
Kinded designators are those which select a particular kind of join point. For example:
execution, get, set, call, handler
Scoping designators are those which select a group of join points of interest (of
probably many kinds). For example: within, withincode
Contextual designators are those that match (and optionally bind) based on context.
For example: this, target, @annotation
A well written pointcut should try and include at least the first two types (kinded and
scoping), whilst the contextual designators may be included if wishing to match based on
join point context, or bind that context for use in the advice. Supplying either just a kinded
designator or just a contextual designator will work but could affect weaving performance
(time and memory used) due to all the extra processing and analysis. Scoping designators
are very fast to match and their usage means AspectJ can very quickly dismiss groups of
join points that should not be further processed - that is why a good pointcut should always
include one if possible.
9.2.4 Declaring advice

Advice is associated with a pointcut expression, and runs before, after, or around method
executions matched by the pointcut. The pointcut expression may be either a simple
reference to a named pointcut, or a pointcut expression declared in place.
Before advice
Before advice is declared in an aspect using the @Before annotation:
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Before;
@Aspect
public class BeforeExample {
@Before("com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.dataAccessOperation()")
public void doAccessCheck() {
// ...
}
}
If using an in-place pointcut expression we could rewrite the above example as:
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Before;
@Aspect
public class BeforeExample {
@Before("execution(* com.xyz.myapp.dao.*.*(..))")
// ...
}
}

After returning advice runs when a matched method execution returns normally. It is
declared using the @AfterReturning annotation:
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.AfterReturning;
@Aspect
public class AfterReturningExample {
@AfterReturning("com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.dataAccessOperation()")
// ...
}
}
Note: it is of course possible to have multiple advice declarations, and other members as
well, all inside the same aspect. We're just showing a single advice declaration in these
examples to focus on the issue under discussion at the time.
Sometimes you need access in the advice body to the actual value that was returned. You
can use the form of @AfterReturning that binds the return value for this:
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.AfterReturning;
@Aspect
public class AfterReturningExample {
@AfterReturning(
pointcut="com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.dataAccessOperation()",
returning="retVal")
public void doAccessCheck(Object retVal) {
// ...
}
}
The name used in the returning attribute must correspond to the name of a parameter
in the advice method. When a method execution returns, the return value will be passed to
the advice method as the corresponding argument value. A returning clause also
restricts matching to only those method executions that return a value of the specified type
(Object in this case, which will match any return value).
Please note that it is not possible to return a totally different reference when using afterreturning advice.

After throwing advice runs when a matched method execution exits by throwing an
exception. It is declared using the @AfterThrowing annotation:
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.AfterThrowing;
@Aspect
public class AfterThrowingExample {
@AfterThrowing("com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.dataAccessOperation()")
public void doRecoveryActions() {
// ...
}
}
Often you want the advice to run only when exceptions of a given type are thrown, and you
also often need access to the thrown exception in the advice body. Use the throwing
attribute to both restrict matching (if desired, use Throwable as the exception type
otherwise) and bind the thrown exception to an advice parameter.
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.AfterThrowing;
@Aspect
public class AfterThrowingExample {
@AfterThrowing(
pointcut="com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.dataAccessOperation()",
throwing="ex")
public void doRecoveryActions(DataAccessException ex) {
// ...
}
}
The name used in the throwing attribute must correspond to the name of a parameter in
the advice method. When a method execution exits by throwing an exception, the
exception will be passed to the advice method as the corresponding argument value. A
throwing clause also restricts matching to only those method executions that throw an
exception of the specified type (DataAccessException in this case).

After (finally) advice runs however a matched method execution exits. It is declared using
the @After annotation. After advice must be prepared to handle both normal and
exception return conditions. It is typically used for releasing resources, etc.
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.After;
@Aspect
public class AfterFinallyExample {
@After("com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.dataAccessOperation()")
public void doReleaseLock() {
// ...
}
}
Around advice
The final kind of advice is around advice. Around advice runs "around" a matched method
execution. It has the opportunity to do work both before and after the method executes, and
to determine when, how, and even if, the method actually gets to execute at all. Around
advice is often used if you need to share state before and after a method execution in a
thread-safe manner (starting and stopping a timer for example). Always use the least
powerful form of advice that meets your requirements (i.e. don't use around advice if simple
before advice would do).
Around advice is declared using the @Around annotation. The first parameter of the
advice method must be of type ProceedingJoinPoint. Within the body of the advice,
calling proceed() on the ProceedingJoinPoint causes the underlying method to
execute. The proceed method may also be called passing in an Object[] - the values
in the array will be used as the arguments to the method execution when it proceeds.
The behavior of proceed when called with an Object[] is a little different than the behavior
of proceed for around advice compiled by the AspectJ compiler. For around advice written
using the traditional AspectJ language, the number of arguments passed to proceed must
match the number of arguments passed to the around advice (not the number of arguments
taken by the underlying join point), and the value passed to proceed in a given argument
position supplants the original value at the join point for the entity the value was bound to
(Don't worry if this doesn't make sense right now!). The approach taken by Spring is
simpler and a better match to its proxy-based, execution only semantics. You only need to
be aware of this difference if you are compiling @AspectJ aspects written for Spring and
using proceed with arguments with the AspectJ compiler and weaver. There is a way to
write such aspects that is 100% compatible across both Spring AOP and AspectJ, and this
is discussed in the following section on advice parameters.
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Around;
import org.aspectj.lang.ProceedingJoinPoint;
@Aspect
public class AroundExample {
@Around("com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.businessService()")
public Object doBasicProfiling(ProceedingJoinPoint pjp) throws Throwable {
// start stopwatch
Object retVal = pjp.proceed();
// stop stopwatch
return retVal;
}
}
The value returned by the around advice will be the return value seen by the caller of the
method. A simple caching aspect for example could return a value from a cache if it has
one, and invoke proceed() if it does not. Note that proceed may be invoked once, many
times, or not at all within the body of the around advice, all of these are quite legal.
Advice parameters
Spring 2.0 offers fully typed advice - meaning that you declare the parameters you need in
the advice signature (as we saw for the returning and throwing examples above) rather
than work with Object[] arrays all the time. We'll see how to make argument and other
contextual values available to the advice body in a moment. First let's take a look at how to
write generic advice that can find out about the method the advice is currently advising.
Access to the current JoinPoint

Any advice method may declare as its first parameter, a parameter of type
org.aspectj.lang.JoinPoint (please note that around advice is required to declare
a first parameter of type ProceedingJoinPoint, which is a subclass of JoinPoint.
The JoinPoint interface provides a number of useful methods such as getArgs()
(returns the method arguments), getThis() (returns the proxy object), getTarget()
(returns the target object), getSignature() (returns a description of the method that is
being advised) and toString() (prints a useful description of the method being
advised). Please do consult the Javadocs for full details.
Passing parameters to advice

We've already seen how to bind the returned value or exception value (using after
returning and after throwing advice). To make argument values available to the advice
body, you can use the binding form of args. If a parameter name is used in place of a type
name in an args expression, then the value of the corresponding argument will be passed
as the parameter value when the advice is invoked. An example should make this clearer.
Suppose you want to advise the execution of dao operations that take an Account object
as the first parameter, and you need access to the account in the advice body. You could
write the following:
@Before("com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.dataAccessOperation() &&" +
"args(account,..)")
public void validateAccount(Account account) {
// ...
}
The args(account,..) part of the pointcut expression serves two purposes: firstly, it
restricts matching to only those method executions where the method takes at least one
parameter, and the argument passed to that parameter is an instance of Account;
secondly, it makes the actual Account object available to the advice via the account
parameter.
Another way of writing this is to declare a pointcut that "provides" the Account object
value when it matches a join point, and then just refer to the named pointcut from the
advice. This would look as follows:
@Pointcut("com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.dataAccessOperation() &&" +
"args(account,..)")
private void accountDataAccessOperation(Account account) {}
@Before("accountDataAccessOperation(account)")
public void validateAccount(Account account) {
// ...
}
The interested reader is once more referred to the AspectJ programming guide for more
details.
The proxy object (this), target object (target), and annotations (@within,
@target, @annotation, @args) can all be bound in a similar fashion. The following
example shows how you could match the execution of methods annotated with an
@Auditable annotation, and extract the audit code.
First the definition of the @Auditable annotation:
@Target(ElementType.METHOD)
public @interface Auditable {
AuditCode value();
}
And then the advice that matches the execution of @Auditable methods:
@Before("com.xyz.lib.Pointcuts.anyPublicMethod() && " +
"@annotation(auditable)")
public void audit(Auditable auditable) {
AuditCode code = auditable.value();
// ...
}
Advice parameters and generics

Spring AOP can handle generics used in class declarations and method parameters.
Suppose you have a generic type like this:
public interface Sample<T> {
void sampleGenericMethod(T param);
void sampleGenericCollectionMethod(Collection>T> param);

}
You can restrict interception of method types to certain parameter types by simply typing
the advice parameter to the parameter type you want to intercept the method for:
@Before("execution(* ..Sample+.sampleGenericMethod(*)) && args(param)")
public void beforeSampleMethod(MyType param) {
// Advice implementation
}
That this works is pretty obvious as we already discussed above. However, it's worth
pointing out that this won't work for generic collections. So you cannot define a pointcut like
this:
@Before("execution(* ..Sample+.sampleGenericCollectionMethod(*)) && args(param)")
public void beforeSampleMethod(Collection<MyType> param) {
// Advice implementation
}
To make this work we would have to inspect every element of the collection, which is not
reasonable as we also cannot decide how to treat null values in general. To achieve
something similar to this you have to type the parameter to Collection<?> and
manually check the type of the elements.
Determining argument names

The parameter binding in advice invocations relies on matching names used in pointcut
expressions to declared parameter names in (advice and pointcut) method signatures.
Parameter names are not available through Java reflection, so Spring AOP uses the
following strategies to determine parameter names:
1. If the parameter names have been specified by the user explicitly, then the specified
parameter names are used: both the advice and the pointcut annotations have an
optional "argNames" attribute which can be used to specify the argument names of the
annotated method - these argument names are available at runtime. For example:
@Before(
value="com.xyz.lib.Pointcuts.anyPublicMethod() && target(bean) && @annotation(auditable)",
argNames="bean,auditable")
public void audit(Object bean, Auditable auditable) {
// ... use code and bean
}
If the first parameter is of the JoinPoint, ProceedingJoinPoint, or

JoinPoint.StaticPart type, you may leave out the name of the parameter from
the value of the "argNames" attribute. For example, if you modify the preceding advice
to receive the join point object, the "argNames" attribute need not include it:
@Before(
value="com.xyz.lib.Pointcuts.anyPublicMethod() && target(bean) && @annotation(auditable)",
argNames="bean,auditable")
public void audit(JoinPoint jp, Object bean, Auditable auditable) {
// ... use code, bean, and jp
}
The special treatment given to the first parameter of the JoinPoint,

ProceedingJoinPoint, and JoinPoint.StaticPart types is particularly
convenient for advice that do not collect any other join point context. In such situations,
you may simply omit the "argNames" attribute. For example, the following advice need
not declare the "argNames" attribute:
@Before(
"com.xyz.lib.Pointcuts.anyPublicMethod()")
public void audit(JoinPoint jp) {
// ... use jp
}
2. Using the 'argNames' attribute is a little clumsy, so if the 'argNames' attribute has
not been specified, then Spring AOP will look at the debug information for the class
and try to determine the parameter names from the local variable table. This
information will be present as long as the classes have been compiled with debug
information ('-g:vars' at a minimum). The consequences of compiling with this flag
on are: (1) your code will be slightly easier to understand (reverse engineer), (2) the
class file sizes will be very slightly bigger (typically inconsequential), (3) the
optimization to remove unused local variables will not be applied by your compiler. In
other words, you should encounter no difficulties building with this flag on.
If an @AspectJ aspect has been compiled by the AspectJ compiler (ajc) even without
the debug information then there is no need to add the argNames attribute as the
compiler will retain the needed information.
3. If the code has been compiled without the necessary debug information, then Spring
AOP will attempt to deduce the pairing of binding variables to parameters (for
example, if only one variable is bound in the pointcut expression, and the advice
method only takes one parameter, the pairing is obvious!). If the binding of variables is
ambiguous given the available information, then an
AmbiguousBindingException will be thrown.
4. If all of the above strategies fail then an IllegalArgumentException will be
thrown.
Proceeding with arguments

We remarked earlier that we would describe how to write a proceed call with arguments
that works consistently across Spring AOP and AspectJ. The solution is simply to ensure
that the advice signature binds each of the method parameters in order. For example:
@Around("execution(List<Account> find*(..)) &&" +
"com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.inDataAccessLayer() && " +
"args(accountHolderNamePattern)")
public Object preProcessQueryPattern(ProceedingJoinPoint pjp, String accountHolderNamePattern)
throws Throwable {
String newPattern = preProcess(accountHolderNamePattern);
return pjp.proceed(new Object[] {newPattern});
}
In many cases you will be doing this binding anyway (as in the example above).
Advice ordering
What happens when multiple pieces of advice all want to run at the same join point?
Spring AOP follows the same precedence rules as AspectJ to determine the order of
advice execution. The highest precedence advice runs first "on the way in" (so given two
pieces of before advice, the one with highest precedence runs first). "On the way out" from
a join point, the highest precedence advice runs last (so given two pieces of after advice,
the one with the highest precedence will run second).
When two pieces of advice defined in different aspects both need to run at the same join
point, unless you specify otherwise the order of execution is undefined. You can control the
order of execution by specifying precedence. This is done in the normal Spring way by
either implementing the org.springframework.core.Ordered interface in the
aspect class or annotating it with the Order annotation. Given two aspects, the aspect
returning the lower value from Ordered.getValue() (or the annotation value) has the
higher precedence.
When two pieces of advice defined in the same aspect both need to run at the same join
point, the ordering is undefined (since there is no way to retrieve the declaration order via
reflection for javac-compiled classes). Consider collapsing such advice methods into one
advice method per join point in each aspect class, or refactor the pieces of advice into
separate aspect classes - which can be ordered at the aspect level.
9.2.5 Introductions
Introductions (known as inter-type declarations in AspectJ) enable an aspect to declare
that advised objects implement a given interface, and to provide an implementation of that
interface on behalf of those objects.
An introduction is made using the @DeclareParents annotation. This annotation is
used to declare that matching types have a new parent (hence the name). For example,
given an interface UsageTracked, and an implementation of that interface
DefaultUsageTracked, the following aspect declares that all implementors of service
interfaces also implement the UsageTracked interface. (In order to expose statistics via
JMX for example.)
@Aspect
public class UsageTracking {
@DeclareParents(value="com.xzy.myapp.service.*+",
defaultImpl=DefaultUsageTracked.class)
public static UsageTracked mixin;
@Before("com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.businessService() &&" +
"this(usageTracked)")
public void recordUsage(UsageTracked usageTracked) {
usageTracked.incrementUseCount();
}
}
The interface to be implemented is determined by the type of the annotated field. The
value attribute of the @DeclareParents annotation is an AspectJ type pattern :- any
bean of a matching type will implement the UsageTracked interface. Note that in the before
advice of the above example, service beans can be directly used as implementations of
the UsageTracked interface. If accessing a bean programmatically you would write the
following:
UsageTracked usageTracked = (UsageTracked) context.getBean("myService");
9.2.6 Aspect instantiation models

(This is an advanced topic, so if you are just starting out with AOP you can safely skip it
until later.)
By default there will be a single instance of each aspect within the application context.
AspectJ calls this the singleton instantiation model. It is possible to define aspects with
alternate lifecycles :- Spring supports AspectJ's perthis and pertarget instantiation
models (percflow, percflowbelow, and pertypewithin are not currently
supported).
A "perthis" aspect is declared by specifying a perthis clause in the @Aspect
annotation. Let's look at an example, and then we'll explain how it works.
@Aspect("perthis(com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.businessService())")
public class MyAspect {
private int someState;
@Before(com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.businessService())
public void recordServiceUsage() {
// ...
}
}
The effect of the 'perthis' clause is that one aspect instance will be created for each
unique service object executing a business service (each unique object bound to 'this' at
join points matched by the pointcut expression). The aspect instance is created the first
time that a method is invoked on the service object. The aspect goes out of scope when
the service object goes out of scope. Before the aspect instance is created, none of the
advice within it executes. As soon as the aspect instance has been created, the advice
declared within it will execute at matched join points, but only when the service object is
the one this aspect is associated with. See the AspectJ programming guide for more
information on per-clauses.
The 'pertarget' instantiation model works in exactly the same way as perthis, but
creates one aspect instance for each unique target object at matched join points.
9.2.7 Example
Now that you have seen how all the constituent parts work, let's put them together to do
something useful!
The execution of business services can sometimes fail due to concurrency issues (for
example, deadlock loser). If the operation is retried, it is quite likely to succeed next time
round. For business services where it is appropriate to retry in such conditions (idempotent
operations that don't need to go back to the user for conflict resolution), we'd like to
transparently retry the operation to avoid the client seeing a
PessimisticLockingFailureException. This is a requirement that clearly cuts
across multiple services in the service layer, and hence is ideal for implementing via an
aspect.
Because we want to retry the operation, we will need to use around advice so that we can
call proceed multiple times. Here's how the basic aspect implementation looks:
@Aspect
public class ConcurrentOperationExecutor implements Ordered {
private static final int DEFAULT_MAX_RETRIES = 2;
private int maxRetries = DEFAULT_MAX_RETRIES;
private int order = 1;
public void setMaxRetries(int maxRetries) {
this.maxRetries = maxRetries;
}
public int getOrder() {
return this.order;
}
public void setOrder(int order) {
this.order = order;
}
@Around("com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.businessService()")
public Object doConcurrentOperation(ProceedingJoinPoint pjp) throws Throwable {
int numAttempts = 0;
PessimisticLockingFailureException lockFailureException;
do {
numAttempts++;
try {
return pjp.proceed();
}
catch(PessimisticLockingFailureException ex) {
lockFailureException = ex;
}
}
while(numAttempts <= this.maxRetries);
throw lockFailureException;
}
}
Note that the aspect implements the Ordered interface so we can set the precedence of
the aspect higher than the transaction advice (we want a fresh transaction each time we
retry). The maxRetries and order properties will both be configured by Spring. The
main action happens in the doConcurrentOperation around advice. Notice that for
the moment we're applying the retry logic to all businessService()s. We try to
proceed, and if we fail with an PessimisticLockingFailureException we simply
try again unless we have exhausted all of our retry attempts.
The corresponding Spring configuration is:
<aop:aspectj-autoproxy/>
<bean id="concurrentOperationExecutor"
class="com.xyz.myapp.service.impl.ConcurrentOperationExecutor">
<property name="maxRetries" value="3"/>
<property name="order" value="100"/>
</bean>
To refine the aspect so that it only retries idempotent operations, we might define an
Idempotent annotation:
public @interface Idempotent {
// marker annotation
}
and use the annotation to annotate the implementation of service operations. The change
to the aspect to only retry idempotent operations simply involves refining the pointcut
expression so that only @Idempotent operations match:
@Around("com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.businessService() && " +
"@annotation(com.xyz.myapp.service.Idempotent)")
...
}
9.3 Schema-based AOP support

If you are unable to use Java 5, or simply prefer an XML-based format, then Spring 2.0 also
offers support for defining aspects using the new "aop" namespace tags. The exact same
pointcut expressions and advice kinds are supported as when using the @AspectJ style,
hence in this section we will focus on the new syntax and refer the reader to the discussion
in the previous section (Section 9.2, @AspectJ support) for an understanding of writing
pointcut expressions and the binding of advice parameters.
To use the aop namespace tags described in this section, you need to import the springaop schema as described in Appendix E, XML Schema-based configuration. See
Section E.2.7, The aop schema for how to import the tags in the aop namespace.
Within your Spring configurations, all aspect and advisor elements must be placed within
an <aop:config> element (you can have more than one <aop:config> element in an
application context configuration). An <aop:config> element can contain pointcut,
advisor, and aspect elements (note these must be declared in that order).
Warning
The <aop:config> style of configuration makes heavy use of
Spring's auto-proxying mechanism. This can cause issues (such as
advice not being woven) if you are already using explicit auto-proxying
via the use of BeanNameAutoProxyCreator or suchlike. The
recommended usage pattern is to use either just the <aop:config>
style, or just the AutoProxyCreator style.
9.3.1 Declaring an aspect

Using the schema support, an aspect is simply a regular Java object defined as a bean in
your Spring application context. The state and behavior is captured in the fields and
methods of the object, and the pointcut and advice information is captured in the XML.
An aspect is declared using the <aop:aspect> element, and the backing bean is referenced
using the ref attribute:
<aop:config>
<aop:aspect id="myAspect" ref="aBean">
...
</aop:aspect>
</aop:config>
<bean id="aBean" class="...">
...
</bean>
The bean backing the aspect ("aBean" in this case) can of course be configured and
dependency injected just like any other Spring bean.
9.3.2 Declaring a pointcut

A named pointcut can be declared inside an <aop:config> element, enabling the pointcut
definition to be shared across several aspects and advisors.
A pointcut representing the execution of any business service in the service layer could be
defined as follows:
<aop:config>
<aop:pointcut id="businessService"
expression="execution(* com.xyz.myapp.service.*.*(..))"/>
</aop:config>
Note that the pointcut expression itself is using the same AspectJ pointcut expression
language as described in Section 9.2, @AspectJ support. If you are using the schema
based declaration style with Java 5, you can refer to named pointcuts defined in types
(@Aspects) within the pointcut expression, but this feature is not available on JDK 1.4 and
below (it relies on the Java 5 specific AspectJ reflection APIs). On JDK 1.5 therefore,
another way of defining the above pointcut would be:
<aop:config>
expression="com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.businessService()"/>
</aop:config>
Assuming you have a SystemArchitecture aspect as described in the section called

Sharing common pointcut definitions.
Declaring a pointcut inside an aspect is very similar to declaring a top-level pointcut:
<aop:config>
...
</aop:aspect>
</aop:config>
Much the same way in an @AspectJ aspect, pointcuts declared using the schema based
definition style may collect join point context. For example, the following pointcut collects
the 'this' object as the join point context and passes it to advice:
<aop:config>
expression="execution(* com.xyz.myapp.service.*.*(..)) && this(service)"/>
<aop:before pointcut-ref="businessService" method="monitor"/>
...
</aop:aspect>
</aop:config>
The advice must be declared to receive the collected join point context by including
parameters of the matching names:
public void monitor(Object service) {
...
}
When combining pointcut sub-expressions, '&&' is awkward within an XML document, and
so the keywords 'and', 'or' and 'not' can be used in place of '&&', '||' and '!' respectively. For
example, the previous pointcut may be better written as:
<aop:config>
expression="execution(* com.xyz.myapp.service.*.*(..)) and this(service)"/>
<aop:before pointcut-ref="businessService" method="monitor"/>
...
</aop:aspect>
</aop:config>
Note that pointcuts defined in this way are referred to by their XML id and cannot be used
as named pointcuts to form composite pointcuts. The named pointcut support in the
schema based definition style is thus more limited than that offered by the @AspectJ style.
9.3.3 Declaring advice

The same five advice kinds are supported as for the @AspectJ style, and they have exactly
the same semantics.
Before advice
Before advice runs before a matched method execution. It is declared inside an
<aop:aspect> using the <aop:before> element.
<aop:aspect id="beforeExample" ref="aBean">
<aop:before
pointcut-ref="dataAccessOperation"
method="doAccessCheck"/>
...
</aop:aspect>
Here dataAccessOperation is the id of a pointcut defined at the top (<aop:config>)

level. To define the pointcut inline instead, replace the pointcut-ref attribute with a
pointcut attribute:
<aop:aspect id="beforeExample" ref="aBean">
<aop:before
pointcut="execution(* com.xyz.myapp.dao.*.*(..))"
...
</aop:aspect>
As we noted in the discussion of the @AspectJ style, using named pointcuts can
significantly improve the readability of your code.
The method attribute identifies a method (doAccessCheck) that provides the body of the
advice. This method must be defined for the bean referenced by the aspect element
containing the advice. Before a data access operation is executed (a method execution
join point matched by the pointcut expression), the "doAccessCheck" method on the
aspect bean will be invoked.

After returning advice runs when a matched method execution completes normally. It is
declared inside an <aop:aspect> in the same way as before advice. For example:
<aop:aspect id="afterReturningExample" ref="aBean">
<aop:after-returning
...
</aop:aspect>
Just as in the @AspectJ style, it is possible to get hold of the return value within the advice
body. Use the returning attribute to specify the name of the parameter to which the return
value should be passed:
<aop:aspect id="afterReturningExample" ref="aBean">
<aop:after-returning
returning="retVal"
...
</aop:aspect>
The doAccessCheck method must declare a parameter named retVal. The type of this
parameter constrains matching in the same way as described for @AfterReturning. For
example, the method signature may be declared as:
public void doAccessCheck(Object retVal) {...

After throwing advice executes when a matched method execution exits by throwing an
exception. It is declared inside an <aop:aspect> using the after-throwing element:
<aop:aspect id="afterThrowingExample" ref="aBean">
<aop:after-throwing
method="doRecoveryActions"/>
...
</aop:aspect>
Just as in the @AspectJ style, it is possible to get hold of the thrown exception within the
advice body. Use the throwing attribute to specify the name of the parameter to which the
exception should be passed:
<aop:aspect id="afterThrowingExample" ref="aBean">
<aop:after-throwing
throwing="dataAccessEx"
method="doRecoveryActions"/>
...
</aop:aspect>
The doRecoveryActions method must declare a parameter named dataAccessEx. The

type of this parameter constrains matching in the same way as described for
@AfterThrowing. For example, the method signature may be declared as:
public void doRecoveryActions(DataAccessException dataAccessEx) {...

After (finally) advice runs however a matched method execution exits. It is declared using
the after element:
<aop:aspect id="afterFinallyExample" ref="aBean">
<aop:after
method="doReleaseLock"/>
...
</aop:aspect>
Around advice
The final kind of advice is around advice. Around advice runs "around" a matched method
execution. It has the opportunity to do work both before and after the method executes, and
to determine when, how, and even if, the method actually gets to execute at all. Around
advice is often used if you need to share state before and after a method execution in a
thread-safe manner (starting and stopping a timer for example). Always use the least
powerful form of advice that meets your requirements; don't use around advice if simple
before advice would do.
Around advice is declared using the aop:around element. The first parameter of the
advice method must be of type ProceedingJoinPoint. Within the body of the advice,
calling proceed() on the ProceedingJoinPoint causes the underlying method to
execute. The proceed method may also be calling passing in an Object[] - the values
in the array will be used as the arguments to the method execution when it proceeds. See
the section called Around advice for notes on calling proceed with an Object[].
<aop:aspect id="aroundExample" ref="aBean">
<aop:around
pointcut-ref="businessService"
method="doBasicProfiling"/>
...
</aop:aspect>
The implementation of the doBasicProfiling advice would be exactly the same as in

the @AspectJ example (minus the annotation of course):
public Object doBasicProfiling(ProceedingJoinPoint pjp) throws Throwable {
// start stopwatch
Object retVal = pjp.proceed();
// stop stopwatch
return retVal;
}
Advice parameters
The schema based declaration style supports fully typed advice in the same way as
described for the @AspectJ support - by matching pointcut parameters by name against
advice method parameters. See the section called Advice parameters for details. If you
wish to explicitly specify argument names for the advice methods (not relying on the
detection strategies previously described) then this is done using the arg-names attribute
of the advice element, which is treated in the same manner to the "argNames" attribute in
an advice annotation as described in the section called Determining argument names.
For example:
<aop:before
pointcut="com.xyz.lib.Pointcuts.anyPublicMethod() and @annotation(auditable)"
method="audit"
arg-names="auditable"/>
The arg-names attribute accepts a comma-delimited list of parameter names.

Find below a slightly more involved example of the XSD-based approach that illustrates
some around advice used in conjunction with a number of strongly typed parameters.
package x.y.service;
public interface FooService {
Foo getFoo(String fooName, int age);
}
public class DefaultFooService implements FooService {
public Foo getFoo(String name, int age) {
return new Foo(name, age);

}
}
Next up is the aspect. Notice the fact that the profile(..) method accepts a number of
strongly-typed parameters, the first of which happens to be the join point used to proceed
with the method call: the presence of this parameter is an indication that the
profile(..) is to be used as around advice:
package x.y;
import org.springframework.util.StopWatch;
public class SimpleProfiler {
public Object profile(ProceedingJoinPoint call, String name, int age) throws Throwable {
StopWatch clock = new StopWatch(
"Profiling for '" + name + "' and '" + age + "'");
try {
clock.start(call.toShortString());
return call.proceed();
} finally {
clock.stop();
System.out.println(clock.prettyPrint());
}
}
}
Finally, here is the XML configuration that is required to effect the execution of the above
advice for a particular join point:
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop.xsd">

<bean id="fooService" class="x.y.service.DefaultFooService"/>

<bean id="profiler" class="x.y.SimpleProfiler"/>
<aop:config>
<aop:aspect ref="profiler">
<aop:pointcut id="theExecutionOfSomeFooServiceMethod"
expression="execution(* x.y.service.FooService.getFoo(String,int))
and args(name, age)"/>
<aop:around pointcut-ref="theExecutionOfSomeFooServiceMethod"
method="profile"/>
</aop:aspect>
</aop:config>
</beans>
If we had the following driver script, we would get output something like this on standard
output:
import org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanFactory;
import x.y.service.FooService;
BeanFactory ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("x/y/plain.xml");
FooService foo = (FooService) ctx.getBean("fooService");
foo.getFoo("Pengo", 12);
}
}
StopWatch 'Profiling for 'Pengo' and '12'': running time (millis) = 0
----------------------------------------ms
%
Task name
----------------------------------------00000 ? execution(getFoo)
Advice ordering
When multiple advice needs to execute at the same join point (executing method) the
ordering rules are as described in the section called Advice ordering. The precedence
between aspects is determined by either adding the Order annotation to the bean backing
the aspect or by having the bean implement the Ordered interface.
9.3.4 Introductions
Introductions (known as inter-type declarations in AspectJ) enable an aspect to declare
that advised objects implement a given interface, and to provide an implementation of that
interface on behalf of those objects.
An introduction is made using the aop:declare-parents element inside an
aop:aspect This element is used to declare that matching types have a new parent
(hence the name). For example, given an interface UsageTracked, and an
implementation of that interface DefaultUsageTracked, the following aspect declares
that all implementors of service interfaces also implement the UsageTracked interface.
(In order to expose statistics via JMX for example.)
<aop:aspect id="usageTrackerAspect" ref="usageTracking">
<aop:declare-parents
types-matching="com.xzy.myapp.service.*+"
implement-interface="com.xyz.myapp.service.tracking.UsageTracked"
default-impl="com.xyz.myapp.service.tracking.DefaultUsageTracked"/>
<aop:before
pointcut="com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.businessService()
and this(usageTracked)"
method="recordUsage"/>
</aop:aspect>
The class backing the usageTracking bean would contain the method:
public void recordUsage(UsageTracked usageTracked) {
usageTracked.incrementUseCount();
}
The interface to be implemented is determined by implement-interface attribute. The

value of the types-matching attribute is an AspectJ type pattern :- any bean of a
matching type will implement the UsageTracked interface. Note that in the before advice
of the above example, service beans can be directly used as implementations of the
UsageTracked interface. If accessing a bean programmatically you would write the
following:
UsageTracked usageTracked = (UsageTracked) context.getBean("myService");
9.3.5 Aspect instantiation models

The only supported instantiation model for schema-defined aspects is the singleton model.
Other instantiation models may be supported in future releases.
9.3.6 Advisors
The concept of "advisors" is brought forward from the AOP support defined in Spring 1.2
and does not have a direct equivalent in AspectJ. An advisor is like a small self-contained
aspect that has a single piece of advice. The advice itself is represented by a bean, and
must implement one of the advice interfaces described in Section 10.3.2, Advice types in
Spring. Advisors can take advantage of AspectJ pointcut expressions though.
Spring 2.0 supports the advisor concept with the <aop:advisor> element. You will most
commonly see it used in conjunction with transactional advice, which also has its own
namespace support in Spring 2.0. Here's how it looks:
<aop:config>
<aop:advisor
pointcut-ref="businessService"
advice-ref="tx-advice"/>
</aop:config>
<tx:advice id="tx-advice">
<tx:attributes>
<tx:method name="*" propagation="REQUIRED"/>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>
As well as the pointcut-ref attribute used in the above example, you can also use the
pointcut attribute to define a pointcut expression inline.
To define the precedence of an advisor so that the advice can participate in ordering, use
the order attribute to define the Ordered value of the advisor.
9.3.7 Example
Let's see how the concurrent locking failure retry example from Section 9.2.7, Example
looks when rewritten using the schema support.
The execution of business services can sometimes fail due to concurrency issues (for
example, deadlock loser). If the operation is retried, it is quite likely it will succeed next time
round. For business services where it is appropriate to retry in such conditions (idempotent
operations that don't need to go back to the user for conflict resolution), we'd like to
transparently retry the operation to avoid the client seeing a
PessimisticLockingFailureException. This is a requirement that clearly cuts
across multiple services in the service layer, and hence is ideal for implementing via an
aspect.
Because we want to retry the operation, we'll need to use around advice so that we can
call proceed multiple times. Here's how the basic aspect implementation looks (it's just a
regular Java class using the schema support):
public class ConcurrentOperationExecutor implements Ordered {
private static final int DEFAULT_MAX_RETRIES = 2;
private int maxRetries = DEFAULT_MAX_RETRIES;
private int order = 1;
public void setMaxRetries(int maxRetries) {
this.maxRetries = maxRetries;
}
return this.order;
}
this.order = order;
}
int numAttempts = 0;
PessimisticLockingFailureException lockFailureException;
do {
numAttempts++;
try {
}
catch(PessimisticLockingFailureException ex) {
lockFailureException = ex;
}
}
while(numAttempts <= this.maxRetries);
throw lockFailureException;
}
}
Note that the aspect implements the Ordered interface so we can set the precedence of
the aspect higher than the transaction advice (we want a fresh transaction each time we
retry). The maxRetries and order properties will both be configured by Spring. The
main action happens in the doConcurrentOperation around advice method. We try to
proceed, and if we fail with a PessimisticLockingFailureException we simply
try again unless we have exhausted all of our retry attempts.
This class is identical to the one used in the @AspectJ example, but with the annotations
removed.
The corresponding Spring configuration is:
<aop:config>
<aop:aspect id="concurrentOperationRetry" ref="concurrentOperationExecutor">
<aop:pointcut id="idempotentOperation"
<aop:around
pointcut-ref="idempotentOperation"
method="doConcurrentOperation"/>
</aop:aspect>
</aop:config>
<bean id="concurrentOperationExecutor"
class="com.xyz.myapp.service.impl.ConcurrentOperationExecutor">
<property name="maxRetries" value="3"/>
</bean>
Notice that for the time being we assume that all business services are idempotent. If this is
not the case we can refine the aspect so that it only retries genuinely idempotent
operations, by introducing an Idempotent annotation:
public @interface Idempotent {
// marker annotation
}
and using the annotation to annotate the implementation of service operations. The
change to the aspect to retry only idempotent operations simply involves refining the
pointcut expression so that only @Idempotent operations match:
<aop:pointcut id="idempotentOperation"
expression="execution(* com.xyz.myapp.service.*.*(..)) and
@annotation(com.xyz.myapp.service.Idempotent)"/>
9.4 Choosing which AOP declaration style to use

Once you have decided that an aspect is the best approach for implementing a given
requirement, how do you decide between using Spring AOP or AspectJ, and between the
Aspect language (code) style, @AspectJ annotation style, or the Spring XML style? These
decisions are influenced by a number of factors including application requirements,
development tools, and team familiarity with AOP.
9.4.1 Spring AOP or full AspectJ?

Use the simplest thing that can work. Spring AOP is simpler than using full AspectJ as
there is no requirement to introduce the AspectJ compiler / weaver into your development
and build processes. If you only need to advise the execution of operations on Spring
beans, then Spring AOP is the right choice. If you need to advise objects not managed by
the Spring container (such as domain objects typically), then you will need to use AspectJ.
You will also need to use AspectJ if you wish to advise join points other than simple
method executions (for example, field get or set join points, and so on).
When using AspectJ, you have the choice of the AspectJ language syntax (also known as
the "code style") or the @AspectJ annotation style. Clearly, if you are not using Java 5+
then the choice has been made for you... use the code style. If aspects play a large role in
your design, and you are able to use the AspectJ Development Tools (AJDT) plugin for
Eclipse, then the AspectJ language syntax is the preferred option: it is cleaner and simpler
because the language was purposefully designed for writing aspects. If you are not using
Eclipse, or have only a few aspects that do not play a major role in your application, then
you may want to consider using the @AspectJ style and sticking with a regular Java
compilation in your IDE, and adding an aspect weaving phase to your build script.
9.4.2 @AspectJ or XML for Spring AOP?

If you have chosen to use Spring AOP, then you have a choice of @AspectJ or XML style.
Clearly if you are not running on Java 5+, then the XML style is the appropriate choice; for
Java 5 projects there are various tradeoffs to consider.
The XML style will be most familiar to existing Spring users. It can be used with any JDK
level (referring to named pointcuts from within pointcut expressions does still require Java
5+ though) and is backed by genuine POJOs. When using AOP as a tool to configure
enterprise services then XML can be a good choice (a good test is whether you consider
the pointcut expression to be a part of your configuration you might want to change
independently). With the XML style arguably it is clearer from your configuration what
aspects are present in the system.
The XML style has two disadvantages. Firstly it does not fully encapsulate the
implementation of the requirement it addresses in a single place. The DRY principle says
that there should be a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation of any piece of
knowledge within a system. When using the XML style, the knowledge of how a
requirement is implemented is split across the declaration of the backing bean class, and
the XML in the configuration file. When using the @AspectJ style there is a single module the aspect - in which this information is encapsulated. Secondly, the XML style is slightly
more limited in what it can express than the @AspectJ style: only the "singleton" aspect
instantiation model is supported, and it is not possible to combine named pointcuts
declared in XML. For example, in the @AspectJ style you can write something like:
@Pointcut(execution(* get*()))
public void propertyAccess() {}
@Pointcut(execution(org.xyz.Account+ *(..))
public void operationReturningAnAccount() {}
@Pointcut(propertyAccess() && operationReturningAnAccount())
public void accountPropertyAccess() {}
In the XML style I can declare the first two pointcuts:

<aop:pointcut id="propertyAccess"
expression="execution(* get*())"/>
<aop:pointcut id="operationReturningAnAccount"
expression="execution(org.xyz.Account+ *(..))"/>
The downside of the XML approach is that you cannot define the
'accountPropertyAccess' pointcut by combining these definitions.
The @AspectJ style supports additional instantiation models, and richer pointcut
composition. It has the advantage of keeping the aspect as a modular unit. It also has the
advantage the @AspectJ aspects can be understood (and thus consumed) both by Spring
AOP and by AspectJ - so if you later decide you need the capabilities of AspectJ to
implement additional requirements then it is very easy to migrate to an AspectJ-based
approach. On balance the Spring team prefer the @AspectJ style whenever you have
aspects that do more than simple "configuration" of enterprise services.
9.5 Mixing aspect types

It is perfectly possible to mix @AspectJ style aspects using the autoproxying support,
schema-defined <aop:aspect> aspects, <aop:advisor> declared advisors and even
proxies and interceptors defined using the Spring 1.2 style in the same configuration. All of
these are implemented using the same underlying support mechanism and will co-exist
without any difficulty.
9.6 Proxying mechanisms

Spring AOP uses either JDK dynamic proxies or CGLIB to create the proxy for a given
target object. (JDK dynamic proxies are preferred whenever you have a choice).
If the target object to be proxied implements at least one interface then a JDK dynamic
proxy will be used. All of the interfaces implemented by the target type will be proxied. If
the target object does not implement any interfaces then a CGLIB proxy will be created.
If you want to force the use of CGLIB proxying (for example, to proxy every method defined
for the target object, not just those implemented by its interfaces) you can do so. However,
there are some issues to consider:
final methods cannot be advised, as they cannot be overridden.
As of Spring 3.2, it is no longer necessary to add CGLIB to your project classpath, as
CGLIB classes are repackaged under org.springframework and included directly in the
spring-core JAR. This means that CGLIB-based proxy support 'just works' in the same
way that JDK dynamic proxies always have.
The constructor of your proxied object will be called twice. This is a natural
consequence of the CGLIB proxy model whereby a subclass is generated for each
proxied object. For each proxied instance, two objects are created: the actual proxied
object and an instance of the subclass that implements the advice. This behavior is not
exhibited when using JDK proxies. Usually, calling the constructor of the proxied type
twice, is not an issue, as there are usually only assignments taking place and no real
logic is implemented in the constructor.
To force the use of CGLIB proxies set the value of the proxy-target-class attribute of
the <aop:config> element to true:
<aop:config proxy-target-class="true">

</aop:config>
To force CGLIB proxying when using the @AspectJ autoproxy support, set the 'proxytarget-class' attribute of the <aop:aspectj-autoproxy> element to true:
<aop:aspectj-autoproxy proxy-target-class="true"/>
Note
Multiple <aop:config/> sections are collapsed into a single unified
auto-proxy creator at runtime, which applies the strongest proxy
settings that any of the <aop:config/> sections (typically from
different XML bean definition files) specified. This also applies to the
<tx:annotation-driven/> and <aop:aspectjautoproxy/> elements.
To be clear: using 'proxy-target-class="true"' on
<tx:annotation-driven/>, <aop:aspectj-autoproxy/> or
<aop:config/> elements will force the use of CGLIB proxies for all
three of them.
9.6.1 Understanding AOP proxies

Spring AOP is proxy-based. It is vitally important that you grasp the semantics of what that
last statement actually means before you write your own aspects or use any of the Spring
AOP-based aspects supplied with the Spring Framework.
Consider first the scenario where you have a plain-vanilla, un-proxied, nothing-special-
about-it, straight object reference, as illustrated by the following code snippet.

public class SimplePojo implements Pojo {
public void foo() {
// this next method invocation is a direct
call on the 'this' reference
this.bar();
}
public void bar() {
// some logic...
}
}
If you invoke a method on an object reference, the method is invoked directly on that object
reference, as can be seen below.
public class Main {

Pojo pojo = new SimplePojo();
// this is a direct method call on the 'pojo' reference
pojo.foo();
}
}
Things change slightly when the reference that client code has is a proxy. Consider the
following diagram and code snippet.
public class Main {

ProxyFactory factory = new ProxyFactory(new SimplePojo());
factory.addInterface(Pojo.class);
factory.addAdvice(new RetryAdvice());
Pojo pojo = (Pojo) factory.getProxy();
// this is a method call on the proxy!
pojo.foo();
}
}
The key thing to understand here is that the client code inside the main(..) of the Main
class has a reference to the proxy. This means that method calls on that object reference
will be calls on the proxy, and as such the proxy will be able to delegate to all of the
interceptors (advice) that are relevant to that particular method call. However, once the call
has finally reached the target object, the SimplePojo reference in this case, any method
calls that it may make on itself, such as this.bar() or this.foo(), are going to be
invoked against the this reference, and not the proxy. This has important implications. It
means that self-invocation is not going to result in the advice associated with a method
invocation getting a chance to execute.

Okay, so what is to be done about this? The best approach (the term best is used loosely
here) is to refactor your code such that the self-invocation does not happen. For sure, this
does entail some work on your part, but it is the best, least-invasive approach. The next
approach is absolutely horrendous, and I am almost reticent to point it out precisely
because it is so horrendous. You can (choke!) totally tie the logic within your class to
Spring AOP by doing this:
public class SimplePojo implements Pojo {
public void foo() {
// this works, but... gah!
((Pojo) AopContext.currentProxy()).bar();
}
public void bar() {
// some logic...
}
}
This totally couples your code to Spring AOP, and it makes the class itself aware of the fact
that it is being used in an AOP context, which flies in the face of AOP. It also requires some
additional configuration when the proxy is being created:
public class Main {
ProxyFactory factory = new ProxyFactory(new SimplePojo());
factory.adddInterface(Pojo.class);
factory.addAdvice(new RetryAdvice());
factory.setExposeProxy(true);
Pojo pojo = (Pojo) factory.getProxy();
// this is a method call on the proxy!
pojo.foo();
}
}
Finally, it must be noted that AspectJ does not have this self-invocation issue because it is
not a proxy-based AOP framework.
9.7 Programmatic creation of @AspectJ Proxies

In addition to declaring aspects in your configuration using either <aop:config> or
<aop:aspectj-autoproxy>, it is also possible programmatically to create proxies that
advise target objects. For the full details of Spring's AOP API, see the next chapter. Here
we want to focus on the ability to automatically create proxies using @AspectJ aspects.
The class
org.springframework.aop.aspectj.annotation.AspectJProxyFactory
can be used to create a proxy for a target object that is advised by one or more @AspectJ
aspects. Basic usage for this class is very simple, as illustrated below. See the Javadocs
for full information.
// create a factory that can generate a proxy for the given target object
AspectJProxyFactory factory = new AspectJProxyFactory(targetObject);
// add an aspect, the class must be an @AspectJ aspect
// you can call this as many times as you need with different aspects
factory.addAspect(SecurityManager.class);
// you can also add existing aspect instances, the type of the object supplied must be an @AspectJ aspect
factory.addAspect(usageTracker);
// now get the proxy object...
MyInterfaceType proxy = factory.getProxy();
9.8 Using AspectJ with Spring applications

Everything we've covered so far in this chapter is pure Spring AOP. In this section, we're
going to look at how you can use the AspectJ compiler/weaver instead of, or in addition to,
Spring AOP if your needs go beyond the facilities offered by Spring AOP alone.
Spring ships with a small AspectJ aspect library, which is available standalone in your
distribution as spring-aspects.jar; you'll need to add this to your classpath in order
to use the aspects in it. Section 9.8.1, Using AspectJ to dependency inject domain objects
with Spring and Section 9.8.2, Other Spring aspects for AspectJ discuss the content of
this library and how you can use it. Section 9.8.3, Configuring AspectJ aspects using
Spring IoC discusses how to dependency inject AspectJ aspects that are woven using the
AspectJ compiler. Finally, Section 9.8.4, Load-time weaving with AspectJ in the Spring
Framework provides an introduction to load-time weaving for Spring applications using
AspectJ.
9.8.1 Using AspectJ to dependency inject domain objects with

Spring
The Spring container instantiates and configures beans defined in your application
context. It is also possible to ask a bean factory to configure a pre-existing object given the
name of a bean definition containing the configuration to be applied. The springaspects.jar contains an annotation-driven aspect that exploits this capability to allow
dependency injection of any object. The support is intended to be used for objects created
outside of the control of any container. Domain objects often fall into this category because
they are often created programmatically using the new operator, or by an ORM tool as a
result of a database query.
The @Configurable annotation marks a class as eligible for Spring-driven
configuration. In the simplest case it can be used just as a marker annotation:
package com.xyz.myapp.domain;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Configurable;
@Configurable
public class Account {
// ...
}
When used as a marker interface in this way, Spring will configure new instances of the
annotated type (Account in this case) using a bean definition (typically prototype-scoped)
with the same name as the fully-qualified type name
(com.xyz.myapp.domain.Account). Since the default name for a bean is the fullyqualified name of its type, a convenient way to declare the prototype definition is simply to
omit the id attribute:
<bean class="com.xyz.myapp.domain.Account" scope="prototype">
<property name="fundsTransferService" ref="fundsTransferService"/>
</bean>
If you want to explicitly specify the name of the prototype bean definition to use, you can do
so directly in the annotation:
package com.xyz.myapp.domain;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Configurable;
@Configurable("account")
// ...
}
Spring will now look for a bean definition named "account" and use that as the definition
to configure new Account instances.
You can also use autowiring to avoid having to specify a dedicated bean definition at all.
To have Spring apply autowiring use the 'autowire' property of the @Configurable
annotation: specify either @Configurable(autowire=Autowire.BY_TYPE) or
@Configurable(autowire=Autowire.BY_NAME for autowiring by type or by name

respectively. As an alternative, as of Spring 2.5 it is preferable to specify explicit,
annotation-driven dependency injection for your @Configurable beans by using
@Autowired or @Inject at the field or method level (see Section 5.9, Annotation-based
container configuration for further details).
Finally you can enable Spring dependency checking for the object references in the newly
created and configured object by using the dependencyCheck attribute (for example:
@Configurable(autowire=Autowire.BY_NAME,dependencyCheck=true)). If
this attribute is set to true, then Spring will validate after configuration that all properties
(which are not primitives or collections) have been set.
Using the annotation on its own does nothing of course. It is the
AnnotationBeanConfigurerAspect in spring-aspects.jar that acts on the
presence of the annotation. In essence the aspect says "after returning from the
initialization of a new object of a type annotated with @Configurable, configure the
newly created object using Spring in accordance with the properties of the annotation". In
this context, initialization refers to newly instantiated objects (e.g., objects instantiated with
the 'new' operator) as well as to Serializable objects that are undergoing
deserialization (e.g., via readResolve()).
Note
One of the key phrases in the above paragraph is 'in essence'. For
most cases, the exact semantics of 'after returning from the initialization
of a new object' will be fine... in this context, 'after initialization' means
that the dependencies will be injected after the object has been
constructed - this means that the dependencies will not be available for
use in the constructor bodies of the class. If you want the dependencies
to be injected before the constructor bodies execute, and thus be
available for use in the body of the constructors, then you need to
define this on the @Configurable declaration like so:
@Configurable(preConstruction=true)
You can find out more information about the language semantics of the
various pointcut types in AspectJ in this appendix of the AspectJ
Programming Guide.
For this to work the annotated types must be woven with the AspectJ weaver - you can
either use a build-time Ant or Maven task to do this (see for example the AspectJ
Development Environment Guide) or load-time weaving (see Section 9.8.4, Load-time
weaving with AspectJ in the Spring Framework). The
AnnotationBeanConfigurerAspect itself needs configuring by Spring (in order to
obtain a reference to the bean factory that is to be used to configure new objects). If you are
using Java based configuration simply add @EnableSpringConfigured to any
@Configuration class.
@Configuration
@EnableSpringConfigured
}
If you prefer XML based configuration, the Spring context namespace defines a
convenient context:spring-configured element:
<context:spring-configured/>
If you are using the DTD instead of schema, the equivalent definition is:
<bean
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.aspectj.AnnotationBeanConfigurerAspect"
factory-method="aspectOf"/>
Instances of @Configurable objects created before the aspect has been configured will
result in a message being issued to the debug log and no configuration of the object taking
place. An example might be a bean in the Spring configuration that creates domain objects
when it is initialized by Spring. In this case you can use the "depends-on" bean attribute to
manually specify that the bean depends on the configuration aspect.
<bean id="myService"
class="com.xzy.myapp.service.MyService"
depends-on="org.springframework.beans.factory.aspectj.AnnotationBeanConfigurerAspect">

</bean>
Note
Do not activate @Configurable processing through the bean
configurer aspect unless you really mean to rely on its semantics at
runtime. In particular, make sure that you do not use @Configurable
on bean classes which are registered as regular Spring beans with the
container: You would get double initialization otherwise, once through
the container and once through the aspect.
Unit testing @Configurable objects

One of the goals of the @Configurable support is to enable independent unit testing of
domain objects without the difficulties associated with hard-coded lookups. If
@Configurable types have not been woven by AspectJ then the annotation has no
affect during unit testing, and you can simply set mock or stub property references in the
object under test and proceed as normal. If @Configurable types have been woven by
AspectJ then you can still unit test outside of the container as normal, but you will see a
warning message each time that you construct an @Configurable object indicating that
it has not been configured by Spring.
Working with multiple application contexts

The AnnotationBeanConfigurerAspect used to implement the @Configurable
support is an AspectJ singleton aspect. The scope of a singleton aspect is the same as the
scope of static members, that is to say there is one aspect instance per classloader that
defines the type. This means that if you define multiple application contexts within the
same classloader hierarchy you need to consider where to define the
@EnableSpringConfigured bean and where to place spring-aspects.jar on
the classpath.
Consider a typical Spring web-app configuration with a shared parent application context
defining common business services and everything needed to support them, and one child
application context per servlet containing definitions particular to that servlet. All of these
contexts will co-exist within the same classloader hierarchy, and so the
AnnotationBeanConfigurerAspect can only hold a reference to one of them. In this
case we recommend defining the @EnableSpringConfigured bean in the shared
(parent) application context: this defines the services that you are likely to want to inject
into domain objects. A consequence is that you cannot configure domain objects with
references to beans defined in the child (servlet-specific) contexts using the
@Configurable mechanism (probably not something you want to do anyway!).
When deploying multiple web-apps within the same container, ensure that each webapplication loads the types in spring-aspects.jar using its own classloader (for
example, by placing spring-aspects.jar in 'WEB-INF/lib'). If springaspects.jar is only added to the container wide classpath (and hence loaded by the
shared parent classloader), all web applications will share the same aspect instance which
is probably not what you want.
9.8.2 Other Spring aspects for AspectJ

In addition to the @Configurable aspect, spring-aspects.jar contains an AspectJ
aspect that can be used to drive Spring's transaction management for types and methods
annotated with the @Transactional annotation. This is primarily intended for users who
want to use the Spring Framework's transaction support outside of the Spring container.
The aspect that interprets @Transactional annotations is the
AnnotationTransactionAspect. When using this aspect, you must annotate the
implementation class (and/or methods within that class), not the interface (if any) that the
class implements. AspectJ follows Java's rule that annotations on interfaces are not
inherited.
A @Transactional annotation on a class specifies the default transaction semantics for
the execution of any public operation in the class.
A @Transactional annotation on a method within the class overrides the default
transaction semantics given by the class annotation (if present). Methods with public,
protected, and default visibility may all be annotated. Annotating protected and
default visibility methods directly is the only way to get transaction demarcation for the
execution of such methods.
For AspectJ programmers that want to use the Spring configuration and transaction
management support but don't want to (or cannot) use annotations, springaspects.jar also contains abstract aspects you can extend to provide your own
pointcut definitions. See the sources for the AbstractBeanConfigurerAspect and
AbstractTransactionAspect aspects for more information. As an example, the
following excerpt shows how you could write an aspect to configure all instances of objects
defined in the domain model using prototype bean definitions that match the fully-qualified
class names:
public aspect DomainObjectConfiguration extends AbstractBeanConfigurerAspect {
public DomainObjectConfiguration() {
setBeanWiringInfoResolver(new ClassNameBeanWiringInfoResolver());
}
// the creation of a new bean (any object in the domain model)
protected pointcut beanCreation(Object beanInstance) :
initialization(new(..)) &&
SystemArchitecture.inDomainModel() &&
this(beanInstance);
}
9.8.3 Configuring AspectJ aspects using Spring IoC

When using AspectJ aspects with Spring applications, it is natural to both want and expect
to be able to configure such aspects using Spring. The AspectJ runtime itself is
responsible for aspect creation, and the means of configuring the AspectJ created aspects
via Spring depends on the AspectJ instantiation model (the 'per-xxx' clause) used by the
aspect.
The majority of AspectJ aspects are singleton aspects. Configuration of these aspects is
very easy: simply create a bean definition referencing the aspect type as normal, and
include the bean attribute 'factory-method="aspectOf"'. This ensures that Spring
obtains the aspect instance by asking AspectJ for it rather than trying to create an instance
itself. For example:
<bean id="profiler" class="com.xyz.profiler.Profiler"
factory-method="aspectOf">
<property name="profilingStrategy" ref="jamonProfilingStrategy"/>
</bean>
Non-singleton aspects are harder to configure: however it is possible to do so by creating
prototype bean definitions and using the @Configurable support from springaspects.jar to configure the aspect instances once they have bean created by the
AspectJ runtime.
If you have some @AspectJ aspects that you want to weave with AspectJ (for example,
using load-time weaving for domain model types) and other @AspectJ aspects that you
want to use with Spring AOP, and these aspects are all configured using Spring, then you
will need to tell the Spring AOP @AspectJ autoproxying support which exact subset of the
@AspectJ aspects defined in the configuration should be used for autoproxying. You can
do this by using one or more <include/> elements inside the <aop:aspectjautoproxy/> declaration. Each <include/> element specifies a name pattern, and
only beans with names matched by at least one of the patterns will be used for Spring AOP
autoproxy configuration:
<aop:aspectj-autoproxy>
<aop:include name="thisBean"/>
<aop:include name="thatBean"/>
</aop:aspectj-autoproxy>
Note
Do not be misled by the name of the <aop:aspectj-autoproxy/>
element: using it will result in the creation of Spring AOP proxies. The
@AspectJ style of aspect declaration is just being used here, but the
AspectJ runtime is not involved.
9.8.4 Load-time weaving with AspectJ in the Spring Framework

Load-time weaving (LTW) refers to the process of weaving AspectJ aspects into an
application's class files as they are being loaded into the Java virtual machine (JVM). The
focus of this section is on configuring and using LTW in the specific context of the Spring
Framework: this section is not an introduction to LTW though. For full details on the
specifics of LTW and configuring LTW with just AspectJ (with Spring not being involved at
all), see the LTW section of the AspectJ Development Environment Guide.
The value-add that the Spring Framework brings to AspectJ LTW is in enabling much finergrained control over the weaving process. 'Vanilla' AspectJ LTW is effected using a Java
(5+) agent, which is switched on by specifying a VM argument when starting up a JVM. It is
thus a JVM-wide setting, which may be fine in some situations, but often is a little too
coarse. Spring-enabled LTW enables you to switch on LTW on a per-ClassLoader
basis, which obviously is more fine-grained and which can make more sense in a 'singleJVM-multiple-application' environment (such as is found in a typical application server
environment).
Further, in certain environments, this support enables load-time weaving without making
any modifications to the application server's launch script that will be needed to add javaagent:path/to/aspectjweaver.jar or (as we describe later in this section) javaagent:path/to/org.springframework.instrument-{version}.jar
(previously named spring-agent.jar). Developers simply modify one or more files
that form the application context to enable load-time weaving instead of relying on
administrators who typically are in charge of the deployment configuration such as the
launch script.
Now that the sales pitch is over, let us first walk through a quick example of AspectJ LTW
using Spring, followed by detailed specifics about elements introduced in the following
example. For a complete example, please see the Petclinic sample application.
A first example
Let us assume that you are an application developer who has been tasked with diagnosing
the cause of some performance problems in a system. Rather than break out a profiling
tool, what we are going to do is switch on a simple profiling aspect that will enable us to
very quickly get some performance metrics, so that we can then apply a finer-grained
profiling tool to that specific area immediately afterwards.
Note
The example presented here uses XML style configuration, it is also
possible to configure and use @AspectJ with Java Configuration.
Specifically the @EnableLoadTimeWeaving annotation can be used
as an alternative to <context:load-time-weaver/> (see below
for details).
Here is the profiling aspect. Nothing too fancy, just a quick-and-dirty time-based profiler,
using the @AspectJ-style of aspect declaration.
package foo;
import
import
import
import
import
import
org.aspectj.lang.ProceedingJoinPoint;
org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Aspect;
org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Around;
org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Pointcut;
org.springframework.util.StopWatch;
org.springframework.core.annotation.Order;
@Aspect
public class ProfilingAspect {
@Around("methodsToBeProfiled()")
public Object profile(ProceedingJoinPoint pjp) throws Throwable {
StopWatch sw = new StopWatch(getClass().getSimpleName());
try {
sw.start(pjp.getSignature().getName());
} finally {
sw.stop();
System.out.println(sw.prettyPrint());
}
}
@Pointcut("execution(public * foo..*.*(..))")
public void methodsToBeProfiled(){}
}
We will also need to create an 'META-INF/aop.xml' file, to inform the AspectJ weaver
that we want to weave our ProfilingAspect into our classes. This file convention,
namely the presence of a file (or files) on the Java classpath called ' METAINF/aop.xml' is standard AspectJ.
<!DOCTYPE aspectj PUBLIC
"-//AspectJ//DTD//EN" "http://www.eclipse.org/aspectj/dtd/aspectj.dtd">
<aspectj>
<weaver>

<include within="foo.*"/>
</weaver>
<aspects>

<aspect name="foo.ProfilingAspect"/>
</aspects>
</aspectj>
Now to the Spring-specific portion of the configuration. We need to configure a

LoadTimeWeaver (all explained later, just take it on trust for now). This load-time weaver
is the essential component responsible for weaving the aspect configuration in one or
more 'META-INF/aop.xml' files into the classes in your application. The good thing is
that it does not require a lot of configuration, as can be seen below (there are some more
options that you can specify, but these are detailed later).

<bean id="entitlementCalculationService"
class="foo.StubEntitlementCalculationService"/>

</beans>
Now that all the required artifacts are in place - the aspect, the 'META-INF/aop.xml' file,
and the Spring configuration -, let us create a simple driver class with a main(..) method
to demonstrate the LTW in action.
package foo;
public final class Main {
ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("beans.xml", Main.class);
EntitlementCalculationService entitlementCalculationService
= (EntitlementCalculationService) ctx.getBean("entitlementCalculationService");
// the profiling aspect is 'woven' around this method execution
entitlementCalculationService.calculateEntitlement();
}
}
There is one last thing to do. The introduction to this section did say that one could switch
on LTW selectively on a per-ClassLoader basis with Spring, and this is true. However,
just for this example, we are going to use a Java agent (supplied with Spring) to switch on
the LTW. This is the command line we will use to run the above Main class:
java -javaagent:C:/projects/foo/lib/global/spring-instrument.jar foo.Main
The '-javaagent' is a Java 5+ flag for specifying and enabling agents to instrument
programs running on the JVM. The Spring Framework ships with such an agent, the
InstrumentationSavingAgent, which is packaged in the springinstrument.jar that was supplied as the value of the -javaagent argument in the
above example.
The output from the execution of the Main program will look something like that below. (I
have introduced a Thread.sleep(..) statement into the
calculateEntitlement() implementation so that the profiler actually captures
something other than 0 milliseconds - the 01234 milliseconds is not an overhead
introduced by the AOP :) )
Calculating entitlement
StopWatch 'ProfilingAspect': running time (millis) = 1234
------ ----- ---------------------------ms
%
Task name
------ ----- ---------------------------01234 100% calculateEntitlement
Since this LTW is effected using full-blown AspectJ, we are not just limited to advising
Spring beans; the following slight variation on the Main program will yield the same result.
package foo;
public final class Main {
new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("beans.xml", Main.class);
EntitlementCalculationService entitlementCalculationService =
new StubEntitlementCalculationService();
// the profiling aspect will be 'woven' around this method execution
entitlementCalculationService.calculateEntitlement();
}
}
Notice how in the above program we are simply bootstrapping the Spring container, and
then creating a new instance of the StubEntitlementCalculationService totally
outside the context of Spring... the profiling advice still gets woven in.
The example admittedly is simplistic... however the basics of the LTW support in Spring
have all been introduced in the above example, and the rest of this section will explain the
'why' behind each bit of configuration and usage in detail.
Note
The ProfilingAspect used in this example may be basic, but it is
quite useful. It is a nice example of a development-time aspect that
developers can use during development (of course), and then quite
easily exclude from builds of the application being deployed into UAT
or production.
Aspects
The aspects that you use in LTW have to be AspectJ aspects. They can be written in either
the AspectJ language itself or you can write your aspects in the @AspectJ-style. The latter
option is of course only an option if you are using Java 5+, but it does mean that your
aspects are then both valid AspectJ and Spring AOP aspects. Furthermore, the compiled
aspect classes need to be available on the classpath.
'META-INF/aop.xml'
The AspectJ LTW infrastructure is configured using one or more 'META-INF/aop.xml'
files, that are on the Java classpath (either directly, or more typically in jar files).
The structure and contents of this file is detailed in the main AspectJ reference
documentation, and the interested reader is referred to that resource. (I appreciate that this
section is brief, but the 'aop.xml' file is 100% AspectJ - there is no Spring-specific
information or semantics that apply to it, and so there is no extra value that I can contribute
either as a result), so rather than rehash the quite satisfactory section that the AspectJ
developers wrote, I am just directing you there.)
Required libraries (JARS)

At a minimum you will need the following libraries to use the Spring Framework's support
for AspectJ LTW:
1. spring-aop.jar (version 2.5 or later, plus all mandatory dependencies)
2. aspectjweaver.jar (version 1.6.8 or later)
If you are using the Spring-provided agent to enable instrumentation, you will also need:
1. spring-instrument.jar
Spring configuration
The key component in Spring's LTW support is the LoadTimeWeaver interface (in the
org.springframework.instrument.classloading package), and the numerous
implementations of it that ship with the Spring distribution. A LoadTimeWeaver is
responsible for adding one or more
java.lang.instrument.ClassFileTransformers to a ClassLoader at
runtime, which opens the door to all manner of interesting applications, one of which
happens to be the LTW of aspects.
happens to be the LTW of aspects.

Tip
If you are unfamiliar with the idea of runtime class file transformation,
you are encouraged to read the Javadoc API documentation for the
java.lang.instrument package before continuing. This is not a
huge chore because there is - rather annoyingly - precious little
documentation there... the key interfaces and classes will at least be
laid out in front of you for reference as you read through this section.
Configuring a LoadTimeWeaver for a particular ApplicationContext can be as easy
as adding one line. (Please note that you almost certainly will need to be using an
ApplicationContext as your Spring container - typically a BeanFactory will not be
enough because the LTW support makes use of BeanFactoryPostProcessors.)
To enable the Spring Framework's LTW support, you need to configure a
LoadTimeWeaver, which typically is done using the @EnableLoadTimeWeaving
annotation.
@Configuration
}
Alternatively, if you prefer XML based configuration, use the <context:load-timeweaver/> element. Note that the element is defined in the 'context' namespace.
</beans>
The above configuration will define and register a number of LTW-specific infrastructure
beans for you automatically, such as a LoadTimeWeaver and an
AspectJWeavingEnabler. The default LoadTimeWeaver is the
DefaultContextLoadTimeWeaver class, which attempts to decorate an automatically
detected LoadTimeWeaver: the exact type of LoadTimeWeaver that will be
'automatically detected' is dependent upon your runtime environment (summarized in the
following table).
Table 9.1. DefaultContextLoadTimeWeaver LoadTimeWeavers

Runtime Environment
LoadTimeWeaver implementation
Running in BEA's Weblogic 10
WebLogicLoadTimeWeaver
Running in IBM WebSphere Application

Server 7
WebSphereLoadTimeWeaver
Running in Oracle's OC4J
OC4JLoadTimeWeaver
Running in GlassFish
GlassFishLoadTimeWeaver
Running in JBoss AS
JBossLoadTimeWeaver
JVM started with Spring

InstrumentationSavingAgent
(java javaagent:path/to/springinstrument.jar)
InstrumentationLoadTimeWeaver
Fallback, expecting the underlying
ClassLoader to follow common conventions

ReflectiveLoadTimeWeaver
(e.g. applicable to
TomcatInstrumentableClassLoader
and Resin)
Note that these are just the LoadTimeWeavers that are autodetected when using the
DefaultContextLoadTimeWeaver: it is of course possible to specify exactly which
LoadTimeWeaver implementation that you wish to use.
To specify a specific LoadTimeWeaver with Java configuration implement the
LoadTimeWeavingConfigurer interface and override the getLoadTimeWeaver()
method:
@Configuration
public class AppConfig implements LoadTimeWeavingConfigurer {
@Override
public LoadTimeWeaver getLoadTimeWeaver() {
return new ReflectiveLoadTimeWeaver();
}
}
If you are using XML based configuration you can specify the fully-qualified classname as
the value of the 'weaver-class' attribute on the <context:load-time-weaver/>
element:
<context:load-time-weaver
weaver-class="org.springframework.instrument.classloading.ReflectiveLoadTimeWeaver"/>
</beans>
The LoadTimeWeaver that is defined and registered by the configuration can be later
retrieved from the Spring container using the well-known name 'loadTimeWeaver'.
Remember that the LoadTimeWeaver exists just as a mechanism for Spring's LTW
infrastructure to add one or more ClassFileTransformers. The actual
ClassFileTransformer that does the LTW is the
ClassPreProcessorAgentAdapter (from the org.aspectj.weaver.loadtime
package) class. See the class-level Javadoc for the
ClassPreProcessorAgentAdapter class for further details, because the specifics of
how the weaving is actually effected is beyond the scope of this section.
There is one final attribute of the configuration left to discuss: the 'aspectjWeaving'
attribute (or 'aspectj-weaving' if you are using XML). This is a simple attribute that
controls whether LTW is enabled or not, it is as simple as that. It accepts one of three
possible values, summarized below, with the default value if the attribute is not present
being 'autodetect'
Table 9.2. AspectJ weaving attribute values

Annotation
Value
XML Value
ENABLED
on
DISABLED
off
Explanation
AspectJ weaving is on, and aspects will be
woven at load-time as appropriate.
LTW is off... no aspect will be woven at load-
DISABLED
off
time.
If the Spring LTW infrastructure can find at least

one 'META-INF/aop.xml' file, then AspectJ
AUTODETECT autodetect
weaving is on, else it is off. This is the default
value.
Environment-specific configuration
This last section contains any additional settings and configuration that you will need when
using Spring's LTW support in environments such as application servers and web
containers.
Tomcat
Apache Tomcat's default class loader does not support class transformation which is why
Spring provides an enhanced implementation that addresses this need. Named
TomcatInstrumentableClassLoader, the loader works on Tomcat 5.0 and above
and can be registered individually for each web application as follows:
Tomcat 6.0.x or higher
1. Copy org.springframework.instrument.tomcat.jar into
$CATALINA_HOME/lib, where $CATALINA_HOME represents the root of the
Tomcat installation)
2. Instruct Tomcat to use the custom class loader (instead of the default) by editing
the web application context file:
<Context path="/myWebApp" docBase="/my/webApp/location">
<Loader
loaderClass="org.springframework.instrument.classloading.tomcat.TomcatInstrumentableClassLoader"/>
</Context>
Apache Tomcat 6.0.x (similar to 5.0.x/5.5.x) series supports several context

locations:
server configuration file - $CATALINA_HOME/conf/server.xml
default context configuration - $CATALINA_HOME/conf/context.xml - that
affects all deployed web applications
per-web application configuration which can be deployed either on the serverside at $CATALINA_HOME/conf/[enginename]/[hostname]/[webapp]context.xml or embedded inside the web-app archive at METAINF/context.xml
For efficiency, the embedded per-web-app configuration style is recommended
because it will impact only applications that use the custom class loader and does
not require any changes to the server configuration. See the Tomcat 6.0.x
documentation for more details about available context locations.
Tomcat 5.0.x/5.5.x
1. Copy org.springframework.instrument.tomcat.jar into
$CATALINA_HOME/server/lib, where $CATALINA_HOME represents the root of
the Tomcat installation.
2. Instruct Tomcat to use the custom class loader instead of the default one by
editing the web application context file:
<Loader
loaderClass="org.springframework.instrument.classloading.tomcat.TomcatInstrumentableClassLoader"/>
</Context>
Tomcat 5.0.x and 5.5.x series supports several context locations:

server configuration file - $CATALINA_HOME/conf/server.xml
default context configuration - $CATALINA_HOME/conf/context.xml - that
affects all deployed web applications
per-web application configuration which can be deployed either on the serverside at $CATALINA_HOME/conf/[enginename]/[hostname]/[webapp]context.xml or embedded inside the web-app archive at METAINF/context.xml
For efficiency, the embedded web-app configuration style is recommended
recommended because it will impact only applications that use the class loader.
See the Tomcat 5.x documentation for more details about available context
locations.
Tomcat versions prior to 5.5.20 contained a bug in the XML configuration parsing
that prevented usage of the Loader tag inside server.xml configuration,
regardless of whether a class loader is specified or whether it is the official or a
custom one. See Tomcat's bugzilla for more details.
In Tomcat 5.5.x, versions 5.5.20 or later, you should set
useSystemClassLoaderAsParent to false to fix this problem:
<Loader
loaderClass="org.springframework.instrument.classloading.tomcat.TomcatInstrumentableClassLoader"
useSystemClassLoaderAsParent="false"/>
</Context>
This setting is not needed on Tomcat 6 or higher.

Alternatively, consider the use of the Spring-provided generic VM agent, to be specified in
Tomcat's launch script (see above). This will make instrumentation available to all
deployed web applications, no matter what ClassLoader they happen to run on.
WebLogic, WebSphere, OC4J, Resin, GlassFish, JBoss

Recent versions of BEA WebLogic (version 10 and above), IBM WebSphere Application
Server (version 7 and above), Oracle Containers for Java EE (OC4J 10.1.3.1 and above),
Resin (3.1 and above) and JBoss (5.x or above) provide a ClassLoader that is capable of
local instrumentation. Spring's native LTW leverages such ClassLoaders to enable
AspectJ weaving. You can enable LTW by simply activating load-time weaving as
described earlier. Specifically, you do not need to modify the launch script to add javaagent:path/to/spring-instrument.jar.
Note that GlassFish instrumentation-capable ClassLoader is available only in its EAR
environment. For GlassFish web applications, follow the Tomcat setup instructions as
outlined above.
Note that on JBoss 6.x, the app server scanning needs to be disabled to prevent it from
loading the classes before the application actually starts. A quick workaround is to add to
your artifact a file named WEB-INF/jboss-scanning.xml with the following content:
<scanning xmlns="urn:jboss:scanning:1.0"/>
Generic Java applications

When class instrumentation is required in environments that do not support or are not
supported by the existing LoadTimeWeaver implementations, a JDK agent can be the
only solution. For such cases, Spring provides InstrumentationLoadTimeWeaver,
which requires a Spring-specific (but very general) VM agent,
org.springframework.instrument-{version}.jar (previously named
spring-agent.jar).
To use it, you must start the virtual machine with the Spring agent, by supplying the
following JVM options:
-javaagent:/path/to/org.springframework.instrument-{version}.jar
Note that this requires modification of the VM launch script which may prevent you from
using this in application server environments (depending on your operation policies).

Additionally, the JDK agent will instrument the entire VM which can prove expensive.
For performance reasons, it is recommended to use this configuration only if your target
environment (such as Jetty) does not have (or does not support) a dedicated LTW.
9.9 Further Resources

More information on AspectJ can be found on the AspectJ website.
The book Eclipse AspectJ by Adrian Colyer et. al. (Addison-Wesley, 2005) provides a
comprehensive introduction and reference for the AspectJ language.
The book AspectJ in Action by Ramnivas Laddad (Manning, 2003) comes highly
recommended; the focus of the book is on AspectJ, but a lot of general AOP themes are
explored (in some depth).
10. Spring AOP APIs

10.1 Introduction
The previous chapter described the Spring 2.0 and later version's support for AOP using
@AspectJ and schema-based aspect definitions. In this chapter we discuss the lower-level
Spring AOP APIs and the AOP support used in Spring 1.2 applications. For new
applications, we recommend the use of the Spring 2.0 and later AOP support described in
the previous chapter, but when working with existing applications, or when reading books
and articles, you may come across Spring 1.2 style examples. Spring 3.0 is backwards
compatible with Spring 1.2 and everything described in this chapter is fully supported in
Spring 3.0.
10.2 Pointcut API in Spring

Let's look at how Spring handles the crucial pointcut concept.
10.2.1 Concepts
Spring's pointcut model enables pointcut reuse independent of advice types. It's possible
to target different advice using the same pointcut.
The org.springframework.aop.Pointcut interface is the central interface, used to
target advices to particular classes and methods. The complete interface is shown below:
public interface Pointcut {
ClassFilter getClassFilter();
MethodMatcher getMethodMatcher();
}
Splitting the Pointcut interface into two parts allows reuse of class and method matching
parts, and fine-grained composition operations (such as performing a "union" with another
method matcher).
The ClassFilter interface is used to restrict the pointcut to a given set of target classes.
If the matches() method always returns true, all target classes will be matched:
public interface ClassFilter {
boolean matches(Class clazz);
}
The MethodMatcher interface is normally more important. The complete interface is

shown below:
public interface MethodMatcher {

boolean matches(Method m, Class targetClass);
boolean isRuntime();
boolean matches(Method m, Class targetClass, Object[] args);
}
The matches(Method, Class) method is used to test whether this pointcut will ever
match a given method on a target class. This evaluation can be performed when an AOP
proxy is created, to avoid the need for a test on every method invocation. If the 2-argument
matches method returns true for a given method, and the isRuntime() method for the
MethodMatcher returns true, the 3-argument matches method will be invoked on every
method invocation. This enables a pointcut to look at the arguments passed to the method
invocation immediately before the target advice is to execute.
Most MethodMatchers are static, meaning that their isRuntime() method returns false.
In this case, the 3-argument matches method will never be invoked.
Tip
If possible, try to make pointcuts static, allowing the AOP framework to
cache the results of pointcut evaluation when an AOP proxy is created.
10.2.2 Operations on pointcuts

Spring supports operations on pointcuts: notably, union and intersection.
Union means the methods that either pointcut matches.
Intersection means the methods that both pointcuts match.
Union is usually more useful.
Pointcuts can be composed using the static methods in the
org.springframework.aop.support.Pointcuts class, or using the ComposablePointcut
class in the same package. However, using AspectJ pointcut expressions is usually a
simpler approach.
10.2.3 AspectJ expression pointcuts

Since 2.0, the most important type of pointcut used by Spring is
org.springframework.aop.aspectj.AspectJExpressionPointcut. This is a
pointcut that uses an AspectJ supplied library to parse an AspectJ pointcut expression
string.
See the previous chapter for a discussion of supported AspectJ pointcut primitives.
10.2.4 Convenience pointcut implementations

Spring provides several convenient pointcut implementations. Some can be used out of
the box; others are intended to be subclassed in application-specific pointcuts.
Static pointcuts
Static pointcuts are based on method and target class, and cannot take into account the
method's arguments. Static pointcuts are sufficient - and best - for most usages. It's
possible for Spring to evaluate a static pointcut only once, when a method is first invoked:
after that, there is no need to evaluate the pointcut again with each method invocation.
Let's consider some static pointcut implementations included with Spring.
Regular expression pointcuts

One obvious way to specify static pointcuts is regular expressions. Several AOP
frameworks besides Spring make this possible.
org.springframework.aop.support.JdkRegexpMethodPointcut is a generic
regular expression pointcut, using the regular expression support in JDK 1.4+.
Using the JdkRegexpMethodPointcut class, you can provide a list of pattern Strings.
If any of these is a match, the pointcut will evaluate to true. (So the result is effectively the
union of these pointcuts.)
The usage is shown below:
<bean id="settersAndAbsquatulatePointcut"
class="org.springframework.aop.support.JdkRegexpMethodPointcut">
<property name="patterns">
<list>
<value>.*set.*</value>
<value>.*absquatulate</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
Spring provides a convenience class, RegexpMethodPointcutAdvisor, that allows

us to also reference an Advice (remember that an Advice can be an interceptor, before
advice, throws advice etc.). Behind the scenes, Spring will use a
JdkRegexpMethodPointcut. Using RegexpMethodPointcutAdvisor simplifies
wiring, as the one bean encapsulates both pointcut and advice, as shown below:
<bean id="settersAndAbsquatulateAdvisor"
class="org.springframework.aop.support.RegexpMethodPointcutAdvisor">
<property name="advice">
<ref local="beanNameOfAopAllianceInterceptor"/>
</property>
<list>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
RegexpMethodPointcutAdvisor can be used with any Advice type.
Attribute-driven pointcuts
An important type of static pointcut is a metadata-driven pointcut. This uses the values of
metadata attributes: typically, source-level metadata.
Dynamic pointcuts
Dynamic pointcuts are costlier to evaluate than static pointcuts. They take into account
method arguments, as well as static information. This means that they must be evaluated
with every method invocation; the result cannot be cached, as arguments will vary.
The main example is the control flow pointcut.
Control flow pointcuts

Spring control flow pointcuts are conceptually similar to AspectJ cflow pointcuts, although
less powerful. (There is currently no way to specify that a pointcut executes below a join
point matched by another pointcut.) A control flow pointcut matches the current call stack.
For example, it might fire if the join point was invoked by a method in the
com.mycompany.web package, or by the SomeCaller class. Control flow pointcuts are
specified using the
org.springframework.aop.support.ControlFlowPointcut class.
Note
Control flow pointcuts are significantly more expensive to evaluate at
runtime than even other dynamic pointcuts. In Java 1.4, the cost is
about 5 times that of other dynamic pointcuts.
10.2.5 Pointcut superclasses
Spring provides useful pointcut superclasses to help you to implement your own pointcuts.
Because static pointcuts are most useful, you'll probably subclass
StaticMethodMatcherPointcut, as shown below. This requires implementing just one
abstract method (although it's possible to override other methods to customize behavior):
class TestStaticPointcut extends StaticMethodMatcherPointcut {
public boolean matches(Method m, Class targetClass) {
// return true if custom criteria match
}
}
There are also superclasses for dynamic pointcuts.

You can use custom pointcuts with any advice type in Spring 1.0 RC2 and above.
10.2.6 Custom pointcuts

Because pointcuts in Spring AOP are Java classes, rather than language features (as in
AspectJ) it's possible to declare custom pointcuts, whether static or dynamic. Custom
pointcuts in Spring can be arbitrarily complex. However, using the AspectJ pointcut
expression language is recommended if possible.
Note
Later versions of Spring may offer support for "semantic pointcuts" as
offered by JAC: for example, "all methods that change instance
variables in the target object."
10.3 Advice API in Spring

Let's now look at how Spring AOP handles advice.
10.3.1 Advice lifecycles

Each advice is a Spring bean. An advice instance can be shared across all advised
objects, or unique to each advised object. This corresponds to per-class or per-instance
advice.
Per-class advice is used most often. It is appropriate for generic advice such as transaction
advisors. These do not depend on the state of the proxied object or add new state; they
merely act on the method and arguments.
Per-instance advice is appropriate for introductions, to support mixins. In this case, the
advice adds state to the proxied object.
It's possible to use a mix of shared and per-instance advice in the same AOP proxy.
10.3.2 Advice types in Spring

Spring provides several advice types out of the box, and is extensible to support arbitrary
advice types. Let us look at the basic concepts and standard advice types.

The most fundamental advice type in Spring is interception around advice.
Spring is compliant with the AOP Alliance interface for around advice using method
interception. MethodInterceptors implementing around advice should implement the
following interface:
public interface MethodInterceptor extends Interceptor {
Object invoke(MethodInvocation invocation) throws Throwable;
}
The MethodInvocation argument to the invoke() method exposes the method being
invoked; the target join point; the AOP proxy; and the arguments to the method. The
invoke() method should return the invocation's result: the return value of the join point.
A simple MethodInterceptor implementation looks as follows:
public class DebugInterceptor implements MethodInterceptor {
public Object invoke(MethodInvocation invocation) throws Throwable {
System.out.println("Before: invocation=[" + invocation + "]");
Object rval = invocation.proceed();
System.out.println("Invocation returned");
return rval;
}
}
Note the call to the MethodInvocation's proceed() method. This proceeds down the
interceptor chain towards the join point. Most interceptors will invoke this method, and
return its return value. However, a MethodInterceptor, like any around advice, can return a
different value or throw an exception rather than invoke the proceed method. However, you
don't want to do this without good reason!
Note
MethodInterceptors offer interoperability with other AOP Alliancecompliant AOP implementations. The other advice types discussed in
the remainder of this section implement common AOP concepts, but in
a Spring-specific way. While there is an advantage in using the most
specific advice type, stick with MethodInterceptor around advice if you
are likely to want to run the aspect in another AOP framework. Note that
pointcuts are not currently interoperable between frameworks, and the
AOP Alliance does not currently define pointcut interfaces.
Before advice
A simpler advice type is a before advice. This does not need a MethodInvocation
object, since it will only be called before entering the method.
The main advantage of a before advice is that there is no need to invoke the proceed()
method, and therefore no possibility of inadvertently failing to proceed down the interceptor
chain.
The MethodBeforeAdvice interface is shown below. (Spring's API design would allow
for field before advice, although the usual objects apply to field interception and it's unlikely
that Spring will ever implement it).
public interface MethodBeforeAdvice extends BeforeAdvice {
void before(Method m, Object[] args, Object target) throws Throwable;
}
Note the return type is void. Before advice can insert custom behavior before the join
point executes, but cannot change the return value. If a before advice throws an exception,
this will abort further execution of the interceptor chain. The exception will propagate back
up the interceptor chain. If it is unchecked, or on the signature of the invoked method, it will
be passed directly to the client; otherwise it will be wrapped in an unchecked exception by
the AOP proxy.
An example of a before advice in Spring, which counts all method invocations:
public class CountingBeforeAdvice implements MethodBeforeAdvice {
private int count;
public void before(Method m, Object[] args, Object target) throws Throwable {
++count;
}
public int getCount() {
return count;
}
}
Tip
Before advice can be used with any pointcut.
Throws advice
Throws advice is invoked after the return of the join point if the join point threw an
exception. Spring offers typed throws advice. Note that this means that the
org.springframework.aop.ThrowsAdvice interface does not contain any
methods: It is a tag interface identifying that the given object implements one or more typed
throws advice methods. These should be in the form of:
afterThrowing([Method, args, target], subclassOfThrowable)
Only the last argument is required. The method signatures may have either one or four
arguments, depending on whether the advice method is interested in the method and
arguments. The following classes are examples of throws advice.
The advice below is invoked if a RemoteException is thrown (including subclasses):
public class RemoteThrowsAdvice implements ThrowsAdvice {
public void afterThrowing(RemoteException ex) throws Throwable {
// Do something with remote exception
}
}
The following advice is invoked if a ServletException is thrown. Unlike the above

advice, it declares 4 arguments, so that it has access to the invoked method, method
arguments and target object:
public class ServletThrowsAdviceWithArguments implements ThrowsAdvice {
public void afterThrowing(Method m, Object[] args, Object target, ServletException ex) {
// Do something with all arguments
}
}
The final example illustrates how these two methods could be used in a single class,
which handles both RemoteException and ServletException. Any number of
throws advice methods can be combined in a single class.
public static class CombinedThrowsAdvice implements ThrowsAdvice {
}
}
}
Note: If a throws-advice method throws an exception itself, it will override the original
exception (i.e. change the exception thrown to the user). The overriding exception will
typically be a RuntimeException; this is compatible with any method signature. However, if
a throws-advice method throws a checked exception, it will have to match the declared
exceptions of the target method and is hence to some degree coupled to specific target
method signatures. Do not throw an undeclared checked exception that is incompatible
with the target method's signature!
Tip
Throws advice can be used with any pointcut.

An after returning advice in Spring must implement the
org.springframework.aop.AfterReturningAdvice interface, shown below:
public interface AfterReturningAdvice extends Advice {
void afterReturning(Object returnValue, Method m, Object[] args, Object target)
throws Throwable;
}
An after returning advice has access to the return value (which it cannot modify), invoked
method, methods arguments and target.
The following after returning advice counts all successful method invocations that have not
thrown exceptions:
public class CountingAfterReturningAdvice implements AfterReturningAdvice {
private int count;
public void afterReturning(Object returnValue, Method m, Object[] args, Object target)
throws Throwable {
++count;
}
return count;
}
}
This advice doesn't change the execution path. If it throws an exception, this will be thrown
up the interceptor chain instead of the return value.
Tip
After returning advice can be used with any pointcut.
Introduction advice
Spring treats introduction advice as a special kind of interception advice.
Introduction requires an IntroductionAdvisor, and an
IntroductionInterceptor, implementing the following interface:
public interface IntroductionInterceptor extends MethodInterceptor {
boolean implementsInterface(Class intf);
}
The invoke() method inherited from the AOP Alliance MethodInterceptor

interface must implement the introduction: that is, if the invoked method is on an introduced
interface, the introduction interceptor is responsible for handling the method call - it cannot
invoke proceed().
Introduction advice cannot be used with any pointcut, as it applies only at class, rather than
method, level. You can only use introduction advice with the IntroductionAdvisor,
which has the following methods:
public interface IntroductionAdvisor extends Advisor, IntroductionInfo {
void validateInterfaces() throws IllegalArgumentException;
}
public interface IntroductionInfo {
Class[] getInterfaces();
}
There is no MethodMatcher, and hence no Pointcut, associated with introduction

advice. Only class filtering is logical.
The getInterfaces() method returns the interfaces introduced by this advisor.
The validateInterfaces() method is used internally to see whether or not the
introduced interfaces can be implemented by the configured
IntroductionInterceptor.
Let's look at a simple example from the Spring test suite. Let's suppose we want to
introduce the following interface to one or more objects:
public interface Lockable {
void lock();
void unlock();
boolean locked();
}
This illustrates a mixin. We want to be able to cast advised objects to Lockable, whatever
their type, and call lock and unlock methods. If we call the lock() method, we want all setter
methods to throw a LockedException. Thus we can add an aspect that provides the
ability to make objects immutable, without them having any knowledge of it: a good
example of AOP.
Firstly, we'll need an IntroductionInterceptor that does the heavy lifting. In this
case, we extend the
org.springframework.aop.support.DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor
convenience class. We could implement IntroductionInterceptor directly, but using
DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor is best for most cases.
The DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor is designed to delegate an introduction
to an actual implementation of the introduced interface(s), concealing the use of
interception to do so. The delegate can be set to any object using a constructor argument;
the default delegate (when the no-arg constructor is used) is this. Thus in the example
below, the delegate is the LockMixin subclass of
DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor. Given a delegate (by default itself), a
DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor instance looks for all interfaces
implemented by the delegate (other than IntroductionInterceptor), and will support
introductions against any of them. It's possible for subclasses such as LockMixin to call
the suppressInterface(Class intf) method to suppress interfaces that should
not be exposed. However, no matter how many interfaces an
IntroductionInterceptor is prepared to support, the IntroductionAdvisor
used will control which interfaces are actually exposed. An introduced interface will
conceal any implementation of the same interface by the target.
Thus LockMixin subclasses DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor and
implements Lockable itself. The superclass automatically picks up that Lockable can be
supported for introduction, so we don't need to specify that. We could introduce any
number of interfaces in this way.
Note the use of the locked instance variable. This effectively adds additional state to that
held in the target object.
public class LockMixin extends DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor
implements Lockable {
private boolean locked;
public void lock() {
this.locked = true;
}
public void unlock() {
this.locked = false;
}
public boolean locked() {
return this.locked;
}
if (locked() && invocation.getMethod().getName().indexOf("set") == 0)
throw new LockedException();
return super.invoke(invocation);
}
}
Often it isn't necessary to override the invoke() method: the

DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor implementation - which calls the delegate
method if the method is introduced, otherwise proceeds towards the join point - is usually
sufficient. In the present case, we need to add a check: no setter method can be invoked if
in locked mode.
The introduction advisor required is simple. All it needs to do is hold a distinct LockMixin
instance, and specify the introduced interfaces - in this case, just Lockable. A more
complex example might take a reference to the introduction interceptor (which would be
defined as a prototype): in this case, there's no configuration relevant for a LockMixin, so
we simply create it using new.
public class LockMixinAdvisor extends DefaultIntroductionAdvisor {
public LockMixinAdvisor() {
super(new LockMixin(), Lockable.class);
}
}
We can apply this advisor very simply: it requires no configuration. (However, it is

necessary: It's impossible to use an IntroductionInterceptor without an
IntroductionAdvisor.) As usual with introductions, the advisor must be per-instance, as it is
stateful. We need a different instance of LockMixinAdvisor, and hence LockMixin,
for each advised object. The advisor comprises part of the advised object's state.
We can apply this advisor programmatically, using the Advised.addAdvisor()
method, or (the recommended way) in XML configuration, like any other advisor. All proxy
creation choices discussed below, including "auto proxy creators," correctly handle
introductions and stateful mixins.
10.4 Advisor API in Spring

In Spring, an Advisor is an aspect that contains just a single advice object associated with
a pointcut expression.
Apart from the special case of introductions, any advisor can be used with any advice.
org.springframework.aop.support.DefaultPointcutAdvisor is the most
commonly used advisor class. For example, it can be used with a MethodInterceptor,
BeforeAdvice or ThrowsAdvice.
It is possible to mix advisor and advice types in Spring in the same AOP proxy. For
example, you could use a interception around advice, throws advice and before advice in
one proxy configuration: Spring will automatically create the necessary interceptor chain.
10.5 Using the ProxyFactoryBean to create AOP proxies

If you're using the Spring IoC container (an ApplicationContext or BeanFactory) for your
business objects - and you should be! - you will want to use one of Spring's AOP
FactoryBeans. (Remember that a factory bean introduces a layer of indirection, enabling it
to create objects of a different type.)
Note
The Spring 2.0 AOP support also uses factory beans under the covers.
The basic way to create an AOP proxy in Spring is to use the

org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean. This gives complete control over
the pointcuts and advice that will apply, and their ordering. However, there are simpler
options that are preferable if you don't need such control.
10.5.1 Basics
The ProxyFactoryBean, like other Spring FactoryBean implementations, introduces
a level of indirection. If you define a ProxyFactoryBean with name foo, what objects
referencing foo see is not the ProxyFactoryBean instance itself, but an object created
by the ProxyFactoryBean's implementation of the getObject() method. This
method will create an AOP proxy wrapping a target object.
One of the most important benefits of using a ProxyFactoryBean or another IoC-aware
class to create AOP proxies, is that it means that advices and pointcuts can also be
managed by IoC. This is a powerful feature, enabling certain approaches that are hard to
achieve with other AOP frameworks. For example, an advice may itself reference
application objects (besides the target, which should be available in any AOP framework),
benefiting from all the pluggability provided by Dependency Injection.
10.5.2 JavaBean properties

In common with most FactoryBean implementations provided with Spring, the
ProxyFactoryBean class is itself a JavaBean. Its properties are used to:
Specify the target you want to proxy.
Specify whether to use CGLIB (see below and also Section 10.5.3, JDK- and CGLIBbased proxies).
Some key properties are inherited from
org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyConfig (the superclass for all
AOP proxy factories in Spring). These key properties include:
proxyTargetClass: true if the target class is to be proxied, rather than the target
class' interfaces. If this property value is set to true, then CGLIB proxies will be
created (but see also Section 10.5.3, JDK- and CGLIB-based proxies).
optimize: controls whether or not aggressive optimizations are applied to proxies
created via CGLIB. One should not blithely use this setting unless one fully
understands how the relevant AOP proxy handles optimization. This is currently used
only for CGLIB proxies; it has no effect with JDK dynamic proxies.
frozen: if a proxy configuration is frozen, then changes to the configuration are no
longer allowed. This is useful both as a slight optimization and for those cases when
you don't want callers to be able to manipulate the proxy (via the Advised interface)
after the proxy has been created. The default value of this property is false, so
changes such as adding additional advice are allowed.
exposeProxy: determines whether or not the current proxy should be exposed in a
ThreadLocal so that it can be accessed by the target. If a target needs to obtain the
proxy and the exposeProxy property is set to true, the target can use the
AopContext.currentProxy() method.
Other properties specific to ProxyFactoryBean include:
proxyInterfaces: array of String interface names. If this isn't supplied, a CGLIB
proxy for the target class will be used (but see also Section 10.5.3, JDK- and CGLIBbased proxies).
interceptorNames: String array of Advisor, interceptor or other advice names to
apply. Ordering is significant, on a first come-first served basis. That is to say that the
first interceptor in the list will be the first to be able to intercept the invocation.
The names are bean names in the current factory, including bean names from
ancestor factories. You can't mention bean references here since doing so would
result in the ProxyFactoryBean ignoring the singleton setting of the advice.

You can append an interceptor name with an asterisk (*). This will result in the
application of all advisor beans with names starting with the part before the asterisk to
be applied. An example of using this feature can be found in Section 10.5.6, Using
'global' advisors.
singleton: whether or not the factory should return a single object, no matter how often
the getObject() method is called. Several FactoryBean implementations offer
such a method. The default value is true. If you want to use stateful advice - for
example, for stateful mixins - use prototype advices along with a singleton value of
false.
10.5.3 JDK- and CGLIB-based proxies

This section serves as the definitive documentation on how the ProxyFactoryBean
chooses to create one of either a JDK- and CGLIB-based proxy for a particular target
object (that is to be proxied).
Note
The behavior of the ProxyFactoryBean with regard to creating JDKor CGLIB-based proxies changed between versions 1.2.x and 2.0 of
Spring. The ProxyFactoryBean now exhibits similar semantics with
regard to auto-detecting interfaces as those of the
TransactionProxyFactoryBean class.
If the class of a target object that is to be proxied (hereafter simply referred to as the target
class) doesn't implement any interfaces, then a CGLIB-based proxy will be created. This is
the easiest scenario, because JDK proxies are interface based, and no interfaces means
JDK proxying isn't even possible. One simply plugs in the target bean, and specifies the
list of interceptors via the interceptorNames property. Note that a CGLIB-based proxy
will be created even if the proxyTargetClass property of the ProxyFactoryBean
has been set to false. (Obviously this makes no sense, and is best removed from the
bean definition because it is at best redundant, and at worst confusing.)
If the target class implements one (or more) interfaces, then the type of proxy that is created
depends on the configuration of the ProxyFactoryBean.
If the proxyTargetClass property of the ProxyFactoryBean has been set to true,
then a CGLIB-based proxy will be created. This makes sense, and is in keeping with the
principle of least surprise. Even if the proxyInterfaces property of the
ProxyFactoryBean has been set to one or more fully qualified interface names, the fact
that the proxyTargetClass property is set to true will cause CGLIB-based proxying to
be in effect.
If the proxyInterfaces property of the ProxyFactoryBean has been set to one or
more fully qualified interface names, then a JDK-based proxy will be created. The created
proxy will implement all of the interfaces that were specified in the proxyInterfaces
property; if the target class happens to implement a whole lot more interfaces than those
specified in the proxyInterfaces property, that is all well and good but those
additional interfaces will not be implemented by the returned proxy.
If the proxyInterfaces property of the ProxyFactoryBean has not been set, but the
target class does implement one (or more) interfaces, then the ProxyFactoryBean will
auto-detect the fact that the target class does actually implement at least one interface, and
a JDK-based proxy will be created. The interfaces that are actually proxied will be all of the
interfaces that the target class implements; in effect, this is the same as simply supplying a
list of each and every interface that the target class implements to the proxyInterfaces
property. However, it is significantly less work, and less prone to typos.
10.5.4 Proxying interfaces

Let's look at a simple example of ProxyFactoryBean in action. This example involves:
A target bean that will be proxied. This is the "personTarget" bean definition in the
example below.
An Advisor and an Interceptor used to provide advice.
An AOP proxy bean definition specifying the target object (the personTarget bean) and
the interfaces to proxy, along with the advices to apply.
<bean id="personTarget" class="com.mycompany.PersonImpl">
<property name="name" value="Tony"/>
</bean>
<bean id="myAdvisor" class="com.mycompany.MyAdvisor">
<property name="someProperty" value="Custom string property value"/>
</bean>
<bean id="debugInterceptor" class="org.springframework.aop.interceptor.DebugInterceptor">
</bean>
<bean id="person"
<property name="proxyInterfaces" value="com.mycompany.Person"/>
<property name="target" ref="personTarget"/>
<property name="interceptorNames">
<list>
<value>myAdvisor</value>
<value>debugInterceptor</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
Note that the interceptorNames property takes a list of String: the bean names of the
interceptor or advisors in the current factory. Advisors, interceptors, before, after returning
and throws advice objects can be used. The ordering of advisors is significant.
Note
You might be wondering why the list doesn't hold bean references. The
reason for this is that if the ProxyFactoryBean's singleton property is set
to false, it must be able to return independent proxy instances. If any of
the advisors is itself a prototype, an independent instance would need
to be returned, so it's necessary to be able to obtain an instance of the
prototype from the factory; holding a reference isn't sufficient.
The "person" bean definition above can be used in place of a Person implementation, as
follows:
Person person = (Person) factory.getBean("person");
Other beans in the same IoC context can express a strongly typed dependency on it, as
with an ordinary Java object:
<bean id="personUser" class="com.mycompany.PersonUser">
<property name="person"><ref local="person"/></property>
</bean>
The PersonUser class in this example would expose a property of type Person. As far as
it's concerned, the AOP proxy can be used transparently in place of a "real" person
implementation. However, its class would be a dynamic proxy class. It would be possible
to cast it to the Advised interface (discussed below).
It's possible to conceal the distinction between target and proxy using an anonymous inner
bean, as follows. Only the ProxyFactoryBean definition is different; the advice is
included only for completeness:
<property name="someProperty" value="Custom string property value"/>
</bean>
<bean id="debugInterceptor" class="org.springframework.aop.interceptor.DebugInterceptor"/>

<bean id="person" class="org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="proxyInterfaces" value="com.mycompany.Person"/>

<bean class="com.mycompany.PersonImpl">
<property name="name" value="Tony"/>
</bean>
</property>
<list>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
This has the advantage that there's only one object of type Person: useful if we want to
prevent users of the application context from obtaining a reference to the un-advised
object, or need to avoid any ambiguity with Spring IoC autowiring. There's also arguably
an advantage in that the ProxyFactoryBean definition is self-contained. However, there are
times when being able to obtain the un-advised target from the factory might actually be an
advantage: for example, in certain test scenarios.
10.5.5 Proxying classes

What if you need to proxy a class, rather than one or more interfaces?
Imagine that in our example above, there was no Person interface: we needed to advise a
class called Person that didn't implement any business interface. In this case, you can
configure Spring to use CGLIB proxying, rather than dynamic proxies. Simply set the
proxyTargetClass property on the ProxyFactoryBean above to true. While it's best to
program to interfaces, rather than classes, the ability to advise classes that don't implement
interfaces can be useful when working with legacy code. (In general, Spring isn't
prescriptive. While it makes it easy to apply good practices, it avoids forcing a particular
approach.)
If you want to, you can force the use of CGLIB in any case, even if you do have interfaces.
CGLIB proxying works by generating a subclass of the target class at runtime. Spring
configures this generated subclass to delegate method calls to the original target: the
subclass is used to implement the Decorator pattern, weaving in the advice.
CGLIB proxying should generally be transparent to users. However, there are some issues
to consider:
Final methods can't be advised, as they can't be overridden.
There is no need to add CGLIB to your classpath. As of Spring 3.2, CGLIB is
repackaged and included in the spring-core JAR. In other words, CGLIB-based AOP
will work "out of the box" just as do JDK dynamic proxies.
There's little performance difference between CGLIB proxying and dynamic proxies. As of
Spring 1.0, dynamic proxies are slightly faster. However, this may change in the future.
Performance should not be a decisive consideration in this case.
10.5.6 Using 'global' advisors

By appending an asterisk to an interceptor name, all advisors with bean names matching
the part before the asterisk, will be added to the advisor chain. This can come in handy if
you need to add a standard set of 'global' advisors:
<bean id="proxy" class="org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="target" ref="service"/>
<list>
<value>global*</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="global_debug" class="org.springframework.aop.interceptor.DebugInterceptor"/>
<bean id="global_performance" class="org.springframework.aop.interceptor.PerformanceMonitorInterceptor"/>
10.6 Concise proxy definitions

Especially when defining transactional proxies, you may end up with many similar proxy
definitions. The use of parent and child bean definitions, along with inner bean definitions,
can result in much cleaner and more concise proxy definitions.
First a parent, template, bean definition is created for the proxy:
<bean id="txProxyTemplate" abstract="true"
class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="transactionManager" ref="transactionManager"/>
<property name="transactionAttributes">
<props>
<prop key="*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
This will never be instantiated itself, so may actually be incomplete. Then each proxy
which needs to be created is just a child bean definition, which wraps the target of the
proxy as an inner bean definition, since the target will never be used on its own anyway.
<bean id="myService" parent="txProxyTemplate">
<bean class="org.springframework.samples.MyServiceImpl">
</bean>
</property>
</bean>
It is of course possible to override properties from the parent template, such as in this case,
the transaction propagation settings:
<bean id="mySpecialService" parent="txProxyTemplate">
<bean class="org.springframework.samples.MySpecialServiceImpl">
</bean>
</property>
<props>
<prop key="get*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED,readOnly</prop>
<prop key="find*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED,readOnly</prop>
<prop key="load*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED,readOnly</prop>
<prop key="store*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
Note that in the example above, we have explicitly marked the parent bean definition as
abstract by using the abstract attribute, as described previously, so that it may not actually
ever be instantiated. Application contexts (but not simple bean factories) will by default preinstantiate all singletons. It is therefore important (at least for singleton beans) that if you
have a (parent) bean definition which you intend to use only as a template, and this
definition specifies a class, you must make sure to set the abstract attribute to true,
otherwise the application context will actually try to pre-instantiate it.
10.7 Creating AOP proxies programmatically with the

ProxyFactory
It's easy to create AOP proxies programmatically using Spring. This enables you to use
Spring AOP without dependency on Spring IoC.
The following listing shows creation of a proxy for a target object, with one interceptor and
one advisor. The interfaces implemented by the target object will automatically be proxied:
ProxyFactory factory = new ProxyFactory(myBusinessInterfaceImpl);
factory.addAdvice(myMethodInterceptor);
factory.addAdvisor(myAdvisor);
MyBusinessInterface tb = (MyBusinessInterface) factory.getProxy();
The first step is to construct an object of type

org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactory. You can create this with
a target object, as in the above example, or specify the interfaces to be proxied in an
alternate constructor.
You can add advices (with interceptors as a specialized kind of advice) and/or advisors,
and manipulate them for the life of the ProxyFactory. If you add an
IntroductionInterceptionAroundAdvisor, you can cause the proxy to implement additional
interfaces.
There are also convenience methods on ProxyFactory (inherited from AdvisedSupport)
which allow you to add other advice types such as before and throws advice.
AdvisedSupport is the superclass of both ProxyFactory and ProxyFactoryBean.
Tip
Integrating AOP proxy creation with the IoC framework is best practice
in most applications. We recommend that you externalize configuration
from Java code with AOP, as in general.
10.8 Manipulating advised objects

However you create AOP proxies, you can manipulate them using the
org.springframework.aop.framework.Advised interface. Any AOP proxy can
be cast to this interface, whichever other interfaces it implements. This interface includes
the following methods:
Advisor[] getAdvisors();
void addAdvice(Advice advice) throws AopConfigException;
void addAdvice(int pos, Advice advice)
throws AopConfigException;
void addAdvisor(Advisor advisor) throws AopConfigException;
void addAdvisor(int pos, Advisor advisor) throws AopConfigException;
int indexOf(Advisor advisor);
boolean removeAdvisor(Advisor advisor) throws AopConfigException;
void removeAdvisor(int index) throws AopConfigException;
boolean replaceAdvisor(Advisor a, Advisor b) throws AopConfigException;
boolean isFrozen();
The getAdvisors() method will return an Advisor for every advisor, interceptor or other
advice type that has been added to the factory. If you added an Advisor, the returned
advisor at this index will be the object that you added. If you added an interceptor or other
advice type, Spring will have wrapped this in an advisor with a pointcut that always returns
true. Thus if you added a MethodInterceptor, the advisor returned for this index will
be an DefaultPointcutAdvisor returning your MethodInterceptor and a
pointcut that matches all classes and methods.
The addAdvisor() methods can be used to add any Advisor. Usually the advisor
holding pointcut and advice will be the generic DefaultPointcutAdvisor, which can
be used with any advice or pointcut (but not for introductions).
By default, it's possible to add or remove advisors or interceptors even once a proxy has
been created. The only restriction is that it's impossible to add or remove an introduction
advisor, as existing proxies from the factory will not show the interface change. (You can
obtain a new proxy from the factory to avoid this problem.)
A simple example of casting an AOP proxy to the Advised interface and examining and
manipulating its advice:

Advised advised = (Advised) myObject;
Advisor[] advisors = advised.getAdvisors();
int oldAdvisorCount = advisors.length;
System.out.println(oldAdvisorCount + " advisors");
// Add an advice like an interceptor without a pointcut
// Will match all proxied methods
// Can use for interceptors, before, after returning or throws advice
advised.addAdvice(new DebugInterceptor());
// Add selective advice using a pointcut
advised.addAdvisor(new DefaultPointcutAdvisor(mySpecialPointcut, myAdvice));
assertEquals("Added two advisors",
oldAdvisorCount + 2, advised.getAdvisors().length);
Note
It's questionable whether it's advisable (no pun intended) to modify
advice on a business object in production, although there are no doubt
legitimate usage cases. However, it can be very useful in development:
for example, in tests. I have sometimes found it very useful to be able to
add test code in the form of an interceptor or other advice, getting inside
a method invocation I want to test. (For example, the advice can get
inside a transaction created for that method: for example, to run SQL to
check that a database was correctly updated, before marking the
transaction for roll back.)
Depending on how you created the proxy, you can usually set a frozen flag, in which
case the Advised isFrozen() method will return true, and any attempts to modify
advice through addition or removal will result in an AopConfigException. The ability to
freeze the state of an advised object is useful in some cases, for example, to prevent
calling code removing a security interceptor. It may also be used in Spring 1.1 to allow
aggressive optimization if runtime advice modification is known not to be required.
10.9 Using the "auto-proxy" facility

So far we've considered explicit creation of AOP proxies using a ProxyFactoryBean or
similar factory bean.
Spring also allows us to use "auto-proxy" bean definitions, which can automatically proxy
selected bean definitions. This is built on Spring "bean post processor" infrastructure,
which enables modification of any bean definition as the container loads.
In this model, you set up some special bean definitions in your XML bean definition file to
configure the auto proxy infrastructure. This allows you just to declare the targets eligible
for auto-proxying: you don't need to use ProxyFactoryBean.
There are two ways to do this:
Using an auto-proxy creator that refers to specific beans in the current context.
A special case of auto-proxy creation that deserves to be considered separately; autoproxy creation driven by source-level metadata attributes.
10.9.1 Autoproxy bean definitions

The org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy package provides the
following standard auto-proxy creators.
The BeanNameAutoProxyCreator class is a BeanPostProcessor that
automatically creates AOP proxies for beans with names matching literal values or
wildcards.
<bean class="org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy.BeanNameAutoProxyCreator">
<property name="beanNames" value="jdk*,onlyJdk"/>
<list>
<value>myInterceptor</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
As with ProxyFactoryBean, there is an interceptorNames property rather than a

list of interceptors, to allow correct behavior for prototype advisors. Named "interceptors"
can be advisors or any advice type.
As with auto proxying in general, the main point of using BeanNameAutoProxyCreator
is to apply the same configuration consistently to multiple objects, with minimal volume of
configuration. It is a popular choice for applying declarative transactions to multiple
objects.
Bean definitions whose names match, such as "jdkMyBean" and "onlyJdk" in the above
example, are plain old bean definitions with the target class. An AOP proxy will be created
automatically by the BeanNameAutoProxyCreator. The same advice will be applied to
all matching beans. Note that if advisors are used (rather than the interceptor in the above
example), the pointcuts may apply differently to different beans.
A more general and extremely powerful auto proxy creator is
DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator. This will automagically apply eligible advisors
in the current context, without the need to include specific bean names in the auto-proxy
advisor's bean definition. It offers the same merit of consistent configuration and avoidance
of duplication as BeanNameAutoProxyCreator.
Using this mechanism involves:
Specifying a DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator bean definition.
Specifying any number of Advisors in the same or related contexts. Note that these
must be Advisors, not just interceptors or other advices. This is necessary because
there must be a pointcut to evaluate, to check the eligibility of each advice to candidate
bean definitions.
The DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator will automatically evaluate the pointcut
contained in each advisor, to see what (if any) advice it should apply to each business
object (such as "businessObject1" and "businessObject2" in the example).
This means that any number of advisors can be applied automatically to each business
object. If no pointcut in any of the advisors matches any method in a business object, the
object will not be proxied. As bean definitions are added for new business objects, they
will automatically be proxied if necessary.
Autoproxying in general has the advantage of making it impossible for callers or
dependencies to obtain an un-advised object. Calling getBean("businessObject1") on this
ApplicationContext will return an AOP proxy, not the target business object. (The "inner
bean" idiom shown earlier also offers this benefit.)
<bean class="org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy.DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator"/>
<bean class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor">
<property name="transactionInterceptor" ref="transactionInterceptor"/>
</bean>
<bean id="customAdvisor" class="com.mycompany.MyAdvisor"/>
<bean id="businessObject1" class="com.mycompany.BusinessObject1">

</bean>
<bean id="businessObject2" class="com.mycompany.BusinessObject2"/>
The DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator is very useful if you want to apply the same
advice consistently to many business objects. Once the infrastructure definitions are in
place, you can simply add new business objects without including specific proxy
configuration. You can also drop in additional aspects very easily - for example, tracing or
performance monitoring aspects - with minimal change to configuration.
The DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator offers support for filtering (using a naming
convention so that only certain advisors are evaluated, allowing use of multiple, differently
configured, AdvisorAutoProxyCreators in the same factory) and ordering. Advisors can
implement the org.springframework.core.Ordered interface to ensure correct
ordering if this is an issue. The TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor used in the above
example has a configurable order value; the default setting is unordered.
This is the superclass of DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator. You can create your own autoproxy creators by subclassing this class, in the unlikely event that advisor definitions offer
insufficient customization to the behavior of the framework
DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator.
10.9.2 Using metadata-driven auto-proxying

A particularly important type of auto-proxying is driven by metadata. This produces a
similar programming model to .NET ServicedComponents. Instead of defining
metadata in XML descriptors, configuration for transaction management and other
enterprise services is held in source-level attributes.
In this case, you use the DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator, in combination with
Advisors that understand metadata attributes. The metadata specifics are held in the
pointcut part of the candidate advisors, rather than in the auto-proxy creation class itself.
This is really a special case of the DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator, but
deserves consideration on its own. (The metadata-aware code is in the pointcuts
contained in the advisors, not the AOP framework itself.)
The /attributes directory of the JPetStore sample application shows the use of
attribute-driven auto-proxying. In this case, there's no need to use the
TransactionProxyFactoryBean. Simply defining transactional attributes on
business objects is sufficient, because of the use of metadata-aware pointcuts. The bean
definitions include the following code, in /WEB-INF/declarativeServices.xml.
Note that this is generic, and can be used outside the JPetStore:
</bean>
<bean id="transactionInterceptor"
class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor">
<property name="transactionAttributeSource">
<bean class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.AttributesTransactionAttributeSource">
<property name="attributes" ref="attributes"/>
</bean>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="attributes" class="org.springframework.metadata.commons.CommonsAttributes"/>
The DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator bean definition (the name is not significant,

hence it can even be omitted) will pick up all eligible pointcuts in the current application
context. In this case, the "transactionAdvisor" bean definition, of type
TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor, will apply to classes or methods carrying a
transaction attribute. The TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor depends on a
TransactionInterceptor, via constructor dependency. The example resolves this via
autowiring. The AttributesTransactionAttributeSource depends on an
implementation of the org.springframework.metadata.Attributes interface. In

this fragment, the "attributes" bean satisfies this, using the Jakarta Commons Attributes API
to obtain attribute information. (The application code must have been compiled using the
Commons Attributes compilation task.)
The /annotation directory of the JPetStore sample application contains an analogous
example for auto-proxying driven by JDK 1.5+ annotations. The following configuration
enables automatic detection of Spring's Transactional annotation, leading to implicit
proxies for beans containing that annotation:
</bean>
<bean class="org.springframework.transaction.annotation.AnnotationTransactionAttributeSource"/>
</property>
</bean>
The TransactionInterceptor defined here depends on a

PlatformTransactionManager definition, which is not included in this generic file
(although it could be) because it will be specific to the application's transaction
requirements (typically JTA, as in this example, or Hibernate, JDO or JDBC):
<bean id="transactionManager"
class="org.springframework.transaction.jta.JtaTransactionManager"/>
Tip
If you require only declarative transaction management, using these
generic XML definitions will result in Spring automatically proxying all
classes or methods with transaction attributes. You won't need to work
directly with AOP, and the programming model is similar to that of .NET
ServicedComponents.
This mechanism is extensible. It's possible to do auto-proxying based on custom attributes.
You need to:
Define your custom attribute.
Specify an Advisor with the necessary advice, including a pointcut that is triggered by
the presence of the custom attribute on a class or method. You may be able to use an
existing advice, merely implementing a static pointcut that picks up the custom
attribute.
It's possible for such advisors to be unique to each advised class (for example, mixins):
they simply need to be defined as prototype, rather than singleton, bean definitions. For
example, the LockMixin introduction interceptor from the Spring test suite, shown above,
could be used in conjunction with an attribute-driven pointcut to target a mixin, as shown
here. We use the generic DefaultPointcutAdvisor, configured using JavaBean
properties:
<bean id="lockMixin" class="org.springframework.aop.LockMixin"
scope="prototype"/>
<bean id="lockableAdvisor" class="org.springframework.aop.support.DefaultPointcutAdvisor"
scope="prototype">
<property name="pointcut" ref="myAttributeAwarePointcut"/>
<property name="advice" ref="lockMixin"/>
</bean>
<bean id="anyBean" class="anyclass" ...
If the attribute aware pointcut matches any methods in the anyBean or other bean
definitions, the mixin will be applied. Note that both lockMixin and lockableAdvisor
definitions are prototypes. The myAttributeAwarePointcut pointcut can be a

singleton definition, as it doesn't hold state for individual advised objects.
10.10 Using TargetSources

Spring offers the concept of a TargetSource, expressed in the
org.springframework.aop.TargetSource interface. This interface is responsible
for returning the "target object" implementing the join point. The TargetSource
implementation is asked for a target instance each time the AOP proxy handles a method
invocation.
Developers using Spring AOP don't normally need to work directly with TargetSources, but
this provides a powerful means of supporting pooling, hot swappable and other
sophisticated targets. For example, a pooling TargetSource can return a different target
instance for each invocation, using a pool to manage instances.
If you do not specify a TargetSource, a default implementation is used that wraps a local
object. The same target is returned for each invocation (as you would expect).
Let's look at the standard target sources provided with Spring, and how you can use them.
Tip
When using a custom target source, your target will usually need to be
a prototype rather than a singleton bean definition. This allows Spring
to create a new target instance when required.
10.10.1 Hot swappable target sources

The org.springframework.aop.target.HotSwappableTargetSource exists
to allow the target of an AOP proxy to be switched while allowing callers to keep their
references to it.
Changing the target source's target takes effect immediately. The
HotSwappableTargetSource is threadsafe.
You can change the target via the swap() method on HotSwappableTargetSource as
follows:
HotSwappableTargetSource swapper =
(HotSwappableTargetSource) beanFactory.getBean("swapper");
Object oldTarget = swapper.swap(newTarget);
The XML definitions required look as follows:

<bean id="initialTarget" class="mycompany.OldTarget"/>
<bean id="swapper" class="org.springframework.aop.target.HotSwappableTargetSource">
<constructor-arg ref="initialTarget"/>
</bean>
<bean id="swappable" class="org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="targetSource" ref="swapper"/>
</bean>
The above swap() call changes the target of the swappable bean. Clients who hold a
reference to that bean will be unaware of the change, but will immediately start hitting the
new target.
Although this example doesn't add any advice - and it's not necessary to add advice to use
a TargetSource - of course any TargetSource can be used in conjunction with
arbitrary advice.
10.10.2 Pooling target sources

Using a pooling target source provides a similar programming model to stateless session
EJBs, in which a pool of identical instances is maintained, with method invocations going
to free objects in the pool.
A crucial difference between Spring pooling and SLSB pooling is that Spring pooling can
be applied to any POJO. As with Spring in general, this service can be applied in a noninvasive way.
Spring provides out-of-the-box support for Jakarta Commons Pool 1.3, which provides a
fairly efficient pooling implementation. You'll need the commons-pool Jar on your
application's classpath to use this feature. It's also possible to subclass
org.springframework.aop.target.AbstractPoolingTargetSource to
support any other pooling API.
Sample configuration is shown below:
<bean id="businessObjectTarget" class="com.mycompany.MyBusinessObject"
scope="prototype">
... properties omitted
</bean>
<bean id="poolTargetSource" class="org.springframework.aop.target.CommonsPoolTargetSource">
<property name="targetBeanName" value="businessObjectTarget"/>
<property name="maxSize" value="25"/>
</bean>
<bean id="businessObject" class="org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="targetSource" ref="poolTargetSource"/>
<property name="interceptorNames" value="myInterceptor"/>
</bean>
Note that the target object - "businessObjectTarget" in the example - must be a prototype.
This allows the PoolingTargetSource implementation to create new instances of the
target to grow the pool as necessary. See the javadoc for
AbstractPoolingTargetSource and the concrete subclass you wish to use for
information about its properties: "maxSize" is the most basic, and always guaranteed to be
present.
In this case, "myInterceptor" is the name of an interceptor that would need to be defined in
the same IoC context. However, it isn't necessary to specify interceptors to use pooling. If
you want only pooling, and no other advice, don't set the interceptorNames property at all.
It's possible to configure Spring so as to be able to cast any pooled object to the
org.springframework.aop.target.PoolingConfig interface, which exposes
information about the configuration and current size of the pool through an introduction.
You'll need to define an advisor like this:
<bean id="poolConfigAdvisor" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean">
<property name="targetObject" ref="poolTargetSource"/>
<property name="targetMethod" value="getPoolingConfigMixin"/>
</bean>
This advisor is obtained by calling a convenience method on the

AbstractPoolingTargetSource class, hence the use of
MethodInvokingFactoryBean. This advisor's name ("poolConfigAdvisor" here) must be in
the list of interceptors names in the ProxyFactoryBean exposing the pooled object.
The cast will look as follows:
PoolingConfig conf = (PoolingConfig) beanFactory.getBean("businessObject");
System.out.println("Max pool size is " + conf.getMaxSize());
Note
Pooling stateless service objects is not usually necessary. We don't
believe it should be the default choice, as most stateless objects are
naturally thread safe, and instance pooling is problematic if resources
are cached.
Simpler pooling is available using auto-proxying. It's possible to set the TargetSources
used by any auto-proxy creator.
10.10.3 Prototype target sources

Setting up a "prototype" target source is similar to a pooling TargetSource. In this case, a
new instance of the target will be created on every method invocation. Although the cost of
creating a new object isn't high in a modern JVM, the cost of wiring up the new object
(satisfying its IoC dependencies) may be more expensive. Thus you shouldn't use this
approach without very good reason.
To do this, you could modify the poolTargetSource definition shown above as follows.
(I've also changed the name, for clarity.)
<bean id="prototypeTargetSource" class="org.springframework.aop.target.PrototypeTargetSource">
<property name="targetBeanName" ref="businessObjectTarget"/>
</bean>
There's only one property: the name of the target bean. Inheritance is used in the
TargetSource implementations to ensure consistent naming. As with the pooling target
source, the target bean must be a prototype bean definition.
10.10.4 ThreadLocal target sources

ThreadLocal target sources are useful if you need an object to be created for each
incoming request (per thread that is). The concept of a ThreadLocal provide a JDK-wide
facility to transparently store resource alongside a thread. Setting up a
ThreadLocalTargetSource is pretty much the same as was explained for the other
types of target source:
<bean id="threadlocalTargetSource" class="org.springframework.aop.target.ThreadLocalTargetSource">
</bean>
Note
ThreadLocals come with serious issues (potentially resulting in
memory leaks) when incorrectly using them in a multi-threaded and
multi-classloader environments. One should always consider wrapping
a threadlocal in some other class and never directly use the
ThreadLocal itself (except of course in the wrapper class). Also, one
should always remember to correctly set and unset (where the latter
simply involved a call to ThreadLocal.set(null)) the resource
local to the thread. Unsetting should be done in any case since not
unsetting it might result in problematic behavior. Spring's ThreadLocal
support does this for you and should always be considered in favor of
using ThreadLocals without other proper handling code.
10.11 Defining new Advice types

Spring AOP is designed to be extensible. While the interception implementation strategy is
presently used internally, it is possible to support arbitrary advice types in addition to the
out-of-the-box interception around advice, before, throws advice and after returning advice.
The org.springframework.aop.framework.adapter package is an SPI package
allowing support for new custom advice types to be added without changing the core
framework. The only constraint on a custom Advice type is that it must implement the
org.aopalliance.aop.Advice tag interface.
Please refer to the org.springframework.aop.framework.adapter package's
Javadocs for further information.
10.12 Further resources

Please refer to the Spring sample applications for further examples of Spring AOP:
The JPetStore's default configuration illustrates the use of the
TransactionProxyFactoryBean for declarative transaction management.
The /attributes directory of the JPetStore illustrates the use of attribute-driven
declarative transaction management.
11. Testing
11.1 Introduction to Spring Testing
Testing is an integral part of enterprise software development. This chapter focuses on the
value-add of the IoC principle to unit testing and on the benefits of the Spring Framework's
support for integration testing. (A thorough treatment of testing in the enterprise is beyond
the scope of this reference manual.)
11.2 Unit Testing

Dependency Injection should make your code less dependent on the container than it
would be with traditional Java EE development. The POJOs that make up your application
should be testable in JUnit or TestNG tests, with objects simply instantiated using the new
operator, without Spring or any other container. You can use mock objects (in conjunction
with other valuable testing techniques) to test your code in isolation. If you follow the
architecture recommendations for Spring, the resulting clean layering and
componentization of your codebase will facilitate easier unit testing. For example, you can
test service layer objects by stubbing or mocking DAO or Repository interfaces, without
needing to access persistent data while running unit tests.
True unit tests typically run extremely quickly, as there is no runtime infrastructure to set up.
Emphasizing true unit tests as part of your development methodology will boost your
productivity. You may not need this section of the testing chapter to help you write effective
unit tests for your IoC-based applications. For certain unit testing scenarios, however, the
Spring Framework provides the following mock objects and testing support classes.
11.2.1 Mock Objects

Environment
The org.springframework.mock.env package contains mock implementations of
the Environment and PropertySource abstractions introduced in Spring 3.1 (see
Section 3.3, Environment Abstraction and Section 3.4, PropertySource Abstraction).
MockEnvironment and MockPropertySource are useful for developing out-ofcontainer tests for code that depends on environment-specific properties.
JNDI
The org.springframework.mock.jndi package contains an implementation of the
JNDI SPI, which you can use to set up a simple JNDI environment for test suites or standalone applications. If, for example, JDBC DataSources get bound to the same JNDI
names in test code as within a Java EE container, you can reuse both application code
and configuration in testing scenarios without modification.
Servlet API
The org.springframework.mock.web package contains a comprehensive set of
Servlet API mock objects, targeted at usage with Spring's Web MVC framework, which are
useful for testing web contexts and controllers. These mock objects are generally more
convenient to use than dynamic mock objects such as EasyMock or existing Servlet API
mock objects such as MockObjects.
Portlet API
The org.springframework.mock.web.portlet package contains a set of Portlet
API mock objects, targeted at usage with Spring's Portlet MVC framework.
11.2.2 Unit Testing support Classes

General utilities
The org.springframework.test.util package contains
ReflectionTestUtils, which is a collection of reflection-based utility methods.
Developers use these methods in unit and integration testing scenarios in which they need
to set a non-public field or invoke a non-public setter method when testing application
code involving, for example:
ORM frameworks such as JPA and Hibernate that condone private or protected
field access as opposed to public setter methods for properties in a domain entity.
Spring's support for annotations such as @Autowired, @Inject, and @Resource,
which provides dependency injection for private or protected fields, setter
methods, and configuration methods.
Spring MVC
The org.springframework.test.web package contains ModelAndViewAssert,
which you can use in combination with JUnit, TestNG, or any other testing framework for
unit tests dealing with Spring MVC ModelAndView objects.
Unit testing Spring MVC Controllers
To test your Spring MVC Controllers, use
ModelAndViewAssert combined with
MockHttpServletRequest, MockHttpSession, and so on from
the org.springframework.mock.web package.
11.3 Integration Testing

11.3.1 Overview
It is important to be able to perform some integration testing without requiring deployment
to your application server or connecting to other enterprise infrastructure. This will enable
you to test things such as:
The correct wiring of your Spring IoC container contexts.
Data access using JDBC or an ORM tool. This would include such things as the
correctness of SQL statements, Hibernate queries, JPA entity mappings, etc.
The Spring Framework provides first-class support for integration testing in the springtest module. The name of the actual JAR file might include the release version and might
also be in the long org.springframework.test form, depending on where you get it
from (see the section on Dependency Management for an explanation). This library
includes the org.springframework.test package, which contains valuable classes
for integration testing with a Spring container. This testing does not rely on an application
server or other deployment environment. Such tests are slower to run than unit tests but
much faster than the equivalent Cactus tests or remote tests that rely on deployment to an
application server.
In Spring 2.5 and later, unit and integration testing support is provided in the form of the
annotation-driven Spring TestContext Framework. The TestContext framework is agnostic
of the actual testing framework in use, thus allowing instrumentation of tests in various
environments including JUnit, TestNG, and so on.

JUnit 3.8 support is deprecated
As of Spring 3.0, the legacy JUnit 3.8 base class hierarchy (i.e.,
AbstractDependencyInjectionSpringContextTests,
AbstractTransactionalDataSourceSpringContextTests,
etc.) is officially deprecated and will be removed in a later release. Any
test classes based on this code should be migrated to the Spring
TestContext Framework.
As of Spring 3.1, the JUnit 3.8 base classes in the Spring TestContext
Framework (i.e., AbstractJUnit38SpringContextTests and
AbstractTransactionalJUnit38SpringContextTests) and
@ExpectedException have been officially deprecated and will be
removed in a later release. Any test classes based on this code should
be migrated to the JUnit 4 or TestNG support provided by the Spring
TestContext Framework. Similarly, any test methods annotated with
@ExpectedException should be modified to use the built-in support
for expected exceptions in JUnit and TestNG.
11.3.2 Goals of Integration Testing

Spring's integration testing support has the following primary goals:
To manage Spring IoC container caching between test execution.
To provide Dependency Injection of test fixture instances.
To provide transaction management appropriate to integration testing.
To supply Spring-specific base classes that assist developers in writing integration
tests.
The next few sections describe each goal and provide links to implementation and
configuration details.
Context management and caching

The Spring TestContext Framework provides consistent loading of Spring
ApplicationContexts and WebApplicationContexts as well as caching of those
contexts. Support for the caching of loaded contexts is important, because startup time can
become an issue not because of the overhead of Spring itself, but because the objects
instantiated by the Spring container take time to instantiate. For example, a project with 50
to 100 Hibernate mapping files might take 10 to 20 seconds to load the mapping files, and
incurring that cost before running every test in every test fixture leads to slower overall test
runs that reduce developer productivity.
Test classes typically declare either an array of resource locations for XML configuration
metadata often in the classpath or an array of annotated classes that is used to
configure the application. These locations or classes are the same as or similar to those
specified in web.xml or other deployment configuration files.
By default, once loaded, the configured ApplicationContext is reused for each test.
Thus the setup cost is incurred only once per test suite, and subsequent test execution is
much faster. In this context, the term test suite means all tests run in the same JVM for
example, all tests run from an Ant, Maven, or Gradle build for a given project or module. In
the unlikely case that a test corrupts the application context and requires reloading for
example, by modifying a bean definition or the state of an application object the
TestContext framework can be configured to reload the configuration and rebuild the
application context before executing the next test.
See the section called Context management and the section called Context caching
with the TestContext framework.
Dependency Injection of test fixtures
When the TestContext framework loads your application context, it can optionally configure
instances of your test classes via Dependency Injection. This provides a convenient
mechanism for setting up test fixtures using preconfigured beans from your application
context. A strong benefit here is that you can reuse application contexts across various
testing scenarios (e.g., for configuring Spring-managed object graphs, transactional
proxies, DataSources, etc.), thus avoiding the need to duplicate complex test fixture
setup for individual test cases.
As an example, consider the scenario where we have a class,
HibernateTitleRepository, that implements data access logic for a Title domain
entity. We want to write integration tests that test the following areas:
The Spring configuration: basically, is everything related to the configuration of the
HibernateTitleRepository bean correct and present?
The Hibernate mapping file configuration: is everything mapped correctly, and are the
correct lazy-loading settings in place?
The logic of the HibernateTitleRepository: does the configured instance of
this class perform as anticipated?
See dependency injection of test fixtures with the TestContext framework.
One common issue in tests that access a real database is their effect on the state of the
persistence store. Even when you're using a development database, changes to the state
may affect future tests. Also, many operations such as inserting or modifying persistent
data cannot be performed (or verified) outside a transaction.
The TestContext framework addresses this issue. By default, the framework will create and
roll back a transaction for each test. You simply write code that can assume the existence
of a transaction. If you call transactionally proxied objects in your tests, they will behave
correctly, according to their configured transactional semantics. In addition, if a test method
deletes the contents of selected tables while running within the transaction managed for
the test, the transaction will roll back by default, and the database will return to its state
prior to execution of the test. Transactional support is provided to a test via a
PlatformTransactionManager bean defined in the test's application context.
If you want a transaction to commit unusual, but occasionally useful when you want a
particular test to populate or modify the database the TestContext framework can be
instructed to cause the transaction to commit instead of roll back via the
@TransactionConfiguration and @Rollback annotations.
See transaction management with the TestContext framework.
Support classes for integration testing

The Spring TestContext Framework provides several abstract support classes that
simplify the writing of integration tests. These base test classes provide well-defined hooks
into the testing framework as well as convenient instance variables and methods, which
enable you to access:
The ApplicationContext, for performing explicit bean lookups or testing the state
of the context as a whole.
A JdbcTemplate, for executing SQL statements to query the database. Such queries
can be used to confirm database state both prior to and after execution of databaserelated application code, and Spring ensures that such queries run in the scope of the
same transaction as the application code. When used in conjunction with an ORM
tool, be sure to avoid false positives.
In addition, you may want to create your own custom, application-wide superclass with
instance variables and methods specific to your project.
See support classes for the TestContext framework.
11.3.3 JDBC Testing Support

The org.springframework.test.jdbc package contains JdbcTestUtils, which
is a collection of JDBC related utility functions intended to simplify standard database
testing scenarios. Note that
AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests and
AbstractTransactionalTestNGSpringContextTests provide convenience
methods which delegate to JdbcTestUtils internally.
The spring-jdbc module provides support for configuring and launching an embedded
database which can be used in integration tests that interact with a database. For details,
see Section 14.8, Embedded database support and Section 14.8.8, Testing data access
logic with an embedded database.
11.3.4 Annotations
Spring Testing Annotations
The Spring Framework provides the following set of Spring-specific annotations that you
can use in your unit and integration tests in conjunction with the TestContext framework.
Refer to the respective Javadoc for further information, including default attribute values,
attribute aliases, and so on.
@ContextConfiguration
Defines class-level metadata that is used to determine how to load and configure an
ApplicationContext for integration tests. Specifically,
@ContextConfiguration declares either the application context resource
locations or the annotated classes that will be used to load the context.
Resource locations are typically XML configuration files located in the classpath;
whereas, annotated classes are typically @Configuration classes. However,
resource locations can also refer to files in the file system, and annotated classes can
be component classes, etc.
@ContextConfiguration("/test-config.xml")
public class XmlApplicationContextTests {
// class body...
}
@ContextConfiguration(classes = TestConfig.class)
public class ConfigClassApplicationContextTests {
// class body...
}
As an alternative or in addition to declaring resource locations or annotated classes,

@ContextConfiguration may be used to declare
ApplicationContextInitializer classes.
@ContextConfiguration(initializers = CustomContextIntializer.class)
public class ContextInitializerTests {
// class body...
}
@ContextConfiguration may optionally be used to declare the

ContextLoader strategy as well. Note, however, that you typically do not need to
explicitly configure the loader since the default loader supports either resource
locations or annotated classes as well as initializers.
@ContextConfiguration(locations = "/test-context.xml", loader = CustomContextLoader.class)
public class CustomLoaderXmlApplicationContextTests {
// class body...
}
Note
@ContextConfiguration provides support for inheriting

resource locations or configuration classes as well as context
initializers declared by superclasses by default.
See the section called Context management and the Javadoc for
@ContextConfiguration for further details.
@WebAppConfiguration
A class-level annotation that is used to declare that the ApplicationContext
loaded for an integration test should be a WebApplicationContext. The mere
presence of @WebAppConfiguration on a test class ensures that a
WebApplicationContext will be loaded for the test, using the default value of
"file:src/main/webapp" for the path to the root of the web application (i.e., the
resource base path). The resource base path is used behind the scenes to create a
MockServletContext which serves as the ServletContext for the test's
WebApplicationContext.
public class WebAppTests {
// class body...
}
To override the default, specify a different base resource path via the implicit value
attribute. Both classpath: and file: resource prefixes are supported. If no
resource prefix is supplied the path is assumed to be a file system resource.
@WebAppConfiguration("classpath:test-web-resources")
public class WebAppTests {
// class body...
}
Note that @WebAppConfiguration must be used in conjunction with

@ContextConfiguration, either within a single test class or within a test class
hierarchy. See the Javadoc for @WebAppConfiguration for further details.
@ContextHierarchy
A class-level annotation that is used to define a hierarchy of
ApplicationContexts for integration tests. @ContextHierarchy should be
declared with a list of one or more @ContextConfiguration instances, each of
which defines a level in the context hierarchy. The following examples demonstrate
the use of @ContextHierarchy within a single test class; however,
@ContextHierarchy can also be used within a test class hierarchy.
@ContextHierarchy({
@ContextConfiguration("/parent-config.xml"),
@ContextConfiguration("/child-config.xml")
})
public class ContextHierarchyTests {
// class body...
}
@ContextHierarchy({
@ContextConfiguration(classes = AppConfig.class),
@ContextConfiguration(classes = WebConfig.class)
})
public class WebIntegrationTests {
// class body...
}
If you need to merge or override the configuration for a given level of the context
hierarchy within a test class hierarchy, you must explicitly name that level by supplying
the same value to the name attribute in @ContextConfiguration at each
corresponding level in the class hierarchy. See the section called Context
hierarchies and the Javadoc for @ContextHierarchy for further examples.
@ActiveProfiles
A class-level annotation that is used to declare which bean definition profiles should
be active when loading an ApplicationContext for test classes.

@ActiveProfiles("dev")
public class DeveloperTests {
// class body...
}
@ActiveProfiles({"dev", "integration"})
public class DeveloperIntegrationTests {
// class body...
}
Note
@ActiveProfiles provides support for inheriting active bean
definition profiles declared by superclasses by default.
See the section called Context configuration with environment profiles and the
Javadoc for @ActiveProfiles for examples and further details.
@DirtiesContext
Indicates that the underlying Spring ApplicationContext has been dirtied during
the execution of a test (i.e., modified or corrupted in some manner for example, by
changing the state of a singleton bean) and should be closed, regardless of whether
the test passed. When an application context is marked dirty, it is removed from the
testing framework's cache and closed. As a consequence, the underlying Spring
container will be rebuilt for any subsequent test that requires a context with the same
configuration metadata.
@DirtiesContext can be used as both a class-level and method-level annotation
within the same test class. In such scenarios, the ApplicationContext is marked
as dirty after any such annotated method as well as after the entire class. If the
ClassMode is set to AFTER_EACH_TEST_METHOD, the context is marked dirty after
each test method in the class.
The following examples explain when the context would be dirtied for various
configuration scenarios:
After the current test class, when declared on a class with class mode set to
AFTER_CLASS (i.e., the default class mode).
@DirtiesContext
public class ContextDirtyingTests {
// some tests that result in the Spring container being dirtied
}
After each test method in the current test class, when declared on a class with
class mode set to AFTER_EACH_TEST_METHOD.
@DirtiesContext(classMode = ClassMode.AFTER_EACH_TEST_METHOD)
public class ContextDirtyingTests {
// some tests that result in the Spring container being dirtied
}
After the current test, when declared on a method.

@DirtiesContext
@Test
public void testProcessWhichDirtiesAppCtx() {
// some logic that results in the Spring container being dirtied
}
If @DirtiesContext is used in a test whose context is configured as part of a

context hierarchy via @ContextHierarchy, the hierarchyMode flag can be used
to control how the context cache is cleared. By default an exhaustive algorithm will be
used that clears the context cache including not only the current level but also all other
context hierarchies that share an ancestor context common to the current test; all
ApplicationContexts that reside in a sub-hierarchy of the common ancestor
context will be removed from the context cache and closed. If the exhaustive algorithm
is overkill for a particular use case, the simpler current level algorithm can be specified
instead, as seen below.

@ContextHierarchy({
@ContextConfiguration("/parent-config.xml"),
@ContextConfiguration("/child-config.xml")
})
public class BaseTests {
// class body...
}
public class ExtendedTests extends BaseTests {
@Test
@DirtiesContext(hierarchyMode = HierarchyMode.CURRENT_LEVEL)
public void test() {
// some logic that results in the child context being dirtied
}
}
For further details regarding the EXHAUSTIVE and CURRENT_LEVEL algorithms see
the Javadoc for DirtiesContext.HierarchyMode.
@TestExecutionListeners
Defines class-level metadata for configuring which TestExecutionListeners
should be registered with the TestContextManager. Typically,
@TestExecutionListeners is used in conjunction with
@ContextConfiguration.
@TestExecutionListeners({CustomTestExecutionListener.class, AnotherTestExecutionListener.class})
public class CustomTestExecutionListenerTests {
// class body...
}
@TestExecutionListeners supports inherited listeners by default. See the

Javadoc for an example and further details.
@TransactionConfiguration
Defines class-level metadata for configuring transactional tests. Specifically, the bean
name of the PlatformTransactionManager that should be used to drive
transactions can be explicitly specified if there are multiple beans of type
PlatformTransactionManager in the test's ApplicationContext and if the
bean name of the desired PlatformTransactionManager is not
"transactionManager". In addition, you can change the defaultRollback flag to
false. Typically, @TransactionConfiguration is used in conjunction with
@ContextConfiguration.
@TransactionConfiguration(transactionManager = "txMgr", defaultRollback = false)
public class CustomConfiguredTransactionalTests {
// class body...
}
Note
If the default conventions are sufficient for your test configuration,
you can avoid using @TransactionConfiguration
altogether. In other words, if you have only one transaction manger
or if you have multiple transaction mangers but the transaction
manager for tests is named "transactionManager" or specified via a
TransactionManagementConfigurer and if you want
transactions to roll back automatically, then there is no need to
annotate your test class with @TransactionConfiguration.
@Rollback
Indicates whether the transaction for the annotated test method should be rolled back
after the test method has completed. If true, the transaction is rolled back; otherwise,
the transaction is committed. Use @Rollback to override the default rollback flag
configured at the class level.
@Rollback(false)
@Test
public void testProcessWithoutRollback() {
// ...
}
@BeforeTransaction
Indicates that the annotated public void method should be executed before a
transaction is started for test methods configured to run within a transaction via the
@Transactional annotation.
@BeforeTransaction
public void beforeTransaction() {
// logic to be executed before a transaction is started
}
@AfterTransaction
Indicates that the annotated public void method should be executed after a
transaction has ended for test methods configured to run within a transaction via the
@Transactional annotation.
@AfterTransaction
public void afterTransaction() {
// logic to be executed after a transaction has ended
}
@NotTransactional
The presence of this annotation indicates that the annotated test method must not
execute in a transactional context.
@NotTransactional
@Test
public void testProcessWithoutTransaction() {
// ...
}
@NotTransactional is deprecated
As of Spring 3.0, @NotTransactional is deprecated in favor of
moving the non-transactional test method to a separate (nontransactional) test class or to a @BeforeTransaction or
@AfterTransaction method. As an alternative to annotating an
entire class with @Transactional, consider annotating
individual methods with @Transactional; doing so allows a mix
of transactional and non-transactional methods in the same test
class without the need for using @NotTransactional.
Standard Annotation Support

The following annotations are supported with standard semantics for all configurations of
the Spring TestContext Framework. Note that these annotations are not specific to tests
and can be used anywhere in the Spring Framework.
@Autowired
@Qualifier
@Resource (javax.annotation) if JSR-250 is present
@Inject (javax.inject) if JSR-330 is present
@Named (javax.inject) if JSR-330 is present
@PersistenceContext (javax.persistence) if JPA is present
@PersistenceUnit (javax.persistence) if JPA is present
@Required
@Transactional
JSR-250 Lifecycle Annotations
In the Spring TestContext Framework @PostConstruct and
@PreDestroy may be used with standard semantics on any
application components configured in the ApplicationContext;
however, these lifecycle annotations have limited usage within an

actual test class.
If a method within a test class is annotated with @PostConstruct,
that method will be executed before any before methods of the
underlying test framework (e.g., methods annotated with JUnit's
@Before), and that will apply for every test method in the test class.
On the other hand, if a method within a test class is annotated with
@PreDestroy, that method will never be executed. Within a test class
it is therefore recommended to use test lifecycle callbacks from the
underlying test framework instead of @PostConstruct and
@PreDestroy.
Spring JUnit Testing Annotations

The following annotations are only supported when used in conjunction with the
SpringJUnit4ClassRunner or the JUnit support classes.
@IfProfileValue
Indicates that the annotated test is enabled for a specific testing environment. If the
configured ProfileValueSource returns a matching value for the provided name,
the test is enabled. This annotation can be applied to an entire class or to individual
methods. Class-level usage overrides method-level usage.
@IfProfileValue(name="java.vendor", value="Sun Microsystems Inc.")
@Test
public void testProcessWhichRunsOnlyOnSunJvm() {
// some logic that should run only on Java VMs from Sun Microsystems
}
Alternatively, you can configure @IfProfileValue with a list of values (with OR

semantics) to achieve TestNG-like support for test groups in a JUnit environment.
Consider the following example:
@IfProfileValue(name="test-groups", values={"unit-tests", "integration-tests"})
@Test
public void testProcessWhichRunsForUnitOrIntegrationTestGroups() {
// some logic that should run only for unit and integration test groups
}
@ProfileValueSourceConfiguration
Class-level annotation that specifies what type of ProfileValueSource to use
when retrieving profile values configured through the @IfProfileValue annotation.
If @ProfileValueSourceConfiguration is not declared for a test,
SystemProfileValueSource is used by default.
@ProfileValueSourceConfiguration(CustomProfileValueSource.class)
public class CustomProfileValueSourceTests {
// class body...
}
@Timed
Indicates that the annotated test method must finish execution in a specified time
period (in milliseconds). If the text execution time exceeds the specified time period,
the test fails.
The time period includes execution of the test method itself, any repetitions of the test
(see @Repeat), as well as any set up or tear down of the test fixture.
@Timed(millis=1000)
public void testProcessWithOneSecondTimeout() {
// some logic that should not take longer than 1 second to execute
}
Spring's @Timed annotation has different semantics than JUnit's

@Test(timeout=...) support. Specifically, due to the manner in which JUnit
handles test execution timeouts (that is, by executing the test method in a separate
Thread), @Test(timeout=...) applies to each iteration in the case of repetitions
and preemptively fails the test if the test takes too long. Spring's @Timed, on the other
hand, times the total test execution time (including all repetitions) and does not
preemptively fail the test but rather waits for the test to complete before failing.
@Repeat
Indicates that the annotated test method must be executed repeatedly. The number of
times that the test method is to be executed is specified in the annotation.
The scope of execution to be repeated includes execution of the test method itself as
well as any set up or tear down of the test fixture.
@Repeat(10)
@Test
public void testProcessRepeatedly() {
// ...
}
11.3.5 Spring TestContext Framework

The Spring TestContext Framework (located in the
org.springframework.test.context package) provides generic, annotationdriven unit and integration testing support that is agnostic of the testing framework in use.
The TestContext framework also places a great deal of importance on convention over
configuration with reasonable defaults that can be overridden through annotation-based
configuration.
In addition to generic testing infrastructure, the TestContext framework provides explicit
support for JUnit and TestNG in the form of abstract support classes. For JUnit, Spring
also provides a custom JUnit Runner that allows one to write so-called POJO test
classes. POJO test classes are not required to extend a particular class hierarchy.
The following section provides an overview of the internals of the TestContext framework.
If you are only interested in using the framework and not necessarily interested in
extending it with your own custom listeners or custom loaders, feel free to go directly to the
configuration (context management, dependency injection, transaction management),
support classes, and annotation support sections.
Key abstractions
The core of the framework consists of the TestContext and TestContextManager
classes and the TestExecutionListener, ContextLoader, and
SmartContextLoader interfaces. A TestContextManager is created on a per-test
basis (e.g., for the execution of a single test method in JUnit). The
TestContextManager in turn manages a TestContext that holds the context of the
current test. The TestContextManager also updates the state of the TestContext as
the test progresses and delegates to TestExecutionListeners, which instrument the
actual test execution by providing dependency injection, managing transactions, and so
on. A ContextLoader (or SmartContextLoader) is responsible for loading an
ApplicationContext for a given test class. Consult the Javadoc and the Spring test
suite for further information and examples of various implementations.
TestContext: Encapsulates the context in which a test is executed, agnostic of the
actual testing framework in use, and provides context management and caching
support for the test instance for which it is responsible. The TestContext also
delegates to a ContextLoader (or SmartContextLoader) to load an
ApplicationContext if requested.
TestContextManager: The main entry point into the Spring TestContext
Framework, which manages a single TestContext and signals events to all
registered TestExecutionListeners at well-defined test execution points:
prior to any before class methods of a particular testing framework
test instance preparation
prior to any before methods of a particular testing framework
after any after methods of a particular testing framework
after any after methods of a particular testing framework

after any after class methods of a particular testing framework
TestExecutionListener: Defines a listener API for reacting to test execution
events published by the TestContextManager with which the listener is registered.
Spring provides four TestExecutionListener implementations that are
configured by default: ServletTestExecutionListener,
DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener,
DirtiesContextTestExecutionListener, and
TransactionalTestExecutionListener. Respectively, they support Servlet
API mocks for a WebApplicationContext, dependency injection of the test
instance, handling of the @DirtiesContext annotation, and transactional test
execution with default rollback semantics.
ContextLoader: Strategy interface introduced in Spring 2.5 for loading an
ApplicationContext for an integration test managed by the Spring TestContext
Framework.
As of Spring 3.1, implement SmartContextLoader instead of this interface in order
to provide support for annotated classes and active bean definition profiles.
SmartContextLoader: Extension of the ContextLoader interface introduced in
Spring 3.1.
The SmartContextLoader SPI supersedes the ContextLoader SPI that was
introduced in Spring 2.5. Specifically, a SmartContextLoader can choose to
process resource locations, annotated classes, or context initializers.
Furthermore, a SmartContextLoader can set active bean definition profiles in the
context that it loads.
Spring provides the following implementations:
DelegatingSmartContextLoader: one of two default loaders which
delegates internally to an AnnotationConfigContextLoader or a
GenericXmlContextLoader depending either on the configuration declared
for the test class or on the presence of default locations or default configuration
classes.
WebDelegatingSmartContextLoader: one of two default loaders which
delegates internally to an AnnotationConfigWebContextLoader or a
GenericXmlWebContextLoader depending either on the configuration
declared for the test class or on the presence of default locations or default
configuration classes. A web ContextLoader will only be used if
@WebAppConfiguration is present on the test class.
AnnotationConfigContextLoader: loads a standard
ApplicationContext from annotated classes.
AnnotationConfigWebContextLoader: loads a
WebApplicationContext from annotated classes.
GenericXmlContextLoader: loads a standard ApplicationContext from
XML resource locations.
GenericXmlWebContextLoader: loads a WebApplicationContext from
XML resource locations.
GenericPropertiesContextLoader: loads a standard
ApplicationContext from Java Properties files.
The following sections explain how to configure the TestContext framework through
annotations and provide working examples of how to write unit and integration tests with
the framework.
Context management
Each TestContext provides context management and caching support for the test
instance it is responsible for. Test instances do not automatically receive access to the
configured ApplicationContext. However, if a test class implements the
ApplicationContextAware interface, a reference to the ApplicationContext is
supplied to the test instance. Note that AbstractJUnit4SpringContextTests and

AbstractTestNGSpringContextTests implement ApplicationContextAware
and therefore provide access to the ApplicationContext automatically.
@Autowired ApplicationContext
As an alternative to implementing the ApplicationContextAware
interface, you can inject the application context for your test class
through the @Autowired annotation on either a field or setter method.
For example:
@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
public class MyTest {
@Autowired
private ApplicationContext applicationContext;
// class body...
}
Similarly, if your test is configured to load a

WebApplicationContext, you can inject the web application
context into your test as follows:
public class MyWebAppTest {
@Autowired
private WebApplicationContext wac;
// class body...
}
Dependency injection via @Autowired is provided by the

DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener which is
configured by default (see the section called Dependency injection of
test fixtures).
Test classes that use the TestContext framework do not need to extend any particular
class or implement a specific interface to configure their application context. Instead,
configuration is achieved simply by declaring the @ContextConfiguration annotation
at the class level. If your test class does not explicitly declare application context resource
locations or annotated classes, the configured ContextLoader determines how to
load a context from a default location or default configuration classes. In addition to context
resource locations and annotated classes, an application context can also be
configured via application context initializers.
The following sections explain how to configure an ApplicationContext via XML
configuration files, annotated classes (typically @Configuration classes), or context
initializers using Spring's @ContextConfiguration annotation. Alternatively, you can
implement and configure your own custom SmartContextLoader for advanced use
cases.
Context configuration with XML resources

To load an ApplicationContext for your tests using XML configuration files, annotate
your test class with @ContextConfiguration and configure the locations attribute
with an array that contains the resource locations of XML configuration metadata. A plain
or relative path for example "context.xml" will be treated as a classpath
resource that is relative to the package in which the test class is defined. A path starting
with a slash is treated as an absolute classpath location, for example
"/org/example/config.xml". A path which represents a resource URL (i.e., a path
prefixed with classpath:, file:, http:, etc.) will be used as is.
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from "/app-config.xml" and
// "/test-config.xml" in the root of the classpath

@ContextConfiguration(locations={"/app-config.xml", "/test-config.xml"})
// class body...
}
@ContextConfiguration supports an alias for the locations attribute through the

standard Java value attribute. Thus, if you do not need to declare additional attributes in
@ContextConfiguration, you can omit the declaration of the locations attribute
name and declare the resource locations by using the shorthand format demonstrated in
the following example.
@ContextConfiguration({"/app-config.xml", "/test-config.xml"})
// class body...
}
If you omit both the locations and value attributes from the
@ContextConfiguration annotation, the TestContext framework will attempt to detect
a default XML resource location. Specifically, GenericXmlContextLoader detects a
default location based on the name of the test class. If your class is named
com.example.MyTest, GenericXmlContextLoader loads your application context
from "classpath:/com/example/MyTest-context.xml".
package com.example;
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from
// "classpath:/com/example/MyTest-context.xml"
// class body...
}
Context configuration with annotated classes

To load an ApplicationContext for your tests using annotated classes (see
Section 5.12, Java-based container configuration), annotate your test class with
@ContextConfiguration and configure the classes attribute with an array that
contains references to annotated classes.
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from AppConfig and TestConfig
@ContextConfiguration(classes = {AppConfig.class, TestConfig.class})
// class body...
}
If you omit the classes attribute from the @ContextConfiguration annotation, the
TestContext framework will attempt to detect the presence of default configuration classes.
Specifically, AnnotationConfigContextLoader will detect all static inner classes of
the test class that meet the requirements for configuration class implementations as
specified in the Javadoc for @Configuration. In the following example, the
OrderServiceTest class declares a static inner configuration class named Config
that will be automatically used to load the ApplicationContext for the test class. Note
that the name of the configuration class is arbitrary. In addition, a test class can contain
more than one static inner configuration class if desired.
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from the
// static inner Config class
public class OrderServiceTest {
@Configuration
static class Config {
// this bean will be injected into the OrderServiceTest class
@Bean
public OrderService orderService() {
OrderService orderService = new OrderServiceImpl();
// set properties, etc.
return orderService;
}
}
@Autowired
private OrderService orderService;
@Test
public void testOrderService() {
// test the orderService
}
}
Mixing XML resources and annotated classes

It may sometimes be desirable to mix XML resources and annotated classes (i.e., typically
@Configuration classes) to configure an ApplicationContext for your tests. For
example, if you use XML configuration in production, you may decide that you want to use
@Configuration classes to configure specific Spring-managed components for your
tests, or vice versa. As mentioned in the section called Spring Testing Annotations the
TestContext framework does not allow you to declare both via
@ContextConfiguration, but this does not mean that you cannot use both.
If you want to use XML and @Configuration classes to configure your tests, you will
have to pick one as the entry point, and that one will have to include or import the other.
For example, in XML you can include @Configuration classes via component
scanning or define them as normal Spring beans in XML; whereas, in a
@Configuration class you can use @ImportResource to import XML configuration
files. Note that this behavior is semantically equivalent to how you configure your
application in production: in production configuration you will define either a set of XML
resource locations or a set of @Configuration classes that your production
ApplicationContext will be loaded from, but you still have the freedom to include or
import the other type of configuration.
Context configuration with context initializers

To configure an ApplicationContext for your tests using context initializers, annotate
your test class with @ContextConfiguration and configure the initializers
attribute with an array that contains references to classes that implement
ApplicationContextInitializer. The declared context initializers will then be
used to initialize the ConfigurableApplicationContext that is loaded for your
tests. Note that the concrete ConfigurableApplicationContext type supported by
each declared initializer must be compatible with the type of ApplicationContext
created by the SmartContextLoader in use (i.e., typically a
GenericApplicationContext). Furthermore, the order in which the initializers are
invoked depends on whether they implement Spring's Ordered interface or are annotated
with Spring's @Order annotation.
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from TestConfig
// and initialized by TestAppCtxInitializer
@ContextConfiguration(
classes = TestConfig.class,
initializers = TestAppCtxInitializer.class)
// class body...
}
It is also possible to omit the declaration of XML configuration files or annotated classes in
@ContextConfiguration entirely and instead declare only
ApplicationContextInitializer classes which are then responsible for
registering beans in the context for example, by programmatically loading bean
definitions from XML files or configuration classes.
// ApplicationContext will be initialized by EntireAppInitializer
// which presumably registers beans in the context
@ContextConfiguration(initializers = EntireAppInitializer.class)
// class body...
}
Context configuration inheritance

@ContextConfiguration supports boolean inheritLocations and
inheritInitializers attributes that denote whether resource locations or annotated
classes and context initializers declared by superclasses should be inherited. The default
value for both flags is true. This means that a test class inherits the resource locations or
annotated classes as well as the context initializers declared by any superclasses.
Specifically, the resource locations or annotated classes for a test class are appended to
the list of resource locations or annotated classes declared by superclasses. Similarly, the
initializers for a given test class will be added to the set of initializers defined by test
superclasses. Thus, subclasses have the option of extending the resource locations,
annotated classes, or context initializers.
If @ContextConfiguration's inheritLocations or inheritInitializers
attribute is set to false, the resource locations or annotated classes and the context
initializers, respectively, for the test class shadow and effectively replace the configuration
defined by superclasses.
In the following example that uses XML resource locations, the ApplicationContext
for ExtendedTest will be loaded from "base-config.xml" and "extended-config.xml", in
that order. Beans defined in "extended-config.xml" may therefore override (i.e., replace)
those defined in "base-config.xml".
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from "/base-config.xml"
// in the root of the classpath
@ContextConfiguration("/base-config.xml")
public class BaseTest {
// class body...
}
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from "/base-config.xml" and
// "/extended-config.xml" in the root of the classpath
@ContextConfiguration("/extended-config.xml")
public class ExtendedTest extends BaseTest {
// class body...
}
Similarly, in the following example that uses annotated classes, the

ApplicationContext for ExtendedTest will be loaded from the BaseConfig and
ExtendedConfig classes, in that order. Beans defined in ExtendedConfig may
therefore override (i.e., replace) those defined in BaseConfig.
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from BaseConfig
@ContextConfiguration(classes = BaseConfig.class)
// class body...
}
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from BaseConfig and ExtendedConfig
@ContextConfiguration(classes = ExtendedConfig.class)
// class body...
}
In the following example that uses context initializers, the ApplicationContext for
ExtendedTest will be initialized using BaseInitializer and
ExtendedInitializer. Note, however, that the order in which the initializers are
invoked depends on whether they implement Spring's Ordered interface or are annotated
with Spring's @Order annotation.
// ApplicationContext will be initialized by BaseInitializer
@ContextConfiguration(initializers=BaseInitializer.class)
// class body...
}
// ApplicationContext will be initialized by BaseInitializer
// and ExtendedInitializer
@ContextConfiguration(initializers=ExtendedInitializer.class)
// class body...
}
Context configuration with environment profiles

Spring 3.1 introduced first-class support in the framework for the notion of environments
and profiles (a.k.a., bean definition profiles), and integration tests can be configured to
activate particular bean definition profiles for various testing scenarios. This is achieved by
annotating a test class with the @ActiveProfiles annotation and supplying a list of
profiles that should be activated when loading the ApplicationContext for the test.
Note
@ActiveProfiles may be used with any implementation of the new
SmartContextLoader SPI, but @ActiveProfiles is not
supported with implementations of the older ContextLoader SPI.
Let's take a look at some examples with XML configuration and @Configuration
classes.

xmlns:jdbc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jdbc"
xmlns:jee="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee"
xsi:schemaLocation="...">
<bean id="transferService"
class="com.bank.service.internal.DefaultTransferService">
<constructor-arg ref="accountRepository"/>
<constructor-arg ref="feePolicy"/>
</bean>
<bean id="accountRepository"
class="com.bank.repository.internal.JdbcAccountRepository">
<constructor-arg ref="dataSource"/>
</bean>
<bean id="feePolicy"
class="com.bank.service.internal.ZeroFeePolicy"/>
<beans profile="dev">
<jdbc:embedded-database id="dataSource">
<jdbc:script
location="classpath:com/bank/config/sql/schema.sql"/>
<jdbc:script
location="classpath:com/bank/config/sql/test-data.sql"/>
</jdbc:embedded-database>
</beans>
<beans profile="production">
<jee:jndi-lookup id="dataSource"
jndi-name="java:comp/env/jdbc/datasource"/>
</beans>
</beans>
package com.bank.service;
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from "classpath:/app-config.xml"
@ContextConfiguration("/app-config.xml")
public class TransferServiceTest {
@Autowired
private TransferService transferService;
@Test
public void testTransferService() {
// test the transferService
}
}
When TransferServiceTest is run, its ApplicationContext will be loaded from

the app-config.xml configuration file in the root of the classpath. If you inspect app-
config.xml you'll notice that the accountRepository bean has a dependency on a

dataSource bean; however, dataSource is not defined as a top-level bean. Instead,
dataSource is defined twice: once in the production profile and once in the dev profile.
By annotating TransferServiceTest with @ActiveProfiles("dev") we instruct
the Spring TestContext Framework to load the ApplicationContext with the active
profiles set to {"dev"}. As a result, an embedded database will be created, and the
accountRepository bean will be wired with a reference to the development
DataSource. And that's likely what we want in an integration test.
The following code listings demonstrate how to implement the same configuration and
integration test but using @Configuration classes instead of XML.
@Configuration
@Profile("dev")
public class StandaloneDataConfig {
@Bean
return new EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder()
.setType(EmbeddedDatabaseType.HSQL)
.addScript("classpath:com/bank/config/sql/schema.sql")
.addScript("classpath:com/bank/config/sql/test-data.sql")
.build();
}
}
@Configuration
@Profile("production")
public class JndiDataConfig {
@Bean
public DataSource dataSource() throws Exception {
Context ctx = new InitialContext();
return (DataSource) ctx.lookup("java:comp/env/jdbc/datasource");
}
}
@Configuration
public class TransferServiceConfig {
@Autowired DataSource dataSource;
@Bean
public TransferService transferService() {
return new DefaultTransferService(accountRepository(),
feePolicy());
}
@Bean
public AccountRepository accountRepository() {
}
@Bean
public FeePolicy feePolicy() {
return new ZeroFeePolicy();
}
}
package com.bank.service;
classes = {
TransferServiceConfig.class,
StandaloneDataConfig.class,
JndiDataConfig.class})
public class TransferServiceTest {
@Autowired
private TransferService transferService;
@Test
public void testTransferService() {
// test the transferService
}
}
In this variation, we have split the XML configuration into three independent
TransferServiceConfig: acquires a dataSource via dependency injection
using @Autowired
StandaloneDataConfig: defines a dataSource for an embedded database
suitable for developer tests
JndiDataConfig: defines a dataSource that is retrieved from JNDI in a
production environment
As with the XML-based configuration example, we still annotate
TransferServiceTest with @ActiveProfiles("dev"), but this time we specify all
three configuration classes via the @ContextConfiguration annotation. The body of
the test class itself remains completely unchanged.
Loading a WebApplicationContext
Spring 3.2 introduces support for loading a WebApplicationContext in integration
tests. To instruct the TestContext framework to load a WebApplicationContext
instead of a standard ApplicationContext, simply annotate the respective test class
with @WebAppConfiguration.
The presence of @WebAppConfiguration on your test class instructs the TestContext
framework (TCF) that a WebApplicationContext (WAC) should be loaded for your
integration tests. In the background the TCF makes sure that a MockServletContext is
created and supplied to your test's WAC. By default the base resource path for your
MockServletContext will be set to "src/main/webapp". This is interpreted as a path
relative to the root of your JVM (i.e., normally the path to your project). If you're familiar with
the directory structure of a web application in a Maven project, you'll know that
"src/main/webapp" is the default location for the root of your WAR. If you need to override
this default, simply provide an alternate path to the @WebAppConfiguration annotation
(e.g., @WebAppConfiguration("src/test/webapp")). If you wish to reference a
base resource path from the classpath instead of the file system, just use Spring's
classpath: prefix.
Please note that Spring's testing support for WebApplicationContexts is on par with
its support for standard ApplicationContexts. When testing with a
WebApplicationContext you are free to declare either XML configuration files or
@Configuration classes via @ContextConfiguration. You are of course also free
to use any other test annotations such as @TestExecutionListeners,
@TransactionConfiguration, @ActiveProfiles, etc.
The following examples demonstrate some of the various configuration options for loading
a WebApplicationContext.
Example 11.1. Conventions
// defaults to "file:src/main/webapp"
// detects "WacTests-context.xml" in same package
// or static nested @Configuration class
public class WacTests {
//...
}
The above example demonstrates the TestContext framework's support for convention
over configuration. If you annotate a test class with @WebAppConfiguration without
specifying a resource base path, the resource path will effectively default to
"file:src/main/webapp". Similarly, if you declare @ContextConfiguration without
specifying resource locations, annotated classes, or context initializers,

Spring will attempt to detect the presence of your configuration using conventions (i.e.,
"WacTests-context.xml" in the same package as the WacTests class or static nested
@Configuration classes).
Example 11.2. Default resource semantics
// file system resource
@WebAppConfiguration("webapp")
// classpath resource
@ContextConfiguration("/spring/test-servlet-config.xml")
//...
}
This example demonstrates how to explicitly declare a resource base path with
@WebAppConfiguration and an XML resource location with
@ContextConfiguration. The important thing to note here is the different semantics
for paths with these two annotations. By default, @WebAppConfiguration resource
paths are file system based; whereas, @ContextConfiguration resource locations
are classpath based.
Example 11.3. Explicit resource semantics
// classpath resource
@WebAppConfiguration("classpath:test-web-resources")
// file system resource
@ContextConfiguration("file:src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/servlet-config.xml")
//...
}
In this third example, we see that we can override the default resource semantics for both
annotations by specifying a Spring resource prefix. Contrast the comments in this example
with the previous example.
Working with Web Mocks

To provide comprehensive web testing support, Spring 3.2 introduces a new
ServletTestExecutionListener that is enabled by default. When testing against a
WebApplicationContext this TestExecutionListener sets up default thread-local state
via Spring Web's RequestContextHolder before each test method and creates a
MockHttpServletRequest, MockHttpServletResponse, and
ServletWebRequest based on the base resource path configured via
@WebAppConfiguration. ServletTestExecutionListener also ensures that the
MockHttpServletResponse and ServletWebRequest can be injected into the test
instance, and once the test is complete it cleans up thread-local state.
Once you have a WebApplicationContext loaded for your test you might find that you
need to interact with the web mocks for example, to set up your test fixture or to perform
assertions after invoking your web component. The following example demonstrates which
mocks can be autowired into your test instance. Note that the
WebApplicationContext and MockServletContext are both cached across the
test suite; whereas, the other mocks are managed per test method by the
ServletTestExecutionListener.
Example 11.4. Injecting mocks
@Autowired WebApplicationContext wac; // cached
@Autowired MockServletContext servletContext; // cached
@Autowired MockHttpSession session;
@Autowired MockHttpServletRequest request;
@Autowired MockHttpServletResponse response;
@Autowired ServletWebRequest webRequest;
//...
}
Context caching
Once the TestContext framework loads an ApplicationContext (or
WebApplicationContext) for a test, that context will be cached and reused for all
subsequent tests that declare the same unique context configuration within the same test
suite. To understand how caching works, it is important to understand what is meant by
unique and test suite.
An ApplicationContext can be uniquely identified by the combination of
configuration parameters that are used to load it. Consequently, the unique combination of
configuration parameters are used to generate a key under which the context is cached.
The TestContext framework uses the following configuration parameters to build the
context cache key:
locations (from @ContextConfiguration)
classes (from @ContextConfiguration)
contextInitializerClasses (from @ContextConfiguration)
contextLoader (from @ContextConfiguration)
activeProfiles (from @ActiveProfiles)
resourceBasePath (from @WebAppConfiguration)
For example, if TestClassA specifies {"app-config.xml", "testconfig.xml"} for the locations (or value) attribute of @ContextConfiguration,
the TestContext framework will load the corresponding ApplicationContext and store
it in a static context cache under a key that is based solely on those locations. So if
TestClassB also defines {"app-config.xml", "test-config.xml"} for its
locations (either explicitly or implicitly through inheritance) but does not define
@WebAppConfiguration, a different ContextLoader, different active profiles, or
different context initializers, then the same ApplicationContext will be shared by both
test classes. This means that the setup cost for loading an application context is incurred
only once (per test suite), and subsequent test execution is much faster.
Test suites and forked processes
The Spring TestContext framework stores application contexts in a
static cache. This means that the context is literally stored in a static
variable. In other words, if tests execute in separate processes the
static cache will be cleared between each test execution, and this will
effectively disable the caching mechanism.
To benefit from the caching mechanism, all tests must run within the
same process or test suite. This can be achieved by executing all tests
as a group within an IDE. Similarly, when executing tests with a build
framework such as Ant, Maven, or Gradle it is important to make sure
that the build framework does not fork between tests. For example, if
the forkMode for the Maven Surefire plug-in is set to always or
pertest, the TestContext framework will not be able to cache
application contexts between test classes and the build process will
run significantly slower as a result.
In the unlikely case that a test corrupts the application context and requires reloading for
example, by modifying a bean definition or the state of an application object you can
annotate your test class or test method with @DirtiesContext (see the discussion of
@DirtiesContext in the section called Spring Testing Annotations). This instructs
Spring to remove the context from the cache and rebuild the application context before
executing the next test. Note that support for the @DirtiesContext annotation is
provided by the DirtiesContextTestExecutionListener which is enabled by
default.
Context hierarchies
When writing integration tests that rely on a loaded Spring ApplicationContext, it is
often sufficient to test against a single context; however, there are times when it is
beneficial or even necessary to test against a hierarchy of ApplicationContexts. For
example, if you are developing a Spring MVC web application you will typically have a root
WebApplicationContext loaded via Spring's ContextLoaderListener and a
child WebApplicationContext loaded via Spring's DispatcherServlet. This
results in a parent-child context hierarchy where shared components and infrastructure
configuration are declared in the root context and consumed in the child context by webspecific components. Another use case can be found in Spring Batch applications where
you often have a parent context that provides configuration for shared batch infrastructure
and a child context for the configuration of a specific batch job.
As of Spring Framework 3.2.2, it is possible to write integration tests that use context
hierarchies by declaring context configuration via the @ContextHierarchy annotation,
either on an individual test class or within a test class hierarchy. If a context hierarchy is
declared on multiple classes within a test class hierarchy it is also possible to merge or
override the context configuration for a specific, named level in the context hierarchy.
When merging configuration for a given level in the hierarchy the configuration resource
type (i.e., XML configuration files or annotated classes) must be consistent; otherwise, it is
perfectly acceptable to have different levels in a context hierarchy configured using
different resource types.
The following JUnit-based examples demonstrate common configuration scenarios for
integration tests that require the use of context hierarchies.
Example 11.5. Single test class with context hierarchy
ControllerIntegrationTests represents a typical integration testing scenario for a
Spring MVC web application by declaring a context hierarchy consisting of two levels, one
for the root WebApplicationContext (loaded using the TestAppConfig
@Configuration class) and one for the dispatcher servlet WebApplicationContext
(loaded using the WebConfig @Configuration class). The
WebApplicationContext that is autowired into the test instance is the one for the child
context (i.e., the lowest context in the hierarchy).
@ContextHierarchy({
@ContextConfiguration(classes = TestAppConfig.class),
@ContextConfiguration(classes = WebConfig.class)
})
public class ControllerIntegrationTests {
@Autowired
// ...
}
Example 11.6. Class hierarchy with implicit parent context

The following test classes define a context hierarchy within a test class hierarchy.
AbstractWebTests declares the configuration for a root WebApplicationContext
in a Spring-powered web application. Note, however, that AbstractWebTests does not
declare @ContextHierarchy; consequently, subclasses of AbstractWebTests can
optionally participate in a context hierarchy or simply follow the standard semantics for
@ContextConfiguration. SoapWebServiceTests and RestWebServiceTests
both extend AbstractWebTests and define a context hierarchy via
@ContextHierarchy. The result is that three application contexts will be loaded (one
for each declaration of @ContextConfiguration), and the application context loaded
based on the configuration in AbstractWebTests will be set as the parent context for
each of the contexts loaded for the concrete subclasses.
@ContextConfiguration("file:src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml")
public abstract class AbstractWebTests {}
@ContextHierarchy(@ContextConfiguration("/spring/soap-ws-config.xml")
public class SoapWebServiceTests extends AbstractWebTests {}
@ContextHierarchy(@ContextConfiguration("/spring/rest-ws-config.xml")
public class RestWebServiceTests extends AbstractWebTests {}
Example 11.7. Class hierarchy with merged context hierarchy configuration

The following classes demonstrate the use of named hierarchy levels in order to merge the
configuration for specific levels in a context hierarchy. BaseTests defines two levels in
the hierarchy, parent and child. ExtendedTests extends BaseTests and instructs
the Spring TestContext Framework to merge the context configuration for the child
hierarchy level, simply by ensuring that the names declared via
ContextConfiguration's name attribute are both "child". The result is that three
application contexts will be loaded: one for "/app-config.xml", one for "/userconfig.xml", and one for {"/user-config.xml", "/order-config.xml"}. As
with the previous example, the application context loaded from "/app-config.xml"
will be set as the parent context for the contexts loaded from "/user-config.xml" and
{"/user-config.xml", "/order-config.xml"}.
@ContextHierarchy({
@ContextConfiguration(name = "parent", locations = "/app-config.xml"),
@ContextConfiguration(name = "child", locations = "/user-config.xml")
})
public class BaseTests {}
@ContextHierarchy(
@ContextConfiguration(name = "child", locations = "/order-config.xml")
)
public class ExtendedTests extends BaseTests {}
Example 11.8. Class hierarchy with overridden context hierarchy configuration

In contrast to the previous example, this example demonstrates how to override the
configuration for a given named level in a context hierarchy by setting
ContextConfiguration's inheritLocations flag to false. Consequently, the
application context for ExtendedTests will be loaded only from "/test-userconfig.xml" and will have its parent set to the context loaded from "/appconfig.xml".
@ContextHierarchy({
@ContextConfiguration(name = "parent", locations = "/app-config.xml"),
@ContextConfiguration(name = "child", locations = "/user-config.xml")
})
public class BaseTests {}

@ContextHierarchy(
name = "child",
locations = "/test-user-config.xml",
inheritLocations = false
))
public class ExtendedTests extends BaseTests {}
Dirtying a context within a context hierarchy

If @DirtiesContext is used in a test whose context is configured as
part of a context hierarchy, the hierarchyMode flag can be used to
control how the context cache is cleared. For further details consult the
discussion of @DirtiesContext in the section called Spring
Testing Annotations and the Javadoc for @DirtiesContext.
Dependency injection of test fixtures

When you use the DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener which is
configured by default the dependencies of your test instances are injected from beans in
the application context that you configured with @ContextConfiguration. You may
use setter injection, field injection, or both, depending on which annotations you choose
and whether you place them on setter methods or fields. For consistency with the
annotation support introduced in Spring 2.5 and 3.0, you can use Spring's @Autowired
annotation or the @Inject annotation from JSR 300.
Tip
The TestContext framework does not instrument the manner in which a
test instance is instantiated. Thus the use of @Autowired or
@Inject for constructors has no effect for test classes.
Because @Autowired is used to perform autowiring by type , if you have multiple bean
definitions of the same type, you cannot rely on this approach for those particular beans. In
that case, you can use @Autowired in conjunction with @Qualifier. As of Spring 3.0
you may also choose to use @Inject in conjunction with @Named. Alternatively, if your
test class has access to its ApplicationContext, you can perform an explicit lookup
by using (for example) a call to
applicationContext.getBean("titleRepository").
If you do not want dependency injection applied to your test instances, simply do not
annotate fields or setter methods with @Autowired or @Inject. Alternatively, you can
disable dependency injection altogether by explicitly configuring your class with
@TestExecutionListeners and omitting
DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener.class from the list of listeners.
Consider the scenario of testing a HibernateTitleRepository class, as outlined in
the Goals section. The next two code listings demonstrate the use of @Autowired on
fields and setter methods. The application context configuration is presented after all
sample code listings.
Note
The dependency injection behavior in the following code listings is not
specific to JUnit. The same DI techniques can be used in conjunction
with any testing framework.
The following examples make calls to static assertion methods such as
assertNotNull() but without prepending the call with Assert. In
such cases, assume that the method was properly imported through an
import static declaration that is not shown in the example.
The first code listing shows a JUnit-based implementation of the test class that uses
@Autowired for field injection.
// specifies the Spring configuration to load for this test fixture
@ContextConfiguration("repository-config.xml")
public class HibernateTitleRepositoryTests {
// this instance will be dependency injected by type
@Autowired
private HibernateTitleRepository titleRepository;
@Test
public void findById() {
Title title = titleRepository.findById(new Long(10));
assertNotNull(title);
}
}
Alternatively, you can configure the class to use @Autowired for setter injection as seen
below.
// specifies the Spring configuration to load for this test fixture
@ContextConfiguration("repository-config.xml")
public class HibernateTitleRepositoryTests {
// this instance will be dependency injected by type
private HibernateTitleRepository titleRepository;
@Autowired
public void setTitleRepository(HibernateTitleRepository titleRepository) {
this.titleRepository = titleRepository;
}
@Test
public void findById() {
Title title = titleRepository.findById(new Long(10));
assertNotNull(title);
}
}
The preceding code listings use the same XML context file referenced by the
@ContextConfiguration annotation (that is, repository-config.xml), which
looks like this:

<bean id="titleRepository" class="com.foo.repository.hibernate.HibernateTitleRepository">
<property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory"/>
</bean>
<bean id="sessionFactory"
class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalSessionFactoryBean">

</bean>
</beans>
Note
If you are extending from a Spring-provided test base class that happens to use @Autowired
on one of its setter methods, you might have multiple beans of the affected type defined in your
application context: for example, multiple DataSource beans. In such a case, you can
override the setter method and use the @Qualifier annotation to indicate a specific target
bean as follows, but make sure to delegate to the overridden method in the superclass as well.
// ...
@Autowired
@Override
public void setDataSource(@Qualifier("myDataSource") DataSource dataSource) {
super.setDataSource(dataSource);
}
// ...
The specified qualifier value indicates the specific DataSource bean to inject, narrowing the
set of type matches to a specific bean. Its value is matched against <qualifier>
declarations within the corresponding <bean> definitions. The bean name is used as a
fallback qualifier value, so you may effectively also point to a specific bean by name there (as
shown above, assuming that "myDataSource" is the bean id).

Request and session scoped beans have been supported by Spring for several years now,
but it's always been a bit non-trivial to test them. As of Spring 3.2 it's now a breeze to test
your request-scoped and session-scoped beans by following these steps.
Ensure that a WebApplicationContext is loaded for your test by annotating your
test class with @WebAppConfiguration.
Inject the mock request or session into your test instance and prepare your test fixture
as appropriate.
Invoke your web component that you retrieved from the configured
WebApplicationContext (i.e., via dependency injection).
Perform assertions against the mocks.
The following code snippet displays the XML configuration for a login use case. Note that
the userService bean has a dependency on a request-scoped loginAction bean.
Also, the LoginAction is instantiated using SpEL expressions that retrieve the
username and password from the current HTTP request. In our test, we will want to
configure these request parameters via the mock managed by the TestContext framework.
Example 11.9. Request-scoped bean configuration
<beans>
<bean id="userService"
class="com.example.SimpleUserService"
c:loginAction-ref="loginAction" />
<bean id="loginAction" class="com.example.LoginAction"
c:username="#{request.getParameter('user')}"
c:password="#{request.getParameter('pswd')}"
scope="request">
<aop:scoped-proxy />
</bean>
</beans>
In RequestScopedBeanTests we inject both the UserService (i.e., the subject under

test) and the MockHttpServletRequest into our test instance. Within our
requestScope() test method we set up our test fixture by setting request parameters in
the provided MockHttpServletRequest. When the loginUser() method is invoked
on our userService we are assured that the user service has access to the requestscoped loginAction for the current MockHttpServletRequest (i.e., the one we just
set parameters in). We can then perform assertions against the results based on the known
inputs for the username and password.
Example 11.10. Request-scoped bean test
public class RequestScopedBeanTests {
@Autowired UserService userService;
@Autowired MockHttpServletRequest request;
@Test
public void requestScope() {
request.setParameter("user", "enigma");
request.setParameter("pswd", "$pr!ng");
LoginResults results = userService.loginUser();
// assert results
}
}
The following code snippet is similar to the one we saw above for a request-scoped bean;
however, this time the userService bean has a dependency on a session-scoped
userPreferences bean. Note that the UserPreferences bean is instantiated using a
SpEL expression that retrieves the theme from the current HTTP session. In our test, we
will need to configure a theme in the mock session managed by the TestContext
framework.
Example 11.11. Session-scoped bean configuration
<beans>
class="com.example.SimpleUserService"
c:userPreferences-ref="userPreferences" />
<bean id="userPreferences"
class="com.example.UserPreferences"
c:theme="#{session.getAttribute('theme')}"
scope="session">
<aop:scoped-proxy />
</bean>
</beans>
In SessionScopedBeanTests we inject the UserService and the

MockHttpSession into our test instance. Within our sessionScope() test method we
set up our test fixture by setting the expected "theme" attribute in the provided
MockHttpSession. When the processUserPreferences() method is invoked on
our userService we are assured that the user service has access to the session-scoped
userPreferences for the current MockHttpSession, and we can perform assertions
against the results based on the configured theme.
Example 11.12. Session-scoped bean test
public class SessionScopedBeanTests {
@Autowired UserService userService;
@Autowired MockHttpSession session;
@Test
public void sessionScope() throws Exception {
session.setAttribute("theme", "blue");
Results results = userService.processUserPreferences();
// assert results
}
}
In the TestContext framework, transactions are managed by the
TransactionalTestExecutionListener. Note that
TransactionalTestExecutionListener is configured by default, even if you do
not explicitly declare @TestExecutionListeners on your test class. To enable
support for transactions, however, you must provide a PlatformTransactionManager
bean in the application context loaded by @ContextConfiguration semantics. In
addition, you must declare @Transactional either at the class or method level for your
tests.
For class-level transaction configuration (i.e., setting an explicit bean name for the
transaction manager and the default rollback flag), see the
@TransactionConfiguration entry in the annotation support section.
If transactions are not enabled for the entire test class, you can annotate methods explicitly
with @Transactional. To control whether a transaction should commit for a particular
test method, you can use the @Rollback annotation to override the class-level default
rollback setting.
AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests and
AbstractTransactionalTestNGSpringContextTests are preconfigured for
transactional support at the class level.
Occasionally you need to execute certain code before or after a transactional test method
but outside the transactional context, for example, to verify the initial database state prior to
execution of your test or to verify expected transactional commit behavior after test
execution (if the test was configured not to roll back the transaction).
TransactionalTestExecutionListener supports the @BeforeTransaction
and @AfterTransaction annotations exactly for such scenarios. Simply annotate any
public void method in your test class with one of these annotations, and the
TransactionalTestExecutionListener ensures that your before transaction
method or after transaction method is executed at the appropriate time.
Tip
Any before methods (such as methods annotated with JUnit's
@Before) and any after methods (such as methods annotated with
JUnit's @After) are executed within a transaction. In addition,
methods annotated with @BeforeTransaction or
@AfterTransaction are naturally not executed for tests annotated
with @NotTransactional. However, @NotTransactional is
deprecated as of Spring 3.0.
The following JUnit-based example displays a fictitious integration testing scenario
highlighting several transaction-related annotations. Consult the annotation support
section for further information and configuration examples.
@TransactionConfiguration(transactionManager="txMgr", defaultRollback=false)
@Transactional
public class FictitiousTransactionalTest {
@BeforeTransaction
public void verifyInitialDatabaseState() {
// logic to verify the initial state before a transaction is started
}
@Before
public void setUpTestDataWithinTransaction() {
// set up test data within the transaction
}
@Test
// overrides the class-level defaultRollback setting
@Rollback(true)
public void modifyDatabaseWithinTransaction() {
// logic which uses the test data and modifies database state
}
@After
public void tearDownWithinTransaction() {
// execute "tear down" logic within the transaction
}
@AfterTransaction
public void verifyFinalDatabaseState() {
// logic to verify the final state after transaction has rolled back
}
}
Avoid false positives when testing ORM code
When you test application code that manipulates the state of the Hibernate
session, make sure to flush the underlying session within test methods that
execute that code. Failing to flush the underlying session can produce false
positives: your test may pass, but the same code throws an exception in a live,
production environment. In the following Hibernate-based example test case, one
method demonstrates a false positive, and the other method correctly exposes the
results of flushing the session. Note that this applies to JPA and any other ORM
frameworks that maintain an in-memory unit of work.
// ...
@Autowired
private SessionFactory sessionFactory;
@Test // no expected exception!
public void falsePositive() {
updateEntityInHibernateSession();
// False positive: an exception will be thrown once the session is
// finally flushed (i.e., in production code)
}
@Test(expected = GenericJDBCException.class)
public void updateWithSessionFlush() {
updateEntityInHibernateSession();
// Manual flush is required to avoid false positive in test
sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().flush();
}
// ...
TestContext Framework support classes

JUnit support classes
The org.springframework.test.context.junit4 package provides support
classes for JUnit 4.5+ based test cases.
AbstractJUnit4SpringContextTests: Abstract base test class that integrates
the Spring TestContext Framework with explicit ApplicationContext testing
support in a JUnit 4.5+ environment.
When you extend AbstractJUnit4SpringContextTests, you can access the
following protected instance variable:
applicationContext: Use this variable to perform explicit bean lookups or to
test the state of the context as a whole.
AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests: Abstract
transactional extension of AbstractJUnit4SpringContextTests that also adds
some convenience functionality for JDBC access. Expects a
javax.sql.DataSource bean and a PlatformTransactionManager bean to
be defined in the ApplicationContext. When you extend
AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests you can access the
following protected instance variables:
applicationContext: Inherited from the
AbstractJUnit4SpringContextTests superclass. Use this variable to
perform explicit bean lookups or to test the state of the context as a whole.
jdbcTemplate: Use this variable to execute SQL statements to query the
database. Such queries can be used to confirm database state both prior to and
after execution of database-related application code, and Spring ensures that
such queries run in the scope of the same transaction as the application code.
When used in conjunction with an ORM tool, be sure to avoid false positives.
Tip
These classes are a convenience for extension. If you do not want your
test classes to be tied to a Spring-specific class hierarchy for
example, if you want to directly extend the class you are testing you
can configure your own custom test classes by using
@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class),
@ContextConfiguration, @TestExecutionListeners, and
so on.
Spring JUnit Runner

The Spring TestContext Framework offers full integration with JUnit 4.5+ through a custom
runner (tested on JUnit 4.5 4.10). By annotating test classes with
@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class), developers can implement
standard JUnit-based unit and integration tests and simultaneously reap the benefits of the
TestContext framework such as support for loading application contexts, dependency
injection of test instances, transactional test method execution, and so on. The following
code listing displays the minimal requirements for configuring a test class to run with the
custom Spring Runner. @TestExecutionListeners is configured with an empty list in
order to disable the default listeners, which otherwise would require an ApplicationContext
to be configured through @ContextConfiguration.
@TestExecutionListeners({})
public class SimpleTest {
@Test
public void testMethod() {
// execute test logic...
}
}
TestNG support classes

The org.springframework.test.context.testng package provides support
classes for TestNG based test cases.
AbstractTestNGSpringContextTests: Abstract base test class that integrates
the Spring TestContext Framework with explicit ApplicationContext testing
support in a TestNG environment.
When you extend AbstractTestNGSpringContextTests, you can access the
following protected instance variable:
applicationContext: Use this variable to perform explicit bean lookups or to
test the state of the context as a whole.
AbstractTransactionalTestNGSpringContextTests: Abstract
transactional extension of AbstractTestNGSpringContextTests that adds
some convenience functionality for JDBC access. Expects a
javax.sql.DataSource bean and a PlatformTransactionManager bean to
be defined in the ApplicationContext. When you extend
AbstractTransactionalTestNGSpringContextTests, you can access the
following protected instance variables:
applicationContext: Inherited from the
AbstractTestNGSpringContextTests superclass. Use this variable to
perform explicit bean lookups or to test the state of the context as a whole.
jdbcTemplate: Use this variable to execute SQL statements to query the
database. Such queries can be used to confirm database state both prior to and
after execution of database-related application code, and Spring ensures that
such queries run in the scope of the same transaction as the application code.
When used in conjunction with an ORM tool, be sure to avoid false positives.
Tip
These classes are a convenience for extension. If you do not want your
test classes to be tied to a Spring-specific class hierarchy for
example, if you want to directly extend the class you are testing you
can configure your own custom test classes by using
@ContextConfiguration, @TestExecutionListeners, and
so on, and by manually instrumenting your test class with a
TestContextManager. See the source code of
AbstractTestNGSpringContextTests for an example of how to
instrument your test class.
11.3.6 Spring MVC Test Framework

The Spring MVC Test framework provides first
class JUnit support for testing client and serverside Spring MVC code through a fluent API.
Typically it loads the actual Spring configuration
through the TestContext framework and always
uses the DispatcherServlet to process
requests thus approximating full integration tests
without requiring a running Servlet container.
Client-side tests are RestTemplate-based and
allow tests for code that relies on the
RestTemplate without requiring a running
server to respond to the requests.
Server-Side Tests
Before Spring Framework 3.2, the most likely way
to test a Spring MVC controller was to write a unit
Standalone project
Before inclusion in Spring
Framework 3.2, the Spring MVC
Test framework had already
existed as a separate project on
GitHub where it grew and
evolved through actual use,
feedback, and the contribution of
many.
The standalone spring-test-mvc
project is still available on GitHub
and can be used in conjunction
with Spring Framework 3.1.x.
Applications upgrading to 3.2
should replace the spring-
test-mvc dependency with a

dependency on springtest.
test that instantiates the controller, injects it with
The spring-test module
mock or stub dependencies, and then calls its
uses a different package
methods directly, using a

MockHttpServletRequest and
MockHttpServletResponse where
necessary.
Although this is pretty easy to do, controllers have
many annotations, and much remains untested.
Request mappings, data binding, type conversion,
and validation are just a few examples of what
isn't tested. Furthermore, there are other types of
org.springframework.test.web
but otherwise is nearly identical
with two exceptions. One is
support for features new in 3.2
(e.g. asynchronous web
requests). The other relates to
the options for creating a
MockMvc instance. In Spring
Framework 3.2, this can only be
done through the TestContext
framework, which provides
caching benefits for the loaded
configuration.
annotated methods such as @InitBinder,

@ModelAttribute, and
@ExceptionHandler that get invoked as part of request processing.
The idea behind Spring MVC Test is to be able to re-write those controller tests by
performing actual requests and generating responses, as they would be at runtime, along
the way invoking controllers through the Spring MVC DispatcherServlet. Controllers
can still be injected with mock dependencies, so tests can remain focused on the web
layer.
Spring MVC Test builds on the familiar "mock" implementations of the Servlet API
available in the spring-test module. This allows performing requests and generating
responses without the need for running in a Servlet container. For the most part everything
should work as it does at runtime with the exception of JSP rendering, which is not
available outside a Servlet container. Furthermore, if you are familiar with how the
MockHttpServletResponse works, you'll know that forwards and redirects are not
actually executed. Instead "forwarded" and "redirected" URLs are saved and can be
asserted in tests. This means if you are using JSPs, you can verify the JSP page to which
the request was forwarded.
All other means of rendering including @ResponseBody methods and View types
(besides JSPs) such as Freemarker, Velocity, Thymeleaf, and others for rendering HTML,
JSON, XML, and so on should work as expected, and the response will contain the
generated content.
Below is an example of a test requesting account information in JSON format:
import static org.springframework.test.web.servlet.request.MockMvcRequestBuilders.*;

import static org.springframework.test.web.servlet.result.MockMvcResultMatchers.*;
@ContextConfiguration("test-servlet-context.xml")
public class ExampleTests {
@Autowired
private MockMvc mockMvc;
@Before
public void setup() {
this.mockMvc = MockMvcBuilders.webAppContextSetup(this.wac).build();
}
@Test
public void getAccount() throws Exception {
this.mockMvc.perform(get("/accounts/1").accept(MediaType.parseMediaType("application/json;charset=UTF-8")))
.andExpect(status().isOk())
.andExpect(content().contentType("application/json"))
.andExpect(jsonPath("$.name").value("Lee"));
}
}
The test relies on the WebApplicationContext support of the TestContext framework.

It loads Spring configuration from an XML configuration file located in the same package
as the test class (also supports JavaConfig) and injects the created
WebApplicationContext into the test so a MockMvc instance can be created with it.
The MockMvc is then used to perform a request to "/accounts/1" and verify the
resulting response status is 200, the response content type is "application/json",
and response content has a JSON property called "name" with the value "Lee". JSON
content is inspected with the help of Jayway's JsonPath project. There are lots of other
options for verifying the result of the performed request and those will be discussed later.
Static Imports
The fluent API in the example above requires a few static imports such as
MockMvcRequestBuilders.*, MockMvcResultMatchers.*, and
MockMvcBuilders.*. An easy way to find these classes is to search for types matching
"MockMvc*". If using Eclipse, be sure to add them as "favorite static members" in the
Eclipse preferences under Java -> Editor -> Content Assist -> Favorites. That will allow
use of content assist after typing the first character of the static method name. Other IDEs
(e.g. IntelliJ) may not require any additional configuration. Just check the support for code
completion on static members.
Setup Options
The goal of server-side test setup is to create an instance of MockMvc that can be used to
perform requests. There are two main options.
The first option is to point to Spring MVC configuration through the TestContext framework,
which loads the Spring configuration and injects a WebApplicationContext into the
test to use to create a MockMvc:
@ContextConfiguration("my-servlet-context.xml")
public class MyWebTests {
@Autowired
@Before
this.mockMvc = MockMvcBuilders.webAppContextSetup(this.wac).build();
}
// ...
The second option is to simply register a controller instance without loading any Spring
configuration. Instead basic Spring MVC configuration suitable for testing annotated
controllers is automatically created. The created configuration is comparable to that of the
MVC JavaConfig (and the MVC namespace) and can be customized to a degree through
builder-style methods:
@Before
this.mockMvc = MockMvcBuilders.standaloneSetup(new AccountController()).build();
}
// ...
}
Which option should you use?

The "webAppContextSetup" loads the actual Spring MVC configuration resulting in a more
complete integration test. Since the TestContext framework caches the loaded Spring
configuration, it helps to keep tests running fast even as more tests get added.
Furthermore, you can inject mock services into controllers through Spring configuration, in
order to remain focused on testing the web layer. Here is an example of declaring a mock
service with Mockito:
<bean id="accountService" class="org.mockito.Mockito" factory-method="mock">
<constructor-arg value="org.example.AccountService"/>
</bean>
Then you can inject the mock service into the test in order set up and verify expectations:
@ContextConfiguration("test-servlet-context.xml")
public class AccountTests {
@Autowired
@Autowired
private AccountService accountService;
// ...
}
The "standaloneSetup" on the other hand is a little closer to a unit test. It tests one
controller at a time, the controller can be injected with mock dependencies manually, and it
doesn't involve loading Spring configuration. Such tests are more focused in style and
make it easier to see which controller is being tested, whether any specific Spring MVC
configuration is required to work, and so on. The "standaloneSetup" is also a very
convenient way to write ad-hoc tests to verify some behavior or to debug an issue.
Just like with integration vs unit testing, there is no right or wrong answer. Using the
"standaloneSetup" does imply the need for some additional "webAppContextSetup" tests
to verify the Spring MVC configuration. Alternatively, you can decide write all tests with
"webAppContextSetup" and always test against actual Spring MVC configuration.
Performing Requests
To perform requests, use the appropriate HTTP method and additional builder-style
methods corresponding to properties of MockHttpServletRequest. For example:
mockMvc.perform(post("/hotels/{id}", 42).accept(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON));
In addition to all the HTTP methods, you can also perform file upload requests, which
internally creates an instance of MockMultipartHttpServletRequest:
mockMvc.perform(fileUpload("/doc").file("a1", "ABC".getBytes("UTF-8")));
Query string parameters can be specified in the URI template:

mockMvc.perform(get("/hotels?foo={foo}", "bar"));
Or by adding Servlet request parameters:

mockMvc.perform(get("/hotels").param("foo", "bar"));
If application code relies on Servlet request parameters, and doesn't check the query
string, as is most often the case, then it doesn't matter how parameters are added. Keep in
mind though that parameters provided in the URI template will be decoded while
parameters provided through the param(...) method are expected to be decoded.
In most cases it's preferable to leave out the context path and the Servlet path from the
request URI. If you must test with the full request URI, be sure to set the contextPath
and servletPath accordingly so that request mappings will work:
mockMvc.perform(get("/app/main/hotels/{id}").contextPath("/app").servletPath("/main"))
Looking at the above example, it would be cumbersome to set the contextPath and
servletPath with every performed request. That's why you can define default request
properties when building the MockMvc:
@Before
mockMvc = standaloneSetup(new AccountController())
.defaultRequest(get("/")
.contextPath("/app").servletPath("/main")
.accept(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON).build();
}
}
The above properties will apply to every request performed through the MockMvc. If the
same property is also specified on a given request, it will override the default value. That is
why, the HTTP method and URI don't matter, when setting default request properties, since
they must be specified on every request.
Defining Expectations
Expectations can be defined by appending one or more .andExpect(..) after call to
perform the request:
mockMvc.perform(get("/accounts/1")).andExpect(status().isOk());
MockMvcResultMatchers.* defines a number of static members, some of which return

types with additional methods, for asserting the result of the performed request. The
assertions fall in two general categories.
The first category of assertions verify properties of the response, i.e the response status,
headers, and content. Those are the most important things to test for.
The second category of assertions go beyond the response, and allow inspecting Spring
MVC specific constructs such as which controller method processed the request, whether
an exception was raised and handled, what the content of the model is, what view was
selected, what flash attributes were added, and so on. It is also possible to verify Servlet
specific constructs such as request and session attributes. The following test asserts that
binding/validation failed:
mockMvc.perform(post("/persons"))
.andExpect(model().attributeHasErrors("person"));
Many times when writing tests, it's useful to dump the result of the performed request. This
can be done as follows, where print() is a static import from
MockMvcResultHandlers:
mockMvc.perform(post("/persons"))
.andDo(print())
.andExpect(model().attributeHasErrors("person"));
As long as request processing causes an unhandled exception, the print() method will
print all the available result data to System.out.
In some cases, you may want to get direct access to the result and verify something that
cannot be verified otherwise. This can be done by appending .andReturn() at the end
after all expectations:
MvcResult mvcResult = mockMvc.perform(post("/persons")).andExpect(status().isOk()).andReturn();
// ...
When all tests repeat the same expectations, you can define the common expectations
once when building the MockMvc:
standaloneSetup(new SimpleController())
.alwaysExpect(status().isOk())
.alwaysExpect(content().contentType("application/json;charset=UTF-8"))
.build()
Note that the expectation is always applied and cannot be overridden without creating a
separate MockMvc instance.
When JSON response content contains hypermedia links created with Spring HATEOAS,
the resulting links can be verified:
mockMvc.perform(get("/people").accept(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON))
.andExpect(jsonPath("$.links[?(@.rel == 'self')].href").value("http://localhost:8080/people"));
When XML response content contains hypermedia links created with Spring HATEOAS,
the resulting links can be verified:
Map<String, String> ns = Collections.singletonMap("ns", "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom");
mockMvc.perform(get("/handle").accept(MediaType.APPLICATION_XML))
.andExpect(xpath("/person/ns:link[@rel='self']/@href", ns).string("http://localhost:8080/people"));
Filter Registrations
When setting up a MockMvc, you can register one or more Filter instances:
mockMvc = standaloneSetup(new PersonController()).addFilters(new CharacterEncodingFilter()).build();
Registered filters will be invoked through MockFilterChain from spring-test and

the last filter will delegates to the DispatcherServlet.
Further Server-Side Test Examples

The framework's own tests include many sample tests intended to demonstrate how to use
Spring MVC Test. Browse these examples for further ideas. Also the spring-mvc-showcase
has full test coverage based on Spring MVC Test.
Client-Side REST Tests
Client-side tests are for code using the RestTemplate. The goal is to define expected
requests and provide "stub" responses:
RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();
MockRestServiceServer mockServer = MockRestServiceServer.createServer(restTemplate);
mockServer.expect(requestTo("/greeting")).andRespond(withSuccess("Hello world", "text/plain"));
// use RestTemplate ...
mockServer.verify();
In the above example, MockRestServiceServer -- the central class for client-side

REST tests -- configures the RestTemplate with a custom
ClientHttpRequestFactory that asserts actual requests against expectations and
returns "stub" responses. In this case we expect a single request to "/greeting" and want to
return a 200 response with "text/plain" content. We could define as many additional
requests and stub responses as necessary.
Once expected requests and stub responses have been defined, the RestTemplate can
be used in client-side code as usual. At the end of the tests mockServer.verify() can
be used to verify that all expected requests were performed.
Static Imports
Just like with server-side tests, the fluent API for client-side tests requires a few static
imports. Those are easy to find by searching "MockRest*". Eclipse users should add
"MockRestRequestMatchers.*" and "MockRestResponseCreators.*" as
"favorite static members" in the Eclipse preferences under Java -> Editor -> Content Assist
-> Favorites. That allows using content assist after typing the first character of the static
method name. Other IDEs (e.g. IntelliJ) may not require any additional configuration. Just
check the support for code completion on static members.
Further Examples of Client-side REST Tests

Spring MVC Test's own tests include example tests of client-side REST tests.
11.3.7 PetClinic Example

The PetClinic application, available from the samples repository, illustrates several
features of the Spring TestContext Framework in a JUnit 4.5+ environment. Most test
functionality is included in the AbstractClinicTests, for which a partial listing is
shown below:
import static org.junit.Assert.assertEquals;
// import ...
public abstract class AbstractClinicTests extends AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests {
@Autowired
protected Clinic clinic;
@Test
public void getVets() {
Collection<Vet> vets = this.clinic.getVets();
assertEquals("JDBC query must show the same number of vets",
super.countRowsInTable("VETS"), vets.size());
Vet v1 = EntityUtils.getById(vets, Vet.class, 2);
assertEquals("Leary", v1.getLastName());
assertEquals(1, v1.getNrOfSpecialties());
assertEquals("radiology", (v1.getSpecialties().get(0)).getName());
// ...
}
// ...
}
Notes:
This test case extends the
AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests class, from which it

inherits configuration for Dependency Injection (through the
DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener) and transactional behavior
(through the TransactionalTestExecutionListener).
The clinic instance variable the application object being tested is set by
Dependency Injection through @Autowired semantics.
The testGetVets() method illustrates how you can use the inherited
countRowsInTable() method to easily verify the number of rows in a given table,
thus verifying correct behavior of the application code being tested. This allows for
stronger tests and lessens dependency on the exact test data. For example, you can
add additional rows in the database without breaking tests.
Like many integration tests that use a database, most of the tests in
AbstractClinicTests depend on a minimum amount of data already in the
database before the test cases run. Alternatively, you might choose to populate the
database within the test fixture set up of your test cases again, within the same
transaction as the tests.
The PetClinic application supports three data access technologies: JDBC, Hibernate, and
JPA. By declaring @ContextConfiguration without any specific resource locations,
the AbstractClinicTests class will have its application context loaded from the
default location, AbstractClinicTests-context.xml, which declares a common
DataSource. Subclasses specify additional context locations that must declare a
PlatformTransactionManager and a concrete implementation of Clinic.
For example, the Hibernate implementation of the PetClinic tests contains the following
implementation. For this example, HibernateClinicTests does not contain a single
line of code: we only need to declare @ContextConfiguration, and the tests are
inherited from AbstractClinicTests. Because @ContextConfiguration is
declared without any specific resource locations, the Spring TestContext Framework loads
an application context from all the beans defined in AbstractClinicTestscontext.xml (i.e., the inherited locations) and HibernateClinicTestscontext.xml, with HibernateClinicTests-context.xml possibly overriding
beans defined in AbstractClinicTests-context.xml.
public class HibernateClinicTests extends AbstractClinicTests { }
In a large-scale application, the Spring configuration is often split across multiple files.
Consequently, configuration locations are typically specified in a common base class for
all application-specific integration tests. Such a base class may also add useful instance
variables populated by Dependency Injection, naturally such as a
SessionFactory in the case of an application using Hibernate.
As far as possible, you should have exactly the same Spring configuration files in your
integration tests as in the deployed environment. One likely point of difference concerns
database connection pooling and transaction infrastructure. If you are deploying to a fullblown application server, you will probably use its connection pool (available through
JNDI) and JTA implementation. Thus in production you will use a
JndiObjectFactoryBean or <jee:jndi-lookup> for the DataSource and
JtaTransactionManager. JNDI and JTA will not be available in out-of-container
integration tests, so you should use a combination like the Commons DBCP
BasicDataSource and DataSourceTransactionManager or
HibernateTransactionManager for them. You can factor out this variant behavior
into a single XML file, having the choice between application server and a 'local'
configuration separated from all other configuration, which will not vary between the test
and production environments. In addition, it is advisable to use properties files for
connection settings. See the PetClinic application for an example.

Consult the following resources for more information about testing:
JUnit: A programmer-oriented testing framework for Java . Used by the Spring
Framework in its test suite.
TestNG: A testing framework inspired by JUnit with added support for Java 5
annotations, test groups, data-driven testing, distributed testing, etc.
MockObjects.com: Web site dedicated to mock objects, a technique for improving the
design of code within test-driven development.
"Mock Objects": Article in Wikipedia.
EasyMock: Java library that provides Mock Objects for interfaces (and objects
through the class extension) by generating them on the fly using Java's proxy
mechanism. Used by the Spring Framework in its test suite.
JMock: Library that supports test-driven development of Java code with mock objects.
Mockito: Java mock library based on the test spy pattern.
DbUnit: JUnit extension (also usable with Ant and Maven) targeted for databasedriven projects that, among other things, puts your database into a known state
between test runs.
The Grinder: Java load testing framework.
Part IV. Data Access

This part of the reference documentation is concerned with data access and the interaction
between the data access layer and the business or service layer.
Spring's comprehensive transaction management support is covered in some detail,
followed by thorough coverage of the various data access frameworks and technologies
that the Spring Framework integrates with.
Chapter 12, Transaction Management
Chapter 13, DAO support
Chapter 14, Data access with JDBC
Chapter 15, Object Relational Mapping (ORM) Data Access
Chapter 16, Marshalling XML using O/X Mappers
12. Transaction Management

12.1 Introduction to Spring Framework transaction
management
Comprehensive transaction support is among the most compelling reasons to use the
Spring Framework. The Spring Framework provides a consistent abstraction for
transaction management that delivers the following benefits:
Consistent programming model across different transaction APIs such as Java
Transaction API (JTA), JDBC, Hibernate, Java Persistence API (JPA), and Java Data
Objects (JDO).
Support for declarative transaction management.
Simpler API for programmatic transaction management than complex transaction APIs
such as JTA.
Excellent integration with Spring's data access abstractions.
The following sections describe the Spring Framework's transaction value-adds and
technologies. (The chapter also includes discussions of best practices, application server
integration, and solutions to common problems.)
Advantages of the Spring Framework's transaction support model describes why you
would use the Spring Framework's transaction abstraction instead of EJB ContainerManaged Transactions (CMT) or choosing to drive local transactions through a
proprietary API such as Hibernate.
Understanding the Spring Framework transaction abstraction outlines the core classes
and describes how to configure and obtain DataSource instances from a variety of
sources.
Synchronizing resources with transactions describes how the application code
ensures that resources are created, reused, and cleaned up properly.
Declarative transaction management describes support for declarative transaction
management.
Programmatic transaction management covers support for programmatic (that is,
explicitly coded) transaction management.
12.2 Advantages of the Spring Framework's transaction

support model
Traditionally, Java EE developers have had two choices for transaction management:
global or local transactions, both of which have profound limitations. Global and local
transaction management is reviewed in the next two sections, followed by a discussion of
how the Spring Framework's transaction management support addresses the limitations of
the global and local transaction models.
12.2.1 Global transactions

Global transactions enable you to work with multiple transactional resources, typically
relational databases and message queues. The application server manages global
transactions through the JTA, which is a cumbersome API to use (partly due to its
exception model). Furthermore, a JTA UserTransaction normally needs to be sourced
from JNDI, meaning that you also need to use JNDI in order to use JTA. Obviously the use
of global transactions would limit any potential reuse of application code, as JTA is
normally only available in an application server environment.
Previously, the preferred way to use global transactions was via EJB CMT (Container
Managed Transaction): CMT is a form of declarative transaction management (as
distinguished from programmatic transaction management). EJB CMT removes the
need for transaction-related JNDI lookups, although of course the use of EJB itself
necessitates the use of JNDI. It removes most but not all of the need to write Java code to
control transactions. The significant downside is that CMT is tied to JTA and an application
server environment. Also, it is only available if one chooses to implement business logic in
EJBs, or at least behind a transactional EJB facade. The negatives of EJB in general are
so great that this is not an attractive proposition, especially in the face of compelling
alternatives for declarative transaction management.
12.2.2 Local transactions

Local transactions are resource-specific, such as a transaction associated with a JDBC
connection. Local transactions may be easier to use, but have significant disadvantages:
they cannot work across multiple transactional resources. For example, code that manages
transactions using a JDBC connection cannot run within a global JTA transaction.
Because the application server is not involved in transaction management, it cannot help
ensure correctness across multiple resources. (It is worth noting that most applications use
a single transaction resource.) Another downside is that local transactions are invasive to
the programming model.
12.2.3 Spring Framework's consistent programming model

Spring resolves the disadvantages of global and local transactions. It enables application
developers to use a consistent programming model in any environment. You write your
code once, and it can benefit from different transaction management strategies in different
environments. The Spring Framework provides both declarative and programmatic
transaction management. Most users prefer declarative transaction management, which is
recommended in most cases.
With programmatic transaction management, developers work with the Spring Framework
transaction abstraction, which can run over any underlying transaction infrastructure. With
the preferred declarative model, developers typically write little or no code related to
transaction management, and hence do not depend on the Spring Framework transaction
API, or any other transaction API.
Do you need an application

server for transaction
management?
The Spring Framework's
transaction management support
changes traditional rules as to
when an enterprise Java
application requires an
application server.
In particular, you do not need an
application server simply for
declarative transactions through
EJBs. In fact, even if your
application server has powerful
JTA capabilities, you may decide
that the Spring Framework's
declarative transactions offer
more power and a more
productive programming model
than EJB CMT.
Typically you need an application
server's JTA capability only if
your application needs to handle
transactions across multiple
resources, which is not a
requirement for many
applications. Many high-end
applications use a single, highly
scalable database (such as
Oracle RAC) instead. Standalone
transaction managers such as
Atomikos Transactions and
JOTM are other options. Of
course, you may need other
application server capabilities
such as Java Message Service
(JMS) and J2EE Connector
Architecture (JCA).
The Spring Framework gives you
the choice of when to scale your
application to a fully loaded
application server. Gone are the
days when the only alternative to
using EJB CMT or JTA was to
write code with local transactions
such as those on JDBC
connections, and face a hefty
rework if you need that code to
run within global, containermanaged transactions. With the
Spring Framework, only some of
the bean definitions in your
configuration file, rather than
your code, need to change.
12.3 Understanding the Spring Framework transaction

abstraction
The key to the Spring transaction abstraction is the notion of a transaction strategy. A
transaction strategy is defined by the
org.springframework.transaction.PlatformTransactionManager
interface:
public interface PlatformTransactionManager {
TransactionStatus getTransaction(TransactionDefinition definition)
throws TransactionException;
void commit(TransactionStatus status) throws TransactionException;
void rollback(TransactionStatus status) throws TransactionException;
}
This is primarily a service provider interface (SPI), although it can be used

programmatically from your application code. Because
PlatformTransactionManager is an interface, it can be easily mocked or stubbed as
necessary. It is not tied to a lookup strategy such as JNDI.
PlatformTransactionManager implementations are defined like any other object (or
bean) in the Spring Framework IoC container. This benefit alone makes Spring Framework
transactions a worthwhile abstraction even when you work with JTA. Transactional code
can be tested much more easily than if it used JTA directly.
Again in keeping with Spring's philosophy, the TransactionException that can be
thrown by any of the PlatformTransactionManager interface's methods is
unchecked (that is, it extends the java.lang.RuntimeException class). Transaction
infrastructure failures are almost invariably fatal. In rare cases where application code can
actually recover from a transaction failure, the application developer can still choose to
catch and handle TransactionException. The salient point is that developers are not
forced to do so.
The getTransaction(..) method returns a TransactionStatus object, depending
on a TransactionDefinition parameter. The returned TransactionStatus might
represent a new transaction, or can represent an existing transaction if a matching
transaction exists in the current call stack. The implication in this latter case is that, as with
Java EE transaction contexts, a TransactionStatus is associated with a thread of
execution.
The TransactionDefinition interface specifies:
Isolation: The degree to which this transaction is isolated from the work of other
transactions. For example, can this transaction see uncommitted writes from other
transactions?
Propagation: Typically, all code executed within a transaction scope will run in that
transaction. However, you have the option of specifying the behavior in the event that
a transactional method is executed when a transaction context already exists. For
example, code can continue running in the existing transaction (the common case); or
the existing transaction can be suspended and a new transaction created. Spring
offers all of the transaction propagation options familiar from EJB CMT. To read about
the semantics of transaction propagation in Spring, see Section 12.5.7, Transaction
propagation.
Timeout: How long this transaction runs before timing out and being rolled back
automatically by the underlying transaction infrastructure.
Read-only status: A read-only transaction can be used when your code reads but
does not modify data. Read-only transactions can be a useful optimization in some
cases, such as when you are using Hibernate.
These settings reflect standard transactional concepts. If necessary, refer to resources that
discuss transaction isolation levels and other core transaction concepts. Understanding
these concepts is essential to using the Spring Framework or any transaction management
solution.
The TransactionStatus interface provides a simple way for transactional code to
control transaction execution and query transaction status. The concepts should be
familiar, as they are common to all transaction APIs:
public interface TransactionStatus extends SavepointManager {
boolean isNewTransaction();
boolean hasSavepoint();
void setRollbackOnly();
boolean isRollbackOnly();
void flush();
boolean isCompleted();
}
Regardless of whether you opt for declarative or programmatic transaction management in

Spring, defining the correct PlatformTransactionManager implementation is
absolutely essential. You typically define this implementation through dependency
injection.
PlatformTransactionManager implementations normally require knowledge of the
environment in which they work: JDBC, JTA, Hibernate, and so on. The following
examples show how you can define a local PlatformTransactionManager
implementation. (This example works with plain JDBC.)
You define a JDBC DataSource
<bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">
<property name="driverClassName" value="${jdbc.driverClassName}" />
<property name="url" value="${jdbc.url}" />
<property name="username" value="${jdbc.username}" />
<property name="password" value="${jdbc.password}" />
</bean>
The related PlatformTransactionManager bean definition will then have a reference

to the DataSource definition. It will look like this:
<bean id="txManager" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceTransactionManager">
<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
</bean>
If you use JTA in a Java EE container then you use a container DataSource, obtained
through JNDI, in conjunction with Spring's JtaTransactionManager. This is what the
JTA and JNDI lookup version would look like:
http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee
http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee/spring-jee.xsd">
<jee:jndi-lookup id="dataSource" jndi-name="jdbc/jpetstore"/>
<bean id="txManager" class="org.springframework.transaction.jta.JtaTransactionManager" />

</beans>
The JtaTransactionManager does not need to know about the DataSource, or any
other specific resources, because it uses the container's global transaction management
infrastructure.
Note
The above definition of the dataSource bean uses the <jndilookup/> tag from the jee namespace. For more information on
schema-based configuration, see Appendix E, XML Schema-based
configuration, and for more information on the <jee/> tags see the
section entitled Section E.2.3, The jee schema.
You can also use Hibernate local transactions easily, as shown in the following examples.
In this case, you need to define a Hibernate LocalSessionFactoryBean, which your
application code will use to obtain Hibernate Session instances.
The DataSource bean definition will be similar to the local JDBC example shown
previously and thus is not shown in the following example.
Note
If the DataSource, used by any non-JTA transaction manager, is
looked up via JNDI and managed by a Java EE container, then it
should be non-transactional because the Spring Framework, rather
than the Java EE container, will manage the transactions.
The txManager bean in this case is of the HibernateTransactionManager type. In
the same way as the DataSourceTransactionManager needs a reference to the
DataSource, the HibernateTransactionManager needs a reference to the
SessionFactory.
<bean id="sessionFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
<property name="mappingResources">
<list>
<value>org/springframework/samples/petclinic/hibernate/petclinic.hbm.xml</value>
</list>
</property>
<property name="hibernateProperties">
<value>
hibernate.dialect=${hibernate.dialect}
</value>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="txManager" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTransactionManager">
<property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory" />
</bean>
If you are using Hibernate and Java EE container-managed JTA transactions, then you
should simply use the same JtaTransactionManager as in the previous JTA example
for JDBC.
<bean id="txManager" class="org.springframework.transaction.jta.JtaTransactionManager"/>
Note
If you use JTA , then your transaction manager definition will look the
same regardless of what data access technology you use, be it JDBC,
Hibernate JPA or any other supported technology. This is due to the
fact that JTA transactions are global transactions, which can enlist any
transactional resource.
In all these cases, application code does not need to change. You can change how
transactions are managed merely by changing configuration, even if that change means
moving from local to global transactions or vice versa.
12.4 Synchronizing resources with transactions
It should now be clear how you create different transaction managers, and how they are
linked to related resources that need to be synchronized to transactions (for example
DataSourceTransactionManager to a JDBC DataSource,
HibernateTransactionManager to a Hibernate SessionFactory, and so forth).
This section describes how the application code, directly or indirectly using a persistence
API such as JDBC, Hibernate, or JDO, ensures that these resources are created, reused,
and cleaned up properly. The section also discusses how transaction synchronization is
triggered (optionally) through the relevant PlatformTransactionManager.
12.4.1 High-level synchronization approach

The preferred approach is to use Spring's highest level template based persistence
integration APIs or to use native ORM APIs with transaction- aware factory beans or
proxies for managing the native resource factories. These transaction-aware solutions
internally handle resource creation and reuse, cleanup, optional transaction
synchronization of the resources, and exception mapping. Thus user data access code
does not have to address these tasks, but can be focused purely on non-boilerplate
persistence logic. Generally, you use the native ORM API or take a template approach for
JDBC access by using the JdbcTemplate. These solutions are detailed in subsequent
chapters of this reference documentation.
12.4.2 Low-level synchronization approach

Classes such as DataSourceUtils (for JDBC), EntityManagerFactoryUtils (for
JPA), SessionFactoryUtils (for Hibernate),
PersistenceManagerFactoryUtils (for JDO), and so on exist at a lower level.
When you want the application code to deal directly with the resource types of the native
persistence APIs, you use these classes to ensure that proper Spring Frameworkmanaged instances are obtained, transactions are (optionally) synchronized, and
exceptions that occur in the process are properly mapped to a consistent API.
For example, in the case of JDBC, instead of the traditional JDBC approach of calling the
getConnection() method on the DataSource, you instead use Spring's
org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceUtils class as follows:
Connection conn = DataSourceUtils.getConnection(dataSource);
If an existing transaction already has a connection synchronized (linked) to it, that instance
is returned. Otherwise, the method call triggers the creation of a new connection, which is
(optionally) synchronized to any existing transaction, and made available for subsequent
reuse in that same transaction. As mentioned, any SQLException is wrapped in a Spring
Framework CannotGetJdbcConnectionException, one of the Spring Framework's
hierarchy of unchecked DataAccessExceptions. This approach gives you more information
than can be obtained easily from the SQLException, and ensures portability across
databases, even across different persistence technologies.
This approach also works without Spring transaction management (transaction
synchronization is optional), so you can use it whether or not you are using Spring for
transaction management.
Of course, once you have used Spring's JDBC support, JPA support or Hibernate support,
you will generally prefer not to use DataSourceUtils or the other helper classes,
because you will be much happier working through the Spring abstraction than directly
with the relevant APIs. For example, if you use the Spring JdbcTemplate or
jdbc.object package to simplify your use of JDBC, correct connection retrieval occurs
behind the scenes and you won't need to write any special code.
12.4.3 TransactionAwareDataSourceProxy
At the very lowest level exists the TransactionAwareDataSourceProxy class. This
is a proxy for a target DataSource, which wraps the target DataSource to add
awareness of Spring-managed transactions. In this respect, it is similar to a transactional
JNDI DataSource as provided by a Java EE server.
It should almost never be necessary or desirable to use this class, except when existing
code must be called and passed a standard JDBC DataSource interface
implementation. In that case, it is possible that this code is usable, but participating in
Spring managed transactions. It is preferable to write your new code by using the higher
level abstractions mentioned above.
12.5 Declarative transaction management

Note
Most Spring Framework users choose declarative transaction
management. This option has the least impact on application code, and
hence is most consistent with the ideals of a non-invasive lightweight
container.
The Spring Framework's declarative transaction management is made possible with
Spring aspect-oriented programming (AOP), although, as the transactional aspects code
comes with the Spring Framework distribution and may be used in a boilerplate fashion,
AOP concepts do not generally have to be understood to make effective use of this code.
The Spring Framework's declarative transaction management is similar to EJB CMT in that
you can specify transaction behavior (or lack of it) down to individual method level. It is
possible to make a setRollbackOnly() call within a transaction context if necessary.
The differences between the two types of transaction management are:
Unlike EJB CMT, which is tied to JTA, the Spring Framework's declarative transaction
management works in any environment. It can work with JTA transactions or local
transactions using JDBC, JPA, Hibernate or JDO by simply adjusting the configuration
files.
You can apply the Spring Framework declarative transaction management to any
class, not merely special classes such as EJBs.
The Spring Framework offers declarative rollback rules, a feature with no EJB
equivalent. Both programmatic and declarative support for rollback rules is provided.
The Spring Framework enables you to customize transactional behavior, by using
AOP. For example, you can insert custom behavior in the case of transaction rollback.
You can also add arbitrary advice, along with the transactional advice. With EJB CMT,
you cannot influence the container's transaction management except with
setRollbackOnly().
The Spring Framework does not support propagation of transaction contexts across
remote calls, as do high-end application servers. If you need this feature, we
recommend that you use EJB. However, consider carefully before using such a
feature, because normally, one does not want transactions to span remote calls.
The concept of rollback rules is important: they
enable you to specify which exceptions (and
Where is
throwables) should cause automatic rollback. You
TransactionProxyFactoryBean?
specify this declaratively, in configuration, not in

Java code. So, although you can still call
setRollbackOnly()on the
TransactionStatus object to roll back the
current transaction back, most often you can
specify a rule that MyApplicationException
must always result in rollback. The significant
advantage to this option is that business objects
do not depend on the transaction infrastructure.
Declarative transaction
configuration in versions of
Spring 2.0 and above differs
considerably from previous
versions of Spring. The main
difference is that there is no
longer any need to configure
TransactionProxyFactoryBean
beans.
The pre-Spring 2.0 configuration
style is still 100% valid
For example, they typically do not need to import

Spring transaction APIs or other Spring APIs.
Although EJB container default behavior
automatically rolls back the transaction on a
style is still 100% valid

configuration; think of the new
<tx:tags/> as simply
defining
TransactionProxyFactoryBean
beans on your behalf.
system exception (usually a runtime exception),

EJB CMT does not roll back the transaction
automatically on an application exception (that is, a checked exception other than
java.rmi.RemoteException). While the Spring default behavior for declarative
transaction management follows EJB convention (roll back is automatic only on
unchecked exceptions), it is often useful to customize this behavior.
12.5.1 Understanding the Spring Framework's declarative

transaction implementation
It is not sufficient to tell you simply to annotate your classes with the @Transactional
annotation, add @EnableTransactionManagement to your configuration, and then
expect you to understand how it all works. This section explains the inner workings of the
Spring Framework's declarative transaction infrastructure in the event of transactionrelated issues.
The most important concepts to grasp with regard to the Spring Framework's declarative
transaction support are that this support is enabled via AOP proxies, and that the
transactional advice is driven by metadata (currently XML- or annotation-based). The
combination of AOP with transactional metadata yields an AOP proxy that uses a
TransactionInterceptor in conjunction with an appropriate
PlatformTransactionManager implementation to drive transactions around method
invocations.
Note
Spring AOP is covered in Chapter 9, Aspect Oriented Programming
with Spring.
Conceptually, calling a method on a transactional proxy looks like this...
12.5.2 Example of declarative transaction implementation

Consider the following interface, and its attendant implementation. This example uses Foo
and Bar classes as placeholders so that you can concentrate on the transaction usage
without focusing on a particular domain model. For the purposes of this example, the fact
that the DefaultFooService class throws UnsupportedOperationException
instances in the body of each implemented method is good; it allows you to see
transactions created and then rolled back in response to the
UnsupportedOperationException instance.
// the service interface that we want to make transactional
public interface FooService {
Foo getFoo(String fooName);
Foo getFoo(String fooName, String barName);
void insertFoo(Foo foo);
void updateFoo(Foo foo);
}
// an implementation of the above interface
public Foo getFoo(String fooName) {
throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
}
public Foo getFoo(String fooName, String barName) {
}
public void insertFoo(Foo foo) {
}
public void updateFoo(Foo foo) {
}
}
Assume that the first two methods of the FooService interface, getFoo(String) and
getFoo(String, String), must execute in the context of a transaction with readonly semantics, and that the other methods,insertFoo(Foo) and updateFoo(Foo),
must execute in the context of a transaction with read-write semantics. The following
configuration is explained in detail in the next few paragraphs.

xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx.xsd


<tx:advice id="txAdvice" transaction-manager="txManager">

<tx:attributes>

<tx:method name="get*" read-only="true"/>

<tx:method name="*"/>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>

<aop:config>
<aop:pointcut id="fooServiceOperation" expression="execution(* x.y.service.FooService.*(..))"/>
<aop:advisor advice-ref="txAdvice" pointcut-ref="fooServiceOperation"/>
</aop:config>

<property name="driverClassName" value="oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver"/>
<property name="url" value="jdbc:oracle:thin:@rj-t42:1521:elvis"/>
<property name="username" value="scott"/>
<property name="password" value="tiger"/>

</bean>

</bean>
</beans>
Examine the preceding configuration. You want to make a service object, the
fooService bean, transactional. The transaction semantics to apply are encapsulated in
the <tx:advice/> definition. The <tx:advice/> definition reads as ... all methods on
starting with 'get' are to execute in the context of a read-only transaction, and all other
methods are to execute with the default transaction semantics. The transactionmanager attribute of the <tx:advice/> tag is set to the name of the
PlatformTransactionManager bean that is going to drive the transactions, in this
case, the txManager bean.
Tip
You can omit the transaction-manager attribute in the
transactional advice (<tx:advice/>) if the bean name of the
PlatformTransactionManager that you want to wire in has the
name transactionManager. If the
PlatformTransactionManager bean that you want to wire in has
any other name, then you must use the transaction-manager
attribute explicitly, as in the preceding example.
The <aop:config/> definition ensures that the transactional advice defined by the
txAdvice bean executes at the appropriate points in the program. First you define a
pointcut that matches the execution of any operation defined in the FooService interface
(fooServiceOperation). Then you associate the pointcut with the txAdvice using
an advisor. The result indicates that at the execution of a fooServiceOperation, the
advice defined by txAdvice will be run.
The expression defined within the <aop:pointcut/> element is an AspectJ pointcut
expression; see Chapter 9, Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring for more details on
pointcut expressions in Spring 2.0.
A common requirement is to make an entire service layer transactional. The best way to do
this is simply to change the pointcut expression to match any operation in your service
layer. For example:
<aop:config>
<aop:pointcut id="fooServiceMethods" expression="execution(* x.y.service.*.*(..))"/>
<aop:advisor advice-ref="txAdvice" pointcut-ref="fooServiceMethods"/>
</aop:config>
Note
In this example it is assumed that all your service interfaces are defined
in the x.y.service package; see Chapter 9, Aspect Oriented
Programming with Spring for more details.
Now that we've analyzed the configuration, you may be asking yourself, Okay... but what
does all this configuration actually do?.
The above configuration will be used to create a transactional proxy around the object that
is created from the fooService bean definition. The proxy will be configured with the
transactional advice, so that when an appropriate method is invoked on the proxy, a
transaction is started, suspended, marked as read-only, and so on, depending on the
transaction configuration associated with that method. Consider the following program that
test drives the above configuration:

ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("context.xml", Boot.class);
FooService fooService = (FooService) ctx.getBean("fooService");
fooService.insertFoo (new Foo());
}
}
The output from running the preceding program will resemble the following. (The Log4J
output and the stack trace from the UnsupportedOperationException thrown by the
insertFoo(..) method of the DefaultFooService class have been truncated for clarity.)

[AspectJInvocationContextExposingAdvisorAutoProxyCreator] - Creating implicit proxy
for bean 'fooService' with 0 common interceptors and 1 specific interceptors

[JdkDynamicAopProxy] - Creating JDK dynamic proxy for [x.y.service.DefaultFooService]

[TransactionInterceptor] - Getting transaction for x.y.service.FooService.insertFoo

[DataSourceTransactionManager] - Creating new transaction with name [x.y.service.FooService.insertFoo]
[DataSourceTransactionManager] - Acquired Connection
[org.apache.commons.dbcp.PoolableConnection@a53de4] for JDBC transaction

[RuleBasedTransactionAttribute] - Applying rules to determine whether transaction should
rollback on java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException
[TransactionInterceptor] - Invoking rollback for transaction on x.y.service.FooService.insertFoo
due to throwable [java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException]

[DataSourceTransactionManager] - Rolling back JDBC transaction on Connection
[org.apache.commons.dbcp.PoolableConnection@a53de4]
[DataSourceTransactionManager] - Releasing JDBC Connection after transaction
[DataSourceUtils] - Returning JDBC Connection to DataSource
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException
at x.y.service.DefaultFooService.insertFoo(DefaultFooService.java:14)

at $Proxy0.insertFoo(Unknown Source)
at Boot.main(Boot.java:11)
12.5.3 Rolling back a declarative transaction

The previous section outlined the basics of how to specify transactional settings for
classes, typically service layer classes, declaratively in your application. This section
describes how you can control the rollback of transactions in a simple declarative fashion.
The recommended way to indicate to the Spring Framework's transaction infrastructure
that a transaction's work is to be rolled back is to throw an Exception from code that is
currently executing in the context of a transaction. The Spring Framework's transaction
infrastructure code will catch any unhandled Exception as it bubbles up the call stack,
and make a determination whether to mark the transaction for rollback.
In its default configuration, the Spring Framework's transaction infrastructure code only
marks a transaction for rollback in the case of runtime, unchecked exceptions; that is, when
the thrown exception is an instance or subclass of RuntimeException. (Errors will
also - by default - result in a rollback). Checked exceptions that are thrown from a
transactional method do not result in rollback in the default configuration.
You can configure exactly which Exception types mark a transaction for rollback,
including checked exceptions. The following XML snippet demonstrates how you
configure rollback for a checked, application-specific Exception type.
<tx:attributes>
<tx:method name="get*" read-only="true" rollback-for="NoProductInStockException"/>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>
You can also specify 'no rollback rules', if you do not want a transaction rolled back when
an exception is thrown. The following example tells the Spring Framework's transaction
infrastructure to commit the attendant transaction even in the face of an unhandled
InstrumentNotFoundException.
<tx:advice id="txAdvice">
<tx:attributes>
<tx:method name="updateStock" no-rollback-for="InstrumentNotFoundException"/>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>
When the Spring Framework's transaction infrastructure catches an exception and is

consults configured rollback rules to determine whether to mark the transaction for rollback,
the strongest matching rule wins. So in the case of the following configuration, any
exception other than an InstrumentNotFoundException results in a rollback of the
attendant transaction.
<tx:attributes>
<tx:method name="*" rollback-for="Throwable" no-rollback-for="InstrumentNotFoundException"/>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>
You can also indicate a required rollback programmatically. Although very simple, this
process is quite invasive, and tightly couples your code to the Spring Framework's
transaction infrastructure:
public void resolvePosition() {
try {
// some business logic...
} catch (NoProductInStockException ex) {
// trigger rollback programmatically
TransactionAspectSupport.currentTransactionStatus().setRollbackOnly();
}
}
You are strongly encouraged to use the declarative approach to rollback if at all possible.
Programmatic rollback is available should you absolutely need it, but its usage flies in the
face of achieving a clean POJO-based architecture.
12.5.4 Configuring different transactional semantics for different

beans
Consider the scenario where you have a number of service layer objects, and you want to
apply a totally different transactional configuration to each of them. You do this by defining
distinct <aop:advisor/> elements with differing pointcut and advice-ref attribute
values.
As a point of comparison, first assume that all of your service layer classes are defined in a
root x.y.service package. To make all beans that are instances of classes defined in
that package (or in subpackages) and that have names ending in Service have the
default transactional configuration, you would write the following:
<aop:config>
<aop:pointcut id="serviceOperation"
expression="execution(* x.y.service..*Service.*(..))"/>
<aop:advisor pointcut-ref="serviceOperation" advice-ref="txAdvice"/>

</aop:config>

<bean id="barService" class="x.y.service.extras.SimpleBarService"/>

<bean id="anotherService" class="org.xyz.SomeService"/> 
<bean id="barManager" class="x.y.service.SimpleBarManager"/> 
<tx:attributes>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>

</beans>
The following example shows how to configure two distinct beans with totally different
transactional settings.
<aop:config>
<aop:pointcut id="defaultServiceOperation"
expression="execution(* x.y.service.*Service.*(..))"/>
<aop:pointcut id="noTxServiceOperation"
expression="execution(* x.y.service.ddl.DefaultDdlManager.*(..))"/>
<aop:advisor pointcut-ref="defaultServiceOperation" advice-ref="defaultTxAdvice"/>
<aop:advisor pointcut-ref="noTxServiceOperation" advice-ref="noTxAdvice"/>
</aop:config>


<bean id="anotherFooService" class="x.y.service.ddl.DefaultDdlManager"/>
<tx:advice id="defaultTxAdvice">
<tx:attributes>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>
<tx:advice id="noTxAdvice">
<tx:attributes>
<tx:method name="*" propagation="NEVER"/>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>

</beans>
12.5.5 <tx:advice/> settings

This section summarizes the various transactional settings that can be specified using the
<tx:advice/> tag. The default <tx:advice/> settings are:
Propagation setting is REQUIRED.
Isolation level is DEFAULT.
Transaction is read/write.
Transaction timeout defaults to the default timeout of the underlying transaction

system, or none if timeouts are not supported.
Any RuntimeException triggers rollback, and any checked Exception does not.
You can change these default settings; the various attributes of the <tx:method/> tags
that are nested within <tx:advice/> and <tx:attributes/> tags are summarized
below:
Table 12.1. <tx:method/> settings

Attribute
name
Required?
Default
Method name(s) with which the transaction attributes are to be

associated. The wildcard (*) character can be used to associate
the same transaction attribute settings with a number of
methods; for example, get*, handle*, on*Event, and so
forth.
Yes
propagation No
Description
REQUIRED Transaction propagation behavior.
isolation
No
DEFAULT
Transaction isolation level.
timeout
No
-1
Transaction timeout value (in seconds).
read-only
No
false
Is this transaction read-only?
rollbackfor
No
Exception(s) that trigger rollback; comma-delimited. For

example,
com.foo.MyBusinessException,ServletException.
norollbackfor
No
Exception(s) that do not trigger rollback; comma-delimited.

For example,
com.foo.MyBusinessException,ServletException.
12.5.6 Using @Transactional

In addition to the XML-based declarative approach to transaction configuration, you can
use an annotation-based approach. Declaring transaction semantics directly in the Java
source code puts the declarations much closer to the affected code. There is not much
danger of undue coupling, because code that is meant to be used transactionally is almost
always deployed that way anyway.
The ease-of-use afforded by the use of the @Transactional annotation is best
illustrated with an example, which is explained in the text that follows. Consider the
following class definition:
// the service class that we want to make transactional
@Transactional
Foo getFoo(String fooName);
Foo getFoo(String fooName, String barName);
void insertFoo(Foo foo);
void updateFoo(Foo foo);
}
When the above POJO is defined as a bean in a Spring IoC container, the bean instance
can be made transactional by adding merely one line of XML configuration:



<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="txManager"/>


</bean>
</beans>
Tip
You can omit the transaction-manager attribute in the
<tx:annotation-driven/> tag if the bean name of the
PlatformTransactionManager that you want to wire in has the
name transactionManager. If the
PlatformTransactionManager bean that you want to
dependency-inject has any other name, then you have to use the
transaction-manager attribute explicitly, as in the preceding
example.
Note
The @EnableTransactionManagement annotation provides
equivalent support if you are using Java based configuration. Simply
add the annotation to a @Configuration class. See Javadoc for full
details.
You can place the @Transactional annotation
before an interface definition, a method on an
Method visibility and
interface, a class definition, or a public method on
@Transactional
a class. However, the mere presence of the
that can be consumed by some runtime
When using proxies, you should

apply the @Transactional
annotation only to methods with
public visibility. If you do
annotate protected, private or
package-visible methods with the
infrastructure that is @Transactional-aware
@Transactional
@Transactional annotation is not enough to

activate the transactional behavior. The
@Transactional annotation is simply metadata
and that can use the metadata to configure the

appropriate beans with transactional behavior. In
the preceding example, the <tx:annotationdriven/> element switches on the transactional
behavior.
Tip
Spring recommends that you only
annotate concrete classes (and
methods of concrete classes) with
the @Transactional
annotation, as opposed to
annotating interfaces. You
certainly can place the
@Transactional annotation
on an interface (or an interface
method), but this works only as
you would expect it to if you are
using interface-based proxies.
The fact that Java annotations are
not inherited from interfaces
annotation, no error is raised, but

the annotated method does not
exhibit the configured
transactional settings. Consider
the use of AspectJ (see below) if
you need to annotate non-public
methods.
means that if you are using classbased proxies (proxy-targetclass="true") or the weavingbased aspect
(mode="aspectj"), then the
transaction settings are not
recognized by the proxying and
weaving infrastructure, and the
object will not be wrapped in a
transactional proxy, which would
be decidedly bad.
Note
In proxy mode (which is 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 calling another method of the
target object, will not lead to an actual transaction at runtime even if the
invoked method is marked with @Transactional.
Consider the use of AspectJ mode (see mode attribute in table below) if you expect selfinvocations to be wrapped with transactions as well. In this case, there will not be a proxy
in the first place; instead, the target class will be weaved (that is, its byte code will be
modified) in order to turn @Transactional into runtime behavior on any kind of method.
Table 12.2. Annotation driven transaction settings

XML Attribute
Annotation Attribute
Default
transaction- N/A (See

TransactionManagementConfigurer transactionManager
manager
Javadoc)
mode
mode
proxy
Description
Name of transaction
manager to use. Only
required if the name of the
transaction manager is
not
transactionManager,
as in the example above.
The default mode "proxy"
processes annotated
beans to be proxied using
Spring's AOP framework
(following proxy
semantics, as discussed
above, applying to
method calls coming in
through the proxy only).
The alternative mode
"aspectj" instead weaves
the affected classes with
Spring's AspectJ
transaction 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 loadtime weaving (or compiletime weaving) enabled.
(See the section called
Spring configuration for
details on how to set up
load-time weaving.)
Applies to proxy mode
only. Controls what type
of transactional proxies
are created for classes
annotated with the

@Transactional
annotation. If the proxytarget-class attribute
is set to true, then classbased proxies are
created. If proxytarget-class is
false or if the attribute is
omitted, then standard
JDK interface-based
proxies are created. (See
Section 9.6, Proxying
mechanisms for a
detailed examination of
the different proxy types.)
proxyproxyTargetClass
target-class
false
order
Defines the order of the

transaction advice that is
applied to beans
annotated with
@Transactional. (For
more information about
the rules related to
Ordered.LOWEST_PRECEDENCE
ordering of AOP advice,
see the section called
Advice ordering.) No
specified ordering means
that the AOP subsystem
determines the order of
the advice.
order
Note
The proxy-target-class attribute controls what type of
transactional proxies are created for classes annotated with the
@Transactional annotation. If proxy-target-class 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 Section 9.6, Proxying mechanisms for a
discussion of the different proxy types.)
Note
@EnableTransactionManagement and <tx:annotationdriven/> only looks for @Transactional on beans in the same
application context they are defined in. This means that, if you put
annotation driven configuration in a WebApplicationContext for a
DispatcherServlet, it only checks for @Transactional beans
in your controllers, and not your services. See Section 17.2, The
DispatcherServlet for more information.
The most derived location takes precedence when evaluating the transactional settings for
a method. In the case of the following example, the DefaultFooService class is
annotated at the class level with the settings for a read-only transaction, but the
@Transactional annotation on the updateFoo(Foo) method in the same class takes
precedence over the transactional settings defined at the class level.
@Transactional(readOnly = true)
public Foo getFoo(String fooName) {
// do something
}
// these settings have precedence for this method
@Transactional(readOnly = false, propagation = Propagation.REQUIRES_NEW)
public void updateFoo(Foo foo) {
// do something
}
}
@Transactional settings
The @Transactional annotation is metadata that specifies that an interface, class, or
method must have transactional semantics; for example, start a brand new read-only
transaction when this method is invoked, suspending any existing transaction. The default
@Transactional settings are as follows:
Propagation setting is PROPAGATION_REQUIRED.
Isolation level is ISOLATION_DEFAULT.
Transaction is read/write.
Transaction timeout defaults to the default timeout of the underlying transaction
system, or to none if timeouts are not supported.
Any RuntimeException triggers rollback, and any checked Exception does not.
These default settings can be changed; the various properties of the @Transactional
annotation are summarized in the following table:
Table 12.3. @Transactional properties

Property
Type
Description
value
String
Optional qualifier
specifying the
transaction manager to
be used.
propagation
enum: Propagation
Optional propagation
setting.
isolation
enum: Isolation
Optional isolation
level.
readOnly
boolean
Read/write vs. readonly transaction
timeout
int (in seconds

granularity)
Transaction timeout.
rollbackFor
Array of Class
Optional array of
objects, which must be
exception classes that
derived from
must cause rollback.
Throwable.
rollbackForClassName
Array of class names.

Classes must be
derived from
Throwable.
Optional array of
names of exception
classes that must
cause rollback.
noRollbackFor
Array of Class
objects, which must be
derived from
Throwable.
Optional array of
exception classes that
must not cause
rollback.
Array of String class

noRollbackForClassName names, which must be
derived from
Throwable.
Optional array of
names of exception
classes that must not
cause rollback.
Currently you cannot have explicit control over the name of a transaction, where 'name'
means the transaction name that will be shown in a transaction monitor, if applicable (for
example, WebLogic's transaction monitor), and in logging output. For declarative
transactions, the transaction name is always the fully-qualified class name + "." + method
name of the transactionally-advised class. For example, if the handlePayment(..)
method of the BusinessService class started a transaction, the name of the transaction
would be: com.foo.BusinessService.handlePayment.

Most Spring applications only need a single transaction manager, but there may be
situations where you want multiple independent transaction managers in a single
application. The value attribute of the @Transactional annotation can be used to
optionally specify the identity of the PlatformTransactionManager to be used. This
can either be the bean name or the qualifier value of the transaction manager bean. For
example, using the qualifier notation, the following Java code
public class TransactionalService {
@Transactional("order")
public void setSomething(String name) { ... }
@Transactional("account")
public void doSomething() { ... }
}
could be combined with the following transaction manager bean declarations in the
application context.
<tx:annotation-driven/>
<bean id="transactionManager1" class="org.springframework.jdbc.DataSourceTransactionManager">
...
<qualifier value="order"/>
</bean>
<bean id="transactionManager2" class="org.springframework.jdbc.DataSourceTransactionManager">
...
<qualifier value="account"/>
</bean>
In this case, the two methods on TransactionalService will run under separate
transaction managers, differentiated by the "order" and "account" qualifiers. The default
<tx:annotation-driven> target bean name transactionManager will still be
used if no specifically qualified PlatformTransactionManager bean is found.
Custom shortcut annotations

If you find you are repeatedly using the same attributes with @Transactional on many
different methods, then Spring's meta-annotation support allows you to define custom
shortcut annotations for your specific use cases. For example, defining the following
annotations
@Target({ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.TYPE})
@Transactional("order")
public @interface OrderTx {
}
@Target({ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.TYPE})
@Transactional("account")
public @interface AccountTx {
}
allows us to write the example from the previous section as

public class TransactionalService {
@OrderTx
public void setSomething(String name) { ... }
@AccountTx
public void doSomething() { ... }
}
Here we have used the syntax to define the transaction manager qualifier, but could also
have included propagation behavior, rollback rules, timeouts etc.
12.5.7 Transaction propagation

This section describes some semantics of transaction propagation in Spring. Please note
that this section is not an introduction to transaction propagation proper; rather it details
some of the semantics regarding transaction propagation in Spring.
In Spring-managed transactions, be aware of the difference between physical and logical
transactions, and how the propagation setting applies to this difference.
Required
PROPAGATION_REQUIRED
When the propagation setting is PROPAGATION_REQUIRED, a logical transaction scope
is created for each method upon which the setting is applied. Each such logical transaction
scope can determine rollback-only status individually, with an outer transaction scope
being logically independent from the inner transaction scope. Of course, in case of
standard PROPAGATION_REQUIRED behavior, all these scopes will be mapped to the
same physical transaction. So a rollback-only marker set in the inner transaction scope
does affect the outer transaction's chance to actually commit (as you would expect it to).
However, in the case where an inner transaction scope sets the rollback-only marker, the
outer transaction has not decided on the rollback itself, and so the rollback (silently
triggered by the inner transaction scope) is unexpected. A corresponding
UnexpectedRollbackException is thrown at that point. This is expected behavior so
that the caller of a transaction can never be misled to assume that a commit was performed
when it really was not. So if an inner transaction (of which the outer caller is not aware)
silently marks a transaction as rollback-only, the outer caller still calls commit. The outer
caller needs to receive an UnexpectedRollbackException to indicate clearly that a
rollback was performed instead.
RequiresNew
PROPAGATION_REQUIRES_NEW
PROPAGATION_REQUIRES_NEW, in contrast to PROPAGATION_REQUIRED, uses a

completely independent transaction for each affected transaction scope. In that case, the
underlying physical transactions are different and hence can commit or roll back
independently, with an outer transaction not affected by an inner transaction's rollback
status.
Nested
PROPAGATION_NESTED uses a single physical transaction with multiple savepoints that it
can roll back to. Such partial rollbacks allow an inner transaction scope to trigger a rollback
for its scope, with the outer transaction being able to continue the physical transaction
despite some operations having been rolled back. This setting is typically mapped onto
JDBC savepoints, so will only work with JDBC resource transactions. See Spring's
DataSourceTransactionManager.
12.5.8 Advising transactional operations

Suppose you want to execute both transactional and some basic profiling advice. How do
you effect this in the context of <tx:annotation-driven/>?
When you invoke the updateFoo(Foo) method, you want to see the following actions:
1. Configured profiling aspect starts up.
2. Transactional advice executes.
3. Method on the advised object executes.
4. Transaction commits.
5. Profiling aspect reports exact duration of the whole transactional method invocation.
Note
This chapter is not concerned with explaining AOP in any great detail
(except as it applies to transactions). See Chapter 9, Aspect Oriented
Programming with Spring for detailed coverage of the following AOP
configuration and AOP in general.
Here is the code for a simple profiling aspect discussed above. The ordering of advice is
controlled through the Ordered interface. For full details on advice ordering, see the
section called Advice ordering.
package x.y;
import org.springframework.util.StopWatch;
import org.springframework.core.Ordered;
public class SimpleProfiler implements Ordered {
private int order;
// allows us to control the ordering of advice
return this.order;
}
this.order = order;
}
// this method *is* the around advice
public Object profile(ProceedingJoinPoint call) throws Throwable {
Object returnValue;
StopWatch clock = new StopWatch(getClass().getName());
try {
clock.start(call.toShortString());
returnValue = call.proceed();
} finally {
clock.stop();
System.out.println(clock.prettyPrint());
}
return returnValue;
}
}


<bean id="profiler" class="x.y.SimpleProfiler">

</bean>
<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="txManager" order="200"/>
<aop:config>

<aop:aspect id="profilingAspect" ref="profiler">
<aop:pointcut id="serviceMethodWithReturnValue"
expression="execution(!void x.y..*Service.*(..))"/>
<aop:around method="profile" pointcut-ref="serviceMethodWithReturnValue"/>
</aop:aspect>
</aop:config>
<property name="driverClassName" value="oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver"/>
<property name="url" value="jdbc:oracle:thin:@rj-t42:1521:elvis"/>
<property name="username" value="scott"/>
<property name="password" value="tiger"/>
</bean>
</bean>
</beans>
The result of the above configuration is a fooService bean that has profiling and
transactional aspects applied to it in the desired order. You configure any number of
additional aspects in similar fashion.
The following example effects the same setup as above, but uses the purely XML
declarative approach.

<bean id="profiler" class="x.y.SimpleProfiler">

</bean>
<aop:config>
<aop:pointcut id="entryPointMethod" expression="execution(* x.y..*Service.*(..))"/>

<aop:advisor
advice-ref="txAdvice"
pointcut-ref="entryPointMethod"
order="2"/> 
<aop:aspect id="profilingAspect" ref="profiler">
<aop:pointcut id="serviceMethodWithReturnValue"
expression="execution(!void x.y..*Service.*(..))"/>
<aop:around method="profile" pointcut-ref="serviceMethodWithReturnValue"/>
</aop:aspect>
</aop:config>
<tx:attributes>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>

</beans>
The result of the above configuration will be a fooService bean that has profiling and
transactional aspects applied to it in that order. If you want the profiling advice to execute
after the transactional advice on the way in, and before the transactional advice on the way
out, then you simply swap the value of the profiling aspect bean's order property so that it
is higher than the transactional advice's order value.
You configure additional aspects in similar fashion.
12.5.9 Using @Transactional with AspectJ

It is also possible to use the Spring Framework's @Transactional support outside of a
Spring container by means of an AspectJ aspect. To do so, you first annotate your classes
(and optionally your classes' methods) with the @Transactional annotation, and then
you link (weave) your application with the
org.springframework.transaction.aspectj.AnnotationTransactionAspect
defined in the spring-aspects.jar file. The aspect must also be configured with a
transaction manager. You can of course use the Spring Framework's IoC container to take
care of dependency-injecting the aspect. The simplest way to configure the transaction
management aspect is to use the <tx:annotation-driven/> element and specify the
mode attribute to aspectj as described in Section 12.5.6, Using @Transactional.
Because we're focusing here on applications running outside of a Spring container, we'll
show you how to do it programmatically.
Note
Prior to continuing, you may want to read Section 12.5.6, Using
@Transactional and Chapter 9, Aspect Oriented Programming
with Spring respectively.
// construct an appropriate transaction manager

DataSourceTransactionManager txManager = new DataSourceTransactionManager(getDataSource());
// configure the AnnotationTransactionAspect to use it; this must be done before executing any transactional methods
AnnotationTransactionAspect.aspectOf().setTransactionManager(txManager);
Note
When using this aspect, you must annotate the implementation class
(and/or methods within that class), not the interface (if any) that the
class implements. AspectJ follows Java's rule that annotations on
interfaces are not inherited.
The @Transactional annotation on a class specifies the default transaction semantics
for the execution of any method in the class.
The @Transactional annotation on a method within the class overrides the default
transaction semantics given by the class annotation (if present). Any method may be
annotated, regardless of visibility.
To weave your applications with the AnnotationTransactionAspect you must either
build your application with AspectJ (see the AspectJ Development Guide) or use load-time
weaving. See Section 9.8.4, Load-time weaving with AspectJ in the Spring Framework
for a discussion of load-time weaving with AspectJ.
12.6 Programmatic transaction management

The Spring Framework provides two means of programmatic transaction management:
Using the TransactionTemplate.
Using a PlatformTransactionManager implementation directly.
The Spring team generally recommends the TransactionTemplate for programmatic
transaction management. The second approach is similar to using the JTA
UserTransaction API, although exception handling is less cumbersome.
12.6.1 Using the TransactionTemplate

The TransactionTemplate adopts the same approach as other Spring templates such
as the JdbcTemplate. It uses a callback approach, to free application code from having
to do the boilerplate acquisition and release of transactional resources, and results in code
that is intention driven, in that the code that is written focuses solely on what the developer
wants to do.
Note
As you will see in the examples that follow, using the
TransactionTemplate absolutely couples you to Spring's
transaction infrastructure and APIs. Whether or not programmatic
transaction management is suitable for your development needs is a
decision that you will have to make yourself.
Application code that must execute in a transactional context, and that will use the
TransactionTemplate explicitly, looks like the following. You, as an application
developer, write a TransactionCallback implementation (typically expressed as an
anonymous inner class) that contains the code that you need to execute in the context of a
transaction. You then pass an instance of your custom TransactionCallback to the
execute(..) method exposed on the TransactionTemplate.
public class SimpleService implements Service {
// single TransactionTemplate shared amongst all methods in this instance
private final TransactionTemplate transactionTemplate;
// use constructor-injection to supply the PlatformTransactionManager
public SimpleService(PlatformTransactionManager transactionManager) {
Assert.notNull(transactionManager, "The 'transactionManager' argument must not be null.");
this.transactionTemplate = new TransactionTemplate(transactionManager);
}
public Object someServiceMethod() {
return transactionTemplate.execute(new TransactionCallback() {
// the code in this method executes in a transactional context
public Object doInTransaction(TransactionStatus status) {
updateOperation1();
return resultOfUpdateOperation2();
}
});
}
}
If there is no return value, use the convenient TransactionCallbackWithoutResult

class with an anonymous class as follows:
transactionTemplate.execute(new TransactionCallbackWithoutResult() {
protected void doInTransactionWithoutResult(TransactionStatus status) {
updateOperation1();
updateOperation2();
}
});
Code within the callback can roll the transaction back by calling the
setRollbackOnly() method on the supplied TransactionStatus object:
transactionTemplate.execute(new TransactionCallbackWithoutResult() {
protected void doInTransactionWithoutResult(TransactionStatus status) {
try {
updateOperation1();
updateOperation2();
} catch (SomeBusinessExeption ex) {
status.setRollbackOnly();
}
}
});
Specifying transaction settings

You can specify transaction settings such as the propagation mode, the isolation level, the
timeout, and so forth on the TransactionTemplate either programmatically or in
configuration. TransactionTemplate instances by default have the default
transactional settings. The following example shows the programmatic customization of
the transactional settings for a specific TransactionTemplate:
public class SimpleService implements Service {
private final TransactionTemplate transactionTemplate;
public SimpleService(PlatformTransactionManager transactionManager) {
Assert.notNull(transactionManager, "The 'transactionManager' argument must not be null.");
// the transaction settings can be set here explicitly if so desired
this.transactionTemplate.setIsolationLevel(TransactionDefinition.ISOLATION_READ_UNCOMMITTED);
this.transactionTemplate.setTimeout(30); // 30 seconds
// and so forth...
}
}
The following example defines a TransactionTemplate with some custom

transactional settings, using Spring XML configuration. The
sharedTransactionTemplate can then be injected into as many services as are
required.
<bean id="sharedTransactionTemplate"
class="org.springframework.transaction.support.TransactionTemplate">
<property name="isolationLevelName" value="ISOLATION_READ_UNCOMMITTED"/>
<property name="timeout" value="30"/>
</bean>"
Finally, instances of the TransactionTemplate class are threadsafe, in that instances

do not maintain any conversational state. TransactionTemplate instances do
however maintain configuration state, so while a number of classes may share a single
instance of a TransactionTemplate, if a class needs to use a
TransactionTemplate with different settings (for example, a different isolation level),
then you need to create two distinct TransactionTemplate instances.
12.6.2 Using the PlatformTransactionManager

You can also use the
org.springframework.transaction.PlatformTransactionManager directly
to manage your transaction. Simply pass the implementation of the
PlatformTransactionManager you are using to your bean through a bean reference.
Then, using the TransactionDefinition and TransactionStatus objects you
can initiate transactions, roll back, and commit.
DefaultTransactionDefinition def = new DefaultTransactionDefinition();
// explicitly setting the transaction name is something that can only be done programmatically
def.setName("SomeTxName");
def.setPropagationBehavior(TransactionDefinition.PROPAGATION_REQUIRED);
TransactionStatus status = txManager.getTransaction(def);
try {
// execute your business logic here
}
catch (MyException ex) {
txManager.rollback(status);
throw ex;
}
txManager.commit(status);
12.7 Choosing between programmatic and declarative

transaction management
Programmatic transaction management is usually a good idea only if you have a small
number of transactional operations. For example, if you have a web application that require
transactions only for certain update operations, you may not want to set up transactional
proxies using Spring or any other technology. In this case, using the
TransactionTemplate may be a good approach. Being able to set the transaction
name explicitly is also something that can only be done using the programmatic approach
to transaction management.
On the other hand, if your application has numerous transactional operations, declarative
transaction management is usually worthwhile. It keeps transaction management out of
business logic, and is not difficult to configure. When using the Spring Framework, rather
than EJB CMT, the configuration cost of declarative transaction management is greatly
reduced.
12.8 Application server-specific integration

Spring's transaction abstraction generally is application server agnostic. Additionally,
Spring's JtaTransactionManager class, which can optionally perform a JNDI lookup
for the JTA UserTransaction and TransactionManager objects, autodetects the
location for the latter object, which varies by application server. Having access to the JTA
TransactionManager allows for enhanced transaction semantics, in particular
supporting transaction suspension. See the JtaTransactionManager Javadocs for
details.
Spring's JtaTransactionManager is the standard choice to run on Java EE
application servers, and is known to work on all common servers. Advanced functionality
such as transaction suspension works on many servers as well -- including GlassFish,
JBoss, Geronimo, and Oracle OC4J -- without any special configuration required.
However, for fully supported transaction suspension and further advanced integration,
Spring ships special adapters for IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic Server, and Oracle
OC4J. These adapters are discussed in the following sections.
For standard scenarios, including WebLogic Server, WebSphere and OC4J, consider
using the convenient <tx:jta-transaction-manager/> configuration element.
When configured, this element automatically detects the underlying server and chooses
the best transaction manager available for the platform. This means that you won't have to
configure server-specific adapter classes (as discussed in the following sections) explicitly;
rather, they are chosen automatically, with the standard JtaTransactionManager as
default fallback.
12.8.1 IBM WebSphere

On WebSphere 6.1.0.9 and above, the recommended Spring JTA transaction manager to
use is WebSphereUowTransactionManager. This special adapter leverages IBM's
UOWManager API, which is available in WebSphere Application Server 6.0.2.19 and later
and 6.1.0.9 and later. With this adapter, Spring-driven transaction suspension
(suspend/resume as initiated by PROPAGATION_REQUIRES_NEW) is officially supported
by IBM!
12.8.2 BEA WebLogic Server

On WebLogic Server 9.0 or above, you typically would use the
WebLogicJtaTransactionManager instead of the stock

JtaTransactionManager class. This special WebLogic-specific subclass of the
normal JtaTransactionManager supports the full power of Spring's transaction
definitions in a WebLogic-managed transaction environment, beyond standard JTA
semantics: Features include transaction names, per-transaction isolation levels, and
proper resuming of transactions in all cases.
12.8.3 Oracle OC4J

Spring ships a special adapter class for OC4J 10.1.3 or later called
OC4JJtaTransactionManager. This class is analogous to the
WebLogicJtaTransactionManager class discussed in the previous section,
providing similar value-adds on OC4J: transaction names and per-transaction isolation
levels.
The full JTA functionality, including transaction suspension, works fine with Spring's
JtaTransactionManager on OC4J as well. The special
OC4JJtaTransactionManager adapter simply provides value-adds beyond standard
JTA.
12.9 Solutions to common problems

12.9.1 Use of the wrong transaction manager for a specific
DataSource
Use the correct PlatformTransactionManager implementation based on your choice
of transactional technologies and requirements. Used properly, the Spring Framework
merely provides a straightforward and portable abstraction. If you are using global
transactions, you must use the
org.springframework.transaction.jta.JtaTransactionManager class (or
an application server-specific subclass of it) for all your transactional operations. Otherwise
the transaction infrastructure attempts to perform local transactions on resources such as
container DataSource instances. Such local transactions do not make sense, and a
good application server treats them as errors.

For more information about the Spring Framework's transaction support:
Distributed transactions in Spring, with and without XA is a JavaWorld presentation in
which SpringSource's David Syer guides you through seven patterns for distributed
transactions in Spring applications, three of them with XA and four without.
Java Transaction Design Strategies is a book available from InfoQ that provides a
well-paced introduction to transactions in Java. It also includes side-by-side examples
of how to configure and use transactions with both the Spring Framework and EJB3.
13. DAO support

13.1 Introduction
The Data Access Object (DAO) support in Spring is aimed at making it easy to work with
data access technologies like JDBC, Hibernate, JPA or JDO in a consistent way. This
allows one to switch between the aforementioned persistence technologies fairly easily
and it also allows one to code without worrying about catching exceptions that are specific
to each technology.
13.2 Consistent exception hierarchy
Spring provides a convenient translation from technology-specific exceptions like

SQLException to its own exception class hierarchy with the DataAccessException
as the root exception. These exceptions wrap the original exception so there is never any
risk that one might lose any information as to what might have gone wrong.
In addition to JDBC exceptions, Spring can also wrap Hibernate-specific exceptions,
converting them from proprietary, checked exceptions (in the case of versions of Hibernate
prior to Hibernate 3.0), to a set of focused runtime exceptions (the same is true for JDO and
JPA exceptions). This allows one to handle most persistence exceptions, which are nonrecoverable, only in the appropriate layers, without having annoying boilerplate catch-andthrow blocks and exception declarations in one's DAOs. (One can still trap and handle
exceptions anywhere one needs to though.) As mentioned above, JDBC exceptions
(including database-specific dialects) are also converted to the same hierarchy, meaning
that one can perform some operations with JDBC within a consistent programming model.
The above holds true for the various template classes in Springs support for various ORM
frameworks. If one uses the interceptor-based classes then the application must care about
handling HibernateExceptions and JDOExceptions itself, preferably via
delegating to SessionFactoryUtils'
convertHibernateAccessException(..) or
convertJdoAccessException() methods respectively. These methods convert the
exceptions to ones that are compatible with the exceptions in the
org.springframework.dao exception hierarchy. As JDOExceptions are
unchecked, they can simply get thrown too, sacrificing generic DAO abstraction in terms of
exceptions though.
The exception hierarchy that Spring provides can be seen below. (Please note that the
class hierarchy detailed in the image shows only a subset of the entire
DataAccessException hierarchy.)
13.3 Annotations used for configuring DAO or

Repository classes
The best way to guarantee that your Data Access Objects (DAOs) or repositories provide
exception translation is to use the @Repository annotation. This annotation also allows
the component scanning support to find and configure your DAOs and repositories without
having to provide XML configuration entries for them.
@Repository
public class SomeMovieFinder implements MovieFinder {
// ...
}
Any DAO or repository implementation will need to access to a persistence resource,

depending on the persistence technology used; for example, a JDBC-based repository will
need access to a JDBC DataSource; a JPA-based repository will need access to an
EntityManager. The easiest way to accomplish this is to have this resource
dependency injected using one of the @Autowired,, @Inject, @Resource or
@PersistenceContext annotations. Here is an example for a JPA repository:
@Repository
public class JpaMovieFinder implements MovieFinder {
@PersistenceContext
private EntityManager entityManager;
// ...
}
If you are using the classic Hibernate APIs than you can inject the SessionFactory:
@Repository
public class HibernateMovieFinder implements MovieFinder {
@Autowired
public void setSessionFactory(SessionFactory sessionFactory) {
this.sessionFactory = sessionFactory;
}
// ...
}
Last example we will show here is for typical JDBC support. You would have the
DataSource injected into an initialization method where you would create a
JdbcTemplate and other data access support classes like SimpleJdbcCall etc using
this DataSource.
@Repository
public class JdbcMovieFinder implements MovieFinder {
private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;
@Autowired
public void init(DataSource dataSource) {
this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}
// ...
}
Note
Please see the specific coverage of each persistence technology for
details on how to configure the application context to take advantage of
these annotations.
14. Data access with JDBC

14.1 Introduction to Spring Framework JDBC
The value-add provided by the Spring Framework JDBC abstraction is perhaps best
shown by the sequence of actions outlined in the table below. The table shows what
actions Spring will take care of and which actions are the responsibility of you, the
application developer.
Table 14.1. Spring JDBC - who does what?

Action
Spring
You
Define connection parameters.

Open the connection.
X
X
Specify the SQL statement.
Declare parameters and provide parameter values
Prepare and execute the statement.
Set up the loop to iterate through the results (if any).
Do the work for each iteration.
Process any exception.
Handle transactions.
Close the connection, statement and resultset.
The Spring Framework takes care of all the low-level details that can make JDBC such a
tedious API to develop with.
14.1.1 Choosing an approach for JDBC database access

You can choose among several approaches to form the basis for your JDBC database
access. In addition to three flavors of the JdbcTemplate, a new SimpleJdbcInsert and
SimplejdbcCall approach optimizes database metadata, and the RDBMS Object style
takes a more object-oriented approach similar to that of JDO Query design. Once you start
using one of these approaches, you can still mix and match to include a feature from a
different approach. All approaches require a JDBC 2.0-compliant driver, and some
advanced features require a JDBC 3.0 driver.
Note
Spring 3.0 updates all of the following approaches with Java 5 support
such as generics and varargs.
JdbcTemplate is the classic Spring JDBC approach and the most popular. This
"lowest level" approach and all others use a JdbcTemplate under the covers, and all
are updated with Java 5 support such as generics and varargs.
NamedParameterJdbcTemplate wraps a JdbcTemplate to provide named
parameters instead of the traditional JDBC "?" placeholders. This approach provides
better documentation and ease of use when you have multiple parameters for an SQL
statement.
SimpleJdbcInsert and SimpleJdbcCall optimize database metadata to limit the
amount of necessary configuration. This approach simplifies coding so that you only
need to provide the name of the table or procedure and provide a map of parameters
matching the column names. This only works if the database provides adequate
metadata. If the database doesn't provide this metadata, you will have to provide
explicit configuration of the parameters.
RDBMS Objects including MappingSqlQuery, SqlUpdate and StoredProcedure
requires you to create reusable and thread-safe objects during initialization of your
data access layer. This approach is modeled after JDO Query wherein you define your
query string, declare parameters, and compile the query. Once you do that, execute
methods can be called multiple times with various parameter values passed in.
14.1.2 Package hierarchy

The Spring Framework's JDBC abstraction framework consists of four different packages,
namely core, datasource, object, and support.
The org.springframework.jdbc.core package contains the JdbcTemplate
class and its various callback interfaces, plus a variety of related classes. A subpackage
named org.springframework.jdbc.core.simple contains the

SimpleJdbcInsert and SimpleJdbcCall classes. Another subpackage named
org.springframework.jdbc.core.namedparam contains the
NamedParameterJdbcTemplate class and the related support classes. See
Section 14.2, Using the JDBC core classes to control basic JDBC processing and error
handling, Section 14.4, JDBC batch operations, and Section 14.5, Simplifying JDBC
operations with the SimpleJdbc classes
The org.springframework.jdbc.datasource package contains a utility class for
easy DataSource access, and various simple DataSource implementations that can
be used for testing and running unmodified JDBC code outside of a Java EE container. A
subpackage named org.springfamework.jdbc.datasource.embedded provides
support for creating in-memory database instances using Java database engines such as
HSQL and H2. See Section 14.3, Controlling database connections and Section 14.8,
Embedded database support
The org.springframework.jdbc.object package contains classes that represent
RDBMS queries, updates, and stored procedures as thread safe, reusable objects. See
Section 14.6, Modeling JDBC operations as Java objects.This approach is modeled by
JDO, although of course objects returned by queries are disconnected from the database.
This higher level of JDBC abstraction depends on the lower-level abstraction in the
org.springframework.jdbc.core package.
The org.springframework.jdbc.support package provides SQLException
translation functionality and some utility classes. Exceptions thrown during JDBC
processing are translated to exceptions defined in the org.springframework.dao
package. This means that code using the Spring JDBC abstraction layer does not need to
implement JDBC or RDBMS-specific error handling. All translated exceptions are
unchecked, which gives you the option of catching the exceptions from which you can
recover while allowing other exceptions to be propagated to the caller. See Section 14.2.3,
SQLExceptionTranslator.
14.2 Using the JDBC core classes to control basic

JDBC processing and error handling
14.2.1 JdbcTemplate
The JdbcTemplate class is the central class in the JDBC core package. It handles the
creation and release of resources, which helps you avoid common errors such as
forgetting to close the connection. It performs the basic tasks of the core JDBC workflow
such as statement creation and execution, leaving application code to provide SQL and
extract results. The JdbcTemplate class executes SQL queries, update statements and
stored procedure calls, performs iteration over ResultSets and extraction of returned
parameter values. It also catches JDBC exceptions and translates them to the generic,
more informative, exception hierarchy defined in the org.springframework.dao
package.
When you use the JdbcTemplate for your code, you only need to implement callback
interfaces, giving them a clearly defined contract. The PreparedStatementCreator
callback interface creates a prepared statement given a Connection provided by this
class, providing SQL and any necessary parameters. The same is true for the
CallableStatementCreator interface, which creates callable statements. The
RowCallbackHandler interface extracts values from each row of a ResultSet.
The JdbcTemplate can be used within a DAO implementation through direct
instantiation with a DataSource reference, or be configured in a Spring IoC container
and given to DAOs as a bean reference.
Note
The DataSource should always be configured as a bean in the
Spring IoC container. In the first case the bean is given to the service
directly; in the second case it is given to the prepared template.
All SQL issued by this class is logged at the DEBUG level under the category
corresponding to the fully qualified class name of the template instance (typically
JdbcTemplate, but it may be different if you are using a custom subclass of the
JdbcTemplate class).
Examples of JdbcTemplate class usage

This section provides some examples of JdbcTemplate class usage. These examples
are not an exhaustive list of all of the functionality exposed by the JdbcTemplate; see
the attendant Javadocs for that.
Querying (SELECT)
Here is a simple query for getting the number of rows in a relation:
int rowCount = this.jdbcTemplate.queryForObject("select count(*) from t_actor", int.class);
A simple query using a bind variable:

int countOfActorsNamedJoe = this.jdbcTemplate.queryForObject(
"select count(*) from t_actor where first_name = ?", int.class, "Joe");
Querying for a String:

String lastName = this.jdbcTemplate.queryForObject(
"select last_name from t_actor where id = ?",
new Object[]{1212L}, String.class);
Querying and populating a single domain object:

Actor actor = this.jdbcTemplate.queryForObject(
"select first_name, last_name from t_actor where id = ?",
new Object[]{1212L},
new RowMapper<Actor>() {
public Actor mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNum) throws SQLException {
Actor actor = new Actor();
actor.setFirstName(rs.getString("first_name"));
actor.setLastName(rs.getString("last_name"));
return actor;
}
});
Querying and populating a number of domain objects:

List<Actor> actors = this.jdbcTemplate.query(
"select first_name, last_name from t_actor",
new RowMapper<Actor>() {
return actor;
}
});
If the last two snippets of code actually existed in the same application, it would make
sense to remove the duplication present in the two RowMapper anonymous inner classes,
and extract them out into a single class (typically a static inner class) that can then be
referenced by DAO methods as needed. For example, it may be better to write the last
code snippet as follows:
public List<Actor> findAllActors() {
return this.jdbcTemplate.query( "select first_name, last_name from t_actor", new ActorMapper());
}
private static final class ActorMapper implements RowMapper<Actor> {
return actor;
}
}
Updating (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE) with jdbcTemplate

You use the update(..) method to perform insert, update and delete operations.
Parameter values are usually provided as var args or alternatively as an object array.
this.jdbcTemplate.update(
"insert into t_actor (first_name, last_name) values (?, ?)",
"Leonor", "Watling");
"update t_actor set last_name = ? where id = ?",
"Banjo", 5276L);
"delete from actor where id = ?",
Long.valueOf(actorId));
Other jdbcTemplate operations

You can use the execute(..) method to execute any arbitrary SQL, and as such the
method is often used for DDL statements. It is heavily overloaded with variants taking
callback interfaces, binding variable arrays, and so on.
this.jdbcTemplate.execute("create table mytable (id integer, name varchar(100))");
The following example invokes a simple stored procedure. More sophisticated stored
procedure support is covered later.
"call SUPPORT.REFRESH_ACTORS_SUMMARY(?)",
Long.valueOf(unionId));
JdbcTemplate best practices

Instances of the JdbcTemplate class are threadsafe once configured. This is important
because it means that you can configure a single instance of a JdbcTemplate and then
safely inject this shared reference into multiple DAOs (or repositories). The
JdbcTemplate is stateful, in that it maintains a reference to a DataSource, but this
state is not conversational state.
A common practice when using the JdbcTemplate class (and the associated
NamedParameterJdbcTemplate classes) is to configure a DataSource in your
Spring configuration file, and then dependency-inject that shared DataSource bean into
your DAO classes; the JdbcTemplate is created in the setter for the DataSource. This
leads to DAOs that look in part like the following:
public class JdbcCorporateEventDao implements CorporateEventDao {
public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
}
// JDBC-backed implementations of the methods on the CorporateEventDao follow...
}
The corresponding configuration might look like this.

<bean id="corporateEventDao" class="com.example.JdbcCorporateEventDao">
</bean>
</bean>
<context:property-placeholder location="jdbc.properties"/>
</beans>
An alternative to explicit configuration is to use component-scanning and annotation

support for dependency injection. In this case you annotate the class with @Repository
(which makes it a candidate for component-scanning) and annotate the DataSource
setter method with @Autowired.
@Repository
public class JdbcCorporateEventDao implements CorporateEventDao {
@Autowired
}
// JDBC-backed implementations of the methods on the CorporateEventDao follow...
}
The corresponding XML configuration file would look like the following:

<context:component-scan base-package="org.springframework.docs.test" />
</bean>
</beans>
If you are using Spring's JdbcDaoSupport class, and your various JDBC-backed DAO
classes extend from it, then your sub-class inherits a setDataSource(..) method from
the JdbcDaoSupport class. You can choose whether to inherit from this class. The
JdbcDaoSupport class is provided as a convenience only.
Regardless of which of the above template initialization styles you choose to use (or not), it
is seldom necessary to create a new instance of a JdbcTemplate class each time you
want to execute SQL. Once configured, a JdbcTemplate instance is threadsafe. You
may want multiple JdbcTemplate instances if your application accesses multiple
databases, which requires multiple DataSources, and subsequently multiple differently
configured JdbcTemplates.
14.2.2 NamedParameterJdbcTemplate
The NamedParameterJdbcTemplate class adds support for programming JDBC
statements using named parameters, as opposed to programming JDBC statements using
only classic placeholder ('?') arguments. The NamedParameterJdbcTemplate class
wraps a JdbcTemplate, and delegates to the wrapped JdbcTemplate to do much of
its work. This section describes only those areas of the
NamedParameterJdbcTemplate class that differ from the JdbcTemplate itself;
namely, programming JDBC statements using named parameters.
// some JDBC-backed DAO class...
private NamedParameterJdbcTemplate namedParameterJdbcTemplate;
this.namedParameterJdbcTemplate = new NamedParameterJdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}
public int countOfActorsByFirstName(String firstName) {
String sql = "select count(*) from T_ACTOR where first_name = :first_name";
SqlParameterSource namedParameters = new MapSqlParameterSource("first_name", firstName);
return this.namedParameterJdbcTemplate.queryForObject(sql, int.class, namedParameters);
}
Notice the use of the named parameter notation in the value assigned to the sql variable,
and the corresponding value that is plugged into the namedParameters variable (of type
MapSqlParameterSource).
Alternatively, you can pass along named parameters and their corresponding values to a
NamedParameterJdbcTemplate instance by using the Map-based style.The
remaining methods exposed by the NamedParameterJdbcOperations and
implemented by the NamedParameterJdbcTemplate class follow a similar pattern and
are not covered here.
The following example shows the use of the Map-based style.
}
public int countOfActorsByFirstName(String firstName) {
String sql = "select count(*) from T_ACTOR where first_name = :first_name";
Map<String, String> namedParameters = Collections.singletonMap("first_name", firstName);
}
One nice feature related to the NamedParameterJdbcTemplate (and existing in the

same Java package) is the SqlParameterSource interface. You have already seen an
example of an implementation of this interface in one of the previous code snippet (the
MapSqlParameterSource class). An SqlParameterSource is a source of named
parameter values to a NamedParameterJdbcTemplate. The
MapSqlParameterSource class is a very simple implementation that is simply an
adapter around a java.util.Map, where the keys are the parameter names and the
values are the parameter values.
Another SqlParameterSource implementation is the
BeanPropertySqlParameterSource class. This class wraps an arbitrary JavaBean
(that is, an instance of a class that adheres to the JavaBean conventions), and uses the
properties of the wrapped JavaBean as the source of named parameter values.
public class Actor {

private Long id;
private String firstName;
private String lastName;
public String getFirstName() {
return this.firstName;
}
public String getLastName() {
return this.lastName;
}
public Long getId() {
return this.id;
}
// setters omitted...
}
}
public int countOfActors(Actor exampleActor) {
// notice how the named parameters match the properties of the above 'Actor' class
String sql =
"select count(*) from T_ACTOR where first_name = :firstName and last_name = :lastName";
SqlParameterSource namedParameters = new BeanPropertySqlParameterSource(exampleActor);
}
Remember that the NamedParameterJdbcTemplate class wraps a classic

JdbcTemplate template; if you need access to the wrapped JdbcTemplate instance to
access functionality only present in the JdbcTemplate class, you can use the
getJdbcOperations() method to access the wrapped JdbcTemplate through the
JdbcOperations interface.
See also the section called JdbcTemplate best practices for guidelines on using the
NamedParameterJdbcTemplate class in the context of an application.
14.2.3 SQLExceptionTranslator
SQLExceptionTranslator is an interface to be implemented by classes that can
translate between SQLExceptions and Spring's own
org.springframework.dao.DataAccessException, which is agnostic in regard
to data access strategy. Implementations can be generic (for example, using SQLState
codes for JDBC) or proprietary (for example, using Oracle error codes) for greater
precision.
SQLErrorCodeSQLExceptionTranslator is the implementation of
SQLExceptionTranslator that is used by default. This implementation uses specific
vendor codes. It is more precise than the SQLState implementation. The error code
translations are based on codes held in a JavaBean type class called SQLErrorCodes.
This class is created and populated by an SQLErrorCodesFactory which as the name
suggests is a factory for creating SQLErrorCodes based on the contents of a
configuration file named sql-error-codes.xml. This file is populated with vendor
codes and based on the DatabaseProductName taken from the DatabaseMetaData.
The codes for the actual database you are using are used.
The SQLErrorCodeSQLExceptionTranslator applies matching rules in the
following sequence:
Note
The SQLErrorCodesFactory is used by default to define Error
codes and custom exception translations. They are looked up in a file
named sql-error-codes.xml from the classpath and the matching
SQLErrorCodes instance is located based on the database name
from the database metadata of the database in use.
1. Any custom translation implemented by a subclass. Normally the provided concrete
SQLErrorCodeSQLExceptionTranslator is used so this rule does not apply. It
only applies if you have actually provided a subclass implementation.
2. Any custom implementation of the SQLExceptionTranslator interface that is
provided as the customSqlExceptionTranslator property of the
SQLErrorCodes class.
3. The list of instances of the CustomSQLErrorCodesTranslation class, provided
for the customTranslations property of the SQLErrorCodes class, are searched
for a match.
4. Error code matching is applied.
5. Use the fallback translator. SQLExceptionSubclassTranslator is the default
fallback translator. If this translation is not available then the next fallback translator is
the SQLStateSQLExceptionTranslator.
You can extend SQLErrorCodeSQLExceptionTranslator:
public class CustomSQLErrorCodesTranslator extends SQLErrorCodeSQLExceptionTranslator {
protected DataAccessException customTranslate(String task, String sql, SQLException sqlex) {
if (sqlex.getErrorCode() == -12345) {
return new DeadlockLoserDataAccessException(task, sqlex);
}
return null;
}
}
In this example, the specific error code -12345 is translated and other errors are left to be
translated by the default translator implementation. To use this custom translator, it is
necessary to pass it to the JdbcTemplate through the method
setExceptionTranslator and to use this JdbcTemplate for all of the data access
processing where this translator is needed. Here is an example of how this custom
translator can be used:
// create a JdbcTemplate and set data source
this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate();
this.jdbcTemplate.setDataSource(dataSource);
// create a custom translator and set the DataSource for the default translation lookup
CustomSQLErrorCodesTranslator tr = new CustomSQLErrorCodesTranslator();
tr.setDataSource(dataSource);
this.jdbcTemplate.setExceptionTranslator(tr);
}
public void updateShippingCharge(long orderId, long pct) {
// use the prepared JdbcTemplate for this update
"update orders" +
" set shipping_charge = shipping_charge * ? / 100" +
" where id = ?"
pct, orderId);
}
The custom translator is passed a data source in order to look up the error codes in sqlerror-codes.xml.
14.2.4 Executing statements

Executing an SQL statement requires very little code. You need a DataSource and a
JdbcTemplate, including the convenience methods that are provided with the
JdbcTemplate. The following example shows what you need to include for a minimal
but fully functional class that creates a new table:
import javax.sql.DataSource;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate;
public class ExecuteAStatement {
}
public void doExecute() {
this.jdbcTemplate.execute("create table mytable (id integer, name varchar(100))");
}
}
14.2.5 Running queries

Some query methods return a single value. To retrieve a count or a specific value from one
row, use queryForObject(..). The latter converts the returned JDBC Type to the
Java class that is passed in as an argument. If the type conversion is invalid, then an
InvalidDataAccessApiUsageException is thrown. Here is an example that
contains two query methods, one for an int and one that queries for a String.
public class RunAQuery {
}
return this.jdbcTemplate.queryForObject("select count(*) from mytable", int.class);
}
return this.jdbcTemplate.queryForObject("select name from mytable", String.class);
}
this.dataSource = dataSource;
}
}
In addition to the single result query methods, several methods return a list with an entry for
each row that the query returned. The most generic method is queryForList(..)
which returns a List where each entry is a Map with each entry in the map representing
the column value for that row. If you add a method to the above example to retrieve a list of
all the rows, it would look like this:
}
public List<Map<String, Object>> getList() {
return this.jdbcTemplate.queryForList("select * from mytable");
}
The list returned would look something like this:

[{name=Bob, id=1}, {name=Mary, id=2}]
14.2.6 Updating the database

The following example shows a column updated for a certain primary key. In this example,
an SQL statement has placeholders for row parameters. The parameter values can be
passed in as varargs or alternatively as an array of objects. Thus primitives should be

wrapped in the primitive wrapper classes explicitly or using auto-boxing.
public class ExecuteAnUpdate {
}
public void setName(int id, String name) {
"update mytable set name = ? where id = ?",
name, id);
}
}
14.2.7 Retrieving auto-generated keys

An update() convenience method supports the retrieval of primary keys generated by
the database. This support is part of the JDBC 3.0 standard; see Chapter 13.6 of the
specification for details. The method takes a PreparedStatementCreator as its first
argument, and this is the way the required insert statement is specified. The other
argument is a KeyHolder, which contains the generated key on successful return from
the update. There is not a standard single way to create an appropriate
PreparedStatement (which explains why the method signature is the way it is). The
following example works on Oracle but may not work on other platforms:
final String INSERT_SQL = "insert into my_test (name) values(?)";
final String name = "Rob";
KeyHolder keyHolder = new GeneratedKeyHolder();
jdbcTemplate.update(
new PreparedStatementCreator() {
public PreparedStatement createPreparedStatement(Connection connection) throws SQLException {
PreparedStatement ps =
connection.prepareStatement(INSERT_SQL, new String[] {"id"});
ps.setString(1, name);
return ps;
}
},
keyHolder);
// keyHolder.getKey() now contains the generated key
14.3 Controlling database connections

14.3.1 DataSource
Spring obtains a connection to the database through a DataSource. A DataSource is
part of the JDBC specification and is a generalized connection factory. It allows a container
or a framework to hide connection pooling and transaction management issues from the
application code. As a developer, you need not know details about how to connect to the
database; that is the responsibility of the administrator that sets up the datasource. You
most likely fill both roles as you develop and test code, but you do not necessarily have to
know how the production data source is configured.
When using Spring's JDBC layer, you obtain a data source from JNDI or you configure
your own with a connection pool implementation provided by a third party. Popular
implementations are Apache Jakarta Commons DBCP and C3P0. Implementations in the
Spring distribution are meant only for testing purposes and do not provide pooling.
This section uses Spring's DriverManagerDataSource implementation, and several
additional implementations are covered later.
Note
Only use the DriverManagerDataSource class should only be

used for testing purposes since it does not provide pooling and will
perform poorly when multiple requests for a connection are made.
You obtain a connection with DriverManagerDataSource as you typically obtain a
JDBC connection. Specify the fully qualified classname of the JDBC driver so that the
DriverManager can load the driver class. Next, provide a URL that varies between
JDBC drivers. (Consult the documentation for your driver for the correct value.) Then
provide a username and a password to connect to the database. Here is an example of
how to configure a DriverManagerDataSource in Java code:
DriverManagerDataSource dataSource = new DriverManagerDataSource();
dataSource.setDriverClassName("org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver");
dataSource.setUrl("jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost:");
dataSource.setUsername("sa");
dataSource.setPassword("");
Here is the corresponding XML configuration:

<bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
</bean>
The following examples show the basic connectivity and configuration for DBCP and
C3P0. To learn about more options that help control the pooling features, see the product
documentation for the respective connection pooling implementations.
DBCP configuration:
<bean id="dataSource"
class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">
</bean>
C3P0 configuration:
<bean id="dataSource"
class="com.mchange.v2.c3p0.ComboPooledDataSource" destroy-method="close">
<property name="driverClass" value="${jdbc.driverClassName}"/>
<property name="jdbcUrl" value="${jdbc.url}"/>
<property name="user" value="${jdbc.username}"/>
</bean>
14.3.2 DataSourceUtils
The DataSourceUtils class is a convenient and powerful helper class that provides
static methods to obtain connections from JNDI and close connections if necessary. It
supports thread-bound connections with, for example,
DataSourceTransactionManager.
14.3.3 SmartDataSource
The SmartDataSource interface should be implemented by classes that can provide a
connection to a relational database. It extends the DataSource interface to allow classes
using it to query whether the connection should be closed after a given operation. This
usage is efficient when you know that you will reuse a connection.
14.3.4 AbstractDataSource
AbstractDataSource is an abstract base class for Spring's DataSource
implementations that implements code that is common to all DataSource
implementations. You extend the AbstractDataSource class if you are writing your
own DataSource implementation.
14.3.5 SingleConnectionDataSource
The SingleConnectionDataSource class is an implementation of the
SmartDataSource interface that wraps a single Connection that is not closed after
each use. Obviously, this is not multi-threading capable.
If any client code calls close in the assumption of a pooled connection, as when using
persistence tools, set the suppressClose property to true. This setting returns a closesuppressing proxy wrapping the physical connection. Be aware that you will not be able to
cast this to a native Oracle Connection or the like anymore.
This is primarily a test class. For example, it enables easy testing of code outside an
application server, in conjunction with a simple JNDI environment. In contrast to
DriverManagerDataSource, it reuses the same connection all the time, avoiding
excessive creation of physical connections.
14.3.6 DriverManagerDataSource
The DriverManagerDataSource class is an implementation of the standard
DataSource interface that configures a plain JDBC driver through bean properties, and
returns a new Connection every time.
This implementation is useful for test and stand-alone environments outside of a Java EE
container, either as a DataSource bean in a Spring IoC container, or in conjunction with
a simple JNDI environment. Pool-assuming Connection.close() calls will simply
close the connection, so any DataSource-aware persistence code should work.
However, using JavaBean-style connection pools such as commons-dbcp is so easy,
even in a test environment, that it is almost always preferable to use such a connection
pool over DriverManagerDataSource.
14.3.7 TransactionAwareDataSourceProxy
TransactionAwareDataSourceProxy is a proxy for a target DataSource, which
wraps that target DataSource to add awareness of Spring-managed transactions. In this
respect, it is similar to a transactional JNDI DataSource as provided by a Java EE
server.
Note
It is rarely desirable to use this class, except when already existing
code that must be called and passed a standard JDBC DataSource
interface implementation. In this case, it's possible to still have this
code be usable, and at the same time have this code participating in
Spring managed transactions. It is generally preferable to write your
own new code using the higher level abstractions for resource
management, such as JdbcTemplate or DataSourceUtils.
(See the TransactionAwareDataSourceProxy Javadocs for more details.)
14.3.8 DataSourceTransactionManager
The DataSourceTransactionManager class is a
PlatformTransactionManager implementation for single JDBC datasources. It binds
a JDBC connection from the specified data source to the currently executing thread,
potentially allowing for one thread connection per data source.

Application code is required to retrieve the JDBC connection through
DataSourceUtils.getConnection(DataSource) instead of Java EE's standard
DataSource.getConnection. It throws unchecked org.springframework.dao
exceptions instead of checked SQLExceptions. All framework classes like
JdbcTemplate use this strategy implicitly. If not used with this transaction manager, the
lookup strategy behaves exactly like the common one - it can thus be used in any case.
The DataSourceTransactionManager class supports custom isolation levels, and
timeouts that get applied as appropriate JDBC statement query timeouts. To support the
latter, application code must either use JdbcTemplate or call the
DataSourceUtils.applyTransactionTimeout(..) method for each created
statement.
This implementation can be used instead of JtaTransactionManager in the single
resource case, as it does not require the container to support JTA. Switching between both
is just a matter of configuration, if you stick to the required connection lookup pattern. JTA
does not support custom isolation levels!
14.3.9 NativeJdbcExtractor
Sometimes you need to access vendor specific JDBC methods that differ from the standard
JDBC API. This can be problematic if you are running in an application server or with a
DataSource that wraps the Connection, Statement and ResultSet objects with its
own wrapper objects. To gain access to the native objects you can configure your
JdbcTemplate or OracleLobHandler with a NativeJdbcExtractor.
The NativeJdbcExtractor comes in a variety of flavors to match your execution
environment:
SimpleNativeJdbcExtractor
C3P0NativeJdbcExtractor
CommonsDbcpNativeJdbcExtractor
JBossNativeJdbcExtractor
WebLogicNativeJdbcExtractor
WebSphereNativeJdbcExtractor
XAPoolNativeJdbcExtractor
Usually the SimpleNativeJdbcExtractor is sufficient for unwrapping a
Connection object in most environments. See the Javadocs for more details.
14.4 JDBC batch operations

Most JDBC drivers provide improved performance if you batch multiple calls to the same
prepared statement. By grouping updates into batches you limit the number of round trips
to the database.
14.4.1 Basic batch operations with the JdbcTemplate

You accomplish JdbcTemplate batch processing by implementing two methods of a
special interface, BatchPreparedStatementSetter, and passing that in as the
second parameter in your batchUpdate method call. Use the getBatchSize method
to provide the size of the current batch. Use the setValues method to set the values for
the parameters of the prepared statement. This method will be called the number of times
that you specified in the getBatchSize call. The following example updates the actor
table based on entries in a list. The entire list is used as the batch in this example:
public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

}
public int[] batchUpdate(final List<Actor> actors) {
int[] updateCounts = jdbcTemplate.batchUpdate(
"update t_actor set first_name = ?, last_name = ? where id = ?",
new BatchPreparedStatementSetter() {
public void setValues(PreparedStatement ps, int i) throws SQLException {
ps.setString(1, actors.get(i).getFirstName());
ps.setString(2, actors.get(i).getLastName());
ps.setLong(3, actors.get(i).getId().longValue());
}
public int getBatchSize() {
return actors.size();
}
} );
return updateCounts;
}
//
... additional methods
If you are processing a stream of updates or reading from a file, then you might have a
preferred batch size, but the last batch might not have that number of entries. In this case
you can use the InterruptibleBatchPreparedStatementSetter interface,
which allows you to interrupt a batch once the input source is exhausted. The
isBatchExhausted method allows you to signal the end of the batch.
14.4.2 Batch operations with a List of objects

Both the JdbcTemplate and the NamedParameterJdbcTemplate provides an
alternate way of providing the batch update. Instead of implementing a special batch
interface, you provide all parameter values in the call as a list. The framework loops over
these values and uses an internal prepared statement setter. The API varies depending on
whether you use named parameters. For the named parameters you provide an array of
SqlParameterSource, one entry for each member of the batch. You can use the
SqlParameterSource.createBatch method to create this array, passing in either an
array of JavaBeans or an array of Maps containing the parameter values.
This example shows a batch update using named parameters:
private NamedParameterTemplate namedParameterJdbcTemplate;
}
SqlParameterSource[] batch = SqlParameterSourceUtils.createBatch(actors.toArray());
int[] updateCounts = namedParameterJdbcTemplate.batchUpdate(
"update t_actor set first_name = :firstName, last_name = :lastName where id = :id",
batch);
}
//
For an SQL statement using the classic "?" placeholders, you pass in a list containing an
object array with the update values. This object array must have one entry for each
placeholder in the SQL statement, and they must be in the same order as they are defined
in the SQL statement.
The same example using classic JDBC "?" placeholders:
}
List<Object[]> batch = new ArrayList<Object[]>();
for (Actor actor : actors) {

Object[] values = new Object[] {
actor.getFirstName(),
actor.getLastName(),
actor.getId()};
batch.add(values);
}
int[] updateCounts = jdbcTemplate.batchUpdate(
batch);
}
//
All of the above batch update methods return an int array containing the number of affected
rows for each batch entry. This count is reported by the JDBC driver. If the count is not
available, the JDBC driver returns a -2 value.
14.4.3 Batch operations with multiple batches

The last example of a batch update deals with batches that are so large that you want to
break them up into several smaller batches. You can of course do this with the methods
mentioned above by making multiple calls to the batchUpdate method, but there is now
a more convenient method. This method takes, in addition to the SQL statement, a
Collection of objects containing the parameters, the number of updates to make for each
batch and a ParameterizedPreparedStatementSetter to set the values for the
parameters of the prepared statement. The framework loops over the provided values and
breaks the update calls into batches of the size specified.
This example shows a batch update using a batch size of 100:
}
public int[][] batchUpdate(final Collection<Actor> actors) {
int[][] updateCounts = jdbcTemplate.batchUpdate(
actors,
100,
new ParameterizedPreparedStatementSetter<Actor>() {
public void setValues(PreparedStatement ps, Actor argument) throws SQLException {
ps.setString(1, argument.getFirstName());
ps.setString(2, argument.getLastName());
ps.setLong(3, argument.getId().longValue());
}
} );
}
//
The batch update methods for this call returns an array of int arrays containing an array
entry for each batch with an array of the number of affected rows for each update. The top
level array's length indicates the number of batches executed and the second level array's
length indicates the number of updates in that batch. The number of updates in each batch
should be the the batch size provided for all batches except for the last one that might be
less, depending on the total number of update objects provided. The update count for each
update statement is the one reported by the JDBC driver. If the count is not available, the
JDBC driver returns a -2 value.
14.5 Simplifying JDBC operations with the SimpleJdbc

classes
The SimpleJdbcInsert and SimpleJdbcCall classes provide a simplified
configuration by taking advantage of database metadata that can be retrieved through the
JDBC driver. This means there is less to configure up front, although you can override or
turn off the metadata processing if you prefer to provide all the details in your code.
14.5.1 Inserting data using SimpleJdbcInsert

Let's start by looking at the SimpleJdbcInsert class with the minimal amount of
configuration options. You should instantiate the SimpleJdbcInsert in the data access
layer's initialization method. For this example, the initializing method is the
setDataSource method. You do not need to subclass the SimpleJdbcInsert class;
simply create a new instance and set the table name using the withTableName method.
Configuration methods for this class follow the "fluid" style that returns the instance of the
SimpleJdbcInsert, which allows you to chain all configuration methods. This example
uses only one configuration method; you will see examples of multiple ones later.
private SimpleJdbcInsert insertActor;
this.insertActor =
new SimpleJdbcInsert(dataSource).withTableName("t_actor");
}
public void add(Actor actor) {
Map<String, Object> parameters = new HashMap<String, Object>(3);
parameters.put("id", actor.getId());
parameters.put("first_name", actor.getFirstName());
parameters.put("last_name", actor.getLastName());
insertActor.execute(parameters);
}
//
The execute method used here takes a plain java.utils.Map as its only parameter.
The important thing to note here is that the keys used for the Map must match the column
names of the table as defined in the database. This is because we read the metadata in
order to construct the actual insert statement.
14.5.2 Retrieving auto-generated keys using SimpleJdbcInsert

This example uses the same insert as the preceding, but instead of passing in the id it
retrieves the auto-generated key and sets it on the new Actor object. When you create the
SimpleJdbcInsert, in addition to specifying the table name, you specify the name of
the generated key column with the usingGeneratedKeyColumns method.
this.insertActor =
new SimpleJdbcInsert(dataSource)
.withTableName("t_actor")
.usingGeneratedKeyColumns("id");
}
Number newId = insertActor.executeAndReturnKey(parameters);
actor.setId(newId.longValue());
}
//
The main difference when executing the insert by this second approach is that you do not
add the id to the Map and you call the executeReturningKey method. This returns a
java.lang.Number object with which you can create an instance of the numerical type
that is used in our domain class.You cannot rely on all databases to return a specific Java
class here; java.lang.Number is the base class that you can rely on. If you have
multiple auto-generated columns, or the generated values are non-numeric, then you can
use a KeyHolder that is returned from the executeReturningKeyHolder method.
14.5.3 Specifying columns for a SimpleJdbcInsert

You can limit the columns for an insert by specifying a list of column names with the
usingColumns method:
this.insertActor =
.usingColumns("first_name", "last_name")
}
}
//
The execution of the insert is the same as if you had relied on the metadata to determine
which columns to use.
14.5.4 Using SqlParameterSource to provide parameter values

Using a Map to provide parameter values works fine, but it's not the most convenient class
to use. Spring provides a couple of implementations of the SqlParameterSource
interface that can be used instead.The first one is
BeanPropertySqlParameterSource, which is a very convenient class if you have a
JavaBean-compliant class that contains your values. It will use the corresponding getter
method to extract the parameter values. Here is an example:
this.insertActor =
}
SqlParameterSource parameters = new BeanPropertySqlParameterSource(actor);
}
//
Another option is the MapSqlParameterSource that resembles a Map but provides a

more convenient addValue method that can be chained.
this.insertActor =
}
SqlParameterSource parameters = new MapSqlParameterSource()
.addValue("first_name", actor.getFirstName())
.addValue("last_name", actor.getLastName());
}
//
As you can see, the configuration is the same; only the executing code has to change to
use these alternative input classes.
14.5.5 Calling a stored procedure with SimpleJdbcCall

The SimpleJdbcCall class leverages metadata in the database to look up names of in
and out parameters, so that you do not have to declare them explicitly. You can declare
parameters if you prefer to do that, or if you have parameters such as ARRAY or STRUCT
that do not have an automatic mapping to a Java class. The first example shows a simple
procedure that returns only scalar values in VARCHAR and DATE format from a MySQL
database. The example procedure reads a specified actor entry and returns first_name,
last_name, and birth_date columns in the form of out parameters.
CREATE PROCEDURE read_actor (
IN in_id INTEGER,
OUT out_first_name VARCHAR(100),
OUT out_last_name VARCHAR(100),
OUT out_birth_date DATE)
BEGIN
SELECT first_name, last_name, birth_date
INTO out_first_name, out_last_name, out_birth_date
FROM t_actor where id = in_id;
END;
The in_id parameter contains the id of the actor you are looking up. The out
parameters return the data read from the table.
The SimpleJdbcCall is declared in a similar manner to the SimpleJdbcInsert. You
should instantiate and configure the class in the initialization method of your data access
layer. Compared to the StoredProcedure class, you don't have to create a subclass and
you don't have to declare parameters that can be looked up in the database metadata.
Following is an example of a SimpleJdbcCall configuration using the above stored
procedure. The only configuration option, in addition to the DataSource, is the name of
the stored procedure.
private SimpleJdbcCall procReadActor;
this.procReadActor =
new SimpleJdbcCall(dataSource)
.withProcedureName("read_actor");
}
public Actor readActor(Long id) {
SqlParameterSource in = new MapSqlParameterSource()
.addValue("in_id", id);
Map out = procReadActor.execute(in);
actor.setId(id);
actor.setFirstName((String) out.get("out_first_name"));
actor.setLastName((String) out.get("out_last_name"));
actor.setBirthDate((Date) out.get("out_birth_date"));
return actor;
}
//
The code you write for the execution of the call involves creating an
SqlParameterSource containing the IN parameter. It's important to match the name

provided for the input value with that of the parameter name declared in the stored
procedure. The case does not have to match because you use metadata to determine how
database objects should be referred to in a stored procedure. What is specified in the
source for the stored procedure is not necessarily the way it is stored in the database.
Some databases transform names to all upper case while others use lower case or use the
case as specified.
The execute method takes the IN parameters and returns a Map containing any out
parameters keyed by the name as specified in the stored procedure. In this case they are
out_first_name, out_last_name and out_birth_date.
The last part of the execute method creates an Actor instance to use to return the data
retrieved. Again, it is important to use the names of the out parameters as they are
declared in the stored procedure. Also, the case in the names of the out parameters
stored in the results map matches that of the out parameter names in the database, which
could vary between databases. To make your code more portable you should do a caseinsensitive lookup or instruct Spring to use a CaseInsensitiveMap from the Jakarta
Commons project. To do the latter, you create your own JdbcTemplate and set the
setResultsMapCaseInsensitive property to true. Then you pass this customized
JdbcTemplate instance into the constructor of your SimpleJdbcCall. You must
include the commons-collections.jar in your classpath for this to work. Here is an
example of this configuration:
JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
jdbcTemplate.setResultsMapCaseInsensitive(true);
new SimpleJdbcCall(jdbcTemplate)
.withProcedureName("read_actor");
}
//
By taking this action, you avoid conflicts in the case used for the names of your returned
out parameters.
14.5.6 Explicitly declaring parameters to use for a SimpleJdbcCall

You have seen how the parameters are deduced based on metadata, but you can declare
then explicitly if you wish. You do this by creating and configuring SimpleJdbcCall with
the declareParameters method, which takes a variable number of SqlParameter
objects as input. See the next section for details on how to define an SqlParameter.
Note
Explicit declarations are necessary if the database you use is not a
Spring-supported database. Currently Spring supports metadata
lookup of stored procedure calls for the following databases: Apache
Derby, DB2, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and Sybase. We
also support metadata lookup of stored functions for: MySQL, Microsoft
SQL Server, and Oracle.
You can opt to declare one, some, or all the parameters explicitly. The parameter metadata
is still used where you do not declare parameters explicitly. To bypass all processing of
metadata lookups for potential parameters and only use the declared parameters, you call
the method withoutProcedureColumnMetaDataAccess as part of the declaration.
Suppose that you have two or more different call signatures declared for a database
function. In this case you call the useInParameterNames to specify the list of IN
parameter names to include for a given signature.
The following example shows a fully declared procedure call, using the information from
the preceding example.
.withProcedureName("read_actor")
.withoutProcedureColumnMetaDataAccess()
.useInParameterNames("in_id")
.declareParameters(
new SqlParameter("in_id", Types.NUMERIC),
new SqlOutParameter("out_first_name", Types.VARCHAR),
new SqlOutParameter("out_last_name", Types.VARCHAR),
new SqlOutParameter("out_birth_date", Types.DATE)
);
}
//
The execution and end results of the two examples are the same; this one specifies all
details explicitly rather than relying on metadata.
14.5.7 How to define SqlParameters

To define a parameter for the SimpleJdbc classes and also for the RDBMS operations
classes, covered in Section 14.6, Modeling JDBC operations as Java objects, you use an
SqlParameter or one of its subclasses. You typically specify the parameter name and
SQL type in the constructor. The SQL type is specified using the java.sql.Types
constants. We have already seen declarations like:
The first line with the SqlParameter declares an IN parameter. IN parameters can be
used for both stored procedure calls and for queries using the SqlQuery and its
subclasses covered in the following section.
The second line with the SqlOutParameter declares an out parameter to be used in a
stored procedure call. There is also an SqlInOutParameter for InOut parameters,
parameters that provide an IN value to the procedure and that also return a value.
Note
Only parameters declared as SqlParameter and
SqlInOutParameter will be used to provide input values. This is
different from the StoredProcedure class, which for backwards
compatibility reasons allows input values to be provided for parameters
declared as SqlOutParameter.
For IN parameters, in addition to the name and the SQL type, you can specify a scale for
numeric data or a type name for custom database types. For out parameters, you can
provide a RowMapper to handle mapping of rows returned from a REF cursor. Another
option is to specify an SqlReturnType that provides an opportunity to define customized
handling of the return values.
14.5.8 Calling a stored function using SimpleJdbcCall

You call a stored function in almost the same way as you call a stored procedure, except
that you provide a function name rather than a procedure name. You use the
withFunctionName method as part of the configuration to indicate that we want to make
a call to a function, and the corresponding string for a function call is generated. A
specialized execute call, executeFunction, is used to execute the function and it

returns the function return value as an object of a specified type, which means you do not
have to retrieve the return value from the results map. A similar convenience method
named executeObject is also available for stored procedures that only have one out
parameter. The following example is based on a stored function named
get_actor_name that returns an actor's full name. Here is the MySQL source for this
function:
CREATE FUNCTION get_actor_name (in_id INTEGER)
RETURNS VARCHAR(200) READS SQL DATA
BEGIN
DECLARE out_name VARCHAR(200);
SELECT concat(first_name, ' ', last_name)
INTO out_name
FROM t_actor where id = in_id;
RETURN out_name;
END;
To call this function we again create a SimpleJdbcCall in the initialization method.

private SimpleJdbcCall funcGetActorName;
this.funcGetActorName =
.withFunctionName("get_actor_name");
}
public String getActorName(Long id) {
SqlParameterSource in = new MapSqlParameterSource()
.addValue("in_id", id);
String name = funcGetActorName.executeFunction(String.class, in);
return name;
}
//
The execute method used returns a String containing the return value from the function
call.
14.5.9 Returning ResultSet/REF Cursor from a SimpleJdbcCall

Calling a stored procedure or function that returns a result set is a bit tricky. Some
databases return result sets during the JDBC results processing while others require an
explicitly registered out parameter of a specific type. Both approaches need additional
processing to loop over the result set and process the returned rows. With the
SimpleJdbcCall you use the returningResultSet method and declare a
RowMapper implementation to be used for a specific parameter. In the case where the
result set is returned during the results processing, there are no names defined, so the
returned results will have to match the order in which you declare the RowMapper
implementations. The name specified is still used to store the processed list of results in
the results map that is returned from the execute statement.
The next example uses a stored procedure that takes no IN parameters and returns all
rows from the t_actor table. Here is the MySQL source for this procedure:
CREATE PROCEDURE read_all_actors()
BEGIN
SELECT a.id, a.first_name, a.last_name, a.birth_date FROM t_actor a;
END;
To call this procedure you declare the RowMapper. Because the class you want to map to
follows the JavaBean rules, you can use a
ParameterizedBeanPropertyRowMapper that is created by passing in the required
class to map to in the newInstance method.

private SimpleJdbcCall procReadAllActors;
this.procReadAllActors =
.withProcedureName("read_all_actors")
.returningResultSet("actors",
ParameterizedBeanPropertyRowMapper.newInstance(Actor.class));
}
public List getActorsList() {
Map m = procReadAllActors.execute(new HashMap<String, Object>(0));
return (List) m.get("actors");
}
//
The execute call passes in an empty Map because this call does not take any parameters.
The list of Actors is then retrieved from the results map and returned to the caller.
14.6 Modeling JDBC operations as Java objects

The org.springframework.jdbc.object package contains classes that allow you
to access the database in a more object-oriented manner. As an example, you can execute
queries and get the results back as a list containing business objects with the relational
column data mapped to the properties of the business object. You can also execute stored
procedures and run update, delete, and insert statements.
Note
Many Spring developers believe that the various RDBMS operation
classes described below (with the exception of the
StoredProcedure class) can often be replaced with straight
JdbcTemplate calls. Often it is simpler to write a DAO method that
simply calls a method on a JdbcTemplate directly (as opposed to
encapsulating a query as a full-blown class).
However, if you are getting measurable value from using the RDBMS
operation classes, continue using these classes.
14.6.1 SqlQuery
SqlQuery is a reusable, threadsafe class that encapsulates an SQL query. Subclasses
must implement the newRowMapper(..) method to provide a RowMapper instance that
can create one object per row obtained from iterating over the ResultSet that is created
during the execution of the query. The SqlQuery class is rarely used directly because the
MappingSqlQuery subclass provides a much more convenient implementation for
mapping rows to Java classes. Other implementations that extend SqlQuery are
MappingSqlQueryWithParameters and UpdatableSqlQuery.
14.6.2 MappingSqlQuery
MappingSqlQuery is a reusable query in which concrete subclasses must implement
the abstract mapRow(..) method to convert each row of the supplied ResultSet into an
object of the type specified. The following example shows a custom query that maps the
data from the t_actor relation to an instance of the Actor class.
public class ActorMappingQuery extends MappingSqlQuery<Actor> {
public ActorMappingQuery(DataSource ds) {
super(ds, "select id, first_name, last_name from t_actor where id = ?");
super.declareParameter(new SqlParameter("id", Types.INTEGER));
compile();
}
@Override
protected Actor mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNumber) throws SQLException {

actor.setId(rs.getLong("id"));
return actor;
}
}
The class extends MappingSqlQuery parameterized with the Actor type. The
constructor for this customer query takes the DataSource as the only parameter. In this
constructor you call the constructor on the superclass with the DataSource and the SQL
that should be executed to retrieve the rows for this query. This SQL will be used to create
a PreparedStatement so it may contain place holders for any parameters to be passed
in during execution.You must declare each parameter using the declareParameter
method passing in an SqlParameter. The SqlParameter takes a name and the JDBC
type as defined in java.sql.Types. After you define all parameters, you call the
compile() method so the statement can be prepared and later executed. This class is
thread-safe after it is compiled, so as long as these instances are created when the DAO is
initialized they can be kept as instance variables and be reused.
private ActorMappingQuery actorMappingQuery;
@Autowired
this.actorMappingQuery = new ActorMappingQuery(dataSource);
}
public Customer getCustomer(Long id) {
return actorMappingQuery.findObject(id);
}
The method in this example retrieves the customer with the id that is passed in as the only
parameter. Since we only want one object returned we simply call the convenience
method findObject with the id as parameter. If we had instead a query that returned a
list of objects and took additional parameters then we would use one of the execute
methods that takes an array of parameter values passed in as varargs.
public List<Actor> searchForActors(int age, String namePattern) {
List<Actor> actors = actorSearchMappingQuery.execute(age, namePattern);
return actors;
}
14.6.3 SqlUpdate
The SqlUpdate class encapsulates an SQL update. Like a query, an update object is
reusable, and like all RdbmsOperation classes, an update can have parameters and is
defined in SQL. This class provides a number of update(..) methods analogous to the
execute(..) methods of query objects. The SQLUpdate class is concrete. It can be
subclassed, for example, to add a custom update method, as in the following snippet
where it's simply called execute. However, you don't have to subclass the SqlUpdate
class since it can easily be parameterized by setting SQL and declaring parameters.
import java.sql.Types;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlParameter;
import org.springframework.jdbc.object.SqlUpdate;
public class UpdateCreditRating extends SqlUpdate {
public UpdateCreditRating(DataSource ds) {
setDataSource(ds);
setSql("update customer set credit_rating = ? where id = ?");
declareParameter(new SqlParameter("creditRating", Types.NUMERIC));
declareParameter(new SqlParameter("id", Types.NUMERIC));
compile();
}
/**
* @param id for the Customer to be updated
* @param rating the new value for credit rating
* @return number of rows updated

*/
public int execute(int id, int rating) {
return update(rating, id);
}
}
14.6.4 StoredProcedure
The StoredProcedure class is a superclass for object abstractions of RDBMS stored
procedures. This class is abstract, and its various execute(..) methods have
protected access, preventing use other than through a subclass that offers tighter
typing.
The inherited sql property will be the name of the stored procedure in the RDBMS.
To define a parameter for the StoredProcedure class, you use an SqlParameter or
one of its subclasses. You must specify the parameter name and SQL type in the
constructor like in the following code snippet. The SQL type is specified using the
java.sql.Types constants.
The first line with the SqlParameter declares an IN parameter. IN parameters can be
used for both stored procedure calls and for queries using the SqlQuery and its
subclasses covered in the following section.
The second line with the SqlOutParameter declares an out parameter to be used in
the stored procedure call. There is also an SqlInOutParameter for InOut parameters,
parameters that provide an in value to the procedure and that also return a value.
For in parameters, in addition to the name and the SQL type, you can specify a scale for
numeric data or a type name for custom database types. For out parameters you can
provide a RowMapper to handle mapping of rows returned from a REF cursor. Another
option is to specify an SqlReturnType that enables you to define customized handling
of the return values.
Here is an example of a simple DAO that uses a StoredProcedure to call a function,
sysdate(),which comes with any Oracle database. To use the stored procedure
functionality you have to create a class that extends StoredProcedure. In this example,
the StoredProcedure class is an inner class, but if you need to reuse the
StoredProcedure you declare it as a top-level class. This example has no input
parameters, but an output parameter is declared as a date type using the class
SqlOutParameter. The execute() method executes the procedure and extracts the
returned date from the results Map. The results Map has an entry for each declared output
parameter, in this case only one, using the parameter name as the key.
import
import
import
import
java.sql.Types;
java.util.Date;
java.util.HashMap;
java.util.Map;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlOutParameter;
import org.springframework.jdbc.object.StoredProcedure;
public class StoredProcedureDao {
private GetSysdateProcedure getSysdate;
@Autowired
public void init(DataSource dataSource) {
this.getSysdate = new GetSysdateProcedure(dataSource);
}
public Date getSysdate() {
return getSysdate.execute();
}
private class GetSysdateProcedure extends StoredProcedure {
private static final String SQL = "sysdate";
public GetSysdateProcedure(DataSource dataSource) {
setDataSource(dataSource);
setFunction(true);
setSql(SQL);
declareParameter(new SqlOutParameter("date", Types.DATE));
compile();
}
public Date execute() {
// the 'sysdate' sproc has no input parameters, so an empty Map is supplied...
Map<String, Object> results = execute(new HashMap<String, Object>());
Date sysdate = (Date) results.get("date");
return sysdate;
}
}
}
The following example of a StoredProcedure has two output parameters (in this case,
Oracle REF cursors).
import oracle.jdbc.OracleTypes;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlOutParameter;
import org.springframework.jdbc.object.StoredProcedure;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;
public class TitlesAndGenresStoredProcedure extends StoredProcedure {
private static final String SPROC_NAME = "AllTitlesAndGenres";
public TitlesAndGenresStoredProcedure(DataSource dataSource) {
super(dataSource, SPROC_NAME);
declareParameter(new SqlOutParameter("titles", OracleTypes.CURSOR, new TitleMapper()));
declareParameter(new SqlOutParameter("genres", OracleTypes.CURSOR, new GenreMapper()));
compile();
}
public Map<String, Object> execute() {
// again, this sproc has no input parameters, so an empty Map is supplied
return super.execute(new HashMap<String, Object>());
}
}
Notice how the overloaded variants of the declareParameter(..) method that have
been used in the TitlesAndGenresStoredProcedure constructor are passed
RowMapper implementation instances; this is a very convenient and powerful way to
reuse existing functionality. The code for the two RowMapper implementations is provided
below.
The TitleMapper class maps a ResultSet to a Title domain object for each row in
the supplied ResultSet:
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.RowMapper;
import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.SQLException;
import com.foo.domain.Title;
public final class TitleMapper implements RowMapper<Title> {
public Title mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNum) throws SQLException {
Title title = new Title();
title.setId(rs.getLong("id"));
title.setName(rs.getString("name"));
return title;
}
}
The GenreMapper class maps a ResultSet to a Genre domain object for each row in
the supplied ResultSet.
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.RowMapper;
import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.SQLException;
import com.foo.domain.Genre;
public final class GenreMapper implements RowMapper<Genre> {
public Genre mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNum) throws SQLException {
return new Genre(rs.getString("name"));
}
}
To pass parameters to a stored procedure that has one or more input parameters in its
definition in the RDBMS, you can code a strongly typed execute(..) method that would
delegate to the superclass' untyped execute(Map parameters) method (which has
protected access); for example:
import
import
import
import
oracle.jdbc.OracleTypes;
org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlOutParameter;
org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlParameter;
org.springframework.jdbc.object.StoredProcedure;
import
import
import
import
java.sql.Types;
java.util.Date;
java.util.HashMap;
java.util.Map;
public class TitlesAfterDateStoredProcedure extends StoredProcedure {

private static final String SPROC_NAME = "TitlesAfterDate";
private static final String CUTOFF_DATE_PARAM = "cutoffDate";
public TitlesAfterDateStoredProcedure(DataSource dataSource) {
super(dataSource, SPROC_NAME);
declareParameter(new SqlParameter(CUTOFF_DATE_PARAM, Types.DATE);
declareParameter(new SqlOutParameter("titles", OracleTypes.CURSOR, new TitleMapper()));
compile();
}
public Map<String, Object> execute(Date cutoffDate) {
Map<String, Object> inputs = new HashMap<String, Object>();
inputs.put(CUTOFF_DATE_PARAM, cutoffDate);
return super.execute(inputs);
}
}
14.7 Common problems with parameter and data value

handling
Common problems with parameters and data values exist in the different approaches
provided by the Spring Framework JDBC.
14.7.1 Providing SQL type information for parameters

Usually Spring determines the SQL type of the parameters based on the type of parameter
passed in. It is possible to explicitly provide the SQL type to be used when setting
parameter values. This is sometimes necessary to correctly set NULL values.
You can provide SQL type information in several ways:
Many update and query methods of the JdbcTemplate take an additional parameter
in the form of an int array. This array is used to indicate the SQL type of the
corresponding parameter using constant values from the java.sql.Types class.
Provide one entry for each parameter.
You can use the SqlParameterValue class to wrap the parameter value that needs
this additional information. Create a new instance for each value and pass in the SQL
type and parameter value in the constructor. You can also provide an optional scale
parameter for numeric values.
For methods working with named parameters, use the SqlParameterSource

classes BeanPropertySqlParameterSource or MapSqlParameterSource.
They both have methods for registering the SQL type for any of the named parameter
values.
14.7.2 Handling BLOB and CLOB objects

You can store images, other binary objects, and large chunks of text. These large object
are called BLOB for binary data and CLOB for character data. In Spring you can handle
these large objects by using the JdbcTemplate directly and also when using the higher
abstractions provided by RDBMS Objects and the SimpleJdbc classes. All of these
approaches use an implementation of the LobHandler interface for the actual
management of the LOB data. The LobHandler provides access to a LobCreator
class, through the getLobCreator method, used for creating new LOB objects to be
inserted.
The LobCreator/LobHandler provides the following support for LOB input and output:
BLOB
byte[] getBlobAsBytes and setBlobAsBytes
InputStream getBlobAsBinaryStream and setBlobAsBinaryStream
CLOB
String getClobAsString and setClobAsString
InputStream getClobAsAsciiStream and setClobAsAsciiStream
Reader getClobAsCharacterStream and setClobAsCharacterStream
The next example shows how to create and insert a BLOB. Later you will see how to read
it back from the database.
This example uses a JdbcTemplate and an implementation of the
AbstractLobCreatingPreparedStatementCallback. It implements one method,
setValues. This method provides a LobCreator that you use to set the values for the
LOB columns in your SQL insert statement.
For this example we assume that there is a variable, lobHandler, that already is set to
an instance of a DefaultLobHandler. You typically set this value through dependency
injection.
final File blobIn = new File("spring2004.jpg");
final InputStream blobIs = new FileInputStream(blobIn);
final File clobIn = new File("large.txt");
final InputStream clobIs = new FileInputStream(clobIn);
final InputStreamReader clobReader = new InputStreamReader(clobIs);
jdbcTemplate.execute(
"INSERT INTO lob_table (id, a_clob, a_blob) VALUES (?, ?, ?)",
new AbstractLobCreatingPreparedStatementCallback(lobHandler) {
protected void setValues(PreparedStatement ps, LobCreator lobCreator)
throws SQLException {
ps.setLong(1, 1L);
lobCreator.setClobAsCharacterStream(ps, 2, clobReader, (int)clobIn.length());
lobCreator.setBlobAsBinaryStream(ps, 3, blobIs, (int)blobIn.length());
}
}
);
blobIs.close();
clobReader.close();
Pass in the lobHandler that in this example is a plain DefaultLobHandler

Using the method setClobAsCharacterStream, pass in the contents of the
CLOB.
Using the method setBlobAsBinaryStream, pass in the contents of the BLOB.
Now it's time to read the LOB data from the database. Again, you use a JdbcTemplate
with the same instance variable lobHandler and a reference to a
DefaultLobHandler.
List<Map<String, Object>> l = jdbcTemplate.query("select id, a_clob, a_blob from lob_table",

new RowMapper<Map<String, Object>>() {
public Map<String, Object> mapRow(ResultSet rs, int i) throws SQLException {
Map<String, Object> results = new HashMap<String, Object>();
String clobText = lobHandler.getClobAsString(rs, "a_clob");
results.put("CLOB", clobText);
byte[] blobBytes = lobHandler.getBlobAsBytes(rs, "a_blob");
results.put("BLOB", blobBytes);
return results;
}
});
Using the method getClobAsString, retrieve the contents of the CLOB.

Using the method getBlobAsBytes, retrieve the contents of the BLOB.
14.7.3 Passing in lists of values for IN clause

The SQL standard allows for selecting rows based on an expression that includes a
variable list of values. A typical example would be select * from T_ACTOR where
id in (1, 2, 3). This variable list is not directly supported for prepared statements by
the JDBC standard; you cannot declare a variable number of placeholders. You need a
number of variations with the desired number of placeholders prepared, or you need to
generate the SQL string dynamically once you know how many placeholders are required.
The named parameter support provided in the NamedParameterJdbcTemplate and
JdbcTemplate takes the latter approach. Pass in the values as a java.util.List of
primitive objects. This list will be used to insert the required placeholders and pass in the
values during the statement execution.
Note
Be careful when passing in many values. The JDBC standard does not
guarantee that you can use more than 100 values for an in expression
list. Various databases exceed this number, but they usually have a
hard limit for how many values are allowed. Oracle's limit is 1000.
In addition to the primitive values in the value list, you can create a java.util.List of
object arrays. This list would support multiple expressions defined for the in clause such
as select * from T_ACTOR where (id, last_name) in ((1,
'Johnson'), (2, 'Harrop')). This of course requires that your database supports
this syntax.
14.7.4 Handling complex types for stored procedure calls

When you call stored procedures you can sometimes use complex types specific to the
database. To accommodate these types, Spring provides a SqlReturnType for handling
them when they are returned from the stored procedure call and SqlTypeValue when
they are passed in as a parameter to the stored procedure.
Here is an example of returning the value of an Oracle STRUCT object of the user declared
type ITEM_TYPE. The SqlReturnType interface has a single method named
getTypeValue that must be implemented. This interface is used as part of the
declaration of an SqlOutParameter.
final TestItem = new TestItem(123L, "A test item",
new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-M-d").parse("2010-12-31"));
declareParameter(new SqlOutParameter("item", OracleTypes.STRUCT, "ITEM_TYPE",
new SqlReturnType() {
public Object getTypeValue(CallableStatement cs, int colIndx, int sqlType, String typeName)
throws SQLException {
STRUCT struct = (STRUCT) cs.getObject(colIndx);
Object[] attr = struct.getAttributes();
TestItem item = new TestItem();
item.setId(((Number) attr[0]).longValue());
item.setDescription((String) attr[1]);
item.setExpirationDate((java.util.Date) attr[2]);
return item;
}
}));
You use the SqlTypeValue to pass in the value of a Java object like TestItem into a
stored procedure. The SqlTypeValue interface has a single method named
createTypeValue that you must implement. The active connection is passed in, and
you can use it to create database-specific objects such as StructDescriptors, as
shown in the following example, or ArrayDescriptors.
final TestItem = new TestItem(123L, "A test item",
new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-M-d").parse("2010-12-31"));
SqlTypeValue value = new AbstractSqlTypeValue() {
protected Object createTypeValue(Connection conn, int sqlType, String typeName) throws SQLException {
StructDescriptor itemDescriptor = new StructDescriptor(typeName, conn);
Struct item = new STRUCT(itemDescriptor, conn,
new Object[] {
testItem.getId(),
testItem.getDescription(),
new java.sql.Date(testItem.getExpirationDate().getTime())
});
return item;
}
};
This SqlTypeValue can now be added to the Map containing the input parameters for
the execute call of the stored procedure.
Another use for the SqlTypeValue is passing in an array of values to an Oracle stored
procedure. Oracle has its own internal ARRAY class that must be used in this case, and
you can use the SqlTypeValue to create an instance of the Oracle ARRAY and populate
it with values from the Java ARRAY.
final Long[] ids = new Long[] {1L, 2L};
SqlTypeValue value = new AbstractSqlTypeValue() {
protected Object createTypeValue(Connection conn, int sqlType, String typeName) throws SQLException {
ArrayDescriptor arrayDescriptor = new ArrayDescriptor(typeName, conn);
ARRAY idArray = new ARRAY(arrayDescriptor, conn, ids);
return idArray;
}
};
14.8 Embedded database support

The org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.embedded package provides
support for embedded Java database engines. Support for HSQL, H2, and Derby is
provided natively. You can also use an extensible API to plug in new embedded database
types and DataSource implementations.
14.8.1 Why use an embedded database?

An embedded database is useful during the development phase of a project because of its
lightweight nature. Benefits include ease of configuration, quick startup time, testability,
and the ability to rapidly evolve SQL during development.
14.8.2 Creating an embedded database instance using Spring XML

If you want to expose an embedded database instance as a bean in a Spring
ApplicationContext, use the embedded-database tag in the spring-jdbc namespace:
<jdbc:embedded-database id="dataSource">
<jdbc:script location="classpath:schema.sql"/>
<jdbc:script location="classpath:test-data.sql"/>
</jdbc:embedded-database>
The preceding configuration creates an embedded HSQL database populated with SQL
from schema.sql and testdata.sql resources in the classpath. The database instance is
made available to the Spring container as a bean of type javax.sql.DataSource.
This bean can then be injected into data access objects as needed.
14.8.3 Creating an embedded database instance programmatically

The EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder class provides a fluent API for constructing an
embedded database programmatically. Use this when you need to create an embedded
database instance in a standalone environment, such as a data access object unit test:
EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder builder = new EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder();
EmbeddedDatabase db = builder.setType(H2).addScript("my-schema.sql").addScript("my-test-data.sql").build();
// do stuff against the db (EmbeddedDatabase extends javax.sql.DataSource)
db.shutdown()
14.8.4 Extending the embedded database support

Spring JDBC embedded database support can be extended in two ways:
1. Implement EmbeddedDatabaseConfigurer to support a new embedded database
type, such as Apache Derby.
2. Implement DataSourceFactory to support a new DataSource implementation,
such as a connection pool, to manage embedded database connections.
You are encouraged to contribute back extensions to the Spring community at
jira.springframework.org.
14.8.5 Using HSQL

Spring supports HSQL 1.8.0 and above. HSQL is the default embedded database if no
type is specified explicitly. To specify HSQL explicitly, set the type attribute of the
embedded-database tag to HSQL. If you are using the builder API, call the
setType(EmbeddedDatabaseType) method with EmbeddedDatabaseType.HSQL.
14.8.6 Using H2
Spring supports the H2 database as well. To enable H2, set the type attribute of the
embedded-database tag to H2. If you are using the builder API, call the
setType(EmbeddedDatabaseType) method with EmbeddedDatabaseType.H2.
14.8.7 Using Derby

Spring also supports Apache Derby 10.5 and above. To enable Derby, set the type
attribute of the embedded-database tag to Derby. If using the builder API, call the
setType(EmbeddedDatabaseType) method with
EmbeddedDatabaseType.Derby.
14.8.8 Testing data access logic with an embedded database

Embedded databases provide a lightweight way to test data access code. The following is
a data access unit test template that uses an embedded database:
public class DataAccessUnitTestTemplate {
private EmbeddedDatabase db;
@Before
public void setUp() {
// creates an HSQL in-memory database populated from default scripts
// classpath:schema.sql and classpath:data.sql
db = new EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder().addDefaultScripts().build();
}
@Test
public void testDataAccess() {
JdbcTemplate template = new JdbcTemplate(db);
template.query(...);
}
@After
public void tearDown() {
db.shutdown();
}
14.9 Initializing a DataSource

The org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.init package provides support
for initializing an existing DataSource. The embedded database support provides one
option for creating and initializing a DataSource for an application, but sometimes you
need to initialize an instance running on a server somewhere.
14.9.1 Initializing a database instance using Spring XML

If you want to initialize a database and you can provide a reference to a DataSource bean,
use the initialize-database tag in the spring-jdbc namespace:
<jdbc:initialize-database data-source="dataSource">
<jdbc:script location="classpath:com/foo/sql/db-schema.sql"/>
<jdbc:script location="classpath:com/foo/sql/db-test-data.sql"/>
</jdbc:initialize-database>
The example above runs the two scripts specified against the database: the first script is a
schema creation, and the second is a test data set insert. The script locations can also be
patterns with wildcards in the usual ant style used for resources in Spring (e.g.
classpath*:/com/foo/**/sql/*-data.sql). If a pattern is used the scripts are
executed in lexical order of their URL or filename.
The default behavior of the database initializer is to unconditionally execute the scripts
provided. This will not always be what you want, for instance if running against an existing
database that already has test data in it. The likelihood of accidentally deleting data is
reduced by the commonest pattern (as shown above) that creates the tables first and then
inserts the data - the first step will fail if the tables already exist.
However, to get more control over the creation and deletion of existing data, the XML
namespace provides a couple more options. The first is flag to switch the initialization on
and off. This can be set according to the environment (e.g. to pull a boolean value from
system properties or an environment bean), e.g.
<jdbc:initialize-database data-source="dataSource"
enabled="#{systemProperties.INITIALIZE_DATABASE}">
<jdbc:script location="..."/>
The second option to control what happens with existing data is to be more tolerant of
failures. To this end you can control the ability of the initializer to ignore certain errors in the
SQL it executes from the scripts, e.g.
<jdbc:initialize-database data-source="dataSource" ignore-failures="DROPS">
<jdbc:script location="..."/>
In this example we are saying we expect that sometimes the scripts will be run against an
empty database and there are some DROP statements in the scripts which would therefore
fail. So failed SQL DROP statements will be ignored, but other failures will cause an
exception. This is useful if your SQL dialect doesn't support DROP ... IF EXISTS (or
similar) but you want to unconditionally remove all test data before re-creating it. In that
case the first script is usually a set of drops, followed by a set of CREATE statements.
The ignore-failures option can be set to NONE (the default), DROPS (ignore failed
drops) or ALL (ignore all failures).
If you need more control than you get from the XML namespace, you can simply use the
DataSourceInitializer directly, and define it as a component in your application.
Initialization of Other Components that Depend on the Database
A large class of applications can just use the database initializer with no further
complications: those that do not use the database until after the Spring context has started.
If your application is not one of those then you might need to read the rest of this section.
The database initializer depends on a data source instance and runs the scripts provided
in its initialization callback (c.f. init-method in an XML bean definition or
InitializingBean). If other beans depend on the same data source and also use the
data source in an initialization callback then there might be a problem because the data
has not yet been initialized. A common example of this is a cache that initializes eagerly
and loads up data from the database on application startup.
To get round this issue you two options: change your cache initialization strategy to a later
phase, or ensure that the database initializer is initialized first.
The first option might be easy if the application is in your control, and not otherwise. Some
suggestions for how to implement this are
Make the cache initialize lazily on first usage, which improves application startup time
Have your cache or a separate component that initializes the cache implement
Lifecycle or SmartLifecycle. When the application context starts up a
SmartLifecycle can be automatically started if its autoStartup flag is set, and a
Lifecycle can be started manually by calling
ConfigurableApplicationContext.start() on the enclosing context.
Use a Spring ApplicationEvent or similar custom observer mechanism to trigger
the cache initialization. ContextRefreshedEvent is always published by the
context when it is ready for use (after all beans have been initialized), so that is often a
useful hook (this is how the SmartLifecycle works by default).
The second option can also be easy. Some suggestions on how to implement this are
Rely on Spring BeanFactory default behavior, which is that beans are initialized in
registration order. You can easily arrange that by adopting the common practice of a
set of <import/> elements that order your application modules, and ensure that the
database and database initialization are listed first
Separate the datasource and the business components that use it and control their
startup order by putting them in separate ApplicationContext instances (e.g. parent has
the datasource and child has the business components). This structure is common in
Spring web applications, but can be more generally applied.
Use a modular runtime like SpringSource dm Server and separate the data source and
the components that depend on it. E.g. specify the bundle start up order as datasource
-> initializer -> business components.
15. Object Relational Mapping (ORM) Data Access

15.1 Introduction to ORM with Spring
The Spring Framework supports integration with Hibernate, Java Persistence API (JPA),
Java Data Objects (JDO) and iBATIS SQL Maps for resource management, data access
object (DAO) implementations, and transaction strategies. For example, for Hibernate there
is first-class support with several convenient IoC features that address many typical
Hibernate integration issues. You can configure all of the supported features for O/R
(object relational) mapping tools through Dependency Injection. They can participate in
Spring's resource and transaction management, and they comply with Spring's generic
transaction and DAO exception hierarchies. The recommended integration style is to code
DAOs against plain Hibernate, JPA, and JDO APIs. The older style of using Spring's DAO
templates is no longer recommended; however, coverage of this style can be found in the
Section A.1, Classic ORM usage in the appendices.
Spring adds significant enhancements to the ORM layer of your choice when you create
data access applications. You can leverage as much of the integration support as you
wish, and you should compare this integration effort with the cost and risk of building a
similar infrastructure in-house. You can use much of the ORM support as you would a
library, regardless of technology, because everything is designed as a set of reusable
JavaBeans. ORM in a Spring IoC container facilitates configuration and deployment. Thus
most examples in this section show configuration inside a Spring container.
Benefits of using the Spring Framework to create your ORM DAOs include:
Easier testing. Spring's IoC approach makes it easy to swap the implementations and
configuration locations of Hibernate SessionFactory instances, JDBC
DataSource instances, transaction managers, and mapped object implementations
(if needed). This in turn makes it much easier to test each piece of persistence-related
code in isolation.
Common data access exceptions. Spring can wrap exceptions from your ORM tool,
converting them from proprietary (potentially checked) exceptions to a common
runtime DataAccessException hierarchy. This feature allows you to handle most
persistence exceptions, which are non-recoverable, only in the appropriate layers,
without annoying boilerplate catches, throws, and exception declarations. You can still
trap and handle exceptions as necessary. Remember that JDBC exceptions (including
DB-specific dialects) are also converted to the same hierarchy, meaning that you can
perform some operations with JDBC within a consistent programming model.
General resource management. Spring application contexts can handle the location
and configuration of Hibernate SessionFactory instances, JPA
EntityManagerFactory instances, JDBC DataSource instances, iBATIS SQL
Maps configuration objects, and other related resources. This makes these values
easy to manage and change. Spring offers efficient, easy, and safe handling of
persistence resources. For example, related code that uses Hibernate generally needs
to use the same Hibernate Session to ensure efficiency and proper transaction
handling. Spring makes it easy to create and bind a Session to the current thread
transparently, by exposing a current Session through the Hibernate
SessionFactory. Thus Spring solves many chronic problems of typical Hibernate
usage, for any local or JTA transaction environment.
Integrated transaction management. You can wrap your ORM code with a declarative,
aspect-oriented programming (AOP) style method interceptor either through the
@Transactional annotation or by explicitly configuring the transaction AOP advice
in an XML configuration file. In both cases, transaction semantics and exception
handling (rollback, and so on) are handled for you. As discussed below, in Resource
and transaction management, you can also swap various transaction managers,
without affecting your ORM-related code. For example, you can swap between local
transactions and JTA, with the same full services (such as declarative transactions)
available in both scenarios. Additionally, JDBC-related code can fully integrate
transactionally with the code you use to do ORM. This is useful for data access that is
not suitable for ORM, such as batch processing and BLOB streaming, which still need
to share common transactions with ORM operations.
TODO: provide links to current samples
15.2 General ORM integration considerations

This section highlights considerations that apply to all ORM technologies. The
Section 15.3, Hibernate section provides more details and also show these features and
configurations in a concrete context.
The major goal of Spring's ORM integration is clear application layering, with any data
access and transaction technology, and for loose coupling of application objects. No more
business service dependencies on the data access or transaction strategy, no more hardcoded resource lookups, no more hard-to-replace singletons, no more custom service
registries. One simple and consistent approach to wiring up application objects, keeping
them as reusable and free from container dependencies as possible. All the individual data
access features are usable on their own but integrate nicely with Spring's application
context concept, providing XML-based configuration and cross-referencing of plain
JavaBean instances that need not be Spring-aware. In a typical Spring application, many
important objects are JavaBeans: data access templates, data access objects, transaction
managers, business services that use the data access objects and transaction managers,
web view resolvers, web controllers that use the business services,and so on.
15.2.1 Resource and transaction management

Typical business applications are cluttered with repetitive resource management code.
Many projects try to invent their own solutions, sometimes sacrificing proper handling of
failures for programming convenience. Spring advocates simple solutions for proper
resource handling, namely IoC through templating in the case of JDBC and applying AOP
interceptors for the ORM technologies.
The infrastructure provides proper resource handling and appropriate conversion of
specific API exceptions to an unchecked infrastructure exception hierarchy. Spring
introduces a DAO exception hierarchy, applicable to any data access strategy. For direct
JDBC, the JdbcTemplate class mentioned in a previous section provides connection
handling and proper conversion of SQLException to the DataAccessException
hierarchy, including translation of database-specific SQL error codes to meaningful
exception classes. For ORM technologies, see the next section for how to get the same
exception translation benefits.
When it comes to transaction management, the JdbcTemplate class hooks in to the
Spring transaction support and supports both JTA and JDBC transactions, through
respective Spring transaction managers. For the supported ORM technologies Spring
offers Hibernate, JPA and JDO support through the Hibernate, JPA, and JDO transaction
managers as well as JTA support. For details on transaction support, see the Chapter 12,
Transaction Management chapter.
15.2.2 Exception translation

When you use Hibernate, JPA, or JDO in a DAO, you must decide how to handle the
persistence technology's native exception classes. The DAO throws a subclass of a
HibernateException, PersistenceException or JDOException depending on
the technology. These exceptions are all run-time exceptions and do not have to be
declared or caught. You may also have to deal with IllegalArgumentException and
IllegalStateException. This means that callers can only treat exceptions as
generally fatal, unless they want to depend on the persistence technology's own exception
structure. Catching specific causes such as an optimistic locking failure is not possible
without tying the caller to the implementation strategy. This trade off might be acceptable to
applications that are strongly ORM-based and/or do not need any special exception
treatment. However, Spring enables exception translation to be applied transparently
through the @Repository annotation:
@Repository
public class ProductDaoImpl implements ProductDao {
// class body here...
}
<beans>

<bean class="org.springframework.dao.annotation.PersistenceExceptionTranslationPostProcessor"/>
<bean id="myProductDao" class="product.ProductDaoImpl"/>
</beans>
The postprocessor automatically looks for all exception translators (implementations of the
PersistenceExceptionTranslator interface) and advises all beans marked with

the @Repository annotation so that the discovered translators can intercept and apply
the appropriate translation on the thrown exceptions.
In summary: you can implement DAOs based on the plain persistence technology's API
and annotations, while still benefiting from Spring-managed transactions, dependency
injection, and transparent exception conversion (if desired) to Spring's custom exception
hierarchies.
15.3 Hibernate
We will start with a coverage of Hibernate 3 in a Spring environment, using it to
demonstrate the approach that Spring takes towards integrating O/R mappers. This section
will cover many issues in detail and show different variations of DAO implementations and
transaction demarcation. Most of these patterns can be directly translated to all other
supported ORM tools. The following sections in this chapter will then cover the other ORM
technologies, showing briefer examples there.
Note
As of Spring 3.0, Spring requires Hibernate 3.2 or later.
15.3.1 SessionFactory setup in a Spring container

To avoid tying application objects to hard-coded resource lookups, you can define
resources such as a JDBC DataSource or a Hibernate SessionFactory as beans in
the Spring container. Application objects that need to access resources receive references
to such predefined instances through bean references, as illustrated in the DAO definition
in the next section.
The following excerpt from an XML application context definition shows how to set up a
JDBC DataSource and a Hibernate SessionFactory on top of it:
<beans>
<bean id="myDataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">
<property name="driverClassName" value="org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver"/>
<property name="url" value="jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost:9001"/>
<property name="username" value="sa"/>
<property name="password" value=""/>
</bean>
<bean id="mySessionFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
<property name="dataSource" ref="myDataSource"/>
<list>
<value>product.hbm.xml</value>
</list>
</property>
<value>
hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.HSQLDialect
</value>
</property>
</bean>
</beans>
Switching from a local Jakarta Commons DBCP BasicDataSource to a JNDI-located

DataSource (usually managed by an application server) is just a matter of configuration:
<beans>
<jee:jndi-lookup id="myDataSource" jndi-name="java:comp/env/jdbc/myds"/>
</beans>
You can also access a JNDI-located SessionFactory, using Spring's

JndiObjectFactoryBean / <jee:jndi-lookup> to retrieve and expose it.
However, that is typically not common outside of an EJB context.
15.3.2 Implementing DAOs based on plain Hibernate 3 API

Hibernate 3 has a feature called contextual sessions, wherein Hibernate itself manages
one current Session per transaction. This is roughly equivalent to Spring's
synchronization of one Hibernate Session per transaction. A corresponding DAO
implementation resembles the following example, based on the plain Hibernate API:
this.sessionFactory = sessionFactory;
}
public Collection loadProductsByCategory(String category) {
return this.sessionFactory.getCurrentSession()
.createQuery("from test.Product product where product.category=?")
.setParameter(0, category)
.list();
}
}
This style is similar to that of the Hibernate reference documentation and examples, except
for holding the SessionFactory in an instance variable. We strongly recommend such
an instance-based setup over the old-school static HibernateUtil class from
Hibernate's CaveatEmptor sample application. (In general, do not keep any resources in
static variables unless absolutely necessary.)
The above DAO follows the dependency injection pattern: it fits nicely into a Spring IoC
container, just as it would if coded against Spring's HibernateTemplate. Of course,
such a DAO can also be set up in plain Java (for example, in unit tests). Simply instantiate
it and call setSessionFactory(..) with the desired factory reference. As a Spring
bean definition, the DAO would resemble the following:
<beans>
<bean id="myProductDao" class="product.ProductDaoImpl">
<property name="sessionFactory" ref="mySessionFactory"/>
</bean>
</beans>
The main advantage of this DAO style is that it depends on Hibernate API only; no import
of any Spring class is required. This is of course appealing from a non-invasiveness
perspective, and will no doubt feel more natural to Hibernate developers.
However, the DAO throws plain HibernateException (which is unchecked, so does
not have to be declared or caught), which means that callers can only treat exceptions as
generally fatal - unless they want to depend on Hibernate's own exception hierarchy.
Catching specific causes such as an optimistic locking failure is not possible without tying
the caller to the implementation strategy. This trade off might be acceptable to applications
that are strongly Hibernate-based and/or do not need any special exception treatment.
Fortunately, Spring's LocalSessionFactoryBean supports Hibernate's
SessionFactory.getCurrentSession() method for any Spring transaction
strategy, returning the current Spring-managed transactional Session even with
HibernateTransactionManager. Of course, the standard behavior of that method
remains the return of the current Session associated with the ongoing JTA transaction, if
any. This behavior applies regardless of whether you are using Spring's
JtaTransactionManager, EJB container managed transactions (CMTs), or JTA.
In summary: you can implement DAOs based on the plain Hibernate 3 API, while still
being able to participate in Spring-managed transactions.
15.3.3 Declarative transaction demarcation
We recommend that you use Spring's declarative transaction support, which enables you
to replace explicit transaction demarcation API calls in your Java code with an AOP
transaction interceptor. This transaction interceptor can be configured in a Spring container
using either Java annotations or XML.This declarative transaction capability allows you to
keep business services free of repetitive transaction demarcation code and to focus on
adding business logic, which is the real value of your application.
Note
Prior to continuing, you are strongly encouraged to read Section 12.5,
Declarative transaction management if you have not done so.
Furthermore, transaction semantics like propagation behavior and isolation level can be
changed in a configuration file and do not affect the business service implementations.
The following example shows how you can configure an AOP transaction interceptor,
using XML, for a simple service class:

class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTransactionManager">
</bean>
<aop:config>
<aop:pointcut id="productServiceMethods"
expression="execution(* product.ProductService.*(..))"/>
<aop:advisor advice-ref="txAdvice" pointcut-ref="productServiceMethods"/>
</aop:config>
<tx:advice id="txAdvice" transaction-manager="myTxManager">
<tx:attributes>
<tx:method name="increasePrice*" propagation="REQUIRED"/>
<tx:method name="someOtherBusinessMethod" propagation="REQUIRES_NEW"/>
<tx:method name="*" propagation="SUPPORTS" read-only="true"/>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>
<bean id="myProductService" class="product.SimpleProductService">
<property name="productDao" ref="myProductDao"/>
</bean>
</beans>
This is the service class that is advised:

public class ProductServiceImpl implements ProductService {
private ProductDao productDao;
public void setProductDao(ProductDao productDao) {
this.productDao = productDao;
}
// notice the absence of transaction demarcation code in this method
// Spring's declarative transaction infrastructure will be demarcating
// transactions on your behalf
public void increasePriceOfAllProductsInCategory(final String category) {
List productsToChange = this.productDao.loadProductsByCategory(category);
// ...
}
}
We also show an attribute-support based configuration, in the following example. You

annotate the service layer with @Transactional annotations and instruct the Spring
container to find these annotations and provide transactional semantics for these
annotated methods.
}
@Transactional
// ...
}
@Transactional(readOnly = true)
public List<Product> findAllProducts() {
return this.productDao.findAllProducts();
}
}
As you can see from the following configuration example, the configuration is much
simplified, compared to the XML example above, while still providing the same
functionality driven by the annotations in the service layer code. All you need to provide is
the TransactionManager implementation and a "<tx:annotation-driven/>" entry.

class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTransactionManager">
</bean>
<tx:annotation-driven/>
<bean id="myProductService" class="product.SimpleProductService">
</bean>
</beans>
15.3.4 Programmatic transaction demarcation

You can demarcate transactions in a higher level of the application, on top of such lowerlevel data access services spanning any number of operations. Nor do restrictions exist on
the implementation of the surrounding business service; it just needs a Spring
PlatformTransactionManager. Again, the latter can come from anywhere, but
preferably as a bean reference through a setTransactionManager(..) method, just
as the productDAO should be set by a setProductDao(..) method. The following
snippets show a transaction manager and a business service definition in a Spring
application context, and an example for a business method implementation:
<beans>
<bean id="myTxManager" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTransactionManager">
</bean>
<bean id="myProductService" class="product.ProductServiceImpl">
<property name="transactionManager" ref="myTxManager"/>
</bean>
</beans>

private TransactionTemplate transactionTemplate;
public void setTransactionManager(PlatformTransactionManager transactionManager) {
}
}
this.transactionTemplate.execute(new TransactionCallbackWithoutResult() {
public void doInTransactionWithoutResult(TransactionStatus status) {
// do the price increase...
}
}
);
}
}
Spring's TransactionInterceptor allows any checked application exception to be

thrown with the callback code, while TransactionTemplate is restricted to unchecked
exceptions within the callback. TransactionTemplate triggers a rollback in case of an
unchecked application exception, or if the transaction is marked rollback-only by the
application (via TransactionStatus). TransactionInterceptor behaves the
same way by default but allows configurable rollback policies per method.
15.3.5 Transaction management strategies

Both TransactionTemplate and TransactionInterceptor delegate the actual
transaction handling to a PlatformTransactionManager instance, which can be a
HibernateTransactionManager (for a single Hibernate SessionFactory, using a
ThreadLocal Session under the hood) or a JtaTransactionManager (delegating
to the JTA subsystem of the container) for Hibernate applications. You can even use a
custom PlatformTransactionManager implementation. Switching from native
Hibernate transaction management to JTA, such as when facing distributed transaction
requirements for certain deployments of your application, is just a matter of configuration.
Simply replace the Hibernate transaction manager with Spring's JTA transaction
implementation. Both transaction demarcation and data access code will work without
changes, because they just use the generic transaction management APIs.
For distributed transactions across multiple Hibernate session factories, simply combine
JtaTransactionManager as a transaction strategy with multiple
LocalSessionFactoryBean definitions. Each DAO then gets one specific
SessionFactory reference passed into its corresponding bean property. If all
underlying JDBC data sources are transactional container ones, a business service can
demarcate transactions across any number of DAOs and any number of session factories
without special regard, as long as it is using JtaTransactionManager as the strategy.
<beans>
<jee:jndi-lookup id="dataSource1" jndi-name="java:comp/env/jdbc/myds1"/>
<jee:jndi-lookup id="dataSource2" jndi-name="java:comp/env/jdbc/myds2"/>
<bean id="mySessionFactory1"
<property name="dataSource" ref="myDataSource1"/>
<list>
<value>product.hbm.xml</value>
</list>
</property>
<value>
hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect
hibernate.show_sql=true
</value>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="mySessionFactory2"
<property name="dataSource" ref="myDataSource2"/>
<list>
<value>inventory.hbm.xml</value>
</list>
</property>
<value>
hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.OracleDialect
</value>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="myTxManager" class="org.springframework.transaction.jta.JtaTransactionManager"/>
<property name="sessionFactory" ref="mySessionFactory1"/>
</bean>
<bean id="myInventoryDao" class="product.InventoryDaoImpl">
<property name="sessionFactory" ref="mySessionFactory2"/>
</bean>
<property name="inventoryDao" ref="myInventoryDao"/>
</bean>
<aop:config>
</aop:config>
<tx:attributes>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>
</beans>
Both HibernateTransactionManager and JtaTransactionManager allow for

proper JVM-level cache handling with Hibernate, without container-specific transaction
manager lookup or a JCA connector (if you are not using EJB to initiate transactions).
HibernateTransactionManager can export the Hibernate JDBC Connection to
plain JDBC access code, for a specific DataSource. This capability allows for high-level
transaction demarcation with mixed Hibernate and JDBC data access completely without
JTA, if you are accessing only one database. HibernateTransactionManager
automatically exposes the Hibernate transaction as a JDBC transaction if you have set up
the passed-in SessionFactory with a DataSource through the dataSource property
of the LocalSessionFactoryBean class. Alternatively, you can specify explicitly the
DataSource for which the transactions are supposed to be exposed through the
dataSource property of the HibernateTransactionManager class.
15.3.6 Comparing container-managed and locally defined

resources
You can switch between a container-managed JNDI SessionFactory and a locally
defined one, without having to change a single line of application code. Whether to keep
resource definitions in the container or locally within the application is mainly a matter of
the transaction strategy that you use. Compared to a Spring-defined local
SessionFactory, a manually registered JNDI SessionFactory does not provide any
benefits. Deploying a SessionFactory through Hibernate's JCA connector provides the
added value of participating in the Java EE server's management infrastructure, but does
not add actual value beyond that.
Spring's transaction support is not bound to a container. Configured with any strategy other
than JTA, transaction support also works in a stand-alone or test environment. Especially
in the typical case of single-database transactions, Spring's single-resource local
transaction support is a lightweight and powerful alternative to JTA. When you use local
EJB stateless session beans to drive transactions, you depend both on an EJB container
and JTA, even if you access only a single database, and only use stateless session beans
to provide declarative transactions through container-managed transactions. Also, direct
use of JTA programmatically requires a Java EE environment as well. JTA does not
involve only container dependencies in terms of JTA itself and of JNDI DataSource
instances. For non-Spring, JTA-driven Hibernate transactions, you have to use the
Hibernate JCA connector, or extra Hibernate transaction code with the
TransactionManagerLookup configured for proper JVM-level caching.
Spring-driven transactions can work as well with a locally defined Hibernate
SessionFactory as they do with a local JDBC DataSource if they are accessing a
single database. Thus you only have to use Spring's JTA transaction strategy when you
have distributed transaction requirements. A JCA connector requires container-specific
deployment steps, and obviously JCA support in the first place. This configuration requires
more work than deploying a simple web application with local resource definitions and
Spring-driven transactions. Also, you often need the Enterprise Edition of your container if
you are using, for example, WebLogic Express, which does not provide JCA. A Spring
application with local resources and transactions spanning one single database works in
any Java EE web container (without JTA, JCA, or EJB) such as Tomcat, Resin, or even
plain Jetty. Additionally, you can easily reuse such a middle tier in desktop applications or
test suites.
All things considered, if you do not use EJBs, stick with local SessionFactory setup
and Spring's HibernateTransactionManager or JtaTransactionManager. You
get all of the benefits, including proper transactional JVM-level caching and distributed
transactions, without the inconvenience of container deployment. JNDI registration of a
Hibernate SessionFactory through the JCA connector only adds value when used in
conjunction with EJBs.
15.3.7 Spurious application server warnings with Hibernate

In some JTA environments with very strict XADataSource implementations -- currently
only some WebLogic Server and WebSphere versions -- when Hibernate is configured
without regard to the JTA PlatformTransactionManager object for that environment,
it is possible for spurious warning or exceptions to show up in the application server log.
These warnings or exceptions indicate that the connection being accessed is no longer
valid, or JDBC access is no longer valid, possibly because the transaction is no longer
active. As an example, here is an actual exception from WebLogic:
java.sql.SQLException: The transaction is no longer active - status: 'Committed'.
No further JDBC access is allowed within this transaction.
You resolve this warning by simply making Hibernate aware of the JTA
PlatformTransactionManager instance, to which it will synchronize (along with
Spring). You have two options for doing this:
If in your application context you are already directly obtaining the JTA
PlatformTransactionManager object (presumably from JNDI through
JndiObjectFactoryBean or <jee:jndi-lookup>) and feeding it, for example,
to Spring's JtaTransactionManager, then the easiest way is to specify a
reference to the bean defining this JTA PlatformTransactionManager instance
as the value of the jtaTransactionManager property for
LocalSessionFactoryBean. Spring then makes the object available to
Hibernate.
More likely you do not already have the JTA PlatformTransactionManager
instance, because Spring's JtaTransactionManager can find it itself. Thus you
need to configure Hibernate to look up JTA PlatformTransactionManager

directly. You do this by configuring an application server- specific
TransactionManagerLookup class in the Hibernate configuration, as described in
the Hibernate manual.
The remainder of this section describes the sequence of events that occur with and without
Hibernate's awareness of the JTA PlatformTransactionManager.
When Hibernate is not configured with any awareness of the JTA
PlatformTransactionManager, the following events occur when a JTA transaction
commits:
1. The JTA transaction commits.
2. Spring's JtaTransactionManager is synchronized to the JTA transaction, so it is
called back through an afterCompletion callback by the JTA transaction manager.
3. Among other activities, this synchronization can trigger a callback by Spring to
Hibernate, through Hibernate's afterTransactionCompletion callback (used to
clear the Hibernate cache), followed by an explicit close() call on the Hibernate
Session, which causes Hibernate to attempt to close() the JDBC Connection.
4. In some environments, this Connection.close() call then triggers the warning or
error, as the application server no longer considers the Connection usable at all,
because the transaction has already been committed.
When Hibernate is configured with awareness of the JTA
PlatformTransactionManager, the following events occur when a JTA transaction
commits:
1. the JTA transaction is ready to commit.
2. Spring's JtaTransactionManager is synchronized to the JTA transaction, so the
transaction is called back through a beforeCompletion callback by the JTA transaction
manager.
3. Spring is aware that Hibernate itself is synchronized to the JTA transaction, and
behaves differently than in the previous scenario. Assuming the Hibernate Session
needs to be closed at all, Spring will close it now.
4. The JTA transaction commits.
5. Hibernate is synchronized to the JTA transaction, so the transaction is called back
through an afterCompletion callback by the JTA transaction manager, and can
properly clear its cache.
15.4 JDO
Spring supports the standard JDO 2.0 and 2.1 APIs as data access strategy, following the
same style as the Hibernate support. The corresponding integration classes reside in the
org.springframework.orm.jdo package.
15.4.1 PersistenceManagerFactory setup

Spring provides a LocalPersistenceManagerFactoryBean class that allows you to
define a local JDO PersistenceManagerFactory within a Spring application context:
<beans>
<bean id="myPmf" class="org.springframework.orm.jdo.LocalPersistenceManagerFactoryBean">
<property name="configLocation" value="classpath:kodo.properties"/>
</bean>
</beans>
Alternatively, you can set up a PersistenceManagerFactory through direct

instantiation of a PersistenceManagerFactory implementation class. A JDO
PersistenceManagerFactory implementation class follows the JavaBeans pattern,
just like a JDBC DataSource implementation class, which is a natural fit for a
configuration that uses Spring. This setup style usually supports a Spring-defined JDBC
DataSource, passed into the connectionFactory property. For example, for the
open source JDO implementation DataNucleus (formerly JPOX)
(http://www.datanucleus.org/), this is the XML configuration of the
PersistenceManagerFactory implementation:
<beans>
</bean>
<bean id="myPmf" class="org.datanucleus.jdo.JDOPersistenceManagerFactory" destroy-method="close">
<property name="connectionFactory" ref="dataSource"/>
<property name="nontransactionalRead" value="true"/>
</bean>
</beans>
You can also set up JDO PersistenceManagerFactory in the JNDI environment of a

Java EE application server, usually through the JCA connector provided by the particular
JDO implementation. Spring's standard JndiObjectFactoryBean or <jee:jndilookup> can be used to retrieve and expose such a PersistenceManagerFactory.
However, outside an EJB context, no real benefit exists in holding the
PersistenceManagerFactory in JNDI: only choose such a setup for a good reason.
See Section 15.3.6, Comparing container-managed and locally defined resources for a
discussion; the arguments there apply to JDO as well.
15.4.2 Implementing DAOs based on the plain JDO API

DAOs can also be written directly against plain JDO API, without any Spring
dependencies, by using an injected PersistenceManagerFactory. The following is
an example of a corresponding DAO implementation:
private PersistenceManagerFactory persistenceManagerFactory;
public void setPersistenceManagerFactory(PersistenceManagerFactory pmf) {
this.persistenceManagerFactory = pmf;
}
PersistenceManager pm = this.persistenceManagerFactory.getPersistenceManager();
try {
Query query = pm.newQuery(Product.class, "category = pCategory");
query.declareParameters("String pCategory");
return query.execute(category);
}
finally {
pm.close();
}
}
}
Because the above DAO follows the dependency injection pattern, it fits nicely into a
Spring container, just as it would if coded against Spring's JdoTemplate:
<beans>
<property name="persistenceManagerFactory" ref="myPmf"/>
</bean>
</beans>
The main problem with such DAOs is that they always get a new PersistenceManager
from the factory. To access a Spring-managed transactional PersistenceManager,
define a TransactionAwarePersistenceManagerFactoryProxy (as included in
Spring) in front of your target PersistenceManagerFactory, then passing a reference

to that proxy into your DAOs as in the following example:
<beans>
<bean id="myPmfProxy"
class="org.springframework.orm.jdo.TransactionAwarePersistenceManagerFactoryProxy">
<property name="targetPersistenceManagerFactory" ref="myPmf"/>
</bean>
<property name="persistenceManagerFactory" ref="myPmfProxy"/>
</bean>
</beans>
Your data access code will receive a transactional PersistenceManager (if any) from
the PersistenceManagerFactory.getPersistenceManager() method that it
calls. The latter method call goes through the proxy, which first checks for a current
transactional PersistenceManager before getting a new one from the factory. Any
close() calls on the PersistenceManager are ignored in case of a transactional
PersistenceManager.
If your data access code always runs within an active transaction (or at least within active
transaction synchronization), it is safe to omit the PersistenceManager.close() call
and thus the entire finally block, which you might do to keep your DAO
implementations concise:
private PersistenceManagerFactory persistenceManagerFactory;
this.persistenceManagerFactory = pmf;
}
PersistenceManager pm = this.persistenceManagerFactory.getPersistenceManager();
return query.execute(category);
}
}
With such DAOs that rely on active transactions, it is recommended that you enforce active
transactions through turning off
TransactionAwarePersistenceManagerFactoryProxy's allowCreate flag:
<beans>
<bean id="myPmfProxy"
class="org.springframework.orm.jdo.TransactionAwarePersistenceManagerFactoryProxy">
<property name="targetPersistenceManagerFactory" ref="myPmf"/>
<property name="allowCreate" value="false"/>
</bean>
<property name="persistenceManagerFactory" ref="myPmfProxy"/>
</bean>
</beans>
The main advantage of this DAO style is that it depends on JDO API only; no import of any
Spring class is required. This is of course appealing from a non-invasiveness perspective,
and might feel more natural to JDO developers.
However, the DAO throws plain JDOException (which is unchecked, so does not have
to be declared or caught), which means that callers can only treat exceptions as fatal,
unless you want to depend on JDO's own exception structure. Catching specific causes
such as an optimistic locking failure is not possible without tying the caller to the
implementation strategy. This trade off might be acceptable to applications that are strongly
JDO-based and/or do not need any special exception treatment.
In summary, you can DAOs based on the plain JDO API, and they can still participate in
Spring-managed transactions. This strategy might appeal to you if you are already familiar
with JDO. However, such DAOs throw plain JDOException, and you would have to
convert explicitly to Spring's DataAccessException (if desired).
15.4.3 Transaction management

Note
You are strongly encouraged to read Section 12.5, Declarative
transaction management if you have not done so, to get a more
detailed coverage of Spring's declarative transaction support.
To execute service operations within transactions, you can use Spring's common
declarative transaction facilities. For example:
<beans
xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
<bean id="myTxManager" class="org.springframework.orm.jdo.JdoTransactionManager">
</bean>
</bean>
<tx:attributes>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>
<aop:config>
</aop:config>
</beans>
JDO requires an active transaction to modify a persistent object. The non-transactional

flush concept does not exist in JDO, in contrast to Hibernate. For this reason, you need to
set up the chosen JDO implementation for a specific environment. Specifically, you need to
set it up explicitly for JTA synchronization, to detect an active JTA transaction itself. This is
not necessary for local transactions as performed by Spring's
JdoTransactionManager, but it is necessary to participate in JTA transactions,
whether driven by Spring's JtaTransactionManager or by EJB CMT and plain JTA.
JdoTransactionManager is capable of exposing a JDO transaction to JDBC access
code that accesses the same JDBC DataSource, provided that the registered
JdoDialect supports retrieval of the underlying JDBC Connection. This is the case for
JDBC-based JDO 2.0 implementations by default.
15.4.4 JdoDialect
As an advanced feature, both JdoTemplate and JdoTransactionManager support a
custom JdoDialect that can be passed into the jdoDialect bean property. In this
scenario, the DAOs will not receive a PersistenceManagerFactory reference but
rather a full JdoTemplate instance (for example, passed into the jdoTemplate
property of JdoDaoSupport). Using a JdoDialect implementation, you can enable

advanced features supported by Spring, usually in a vendor-specific manner:
Applying specific transaction semantics such as custom isolation level or transaction
timeout
Retrieving the transactional JDBC Connection for exposure to JDBC-based DAOs
Applying query timeouts, which are automatically calculated from Spring-managed
transaction timeouts
Eagerly flushing a PersistenceManager, to make transactional changes visible to
JDBC-based data access code
Advanced translation of JDOExceptions to Spring DataAccessExceptions
See the JdoDialect Javadoc for more details on its operations and how to use them
within Spring's JDO support.
15.5 JPA
The Spring JPA, available under the org.springframework.orm.jpa package,
offers comprehensive support for the Java Persistence API in a similar manner to the
integration with Hibernate or JDO, while being aware of the underlying implementation in
order to provide additional features.
15.5.1 Three options for JPA setup in a Spring environment

The Spring JPA support offers three ways of setting up the JPA
EntityManagerFactory that will be used by the application to obtain an entity
manager.
LocalEntityManagerFactoryBean
Note
Only use this option in simple deployment environments such as standalone applications and integration tests.
The LocalEntityManagerFactoryBean creates an EntityManagerFactory
suitable for simple deployment environments where the application uses only JPA for data
access. The factory bean uses the JPA PersistenceProvider autodetection
mechanism (according to JPA's Java SE bootstrapping) and, in most cases, requires you
to specify only the persistence unit name:
<beans>
<bean id="myEmf" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalEntityManagerFactoryBean">
<property name="persistenceUnitName" value="myPersistenceUnit"/>
</bean>
</beans>
This form of JPA deployment is the simplest and the most limited. You cannot refer to an
existing JDBC DataSource bean definition and no support for global transactions exists.
Furthermore, weaving (byte-code transformation) of persistent classes is provider-specific,
often requiring a specific JVM agent to specified on startup. This option is sufficient only for
stand-alone applications and test environments, for which the JPA specification is
designed.
Obtaining an EntityManagerFactory from JNDI

Note
Use this option when deploying to a Java EE 5 server. Check your
server's documentation on how to deploy a custom JPA provider into
your server, allowing for a different provider than the server's default.
Obtaining an EntityManagerFactory from JNDI (for example in a Java EE 5

environment), is simply a matter of changing the XML configuration:
<beans>
<jee:jndi-lookup id="myEmf" jndi-name="persistence/myPersistenceUnit"/>
</beans>
This action assumes standard Java EE 5 bootstrapping: the Java EE server autodetects
persistence units (in effect, META-INF/persistence.xml files in application jars) and
persistence-unit-ref entries in the Java EE deployment descriptor (for example,
web.xml) and defines environment naming context locations for those persistence units.
In such a scenario, the entire persistence unit deployment, including the weaving (bytecode transformation) of persistent classes, is up to the Java EE server. The JDBC
DataSource is defined through a JNDI location in the META-INF/persistence.xml
file; EntityManager transactions are integrated with the server's JTA subsystem. Spring
merely uses the obtained EntityManagerFactory, passing it on to application objects
through dependency injection, and managing transactions for the persistence unit, typically
through JtaTransactionManager.
If multiple persistence units are used in the same application, the bean names of such
JNDI-retrieved persistence units should match the persistence unit names that the
application uses to refer to them, for example, in @PersistenceUnit and
@PersistenceContext annotations.
LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean
Note
Use this option for full JPA capabilities in a Spring-based application
environment. This includes web containers such as Tomcat as well as
stand-alone applications and integration tests with sophisticated
persistence requirements.
The LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean gives full control over
EntityManagerFactory configuration and is appropriate for environments where finegrained customization is required. The
LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean creates a
PersistenceUnitInfo instance based on the persistence.xml file, the supplied
dataSourceLookup strategy, and the specified loadTimeWeaver. It is thus possible to
work with custom data sources outside of JNDI and to control the weaving process. The
following example shows a typical bean definition for a
LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean:
<beans>
<bean id="myEmf" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean">
<property name="dataSource" ref="someDataSource"/>
<property name="loadTimeWeaver">
<bean class="org.springframework.instrument.classloading.InstrumentationLoadTimeWeaver"/>
</property>
</bean>
</beans>
The following example shows a typical persistence.xml file:

<persistence xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence" version="1.0">
<persistence-unit name="myUnit" transaction-type="RESOURCE_LOCAL">
<mapping-file>META-INF/orm.xml</mapping-file>
<exclude-unlisted-classes/>
</persistence-unit>
</persistence>
Note
The exclude-unlisted-classes element always indicates that
no scanning for annotated entity classes is supposed to occur, in order
to support the <exclude-unlisted-classes/> shortcut. This is in
line with the JPA specification, which suggests that shortcut, but
unfortunately is in conflict with the JPA XSD, which implies false for
that shortcut. Consequently, <exclude-unlisted-classes>
false </exclude-unlisted-classes/> is not supported.
Simply omit the exclude-unlisted-classes element if you want
entity class scanning to occur.
Using the LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean is the most powerful JPA
setup option, allowing for flexible local configuration within the application. It supports links
to an existing JDBC DataSource, supports both local and global transactions, and so on.
However, it also imposes requirements on the runtime environment, such as the
availability of a weaving-capable class loader if the persistence provider demands bytecode transformation.
This option may conflict with the built-in JPA capabilities of a Java EE 5 server. In a full
Java EE 5 environment, consider obtaining your EntityManagerFactory from JNDI.
Alternatively, specify a custom persistenceXmlLocation on your
LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean definition, for example, METAINF/my-persistence.xml, and only include a descriptor with that name in your application
jar files. Because the Java EE 5 server only looks for default METAINF/persistence.xml files, it ignores such custom persistence units and hence avoid
conflicts with a Spring-driven JPA setup upfront. (This applies to Resin 3.1, for example.)
The LoadTimeWeaver interface is a Springprovided class that allows JPA
ClassTransformer instances to be plugged in
a specific manner, depending whether the
environment is a web container or application
server. Hooking ClassTransformers through a
Java 5 agent typically is not efficient. The agents
work against the entire virtual machine and
inspect every class that is loaded, which is usually
undesirable in a production server environment.
Spring provides a number of LoadTimeWeaver
When is load-time weaving

required?
Not all JPA providers require a
JVM agent ; Hibernate is an
example of one that does not. If
your provider does not require
an agent or you have other
alternatives, such as applying
enhancements at build time
through a custom compiler or an
ant task, the load-time weaver
should not be used.
implementations for various environments,

allowing ClassTransformer instances to be
applied only per class loader and not per VM.
Refer to the section called Spring configuration in the AOP chapter for more insight
regarding the LoadTimeWeaver implementations and their setup, either generic or
customized to various platforms (such as Tomcat, WebLogic, OC4J, GlassFish, Resin and
JBoss).
As described in the aforementioned section, you can configure a context-wide
LoadTimeWeaver using the @EnableLoadTimeWeaving annotation of
context:load-time-weaver XML element. Such a global weaver is picked up by all
JPA LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBeans automatically. This is the
preferred way of setting up a load-time weaver, delivering autodetection of the platform
(WebLogic, OC4J, GlassFish, Tomcat, Resin, JBoss or VM agent) and automatic
propagation of the weaver to all weaver-aware beans:
<bean id="emf" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean">
...
</bean>
However, if needed, one can manually specify a dedicated weaver through the
loadTimeWeaver property:
<property name="loadTimeWeaver">
<bean class="org.springframework.instrument.classloading.ReflectiveLoadTimeWeaver"/>
</property>
</bean>
No matter how the LTW is configured, using this technique, JPA applications relying on
instrumentation can run in the target platform (ex: Tomcat) without needing an agent. This
is important especially when the hosting applications rely on different JPA
implementations because the JPA transformers are applied only at class loader level and
thus are isolated from each other.
Dealing with multiple persistence units

For applications that rely on multiple persistence units locations, stored in various JARS in
the classpath, for example, Spring offers the PersistenceUnitManager to act as a
central repository and to avoid the persistence units discovery process, which can be
expensive. The default implementation allows multiple locations to be specified that are
parsed and later retrieved through the persistence unit name. (By default, the classpath is
searched for META-INF/persistence.xml files.)
<bean id="pum" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.persistenceunit.DefaultPersistenceUnitManager">
<property name="persistenceXmlLocations">
<list>
<value>org/springframework/orm/jpa/domain/persistence-multi.xml</value>
<value>classpath:/my/package/**/custom-persistence.xml</value>
<value>classpath*:META-INF/persistence.xml</value>
</list>
</property>
<property name="dataSources">
<map>
<entry key="localDataSource" value-ref="local-db"/>
<entry key="remoteDataSource" value-ref="remote-db"/>
</map>
</property>

<property name="defaultDataSource" ref="remoteDataSource"/>
</bean>
<property name="persistenceUnitManager" ref="pum"/>
<property name="persistenceUnitName" value="myCustomUnit"/>
</bean>
The default implementation allows customization of the PersistenceUnitInfo

instances, before they are fed to the JPA provider, declaratively through its properties,
which affect all hosted units, or programmatically, through the
PersistenceUnitPostProcessor, which allows persistence unit selection. If no
PersistenceUnitManager is specified, one is created and used internally by
LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean.
15.5.2 Implementing DAOs based on plain JPA

Note
Although EntityManagerFactory instances are thread-safe,
EntityManager instances are not. The injected JPA
EntityManager behaves like an EntityManager fetched from an
application server's JNDI environment, as defined by the JPA
specification. It delegates all calls to the current transactional
EntityManager, if any; otherwise, it falls back to a newly created
EntityManager per operation, in effect making its usage thread-safe.
It is possible to write code against the plain JPA without any Spring dependencies, by
using an injected EntityManagerFactory or EntityManager. Spring can
understand @PersistenceUnit and @PersistenceContext annotations both at
field and method level if a PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor is

enabled. A plain JPA DAO implementation using the @PersistenceUnit annotation
might look like this:
private EntityManagerFactory emf;
@PersistenceUnit
public void setEntityManagerFactory(EntityManagerFactory emf) {
this.emf = emf;
}
EntityManager em = this.emf.createEntityManager();
try {
Query query = em.createQuery("from Product as p where p.category = ?1");
query.setParameter(1, category);
return query.getResultList();
}
finally {
if (em != null) {
em.close();
}
}
}
}
The DAO above has no dependency on Spring and still fits nicely into a Spring application
context. Moreover, the DAO takes advantage of annotations to require the injection of the
default EntityManagerFactory:
<beans>

<bean class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.support.PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor"/>
</beans>
As an alternative to defining a PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor

explicitly, consider using the Spring context:annotation-config XML element in
your application context configuration. Doing so automatically registers all Spring standard
post-processors for annotation-based configuration, including
CommonAnnotationBeanPostProcessor and so on.
<beans>

</beans>
The main problem with such a DAO is that it always creates a new EntityManager
through the factory. You can avoid this by requesting a transactional EntityManager
(also called "shared EntityManager" because it is a shared, thread-safe proxy for the actual
transactional EntityManager) to be injected instead of the factory:
@PersistenceContext
private EntityManager em;
Query query = em.createQuery("from Product as p where p.category = :category");
query.setParameter("category", category);
return query.getResultList();
}
}
The @PersistenceContext annotation has an optional attribute type, which defaults

to PersistenceContextType.TRANSACTION. This default is what you need to
receive a shared EntityManager proxy. The alternative,

PersistenceContextType.EXTENDED, is a completely different affair: This results in
a so-called extended EntityManager, which is not thread-safe and hence must not be used
in a concurrently accessed component such as a Spring-managed singleton bean.
Extended EntityManagers are only supposed to be used in stateful components that, for
example, reside in a session, with the lifecycle of the EntityManager not tied to a current
transaction but rather being completely up to the application.
The injected EntityManager is Springmanaged (aware of the ongoing transaction). It is
important to note that even though the new DAO
implementation uses method level injection of an
EntityManager instead of an
EntityManagerFactory, no change is
required in the application context XML due to
annotation usage.
The main advantage of this DAO style is that it
only depends on Java Persistence API; no import
of any Spring class is required. Moreover, as the
JPA annotations are understood, the injections are
applied automatically by the Spring container.
This is appealing from a non-invasiveness
perspective, and might feel more natural to JPA
developers.
15.5.3 Transaction Management

Note
You are strongly encouraged to
read Section 12.5, Declarative
transaction management if you
have not done so, to get a more
detailed coverage of Spring's
declarative transaction support.
Method- and field-level

Injection
Annotations that indicate
dependency injections (such as
@PersistenceUnit and
@PersistenceContext)
can be applied on field or
methods inside a class, hence
the expressions method-level
injection and field-level injection.
Field-level annotations are
concise and easier to use while
method-level allows for further
processing of the injected
dependency. In both cases the
member visibility (public,
protected, private) does not
matter.
What about class-level
annotations?
On the Java EE 5 platform, they
are used for dependency
declaration and not for resource
injection.
To execute service operations within transactions, you can use Spring's common
declarative transaction facilities. For example:
<bean id="myTxManager" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager">
<property name="entityManagerFactory" ref="myEmf"/>
</bean>
</bean>
<aop:config>
<aop:pointcut id="productServiceMethods" expression="execution(* product.ProductService.*(..))"/>
</aop:config>
<tx:attributes>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>
</beans>
Spring JPA allows a configured JpaTransactionManager to expose a JPA transaction

to JDBC access code that accesses the same JDBC DataSource, provided that the
registered JpaDialect supports retrieval of the underlying JDBC Connection. Out of
the box, Spring provides dialects for the Toplink, Hibernate and OpenJPA JPA
implementations. See the next section for details on the JpaDialect mechanism.
15.5.4 JpaDialect
As an advanced feature JpaTemplate, JpaTransactionManager and subclasses of
AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean support a custom JpaDialect, to be
passed into the jpaDialect bean property. In such a scenario, the DAOs do not receive an
EntityManagerFactory reference but rather a full JpaTemplate instance (for
example, passed into the jpaTemplate property of JpaDaoSupport). A JpaDialect
implementation can enable some advanced features supported by Spring, usually in a
vendor-specific manner:
Applying specific transaction semantics such as custom isolation level or transaction
timeout)
Retrieving the transactional JDBC Connection for exposure to JDBC-based DAOs)
Advanced translation of PersistenceExceptions to Spring
DataAccessExceptions
This is particularly valuable for special transaction semantics and for advanced translation
of exception. The default implementation used (DefaultJpaDialect) does not provide
any special capabilities and if the above features are required, you have to specify the
appropriate dialect.
See the JpaDialect Javadoc for more details of its operations and how they are used
within Spring's JPA support.
15.6 iBATIS SQL Maps

The iBATIS support in the Spring Framework much resembles the JDBC support in that it
supports the same template style programming, and as with JDBC and other ORM
technologies, the iBATIS support works with Spring's exception hierarchy and lets you
enjoy Spring's IoC features.
Transaction management can be handled through Spring's standard facilities. No special
transaction strategies are necessary for iBATIS, because no special transactional resource
involved other than a JDBC Connection. Hence, Spring's standard JDBC
DataSourceTransactionManager or JtaTransactionManager are perfectly
sufficient.
Note
Spring supports iBATIS 2.x. The iBATIS 1.x support classes are no
longer provided.
15.6.1 Setting up the SqlMapClient

Using iBATIS SQL Maps involves creating SqlMap configuration files containing
statements and result maps. Spring takes care of loading those using the
SqlMapClientFactoryBean. For the examples we will be using the following
Account class:
private String email;

return this.name;
}
this.name = name;
}
public String getEmail() {
return this.email;
}
public void setEmail(String email) {
this.email = email;
}
}
To map this Account class with iBATIS 2.x we need to create the following SQL map
Account.xml:
<sqlMap namespace="Account">
<resultMap id="result" class="examples.Account">
<result property="name" column="NAME" columnIndex="1"/>
<result property="email" column="EMAIL" columnIndex="2"/>
</resultMap>
<select id="getAccountByEmail" resultMap="result">
select ACCOUNT.NAME, ACCOUNT.EMAIL
from ACCOUNT
where ACCOUNT.EMAIL = #value#
</select>
<insert id="insertAccount">
insert into ACCOUNT (NAME, EMAIL) values (#name#, #email#)
</insert>
</sqlMap>
The configuration file for iBATIS 2 looks like this:

<sqlMapConfig>
<sqlMap resource="example/Account.xml"/>
</sqlMapConfig>
Remember that iBATIS loads resources from the class path, so be sure to add
theAccount.xml file to the class path.
We can use the SqlMapClientFactoryBean in the Spring container. Note that with
iBATIS SQL Maps 2.x, the JDBC DataSource is usually specified on the
SqlMapClientFactoryBean, which enables lazy loading. This is the configuration
needed for these bean definitions:
<beans>
</bean>
<bean id="sqlMapClient" class="org.springframework.orm.ibatis.SqlMapClientFactoryBean">
<property name="configLocation" value="WEB-INF/sqlmap-config.xml"/>
</bean>
</beans>
15.6.2 Using SqlMapClientTemplate and

SqlMapClientDaoSupport
The SqlMapClientDaoSupport class offers a supporting class similar to the
SqlMapDaoSupport. We extend it to implement our DAO:
public class SqlMapAccountDao extends SqlMapClientDaoSupport implements AccountDao {
public Account getAccount(String email) throws DataAccessException {

return (Account) getSqlMapClientTemplate().queryForObject("getAccountByEmail", email);
}
public void insertAccount(Account account) throws DataAccessException {
getSqlMapClientTemplate().update("insertAccount", account);
}
}
In the DAO, we use the pre-configured SqlMapClientTemplate to execute the queries,

after setting up the SqlMapAccountDao in the application context and wiring it with our
SqlMapClient instance:
<beans>
<bean id="accountDao" class="example.SqlMapAccountDao">
<property name="sqlMapClient" ref="sqlMapClient"/>
</bean>
</beans>
An SqlMapTemplate instance can also be created manually, passing in the

SqlMapClient as constructor argument. The SqlMapClientDaoSupport base class
simply preinitializes a SqlMapClientTemplate instance for us.
The SqlMapClientTemplate offers a generic execute method, taking a custom
SqlMapClientCallback implementation as argument. This can, for example, be used
for batching:
public class SqlMapAccountDao extends SqlMapClientDaoSupport implements AccountDao {
getSqlMapClientTemplate().execute(new SqlMapClientCallback() {
public Object doInSqlMapClient(SqlMapExecutor executor) throws SQLException {
executor.startBatch();
executor.update("insertAccount", account);
executor.update("insertAddress", account.getAddress());
executor.executeBatch();
}
});
}
}
In general, any combination of operations offered by the native SqlMapExecutor API

can be used in such a callback. Any thrown SQLException is converted automatically to
Spring's generic DataAccessException hierarchy.
15.6.3 Implementing DAOs based on plain iBATIS API

DAOs can also be written against plain iBATIS API, without any Spring dependencies,
directly using an injected SqlMapClient. The following example shows a corresponding
DAO implementation:
public class SqlMapAccountDao implements AccountDao {
private SqlMapClient sqlMapClient;
public void setSqlMapClient(SqlMapClient sqlMapClient) {
this.sqlMapClient = sqlMapClient;
}
public Account getAccount(String email) {
try {
return (Account) this.sqlMapClient.queryForObject("getAccountByEmail", email);
}
catch (SQLException ex) {
throw new MyDaoException(ex);
}
}
try {
this.sqlMapClient.update("insertAccount", account);
}
catch (SQLException ex) {
throw new MyDaoException(ex);
}
}
}
In this scenario, you need to handle the SQLException thrown by the iBATIS API in a
custom fashion, usually by wrapping it in your own application-specific DAO exception.
Wiring in the application context would still look like it does in the example for the
SqlMapClientDaoSupport, due to the fact that the plain iBATIS-based DAO still
follows the dependency injection pattern:
<beans>
<bean id="accountDao" class="example.SqlMapAccountDao">
<property name="sqlMapClient" ref="sqlMapClient"/>
</bean>
</beans>
16. Marshalling XML using O/X Mappers

16.1 Introduction
In this chapter, we will describe Spring's Object/XML Mapping support. Object/XML
Mapping, or O/X mapping for short, is the act of converting an XML document to and from
an object. This conversion process is also known as XML Marshalling, or XML
Serialization. This chapter uses these terms interchangeably.
Within the field of O/X mapping, a marshaller is responsible for serializing an object
(graph) to XML. In similar fashion, an unmarshaller deserializes the XML to an object
graph. This XML can take the form of a DOM document, an input or output stream, or a
SAX handler.
Some of the benefits of using Spring for your O/X mapping needs are:
Ease of configuration. Spring's bean factory makes it easy to configure marshallers,
without needing to construct JAXB context, JiBX binding factories, etc. The marshallers
can be configured as any other bean in your application context. Additionally, XML
Schema-based configuration is available for a number of marshallers, making the
configuration even simpler.
Consistent Interfaces. Spring's O/X mapping operates through two global interfaces: the
Marshaller and Unmarshaller interface. These abstractions allow you to switch O/X
mapping frameworks with relative ease, with little or no changes required on the classes
that do the marshalling. This approach has the additional benefit of making it possible to
do XML marshalling with a mix-and-match approach (e.g. some marshalling performed
using JAXB, other using XMLBeans) in a non-intrusive fashion, leveraging the strength of
each technology.
Consistent Exception Hierarchy. Spring provides a conversion from exceptions from the
underlying O/X mapping tool to its own exception hierarchy with the
XmlMappingException as the root exception. As can be expected, these runtime
exceptions wrap the original exception so no information is lost.
16.2 Marshaller and Unmarshaller

As stated in the introduction, a marshaller serializes an object to XML, and an
unmarshaller deserializes XML stream to an object. In this section, we will describe the two
Spring interfaces used for this purpose.
16.2.1 Marshaller
Spring abstracts all marshalling operations behind the
org.springframework.oxm.Marshaller interface, the main methods of which is
listed below.
public interface Marshaller {

/**
* Marshals the object graph with the given root into the provided Result.
*/
void marshal(Object graph, Result result)
throws XmlMappingException, IOException;
}
The Marshaller interface has one main method, which marshals the given object to a
given javax.xml.transform.Result. Result is a tagging interface that basically
represents an XML output abstraction: concrete implementations wrap various XML
representations, as indicated in the table below.
Result
implementation
Wraps XML representation
DOMResult
org.w3c.dom.Node
SAXResult
org.xml.sax.ContentHandler
StreamResult
java.io.File, java.io.OutputStream, or
java.io.Writer
Note
Although the marshal() method accepts a plain object as its first
parameter, most Marshaller implementations cannot handle
arbitrary objects. Instead, an object class must be mapped in a
mapping file, marked with an annotation, registered with the marshaller,
or have a common base class. Refer to the further sections in this
chapter to determine how your O/X technology of choice manages this.
16.2.2 Unmarshaller
Similar to the Marshaller, there is the
org.springframework.oxm.Unmarshaller interface.
public interface Unmarshaller {
/**
* Unmarshals the given provided Source into an object graph.
*/
Object unmarshal(Source source)
throws XmlMappingException, IOException;
}
This interface also has one method, which reads from the given
javax.xml.transform.Source (an XML input abstraction), and returns the object
read. As with Result, Source is a tagging interface that has three concrete
implementations. Each wraps a different XML representation, as indicated in the table
below.
Source
implementation
Wraps XML representation
DOMSource
org.w3c.dom.Node
SAXSource
org.xml.sax.InputSource, and
org.xml.sax.XMLReader
StreamSource
java.io.File, java.io.InputStream, or
java.io.Reader
Even though there are two separate marshalling interfaces (Marshaller and
Unmarshaller), all implementations found in Spring-WS implement both in one class.
This means that you can wire up one marshaller class and refer to it both as a marshaller
and an unmarshaller in your applicationContext.xml.
16.2.3 XmlMappingException
Spring converts exceptions from the underlying O/X mapping tool to its own exception
hierarchy with the XmlMappingException as the root exception. As can be expected,
these runtime exceptions wrap the original exception so no information will be lost.
Additionally, the MarshallingFailureException and
UnmarshallingFailureException provide a distinction between marshalling and
unmarshalling operations, even though the underlying O/X mapping tool does not do so.
The O/X Mapping exception hierarchy is shown in the following figure:
O/X Mapping exception hierarchy
16.3 Using Marshaller and Unmarshaller

Spring's OXM can be used for a wide variety of situations. In the following example, we will
use it to marshal the settings of a Spring-managed application as an XML file. We will use
a simple JavaBean to represent the settings:
public class Settings {
private boolean fooEnabled;
public boolean isFooEnabled() {
return fooEnabled;
}
public void setFooEnabled(boolean fooEnabled) {
this.fooEnabled = fooEnabled;
}
}
The application class uses this bean to store its settings. Besides a main method, the class
has two methods: saveSettings() saves the settings bean to a file named
settings.xml, and loadSettings() loads these settings again. A main() method
constructs a Spring application context, and calls these two methods.
import
import
import
import
import
java.io.FileInputStream;
java.io.FileOutputStream;
java.io.IOException;
javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;
javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource;
import
import
import
import
org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;
org.springframework.oxm.Marshaller;
org.springframework.oxm.Unmarshaller;
public class Application {

private static final String FILE_NAME = "settings.xml";
private Settings settings = new Settings();
private Marshaller marshaller;
private Unmarshaller unmarshaller;
public void setMarshaller(Marshaller marshaller) {
this.marshaller = marshaller;
}
public void setUnmarshaller(Unmarshaller unmarshaller) {
this.unmarshaller = unmarshaller;
}
public void saveSettings() throws IOException {
FileOutputStream os = null;
try {
os = new FileOutputStream(FILE_NAME);
this.marshaller.marshal(settings, new StreamResult(os));

} finally {
if (os != null) {
os.close();
}
}
}
public void loadSettings() throws IOException {
FileInputStream is = null;
try {
is = new FileInputStream(FILE_NAME);
this.settings = (Settings) this.unmarshaller.unmarshal(new StreamSource(is));
} finally {
if (is != null) {
is.close();
}
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
ApplicationContext appContext =
new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("applicationContext.xml");
Application application = (Application) appContext.getBean("application");
application.saveSettings();
application.loadSettings();
}
}
The Application requires both a marshaller and unmarshaller property to be set. We

can do so using the following applicationContext.xml:
<beans>
<bean id="application" class="Application">
<property name="marshaller" ref="castorMarshaller" />
<property name="unmarshaller" ref="castorMarshaller" />
</bean>
<bean id="castorMarshaller" class="org.springframework.oxm.castor.CastorMarshaller"/>
</beans>
This application context uses Castor, but we could have used any of the other marshaller
instances described later in this chapter. Note that Castor does not require any further
configuration by default, so the bean definition is rather simple. Also note that the
CastorMarshaller implements both Marshaller and Unmarshaller, so we can
refer to the castorMarshaller bean in both the marshaller and unmarshaller property
of the application.
This sample application produces the following settings.xml file:
<settings foo-enabled="false"/>
16.4 XML Schema-based Configuration

Marshallers could be configured more concisely using tags from the OXM namespace. To
make these tags available, the appropriate schema has to be referenced first in the
preamble of the XML configuration file. Note the 'oxm' related text below:
xmlns:oxm="http://www.springframework.org/schema/oxm"
http://www.springframework.org/schema/oxm
http://www.springframework.org/schema/oxm/spring-oxm.xsd">
Currently, the following tags are available:

jaxb2-marshaller
xmlbeans-marshaller
castor-marshaller
jibx-marshaller
Each tag will be explained in its respective marshaller's section. As an example though,
here is how the configuration of a JAXB2 marshaller might look like:

<oxm:jaxb2-marshaller id="marshaller" contextPath="org.springframework.ws.samples.airline.schema"/>
16.5 JAXB
The JAXB binding compiler translates a W3C XML Schema into one or more Java classes,
a jaxb.properties file, and possibly some resource files. JAXB also offers a way to
generate a schema from annotated Java classes.
Spring supports the JAXB 2.0 API as XML marshalling strategies, following the
Marshaller and Unmarshaller interfaces described in Section 16.2, Marshaller and
Unmarshaller. The corresponding integration classes reside in the
org.springframework.oxm.jaxb package.
16.5.1 Jaxb2Marshaller
The Jaxb2Marshaller class implements both the Spring Marshaller and
Unmarshallerinterface. It requires a context path to operate, which you can set using
the contextPath property. The context path is a list of colon (:) separated Java package
names that contain schema derived classes. It also offers a classesToBeBound property,
which allows you to set an array of classes to be supported by the marshaller. Schema
validation is performed by specifying one or more schema resource to the bean, like so:
<beans>
<bean id="jaxb2Marshaller" class="org.springframework.oxm.jaxb.Jaxb2Marshaller">
<property name="classesToBeBound">
<list>
<value>org.springframework.oxm.jaxb.Flight</value>
<value>org.springframework.oxm.jaxb.Flights</value>
</list>
</property>
<property name="schema" value="classpath:org/springframework/oxm/schema.xsd"/>
</bean>
...
</beans>

The jaxb2-marshaller tag configures a
org.springframework.oxm.jaxb.Jaxb2Marshaller. Here is an example:
<oxm:jaxb2-marshaller id="marshaller" contextPath="org.springframework.ws.samples.airline.schema"/>
Alternatively, the list of classes to bind can be provided to the marshaller via the classto-be-bound child tag:
<oxm:jaxb2-marshaller id="marshaller">
<oxm:class-to-be-bound name="org.springframework.ws.samples.airline.schema.Airport"/>
<oxm:class-to-be-bound name="org.springframework.ws.samples.airline.schema.Flight"/>
...
</oxm:jaxb2-marshaller>
Available attributes are:

Attribute
Description
Required
id
the id of the marshaller
no
contextPath
the JAXB Context path
no
16.6 Castor
Castor XML mapping is an open source XML binding framework. It allows you to transform
the data contained in a java object model into/from an XML document. By default, it does
not require any further configuration, though a mapping file can be used to have more
control over the behavior of Castor.
For more information on Castor, refer to the Castor web site. The Spring integration
classes reside in the org.springframework.oxm.castor package.
16.6.1 CastorMarshaller
As with JAXB, the CastorMarshaller implements both the Marshaller and
Unmarshaller interface. It can be wired up as follows:
<beans>
<bean id="castorMarshaller" class="org.springframework.oxm.castor.CastorMarshaller" />
...
</beans>
16.6.2 Mapping
Although it is possible to rely on Castor's default marshalling behavior, it might be
necessary to have more control over it. This can be accomplished using a Castor mapping
file. For more information, refer to Castor XML Mapping.
The mapping can be set using the mappingLocation resource property, indicated below
with a classpath resource.
<beans>
<bean id="castorMarshaller" class="org.springframework.oxm.castor.CastorMarshaller" >
<property name="mappingLocation" value="classpath:mapping.xml" />
</bean>
</beans>

The castor-marshaller tag configures a
org.springframework.oxm.castor.CastorMarshaller. Here is an example:
<oxm:castor-marshaller id="marshaller" mapping-location="classpath:org/springframework/oxm/castor/mapping
The marshaller instance can be configured in two ways, by specifying either the location of
a mapping file (through the mapping-location property), or by identifying Java POJOs
(through the target-class or target-package properties) for which there exist corresponding
XML descriptor classes. The latter way is usually used in conjunction with XML code
generation from XML schemas.
Attribute
Description
Required
id
no
encoding
the encoding to use for unmarshalling from XML
no
targetclass
a Java class name for a POJO for which an XML class

descriptor is available (as generated through code
generation)
no
targetpackage
a Java package name that identifies a package that

contains POJOs and their corresponding Castor XML
descriptor classes (as generated through code generation
from XML schemas)
no
mappinglocation
location of a Castor XML mapping file
no
16.7 XMLBeans
XMLBeans is an XML binding tool that has full XML Schema support, and offers full XML
Infoset fidelity. It takes a different approach to that of most other O/X mapping frameworks,
in that all classes that are generated from an XML Schema are all derived from
XmlObject, and contain XML binding information in them.
For more information on XMLBeans, refer to the XMLBeans web site . The Spring-WS
integration classes reside in the org.springframework.oxm.xmlbeans package.
16.7.1 XmlBeansMarshaller
The XmlBeansMarshaller implements both the Marshaller and Unmarshaller
interfaces. It can be configured as follows:
<beans>
<bean id="xmlBeansMarshaller" class="org.springframework.oxm.xmlbeans.XmlBeansMarshaller" />
...
</beans>
Note
Note that the XmlBeansMarshaller can only marshal objects of
type XmlObject, and not every java.lang.Object.

The xmlbeans-marshaller tag configures a
org.springframework.oxm.xmlbeans.XmlBeansMarshaller. Here is an
example:
<oxm:xmlbeans-marshaller id="marshaller"/>

Attribute
Description
Required
id
no
options
the bean name of the XmlOptions that is to be used for this

marshaller. Typically a XmlOptionsFactoryBean
definition
no
16.8 JiBX
The JiBX framework offers a solution similar to that which JDO provides for ORM: a
binding definition defines the rules for how your Java objects are converted to or from XML.
After preparing the binding and compiling the classes, a JiBX binding compiler enhances
the class files, and adds code to handle converting instances of the classes from or to
XML.
For more information on JiBX, refer to the JiBX web site. The Spring integration classes
reside in the org.springframework.oxm.jibx package.
16.8.1 JibxMarshaller
The JibxMarshaller class implements both the Marshaller and Unmarshaller
interface. To operate, it requires the name of the class to marshal in, which you can set
using the targetClass property. Optionally, you can set the binding name using the
bindingName property. In the next sample, we bind the Flights class:
<beans>
<bean id="jibxFlightsMarshaller" class="org.springframework.oxm.jibx.JibxMarshaller">

<property name="targetClass">org.springframework.oxm.jibx.Flights</property>
</bean>
...
A JibxMarshaller is configured for a single class. If you want to marshal multiple

classes, you have to configure multiple JibxMarshallers with different targetClass
property values.

The jibx-marshaller tag configures a
org.springframework.oxm.jibx.JibxMarshaller. Here is an example:
<oxm:jibx-marshaller id="marshaller" target-class="org.springframework.ws.samples.airline.schema.Flight"/>

Attribute
Description
Required
id
no
target-class
the target class for this marshaller
yes
bindingName
the binding name used by this marshaller
no
16.9 XStream
XStream is a simple library to serialize objects to XML and back again. It does not require
any mapping, and generates clean XML.
For more information on XStream, refer to the XStream web site. The Spring integration
classes reside in the org.springframework.oxm.xstream package.
16.9.1 XStreamMarshaller
The XStreamMarshaller does not require any configuration, and can be configured in
an application context directly. To further customize the XML, you can set an alias map,
which consists of string aliases mapped to classes:
<beans>
<bean id="xstreamMarshaller" class="org.springframework.oxm.xstream.XStreamMarshaller">
<property name="aliases">
<props>
<prop key="Flight">org.springframework.oxm.xstream.Flight</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
...
</beans>
Warning
By default, XStream allows for arbitrary classes to be unmarshalled, which can result in security
vulnerabilities. As such, it is recommended to set the supportedClasses property on the
XStreamMarshaller, like so:
<bean id="xstreamMarshaller" class="org.springframework.oxm.xstream.XStreamMarshaller">
<property name="supportedClasses" value="org.springframework.oxm.xstream.Flight"/>
...
</bean>
This will make sure that only the registered classes are eligible for unmarshalling.
Additionally, you can register custom converters to make sure that only your supported classes can
be unmarshalled. You might want to add a CatchAllConverter as the last converter in the list, in
addition to converters that explicitly support the domain classes that should be supported. As a result,
default XStream converters with lower priorities and possible security vulnerabilities do not get
invoked.
Note
Note that XStream is an XML serialization library, not a data binding
library. Therefore, it has limited namespace support. As such, it is
rather unsuitable for usage within Web services.
Part V. The Web

This part of the reference documentation covers the Spring Framework's support for the
presentation tier (and specifically web-based presentation tiers).
The Spring Framework's own web framework, Spring Web MVC, is covered in the first
couple of chapters. A number of the remaining chapters in this part of the reference
documentation are concerned with the Spring Framework's integration with other web
technologies, such as Struts and JSF (to name but two).
This section concludes with coverage of Spring's MVC portlet framework.
Chapter 17, Web MVC framework
Chapter 18, View technologies
Chapter 19, Integrating with other web frameworks
Chapter 20, Portlet MVC Framework
17. Web MVC framework

17.1 Introduction to Spring Web MVC framework
The Spring Web model-view-controller (MVC) framework is designed around a
DispatcherServlet that dispatches requests to handlers, with configurable handler
mappings, view resolution, locale and theme resolution as well as support for uploading
files. The default handler is based on the @Controller and @RequestMapping
annotations, offering a wide range of flexible handling methods. With the introduction of
Spring 3.0, the @Controller mechanism also allows you to create RESTful Web sites
and applications, through the @PathVariable annotation and other features.
In Spring Web MVC you can use any object as a
command or form-backing object; you do not need
to implement a framework-specific interface or
base class. Spring's data binding is highly flexible:
for example, it treats type mismatches as
validation errors that can be evaluated by the
application, not as system errors. Thus you need
not duplicate your business objects' properties as
simple, untyped strings in your form objects simply
to handle invalid submissions, or to convert the
Strings properly. Instead, it is often preferable to
bind directly to your business objects.
Spring's view resolution is extremely flexible. A
Controller is typically responsible for
preparing a model Map with data and selecting a
view name but it can also write directly to the
response stream and complete the request. View
name resolution is highly configurable through file
extension or Accept header content type
Open for extension...

A key design principle in Spring
Web MVC and in Spring in
general is the Open for
extension, closed for
modification principle.
Some methods in the core
classes of Spring Web MVC are
marked final . As a developer
you cannot override these
methods to supply your own
behavior. This has not been
done arbitrarily, but specifically
with this principle in mind.
For an explanation of this
principle, refer to Expert Spring
Web MVC and Web Flow by Seth
Ladd and others; specifically see
the section "A Look At Design,"
on page 117 of the first edition.
Alternatively, see
negotiation, through bean names, a properties file,

or even a custom ViewResolver
implementation. The model (the M in MVC) is a
Map interface, which allows for the complete
abstraction of the view technology. You can
integrate directly with template based rendering
technologies such as JSP, Velocity and
Freemarker, or directly generate XML, JSON,
Atom, and many other types of content. The model
Map is simply transformed into an appropriate
1. Bob Martin, The OpenClosed Principle (PDF)

You cannot add advice to final
methods when you use Spring
MVC. For example, you cannot
add advice to the
AbstractController.setSynchronizeOnSession()
method. Refer to Section 9.6.1,
Understanding AOP proxies for
more information on AOP proxies
and why you cannot add advice
to final methods.
format, such as JSP request attributes, a Velocity

template model.
17.1.1 Features of Spring Web MVC

Spring's web module includes many unique web
support features:
Clear separation of roles. Each role
controller, validator, command object, form
object, model object, DispatcherServlet,
handler mapping, view resolver, and so on
can be fulfilled by a specialized object.
Powerful and straightforward configuration of
both framework and application classes as
JavaBeans. This configuration capability
includes easy referencing across contexts,
such as from web controllers to business
objects and validators.
Adaptability, non-intrusiveness, and flexibility.
Define any controller method signature you
need, possibly using one of the parameter
annotations (such as @RequestParam,
@RequestHeader, @PathVariable, and more)
for a given scenario.
Reusable business code, no need for
duplication. Use existing business objects as
command or form objects instead of mirroring
them to extend a particular framework base
class.
Spring Web Flow

Spring Web Flow (SWF) aims to
be the best solution for the
management of web application
page flow.
SWF integrates with existing
frameworks like Spring MVC,
Struts, and JSF, in both servlet
and portlet environments. If you
have a business process (or
processes) that would benefit
from a conversational model as
opposed to a purely request
model, then SWF may be the
solution.
SWF allows you to capture
logical page flows as selfcontained modules that are
reusable in different situations,
and as such is ideal for building
web application modules that
guide the user through controlled
navigations that drive business
processes.
For more information about
SWF, consult the Spring Web
Flow website.
Customizable binding and validation. Type

mismatches as application-level validation
errors that keep the offending value, localized date and number binding, and so on
instead of String-only form objects with manual parsing and conversion to business
objects.
Customizable handler mapping and view resolution. Handler mapping and view
resolution strategies range from simple URL-based configuration, to sophisticated,
purpose-built resolution strategies. Spring is more flexible than web MVC frameworks
that mandate a particular technique.
Flexible model transfer. Model transfer with a name/value Map supports easy
integration with any view technology.
Customizable locale and theme resolution, support for JSPs with or without Spring tag
library, support for JSTL, support for Velocity without the need for extra bridges, and so
on.
A simple yet powerful JSP tag library known as the Spring tag library that provides
support for features such as data binding and themes. The custom tags allow for
maximum flexibility in terms of markup code. For information on the tag library
descriptor, see the appendix entitled Appendix G, spring.tld
A JSP form tag library, introduced in Spring 2.0, that makes writing forms in JSP pages
much easier. For information on the tag library descriptor, see the appendix entitled
Appendix H, spring-form.tld
Beans whose lifecycle is scoped to the current HTTP request or HTTP Session. This
is not a specific feature of Spring MVC itself, but rather of the
WebApplicationContext container(s) that Spring MVC uses. These bean scopes
are described in Section 5.5.4, Request, session, and global session scopes
17.1.2 Pluggability of other MVC implementations

Non-Spring MVC implementations are preferable for some projects. Many teams expect to
leverage their existing investment in skills and tools. A large body of knowledge and
experience exist for the Struts framework. If you can abide Struts' architectural flaws, it can
be a viable choice for the web layer; the same applies to WebWork and other web MVC
frameworks.
If you do not want to use Spring's web MVC, but intend to leverage other solutions that
Spring offers, you can integrate the web MVC framework of your choice with Spring easily.
Simply start up a Spring root application context through its ContextLoaderListener,
and access it through its ServletContext attribute (or Spring's respective helper
method) from within a Struts or WebWork action. No "plug-ins" are involved, so no
dedicated integration is necessary. From the web layer's point of view, you simply use
Spring as a library, with the root application context instance as the entry point.
Your registered beans and Spring's services can be at your fingertips even without
Spring's Web MVC. Spring does not compete with Struts or WebWork in this scenario. It
simply addresses the many areas that the pure web MVC frameworks do not, from bean
configuration to data access and transaction handling. So you can enrich your application
with a Spring middle tier and/or data access tier, even if you just want to use, for example,
the transaction abstraction with JDBC or Hibernate.
17.2 The DispatcherServlet

Spring's web MVC framework is, like many other web MVC frameworks, request-driven,
designed around a central Servlet that dispatches requests to controllers and offers other
functionality that facilitates the development of web applications. Spring's
DispatcherServlet however, does more than just that. It is completely integrated with
the Spring IoC container and as such allows you to use every other feature that Spring has.
The request processing workflow of the Spring Web MVC DispatcherServlet is
illustrated in the following diagram. The pattern-savvy reader will recognize that the
DispatcherServlet is an expression of the Front Controller design pattern (this is a
pattern that Spring Web MVC shares with many other leading web frameworks).
The request processing workflow in Spring Web MVC (high level)

The DispatcherServlet is an actual Servlet (it inherits from the HttpServlet
base class), and as such is declared in the web.xml of your web application. You need to
map requests that you want the DispatcherServlet to handle, by using a URL
mapping in the same web.xml file. This is standard Java EE Servlet configuration; the
following example shows such a DispatcherServlet declaration and mapping:
<web-app>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>example</servlet-name>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>example</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/example/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
</web-app>
In the preceding example, all requests starting with /example will be handled by the
DispatcherServlet instance named example. In a Servlet 3.0+ environment, you
also have the option of configuring the Servlet container programmatically. Below is the
code based equivalent of the above web.xml example:
public class MyWebApplicationInitializer implements WebApplicationInitializer {
@Override
public void onStartup(ServletContext container) {
ServletRegistration.Dynamic registration = container.addServlet("dispatcher", new DispatcherServlet());
registration.setLoadOnStartup(1);
registration.addMapping("/example/*");
}
}
WebApplicationInitializer is an interface provided by Spring MVC that ensures

your code-based configuration is detected and automatically used to initialize any Servlet
3 container. An abstract base class implementation of this interace named
AbstractDispatcherServletInitializer makes it even easier to register the
DispatcherServlet by simply specifying its servlet mapping. See Code-based Servlet
container initialization for more details.
The above is only the first step in setting up Spring Web MVC. You now need to configure
the various beans used by the Spring Web MVC framework (over and above the
DispatcherServlet itself).
As detailed in Section 5.14, Additional Capabilities of the ApplicationContext,
ApplicationContext instances in Spring can be scoped. In the Web MVC framework,
each DispatcherServlet has its own WebApplicationContext, which inherits all
the beans already defined in the root WebApplicationContext. These inherited beans
can be overridden in the servlet-specific scope, and you can define new scope-specific
beans local to a given Servlet instance.
Context hierarchy in Spring Web MVC

Upon initialization of a DispatcherServlet, Spring MVC looks for a file named
[servlet-name]-servlet.xml in the WEB-INF directory of your web application
and creates the beans defined there, overriding the definitions of any beans defined with
the same name in the global scope.
Consider the following DispatcherServlet Servlet configuration (in the web.xml file):
<web-app>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>golfing</servlet-name>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>golfing</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/golfing/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
</web-app>
With the above Servlet configuration in place, you will need to have a file called /WEBINF/golfing-servlet.xml in your application; this file will contain all of your Spring
Web MVC-specific components (beans). You can change the exact location of this
configuration file through a Servlet initialization parameter (see below for details).
The WebApplicationContext is an extension of the plain ApplicationContext
that has some extra features necessary for web applications. It differs from a normal
ApplicationContext in that it is capable of resolving themes (see Section 17.9,
Using themes), and that it knows which Servlet it is associated with (by having a link to
the ServletContext). The WebApplicationContext is bound in the
ServletContext, and by using static methods on the RequestContextUtils class
you can always look up the WebApplicationContext if you need access to it.
17.2.1 Special Bean Types In the WebApplicationContext

The Spring DispatcherServlet uses special beans to process requests and render
the appropriate views. These beans are part of Spring MVC. You can choose which
special beans to use by simply configuring one or more of them in the
WebApplicationContext. However, you don't need to do that initially since Spring
MVC maintains a list of default beans to use if you don't configure any. More on that in the
next section. First see the table below listing the special bean types the
DispatcherServlet relies on.
Table 17.1. Special bean types in the WebApplicationContext

Bean type
Explanation
HandlerMapping
Maps incoming requests to handlers and a list of

pre- and post-processors (handler interceptors)
based on some criteria the details of which vary by
HandlerMapping implementation. The most
popular implementation supports annotated
controllers but other implementations exists as well.
HandlerAdapter
Helps the DispatcherServlet to invoke a

handler mapped to a request regardless of the
handler is actually invoked. For example, invoking
an annotated controller requires resolving various
annotations. Thus the main purpose of a
HandlerAdapter is to shield the
DispatcherServlet from such details.
HandlerExceptionResolver
Maps exceptions to views also allowing for more

complex exception handling code.
ViewResolver
Resolves logical String-based view names to actual

View types.
LocaleResolver
Resolves the locale a client is using, in order to be

able to offer internationalized views
ThemeResolver
Resolves themes your web application can use, for

example, to offer personalized layouts
MultipartResolver
Parses multi-part requests for example to support

processing file uploads from HTML forms.
FlashMapManager
Stores and retrieves the "input" and the "output"

FlashMap that can be used to pass attributes from
one request to another, usually across a redirect.
17.2.2 Default DispatcherServlet Configuration

As mentioned in the previous section for each special bean the DispatcherServlet
maintains a list of implementations to use by default. This information is kept in the file
DispatcherServlet.properties in the package
org.springframework.web.servlet.
All special beans have some reasonable defaults of their own. Sooner or later though
you'll need to customize one or more of the properties these beans provide. For example
it's quite common to configure an InternalResourceViewResolver settings its
prefix property to the parent location of view files.
Regardless of the details, the important concept to understand here is that once you
configure a special bean such as an InternalResourceViewResolver in your
WebApplicationContext, you effectively override the list of default implementations
that would have been used otherwise for that special bean type. For example if you
configure an InternalResourceViewResolver, the default list of ViewResolver
implementations is ignored.
In Section 17.15, Configuring Spring MVC you'll learn about other options for configuring
Spring MVC including MVC Java config and the MVC XML namespace both of which
provide a simple starting point and assume little knowledge of how Spring MVC works.
Regardless of how you choose to configure your application, the concepts explained in
this section are fundamental should be of help to you.
17.2.3 DispatcherServlet Processing Sequence

After you set up a DispatcherServlet, and a request comes in for that specific
DispatcherServlet, the DispatcherServlet starts processing the request as
follows:
1. The WebApplicationContext is searched for and bound in the request as an
attribute that the controller and other elements in the process can use. It is bound by
default under the key
DispatcherServlet.WEB_APPLICATION_CONTEXT_ATTRIBUTE.
2. The locale resolver is bound to the request to enable elements in the process to
resolve the locale to use when processing the request (rendering the view, preparing
data, and so on). If you do not need locale resolving, you do not need it.
3. The theme resolver is bound to the request to let elements such as views determine
which theme to use. If you do not use themes, you can ignore it.
4. If you specify a multipart file resolver, the request is inspected for multiparts; if
multiparts are found, the request is wrapped in a
MultipartHttpServletRequest for further processing by other elements in the
process. See Section 17.10, Spring's multipart (file upload) support for further
information about multipart handling.
5. An appropriate handler is searched for. If a handler is found, the execution chain
associated with the handler (preprocessors, postprocessors, and controllers) is
executed in order to prepare a model or rendering.
6. If a model is returned, the view is rendered. If no model is returned, (may be due to a
preprocessor or postprocessor intercepting the request, perhaps for security reasons),
no view is rendered, because the request could already have been fulfilled.
Handler exception resolvers that are declared in the WebApplicationContext pick up
exceptions that are thrown during processing of the request. Using these exception
resolvers allows you to define custom behaviors to address exceptions.
The Spring DispatcherServlet also supports the return of the last-modification-date,
as specified by the Servlet API. The process of determining the last modification date for a
specific request is straightforward: the DispatcherServlet looks up an appropriate
handler mapping and tests whether the handler that is found implements the
LastModified interface. If so, the value of the long getLastModified(request)
method of the LastModified interface is returned to the client.
You can customize individual DispatcherServlet instances by adding Servlet
initialization parameters (init-param elements) to the Servlet declaration in the
web.xml file. See the following table for the list of supported parameters.
Table 17.2. DispatcherServlet initialization parameters

Parameter
contextClass
Explanation
Class that implements
WebApplicationContext, which instantiates
the context used by this Servlet. By default, the
XmlWebApplicationContext is used.
String that is passed to the context instance

(specified by contextClass) to indicate where
context(s) can be found. The string consists
contextConfigLocation potentially of multiple strings (using a comma as
a delimiter) to support multiple contexts. In case
of multiple context locations with beans that are
defined twice, the latest location takes
precedence.
namespace
Namespace of the WebApplicationContext.

Defaults to [servlet-name]-servlet.
17.3 Implementing Controllers

Controllers provide access to the application behavior that you typically define through a
service interface. Controllers interpret user input and transform it into a model that is
represented to the user by the view. Spring implements a controller in a very abstract way,
which enables you to create a wide variety of controllers.
Spring 2.5 introduced an annotation-based programming model for MVC controllers that
uses annotations such as @RequestMapping, @RequestParam, @ModelAttribute,
and so on. This annotation support is available for both Servlet MVC and Portlet MVC.
Controllers implemented in this style do not have to extend specific base classes or
implement specific interfaces. Furthermore, they do not usually have direct dependencies
on Servlet or Portlet APIs, although you can easily configure access to Servlet or Portlet
facilities.
Tip
Available in the samples repository, a number of web applications
leverage the annotation support described in this section including
MvcShowcase, MvcAjax, MvcBasic, PetClinic, PetCare, and others.
@Controller
public class HelloWorldController {
@RequestMapping("/helloWorld")
public String helloWorld(Model model) {
model.addAttribute("message", "Hello World!");
return "helloWorld";
}
}
As you can see, the @Controller and @RequestMapping annotations allow flexible
method names and signatures. In this particular example the method accepts a Model and
returns a view name as a String, but various other method parameters and return values
can be used as explained later in this section. @Controller and @RequestMapping
and a number of other annotations form the basis for the Spring MVC implementation. This
section documents these annotations and how they are most commonly used in a Servlet
environment.
17.3.1 Defining a controller with @Controller

The @Controller annotation indicates that a particular class serves the role of a
controller. Spring does not require you to extend any controller base class or reference the
Servlet API. However, you can still reference Servlet-specific features if you need to.
The @Controller annotation acts as a stereotype for the annotated class, indicating its
role. The dispatcher scans such annotated classes for mapped methods and detects
@RequestMapping annotations (see the next section).
You can define annotated controller beans explicitly, using a standard Spring bean
definition in the dispatcher's context. However, the @Controller stereotype also allows
for autodetection, aligned with Spring general support for detecting component classes in
the classpath and auto-registering bean definitions for them.
To enable autodetection of such annotated controllers, you add component scanning to
your configuration. Use the spring-context schema as shown in the following XML snippet:
<context:component-scan base-package="org.springframework.samples.petclinic.web"/>

</beans>
17.3.2 Mapping Requests With @RequestMapping

You use the @RequestMapping annotation to map URLs such as /appointments
onto an entire class or a particular handler method. Typically the class-level annotation
maps a specific request path (or path pattern) onto a form controller, with additional
method-level annotations narrowing the primary mapping for a specific HTTP method
request method ("GET", "POST", etc.) or an HTTP request parameter condition.
The following example from the Petcare sample shows a controller in a Spring MVC
application that uses this annotation:
@Controller
@RequestMapping("/appointments")
public class AppointmentsController {
private final AppointmentBook appointmentBook;
@Autowired
public AppointmentsController(AppointmentBook appointmentBook) {
this.appointmentBook = appointmentBook;
}
@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
public Map<String, Appointment> get() {
return appointmentBook.getAppointmentsForToday();
}
@RequestMapping(value="/{day}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public Map<String, Appointment> getForDay(@PathVariable @DateTimeFormat(iso=ISO.DATE) Date day, Model model) {
return appointmentBook.getAppointmentsForDay(day);
}
@RequestMapping(value="/new", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public AppointmentForm getNewForm() {
return new AppointmentForm();
}
@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String add(@Valid AppointmentForm appointment, BindingResult result) {
if (result.hasErrors()) {
return "appointments/new";
}
appointmentBook.addAppointment(appointment);
return "redirect:/appointments";
}
}
In the example, the @RequestMapping is used in a number of places. The first usage is
on the type (class) level, which indicates that all handling methods on this controller are
relative to the /appointments path. The get() method has a further
@RequestMapping refinement: it only accepts GET requests, meaning that an HTTP
GET for /appointments invokes this method. The post() has a similar refinement,
and the getNewForm() combines the definition of HTTP method and path into one, so
that GET requests for appointments/new are handled by that method.
The getForDay() method shows another usage of @RequestMapping: URI templates.

(See the next section ).
A @RequestMapping on the class level is not required. Without it, all paths are simply
absolute, and not relative. The following example from the PetClinic sample application
shows a multi-action controller using @RequestMapping:
@Controller
public class ClinicController {
private final Clinic clinic;
@Autowired
public ClinicController(Clinic clinic) {
this.clinic = clinic;
}
@RequestMapping("/")
public void welcomeHandler() {
}
@RequestMapping("/vets")
public ModelMap vetsHandler() {
return new ModelMap(this.clinic.getVets());
}
}
Using @RequestMapping On Interface Methods

A common pitfall when working with annotated controller classes
happens when applying functionality that requires creating a proxy for
the controller object (e.g. @Transactional methods). Usually you
will introduce an interface for the controller in order to use JDK dynamic
proxies. To make this work you must move the @RequestMapping
annotations, as well as any other type and method-level annotations
(e.g. @ModelAttribute, @InitBinder) to the interface as well as
the mapping mechanism can only "see" the interface exposed by the
proxy. Alternatively, you could activate proxy-targetclass="true" in the configuration for the functionality applied to the
controller (in our transaction scenario in <tx:annotation-driven
/>). Doing so indicates that CGLIB-based subclass proxies should be
used instead of interface-based JDK proxies. For more information on
various proxying mechanisms see Section 9.6, Proxying
mechanisms.
Note however that method argument annotations, e.g.
@RequestParam, must be present in the method signatures of the
controller class.
New Support Classes for @RequestMapping methods in Spring MVC 3.1

Spring 3.1 introduced a new set of support classes for @RequestMapping methods
called RequestMappingHandlerMapping and
RequestMappingHandlerAdapter respectively. They are recommended for use and
even required to take advantage of new features in Spring MVC 3.1 and going forward.
The new support classes are enabled by default by the MVC namespace and the MVC
Java config but must be configured explicitly if using neither. This section describes a few
important differences between the old and the new support classes.
Prior to Spring 3.1, type and method-level request mappings were examined in two
separate stages -- a controller was selected first by the
DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping and the actual method to invoke was
narrowed down second by the AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter.
With the new support classes in Spring 3.1, the RequestMappingHandlerMapping is
the only place where a decision is made about which method should process the request.
Think of controller methods as a collection of unique endpoints with mappings for each
method derived from type and method-level @RequestMapping information.
This enables some new possibilities. For once a HandlerInterceptor or a

HandlerExceptionResolver can now expect the Object-based handler to be a
HandlerMethod, which allows them to examine the exact method, its parameters and
associated annotations. The processing for a URL no longer needs to be split across
different controllers.
There are also several things no longer possible:
Select a controller first with a SimpleUrlHandlerMapping or
BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping and then narrow the method based on
@RequestMapping annotations.
Rely on method names as a fall-back mechanism to disambiguate between two
@RequestMapping methods that don't have an explicit path mapping URL path but
otherwise match equally, e.g. by HTTP method. In the new support classes
@RequestMapping methods have to be mapped uniquely.
Have a single default method (without an explicit path mapping) with which requests
are processed if no other controller method matches more concretely. In the new
support classes if a matching method is not found a 404 error is raised.
The above features are still supported with the existing support classes. However to take
advantage of new Spring MVC 3.1 features you'll need to use the new support classes.
URI Template Patterns

URI templates can be used for convenient access to selected parts of a URL in a
@RequestMapping method.
A URI Template is a URI-like string, containing one or more variable names. When you
substitute values for these variables, the template becomes a URI. The proposed RFC for
URI Templates defines how a URI is parameterized. For example, the URI Template
http://www.example.com/users/{userId} contains the variable userId.
Assigning the value fred to the variable yields
http://www.example.com/users/fred.
In Spring MVC you can use the @PathVariable annotation on a method argument to
bind it to the value of a URI template variable:
@RequestMapping(value="/owners/{ownerId}", method=RequestMethod.GET)
public String findOwner(@PathVariable String ownerId, Model model) {
Owner owner = ownerService.findOwner(ownerId);
model.addAttribute("owner", owner);
return "displayOwner";
}
The URI Template "/owners/{ownerId}" specifies the variable name ownerId. When
the controller handles this request, the value of ownerId is set to the value found in the
appropriate part of the URI. For example, when a request comes in for /owners/fred,
the value of ownerId is fred.
Tip
To process the @PathVariable annotation, Spring MVC needs to find the matching URI
template variable by name. You can specify it in the annotation:
public String findOwner(@PathVariable("ownerId") String theOwner, Model model) {
// implementation omitted
}
Or if the URI template variable name matches the method argument name you can omit that
detail. As long as your code is not compiled without debugging information, Spring MVC will
match the method argument name to the URI template variable name:
public String findOwner(@PathVariable String ownerId, Model model) {
}
A method can have any number of @PathVariable annotations:

@RequestMapping(value="/owners/{ownerId}/pets/{petId}", method=RequestMethod.GET)
public String findPet(@PathVariable String ownerId, @PathVariable String petId, Model model) {
Owner owner = ownerService.findOwner(ownerId);
Pet pet = owner.getPet(petId);
model.addAttribute("pet", pet);
return "displayPet";
}
When a @PathVariable annotation is used on a Map<String, String> argument,

the map is populated with all URI template variables.
A URI template can be assembled from type and path level @RequestMapping
annotations. As a result the findPet() method can be invoked with a URL such as
/owners/42/pets/21.
@Controller
@RequestMapping("/owners/{ownerId}")
public class RelativePathUriTemplateController {
@RequestMapping("/pets/{petId}")
public void findPet(@PathVariable String ownerId, @PathVariable String petId, Model model) {
}
}
A @PathVariable argument can be of any simple type such as int, long, Date, etc.
Spring automatically converts to the appropriate type or throws a
TypeMismatchException if it fails to do so. You can also register support for parsing
additional data types. See the section called Method Parameters And Type Conversion
and the section called Customizing WebDataBinder initialization.
URI Template Patterns with Regular Expressions

Sometimes you need more precision in defining URI template variables. Consider the URL
"/spring-web/spring-web-3.0.5.jar". How do you break it down into multiple
parts?
The @RequestMapping annotation supports the use of regular expressions in URI
template variables. The syntax is {varName:regex} where the first part defines the
variable name and the second - the regular expression.For example:
@RequestMapping("/spring-web/{symbolicName:[a-z-]+}-{version:\\d\\.\\d\\.\\d}{extension:\\.[a-z]+}")
public void handle(@PathVariable String version, @PathVariable String extension) {
// ...
}
}
Path Patterns
In addition to URI templates, the @RequestMapping annotation also supports Ant-style
path patterns (for example, /myPath/*.do). A combination of URI templates and Antstyle globs is also supported (for example, /owners/*/pets/{petId}).
Patterns with Placeholders

Patterns in @RequestMapping annotations support ${...} placeholders against local
properties and/or system properties and environment variables. This may be useful in
cases where the path a controller is mapped to may need to be customized through
configuration. For more information on placeholders see the Javadoc for
PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer.
Matrix Variables
The URI specification RFC 3986 defines the possibility of including name-value pairs
within path segments. There is no specific term used in the spec. The general "URI path
parameters" could be applied although the more unique "Matrix URIs", originating from an
old post by Tim Berners-Lee, is also frequently used and fairly well known. Within Spring
MVC these are referred to as matrix variables.
Matrix variables can appear in any path segment, each matrix variable separated with a ";"
(semicolon). For example: "/cars;color=red;year=2012". Multiple values may be
either "," (comma) separated "color=red,green,blue" or the variable name may be
repeated "color=red;color=green;color=blue".
If a URL is expected to contain matrix variables, the request mapping pattern must
represent them with a URI template. This ensures the request can be matched correctly
regardless of whether matrix variables are present or not and in what order they are
provided.
Below is an example of extracting the matrix variable "q":
// GET /pets/42;q=11;r=22
@RequestMapping(value = "/pets/{petId}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public void findPet(@PathVariable String petId, @MatrixVariable int q) {
// petId == 42
// q == 11
}
Since all path segments may contain matrix variables, in some cases you need to be more
specific to identify where the variable is expected to be:
// GET /owners/42;q=11/pets/21;q=22
@RequestMapping(value = "/owners/{ownerId}/pets/{petId}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public void findPet(
@MatrixVariable(value="q", pathVar="ownerId") int q1,
@MatrixVariable(value="q", pathVar="petId") int q2) {
// q1 == 11
// q2 == 22
}
A matrix variable may be defined as optional and a default value specified:

// GET /pets/42
@RequestMapping(value = "/pets/{petId}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public void findPet(@MatrixVariable(required=true, defaultValue="1") int q) {
// q == 1
}
All matrix variables may be obtained in a Map:

// GET /owners/42;q=11;r=12/pets/21;q=22;s=23
@RequestMapping(value = "/owners/{ownerId}/pets/{petId}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public void findPet(
@MatrixVariable Map<String, String> matrixVars,
@MatrixVariable(pathVar="petId"") Map<String, String> petMatrixVars) {
// matrixVars: ["q" : [11,22], "r" : 12, "s" : 23]
// petMatrixVars: ["q" : 11, "s" : 23]
}
Note that to enable the use of matrix variables, you must set the
removeSemicolonContent property of RequestMappingHandlerMapping to
false. By default it is set to false.
Consumable Media Types
You can narrow the primary mapping by specifying a list of consumable media types. The
request will be matched only if the Content-Type request header matches the specified
media type. For example:
@Controller
@RequestMapping(value = "/pets", method = RequestMethod.POST, consumes="application/json")
public void addPet(@RequestBody Pet pet, Model model) {
}
Consumable media type expressions can also be negated as in !text/plain to match to all
requests other than those with Content-Type of text/plain.
Tip
The consumes condition is supported on the type and on the method
level. Unlike most other conditions, when used at the type level,
method-level consumable types override rather than extend type-level
consumable types.
Producible Media Types

You can narrow the primary mapping by specifying a list of producible media types. The
request will be matched only if the Accept request header matches one of these values.
Furthermore, use of the produces condition ensures the actual content type used to
generate the response respects the media types specified in the produces condition. For
example:
@Controller
@RequestMapping(value = "/pets/{petId}", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces="application/json")
@ResponseBody
public Pet getPet(@PathVariable String petId, Model model) {
}
Just like with consumes, producible media type expressions can be negated as in
!text/plain to match to all requests other than those with an Accept header value of
text/plain.
Tip
The produces condition is supported on the type and on the method
level. Unlike most other conditions, when used at the type level,
method-level producible types override rather than extend type-level
producible types.
Request Parameters and Header Values

You can narrow request matching through request parameter conditions such as
"myParam", "!myParam", or "myParam=myValue". The first two test for request
parameter presence/absence and the third for a specific parameter value. Here is an
example with a request parameter value condition:
@Controller
@RequestMapping(value = "/pets/{petId}", method = RequestMethod.GET, params="myParam=myValue")
}
}
The same can be done to test for request header presence/absence or to match based on
a specific request header value:
@Controller

@RequestMapping(value = "/pets", method = RequestMethod.GET, headers="myHeader=myValue")
}
}
Tip
Although you can match to Content-Type and Accept header values
using media type wild cards (for example "content-type=text/*" will
match to "text/plain" and "text/html"), it is recommended to use the
consumes and produces conditions respectively instead. They are
intended specifically for that purpose.
17.3.3 Defining @RequestMapping handler methods

An @RequestMapping handler method can have a very flexible signatures. The
supported method arguments and return values are described in the following section.
Most arguments can be used in arbitrary order with the only exception of
BindingResult arguments. This is described in the next section.
Note
Spring 3.1 introduced a new set of support classes for
@RequestMapping methods called
RequestMappingHandlerMapping and
RequestMappingHandlerAdapter respectively. They are
recommended for use and even required to take advantage of new
features in Spring MVC 3.1 and going forward. The new support
classes are enabled by default from the MVC namespace and with use
of the MVC Java config but must be configured explicitly if using
neither.
Supported method argument types

The following are the supported method arguments:
Request or response objects (Servlet API). Choose any specific request or response
type, for example ServletRequest or HttpServletRequest.
Session object (Servlet API): of type HttpSession. An argument of this type
enforces the presence of a corresponding session. As a consequence, such an
argument is never null.
Note
Session access may not be thread-safe, in particular in a Servlet
environment. Consider setting the
RequestMappingHandlerAdapter's "synchronizeOnSession"
flag to "true" if multiple requests are allowed to access a session
concurrently.
org.springframework.web.context.request.WebRequest or
org.springframework.web.context.request.NativeWebRequest.
Allows for generic request parameter access as well as request/session attribute
access, without ties to the native Servlet/Portlet API.
java.util.Locale for the current request locale, determined by the most specific
locale resolver available, in effect, the configured LocaleResolver in a Servlet
environment.
java.io.InputStream / java.io.Reader for access to the request's content.
This value is the raw InputStream/Reader as exposed by the Servlet API.
java.io.OutputStream / java.io.Writer for generating the response's
content. This value is the raw OutputStream/Writer as exposed by the Servlet API.
java.security.Principal containing the currently authenticated user.

@PathVariable annotated parameters for access to URI template variables. See
the section called URI Template Patterns.
@MatrixVariable annotated parameters for access to name-value pairs located in
URI path segments. See the section called Matrix Variables.
@RequestParam annotated parameters for access to specific Servlet request
parameters. Parameter values are converted to the declared method argument type.
See the section called Binding request parameters to method parameters with
@RequestParam.
@RequestHeader annotated parameters for access to specific Servlet request HTTP
headers. Parameter values are converted to the declared method argument type.
@RequestBody annotated parameters for access to the HTTP request body.
Parameter values are converted to the declared method argument type using
HttpMessageConverters. See the section called Mapping the request body with
the @RequestBody annotation.
@RequestPart annotated parameters for access to the content of a "multipart/formdata" request part. See Section 17.10.5, Handling a file upload request from
programmatic clients and Section 17.10, Spring's multipart (file upload) support.
HttpEntity<?> parameters for access to the Servlet request HTTP headers and
contents. The request stream will be converted to the entity body using
HttpMessageConverters. See the section called Using HttpEntity<?>.
java.util.Map / org.springframework.ui.Model /
org.springframework.ui.ModelMap for enriching the implicit model that is
exposed to the web view.
org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.support.RedirectAttributes
to specify the exact set of attributes to use in case of a redirect and also to add flash
attributes (attributes stored temporarily on the server-side to make them available to
the request after the redirect). RedirectAttributes is used instead of the implicit
model if the method returns a "redirect:" prefixed view name or RedirectView.
Command or form objects to bind request parameters to bean properties (via setters)
or directly to fields, with customizable type conversion, depending on @InitBinder
methods and/or the HandlerAdapter configuration. See the
webBindingInitializer property on RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.
Such command objects along with their validation results will be exposed as model
attributes by default, using the command class class name - e.g. model attribute
"orderAddress" for a command object of type "some.package.OrderAddress". The
ModelAttribute annotation can be used on a method argument to customize the
model attribute name used.
org.springframework.validation.Errors /
org.springframework.validation.BindingResult validation results for a
preceding command or form object (the immediately preceding method argument).
org.springframework.web.bind.support.SessionStatus status handle
for marking form processing as complete, which triggers the cleanup of session
attributes that have been indicated by the @SessionAttributes annotation at the
handler type level.
org.springframework.web.util.UriComponentsBuilder a builder for
preparing a URL relative to the current request's host, port, scheme, context path, and
the literal part of the servlet mapping.
The Errors or BindingResult parameters have to follow the model object that is
being bound immediately as the method signature might have more that one model object
and Spring will create a separate BindingResult instance for each of them so the
following sample won't work:
Example 17.1. Invalid ordering of BindingResult and @ModelAttribute
public String processSubmit(@ModelAttribute("pet") Pet pet,
Model model, BindingResult result) { }
Note, that there is a Model parameter in between Pet and BindingResult. To get this
working you have to reorder the parameters as follows:
public String processSubmit(@ModelAttribute("pet") Pet pet,
BindingResult result, Model model) { }
Supported method return types

The following are the supported return types:
A ModelAndView object, with the model implicitly enriched with command objects
and the results of @ModelAttribute annotated reference data accessor methods.
A Model object, with the view name implicitly determined through a
RequestToViewNameTranslator and the model implicitly enriched with
command objects and the results of @ModelAttribute annotated reference data
accessor methods.
A Map object for exposing a model, with the view name implicitly determined through a
accessor methods.
A View object, with the model implicitly determined through command objects and
@ModelAttribute annotated reference data accessor methods. The handler
method may also programmatically enrich the model by declaring a Model argument
(see above).
A String value that is interpreted as the logical view name, with the model implicitly
determined through command objects and @ModelAttribute annotated reference
data accessor methods. The handler method may also programmatically enrich the
model by declaring a Model argument (see above).
void if the method handles the response itself (by writing the response content
directly, declaring an argument of type ServletResponse /
HttpServletResponse for that purpose) or if the view name is supposed to be
implicitly determined through a RequestToViewNameTranslator (not declaring a
response argument in the handler method signature).
If the method is annotated with @ResponseBody, the return type is written to the
response HTTP body. The return value will be converted to the declared method
argument type using HttpMessageConverters. See the section called Mapping
the response body with the @ResponseBody annotation.
A HttpEntity<?> or ResponseEntity<?> object to provide access to the Servlet
response HTTP headers and contents. The entity body will be converted to the
response stream using HttpMessageConverters. See the section called Using
HttpEntity<?>.
A Callable<?> can be returned when the application wants to produce the return
value asynchronously in a thread managed by Spring MVC.
A DeferredResult<?> can be returned when the application wants to produce the
return value from a thread of its own choosing.
Any other return type is considered to be a single model attribute to be exposed to the
view, using the attribute name specified through @ModelAttribute at the method
level (or the default attribute name based on the return type class name). The model is
implicitly enriched with command objects and the results of @ModelAttribute
annotated reference data accessor methods.
Binding request parameters to method parameters with @RequestParam

Use the @RequestParam annotation to bind request parameters to a method parameter
in your controller.
in your controller.
The following code snippet shows the usage:
@Controller
@RequestMapping("/pets")
@SessionAttributes("pet")
public class EditPetForm {
// ...
@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
public String setupForm(@RequestParam("petId") int petId, ModelMap model) {
Pet pet = this.clinic.loadPet(petId);
model.addAttribute("pet", pet);
return "petForm";
}
// ...
Parameters using this annotation are required by default, but you can specify that a
parameter is optional by setting @RequestParam's required attribute to false (e.g.,
@RequestParam(value="id", required=false)).
Type conversion is applied automatically if the target method parameter type is not
String. See the section called Method Parameters And Type Conversion.
Mapping the request body with the @RequestBody annotation

The @RequestBody method parameter annotation indicates that a method parameter
should be bound to the value of the HTTP request body. For example:
@RequestMapping(value = "/something", method = RequestMethod.PUT)
public void handle(@RequestBody String body, Writer writer) throws IOException {
writer.write(body);
}
You convert the request body to the method argument by using an

HttpMessageConverter. HttpMessageConverter is responsible for converting
from the HTTP request message to an object and converting from an object to the HTTP
response body. The RequestMappingHandlerAdapter supports the @RequestBody
annotation with the following default HttpMessageConverters:
ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter converts byte arrays.
StringHttpMessageConverter converts strings.
FormHttpMessageConverter converts form data to/from a MultiValueMap<String,
String>.
SourceHttpMessageConverter converts to/from a javax.xml.transform.Source.
For more information on these converters, see Message Converters. Also note that if using
the MVC namespace or the MVC Java config, a wider range of message converters are
registered by default. See Enabling the MVC Java Config or the MVC XML Namespace for
more information.
If you intend to read and write XML, you will need to configure the
MarshallingHttpMessageConverter with a specific Marshaller and an
Unmarshaller implementation from the org.springframework.oxm package. The
example below shows how to do that directly in your configuration but if your application is
configured through the MVC namespace or the MVC Java config see Enabling the MVC
Java Config or the MVC XML Namespace instead.
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerAdapter">
<property name="messageConverters">
<util:list id="beanList">
<ref bean="stringHttpMessageConverter"/>
<ref bean="marshallingHttpMessageConverter"/>
</util:list>
</property
</bean>
<bean id="stringHttpMessageConverter"
class="org.springframework.http.converter.StringHttpMessageConverter"/>
<bean id="marshallingHttpMessageConverter"
class="org.springframework.http.converter.xml.MarshallingHttpMessageConverter">
<property name="marshaller" ref="castorMarshaller" />
<property name="unmarshaller" ref="castorMarshaller" />
</bean>
<bean id="castorMarshaller" class="org.springframework.oxm.castor.CastorMarshaller"/>
An @RequestBody method parameter can be annotated with @Valid, in which case it

will be validated using the configured Validator instance. When using the MVC
namespace or the MVC Java config, a JSR-303 validator is configured automatically
assuming a JSR-303 implementation is available on the classpath.
Just like with @ModelAttribute parameters, an Errors argument can be used to
examine the errors. If such an argument is not declared, a
MethodArgumentNotValidException will be raised. The exception is handled in the
DefaultHandlerExceptionResolver, which sends a 400 error back to the client.
Note
Also see Enabling the MVC Java Config or the MVC XML Namespace
for information on configuring message converters and a validator
through the MVC namespace or the MVC Java config.
Mapping the response body with the @ResponseBody annotation

The @ResponseBody annotation is similar to @RequestBody. This annotation can be
put on a method and indicates that the return type should be written straight to the HTTP
response body (and not placed in a Model, or interpreted as a view name). For example:
@RequestMapping(value = "/something", method = RequestMethod.PUT)
@ResponseBody
public String helloWorld() {
return "Hello World";
}
The above example will result in the text Hello World being written to the HTTP
response stream.
As with @RequestBody, Spring converts the returned object to a response body by using
an HttpMessageConverter. For more information on these converters, see the
previous section and Message Converters.
Using HttpEntity<?>
The HttpEntity is similar to @RequestBody and @ResponseBody. Besides getting
access to the request and response body, HttpEntity (and the response-specific
subclass ResponseEntity) also allows access to the request and response headers,
like so:
@RequestMapping("/something")
public ResponseEntity<String> handle(HttpEntity<byte[]> requestEntity) throws UnsupportedEncodingException {
String requestHeader = requestEntity.getHeaders().getFirst("MyRequestHeader"));
byte[] requestBody = requestEntity.getBody();
// do something with request header and body
HttpHeaders responseHeaders = new HttpHeaders();
responseHeaders.set("MyResponseHeader", "MyValue");
return new ResponseEntity<String>("Hello World", responseHeaders, HttpStatus.CREATED);
}
The above example gets the value of the MyRequestHeader request header, and reads
the body as a byte array. It adds the MyResponseHeader to the response, writes Hello
World to the response stream, and sets the response status code to 201 (Created).
As with @RequestBody and @ResponseBody, Spring uses HttpMessageConverter
to convert from and to the request and response streams. For more information on these
converters, see the previous section and Message Converters.
Using @ModelAttribute on a method

The @ModelAttribute annotation can be used on methods or on method arguments.
This section explains its usage on methods while the next section explains its usage on
method arguments.
An @ModelAttribute on a method indicates the purpose of that method is to add one or
more model attributes. Such methods support the same argument types as
@RequestMapping methods but cannot be mapped directly to requests. Instead
@ModelAttribute methods in a controller are invoked before @RequestMapping
methods, within the same controller. A couple of examples:
// Add one attribute
// The return value of the method is added to the model under the name "account"
// You can customize the name via @ModelAttribute("myAccount")
@ModelAttribute
public Account addAccount(@RequestParam String number) {
return accountManager.findAccount(number);
}
// Add multiple attributes
@ModelAttribute
public void populateModel(@RequestParam String number, Model model) {
model.addAttribute(accountManager.findAccount(number));
// add more ...
}
@ModelAttribute methods are used to populate the model with commonly needed
attributes for example to fill a drop-down with states or with pet types, or to retrieve a
command object like Account in order to use it to represent the data on an HTML form. The
latter case is further discussed in the next section.
Note the two styles of @ModelAttribute methods. In the first, the method adds an
attribute implicitly by returning it. In the second, the method accepts a Model and adds any
number of model attributes to it. You can choose between the two styles depending on
your needs.
A controller can have any number of @ModelAttribute methods. All such methods are
invoked before @RequestMapping methods of the same controller.
@ModelAttribute methods can also be defined in an @ControllerAdviceannotated class and such methods apply to all controllers. The @ControllerAdvice
annotation is a component annotation allowing implementation classes to be autodetected
through classpath scanning.
Tip
What happens when a model attribute name is not explicitly specified?
In such cases a default name is assigned to the model attribute based
on its type. For example if the method returns an object of type
Account, the default name used is "account". You can change that
through the value of the @ModelAttribute annotation. If adding
attributes directly to the Model, use the appropriate overloaded
addAttribute(..) method - i.e., with or without an attribute name.
The @ModelAttribute annotation can be used on @RequestMapping methods as
well. In that case the return value of the @RequestMapping method is interpreted as a
model attribute rather than as a view name. The view name is derived from view name
conventions instead much like for methods returning void see Section 17.12.3, The
View - RequestToViewNameTranslator.
Using @ModelAttribute on a method argument
Using
on a method argument
As explained in the previous section @ModelAttribute can be used on methods or on

method arguments. This section explains its usage on method arguments.
An @ModelAttribute on a method argument indicates the argument should be
retrieved from the model. If not present in the model, the argument should be instantiated
first and then added to the model. Once present in the model, the argument's fields should
be populated from all request parameters that have matching names. This is known as
data binding in Spring MVC, a very useful mechanism that saves you from having to parse
each form field individually.
@RequestMapping(value="/owners/{ownerId}/pets/{petId}/edit", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String processSubmit(@ModelAttribute Pet pet) {
}
Given the above example where can the Pet instance come from? There are several
options:
It may already be in the model due to use of @SessionAttributes see the
section called Using @SessionAttributes to store model attributes in the HTTP
session between requests.
It may already be in the model due to an @ModelAttribute method in the same
controller as explained in the previous section.
It may be retrieved based on a URI template variable and type converter (explained in
more detail below).
It may be instantiated using its default constructor.
An @ModelAttribute method is a common way to to retrieve an attribute from the
database, which may optionally be stored between requests through the use of
@SessionAttributes. In some cases it may be convenient to retrieve the attribute by
using an URI template variable and a type converter. Here is an example:
@RequestMapping(value="/accounts/{account}", method = RequestMethod.PUT)
public String save(@ModelAttribute("account") Account account) {
}
In this example the name of the model attribute (i.e. "account") matches the name of a URI
template variable. If you register Converter<String, Account> that can turn the
String account value into an Account instance, then the above example will work
without the need for an @ModelAttribute method.
The next step is data binding. The WebDataBinder class matches request parameter
names including query string parameters and form fields to model attribute fields by
name. Matching fields are populated after type conversion (from String to the target field
type) has been applied where necessary. Data binding and validation are covered in
Chapter 7, Validation, Data Binding, and Type Conversion. Customizing the data binding
process for a controller level is covered in the section called Customizing
WebDataBinder initialization.
As a result of data binding there may be errors such as missing required fields or type
conversion errors. To check for such errors add a BindingResult argument immediately
following the @ModelAttribute argument:
public String processSubmit(@ModelAttribute("pet") Pet pet, BindingResult result) {
return "petForm";
}
// ...
}
With a BindingResult you can check if errors were found in which case it's common to
render the same form where the errors can be shown with the help of Spring's <errors>
form tag.
In addition to data binding you can also invoke validation using your own custom validator
passing the same BindingResult that was used to record data binding errors. That
allows for data binding and validation errors to be accumulated in one place and
subsequently reported back to the user:
public String processSubmit(@ModelAttribute("pet") Pet pet, BindingResult result) {
new PetValidator().validate(pet, result);
return "petForm";
}
// ...
}
Or you can have validation invoked automatically by adding the JSR-303 @Valid
annotation:
public String processSubmit(@Valid @ModelAttribute("pet") Pet pet, BindingResult result) {
return "petForm";
}
// ...
}
See Section 7.8, Spring 3 Validation and Chapter 7, Validation, Data Binding, and Type
Conversion for details on how to configure and use validation.
Using @SessionAttributes to store model attributes in the HTTP session

between requests
The type-level @SessionAttributes annotation declares session attributes used by a
specific handler. This will typically list the names of model attributes or types of model
attributes which should be transparently stored in the session or some conversational
storage, serving as form-backing beans between subsequent requests.
The following code snippet shows the usage of this annotation, specifying the model
attribute name:
@Controller
@RequestMapping("/editPet.do")
@SessionAttributes("pet")
public class EditPetForm {
// ...
}
Note
When using controller interfaces (e.g., for AOP proxying), make sure to
consistently put all your mapping annotations - such as
@RequestMapping and @SessionAttributes - on the controller
interface rather than on the implementation class.
Specifying redirect and flash attributes

By default all model attributes are considered to be exposed as URI template variables in
the redirect URL. Of the remaining attributes those that are primitive types or
collections/arrays of primitive types are automatically appended as query parameters.
In annotated controllers however the model may contain additional attributes originally
added for rendering purposes (e.g. drop-down field values). To gain precise control over
the attributes used in a redirect scenario, an @RequestMapping method can declare an

argument of type RedirectAttributes and use it to add attributes for use in
RedirectView. If the controller method does redirect, the content of
RedirectAttributes is used. Otherwise the content of the default Model is used.
The RequestMappingHandlerAdapter provides a flag called
"ignoreDefaultModelOnRedirect" that can be used to indicate the content of the
default Model should never be used if a controller method redirects. Instead the controller
method should declare an attribute of type RedirectAttributes or if it doesn't do so
no attributes should be passed on to RedirectView. Both the MVC namespace and the
MVC Java config keep this flag set to false in order to maintain backwards compatibility.
However, for new applications we recommend setting it to true
The RedirectAttributes interface can also be used to add flash attributes. Unlike
other redirect attributes, which end up in the target redirect URL, flash attributes are saved
in the HTTP session (and hence do not appear in the URL). The model of the controller
serving the target redirect URL automatically receives these flash attributes after which
they are removed from the session. See Section 17.6, Using flash attributes for an
overview of the general support for flash attributes in Spring MVC.
Working with "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" data

The previous sections covered use of @ModelAttribute to support form submission
requests from browser clients. The same annotation is recommended for use with requests
from non-browser clients as well. However there is one notable difference when it comes
to working with HTTP PUT requests. Browsers can submit form data via HTTP GET or
HTTP POST. Non-browser clients can also submit forms via HTTP PUT. This presents a
challenge because the Servlet specification requires the
ServletRequest.getParameter*() family of methods to support form field access
only for HTTP POST, not for HTTP PUT.
To support HTTP PUT and PATCH requests, the spring-web module provides the filter
HttpPutFormContentFilter, which can be configured in web.xml:
<filter>
<filter-name>httpPutFormFilter</filter-name>
<filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.HttpPutFormContentFilter</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>httpPutFormFilter</filter-name>
<servlet-name>dispatcherServlet</servlet-name>
</filter-mapping>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>dispatcherServlet</servlet-name>
</servlet>
The above filter intercepts HTTP PUT and PATCH requests with content type
application/x-www-form-urlencoded, reads the form data from the body of the
request, and wraps the ServletRequest in order to make the form data available
through the ServletRequest.getParameter*() family of methods.
Note
As HttpPutFormContentFilter consumes the body of the
request, it should not be configured for PUT or PATCH URLs that rely
on other converters for application/x-www-form-urlencoded.
This includes @RequestBody MultiValueMap<String,
String> and HttpEntity<MultiValueMap<String,
String>>.
Mapping cookie values with the @CookieValue annotation
The @CookieValue annotation allows a method parameter to be bound to the value of an

HTTP cookie.
Let us consider that the following cookie has been received with an http request:
JSESSIONID=415A4AC178C59DACE0B2C9CA727CDD84
The following code sample demonstrates how to get the value of the JSESSIONID cookie:
@RequestMapping("/displayHeaderInfo.do")
public void displayHeaderInfo(@CookieValue("JSESSIONID") String cookie)
//...
}
Type conversion is applied automatically if the target method parameter type is not
String. See the section called Method Parameters And Type Conversion.
This annotation is supported for annotated handler methods in Servlet and Portlet
environments.
Mapping request header attributes with the @RequestHeader annotation

The @RequestHeader annotation allows a method parameter to be bound to a request
header.
Here is a sample request header:
Host
Accept
Accept-Language
Accept-Encoding
Accept-Charset
Keep-Alive
localhost:8080
text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9
fr,en-gb;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
gzip,deflate
ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
300
The following code sample demonstrates how to get the value of the Accept-Encoding
and Keep-Alive headers:
@RequestMapping("/displayHeaderInfo.do")
public void displayHeaderInfo(@RequestHeader("Accept-Encoding") String encoding,
@RequestHeader("Keep-Alive") long keepAlive) {
//...
}
Type conversion is applied automatically if the method parameter is not String. See the
section called Method Parameters And Type Conversion.
Tip
Built-in support is available for converting a comma-separated string
into an array/collection of strings or other types known to the type
conversion system. For example a method parameter annotated with
@RequestHeader("Accept") may be of type String but also
String[] or List<String>.
This annotation is supported for annotated handler methods in Servlet and Portlet
environments.
Method Parameters And Type Conversion

String-based values extracted from the request including request parameters, path
variables, request headers, and cookie values may need to be converted to the target type
of the method parameter or field (e.g., binding a request parameter to a field in an
@ModelAttribute parameter) they're bound to. If the target type is not String, Spring
automatically converts to the appropriate type. All simple types such as int, long, Date, etc.
are supported. You can further customize the conversion process through a
WebDataBinder (see the section called Customizing WebDataBinder initialization)

or by registering Formatters with the FormattingConversionService (see
Section 7.6, Spring 3 Field Formatting).
Customizing WebDataBinder initialization

To customize request parameter binding with PropertyEditors through Spring's
WebDataBinder, you can use @InitBinder-annotated methods within your controller,
@InitBinder methods within an @ControllerAdvice class, or provide a custom
WebBindingInitializer.

Annotating controller methods with @InitBinder allows you to configure web data
binding directly within your controller class. @InitBinder identifies methods that
initialize the WebDataBinder that will be used to populate command and form object
arguments of annotated handler methods.
Such init-binder methods support all arguments that @RequestMapping supports, except
for command/form objects and corresponding validation result objects. Init-binder methods
must not have a return value. Thus, they are usually declared as void. Typical arguments
include WebDataBinder in combination with WebRequest or java.util.Locale,
allowing code to register context-specific editors.
The following example demonstrates the use of @InitBinder to configure a
CustomDateEditor for all java.util.Date form properties.
@Controller
public class MyFormController {
@InitBinder
public void initBinder(WebDataBinder binder) {
SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
binder.registerCustomEditor(Date.class, new CustomDateEditor(dateFormat, false));
}
// ...
}

To externalize data binding initialization, you can provide a custom implementation of the
WebBindingInitializer interface, which you then enable by supplying a custom
bean configuration for an AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter, thus overriding the
default configuration.
The following example from the PetClinic application shows a configuration using a
custom implementation of the WebBindingInitializer interface,
org.springframework.samples.petclinic.web.ClinicBindingInitializer,
which configures PropertyEditors required by several of the PetClinic controllers.
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerAdapter">
<property name="cacheSeconds" value="0" />
<property name="webBindingInitializer">
<bean class="org.springframework.samples.petclinic.web.ClinicBindingInitializer" />
</property>
</bean>
Customizing data binding with externalized @InitBinder methods

@InitBinder methods can also be defined in an @ControllerAdvice-annotated
class in which case they apply to all controllers. This provides an alternative to using a
The @ControllerAdvice annotation is a component annotation allowing
implementation classes to be autodetected through classpath scanning.
Support for the 'Last-Modified' Response Header To Facilitate Content

Caching
An @RequestMapping method may wish to support 'Last-Modified' HTTP
requests, as defined in the contract for the Servlet API's getLastModified method, to
facilitate content caching. This involves calculating a lastModified long value for a given
request, comparing it against the 'If-Modified-Since' request header value, and
potentially returning a response with status code 304 (Not Modified). An annotated
controller method can achieve that as follows:
@RequestMapping
public String myHandleMethod(WebRequest webRequest, Model model) {
long lastModified = // 1. application-specific calculation
if (request.checkNotModified(lastModified)) {
// 2. shortcut exit - no further processing necessary
return null;
}
// 3. or otherwise further request processing, actually preparing content
model.addAttribute(...);
return "myViewName";
}
There are two key elements to note: calling

request.checkNotModified(lastModified) and returning null. The former sets
the response status to 304 before it returns true. The latter, in combination with the
former, causes Spring MVC to do no further processing of the request.
17.3.4 Asynchronous Request Processing

Spring MVC 3.2 introduced Servlet 3 based asynchronous request processing. Instead of
returning a value, as usual, a controller method can now return a
java.util.concurrent.Callable and produce the return value from a separate
thread. Meanwhile the main Servlet container thread is released and allowed to process
other requests. Spring MVC invokes the Callable in a separate thread with the help of a
TaskExecutor and when the Callable returns, the request is dispatched back to the
Servlet container to resume processing with the value returned by the Callable. Here is
an example controller method:
@RequestMapping(method=RequestMethod.POST)
public Callable<String> processUpload(final MultipartFile file) {
return new Callable<String>() {
public Object call() throws Exception {
// ...
return "someView";
}
};
}
A second option is for the controller to return an instance of DeferredResult. In this

case the return value will also be produced from a separate thread. However, that thread is
not known to Spring MVC. For example the result may be produced in response to some
external event such as a JMS message, a scheduled task, etc. Here is an example
controller method:
@RequestMapping("/quotes")
@ResponseBody
public DeferredResult<String> quotes() {
DeferredResult<String> deferredResult = new DeferredResult<String>();
// Save the deferredResult in in-memory queue ...
return deferredResult;
}
// In some other thread...
deferredResult.setResult(data);
This may be difficult to understand without any knowledge of the Servlet 3 async
processing feature. It would certainly help to read up on it. At a very minimum consider the
following basic facts:
A ServletRequest can be put in asynchronous mode by calling
request.startAsync(). The main effect of doing so is that the Servlet, as well as
any Filters, can exit but the response will remain open allowing some other thread to
complete processing.
The call to request.startAsync() returns an AsyncContext, which can be
used for further control over async processing. For example it provides the method
dispatch, which can be called from an application thread in order to "dispatch" the
request back to the Servlet container. An async dispatch is similar to a forward except
it is made from one (application) thread to another (Servlet container) thread whereas
a forward occurs synchronously in the same (Servlet container) thread.
ServletRequest provides access to the current DispatcherType, which can be
used to distinguish if a Servlet or a Filter is processing on the initial request
processing thread and when it is processing in an async dispatch.
With the above in mind, the following is the sequence of events for async request
processing with a Callable: (1) Controller returns a Callable, (2) Spring MVC starts
async processing and submits the Callable to a TaskExecutor for processing in a
separate thread, (3) the DispatcherServlet and all Filter's exit the request processing
thread but the response remains open, (4) the Callable produces a result and Spring
MVC dispatches the request back to the Servlet container, (5) the DispatcherServlet
is invoked again and processing resumes with the asynchronously produced result from
the Callable. The exact sequencing of (2), (3), and (4) may vary depending on the speed
of execution of the concurrent threads.
The sequence of events for async request processing with a DeferredResult is the
same in principal except it's up to the application to produce the asynchronous result from
some thread: (1) Controller returns a DeferredResult and saves it in some in-memory
queue or list where it can be accessed, (2) Spring MVC starts async processing, (3) the
DispatcherServlet and all configured Filter's exit the request processing thread but
the response remains open, (4) the application sets the DeferredResult from some
thread and Spring MVC dispatches the request back to the Servlet container, (5) the
DispatcherServlet is invoked again and processing resumes with the
asynchronously produced result.
Explaining the motivation for async request processing and when or why to use it are
beyond the scope of this document. For further information you may wish to read this blog
post series.
Exception Handling for Async Requests

What happens if a Callable returned from a controller method raises an Exception while
being executed? The effect is similar to what happens when any controller method raises
an exception. It is handled by a matching @ExceptionHandler method in the same
controller or by one of the configured HandlerExceptionResolver instances.
Note
Under the covers, when a Callable raises an Exception, Spring
MVC still dispatches to the Servlet container to resume processing.
The only difference is that the result of executing the Callable is an
Exception that must be processed with the configured
HandlerExceptionResolver instances.
When using a DeferredResult, you have a choice of calling its
setErrorResult(Object) method and provide an Exception or any other Object
you'd like to use as the result. If the result is an Exception, it will be processed with a
matching @ExceptionHandler method in the same controller or with any configured
HandlerExceptionResolver instance.
Intercepting Async Requests

An existing HandlerInterceptor can implement AsyncHandlerInterceptor,
which provides one additional method afterConcurrentHandlingStarted. It is
invoked after async processing starts and when the initial request processing thread is
being exited. See the Javadoc of AsyncHandlerInterceptor for more details on that.
Further options for async request lifecycle callbacks are provided directly on
DeferredResult, which has the methods onTimeout(Runnable) and
onCompletion(Runnable). Those are called when the async request is about to time
out or has completed respectively. The timeout event can be handled by setting the
DeferredResult to some value. The completion callback however is final and the result
can no longer be set.
Similar callbacks are also available with a Callable. However, you will need to wrap the
Callable in an instance of WebAsyncTask and then use that to register the timeout and
completion callbacks. Just like with DeferredResult, the timeout event can be handled
and a value can be returned while the completion event is final.
You can also register a CallableProcessingInterceptor or a
DeferredResultProcessingInterceptor globally through the MVC Java config or
the MVC namespace. Those interceptors provide a full set of callbacks and apply every
time a Callable or a DeferredResult is used.
Configuration for Async Request Processing

Servlet 3 Async Config
To use Servlet 3 async request processing, you need to update web.xml to version 3.0:
<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
version="3.0">
...
</web-app>
The DispatcherServlet and any Filter configuration need to have the <asyncsupported>true</async-supported> sub-element. Additionally, any Filter that
also needs to get involved in async dispatches should also be configured to support the
ASYNC dispatcher type. Note that it is safe to enable the ASYNC dispatcher type for all
filters provided with the Spring Framework since they will not get involved in async
dispatches unless needed.
If using Servlet 3, Java based configuration, e.g. via WebApplicationInitializer,
you'll also need to set the "asyncSupported" flag as well as the ASYNC dispatcher type
just like with web.xml. To simplify all this configuration, consider extending
AbstractDispatcherServletInitializer or
AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer, which
automatically set those options and make it very easy to register Filter instances.
Spring MVC Async Config

The MVC Java config and the MVC namespace both provide options for configuring async
request processing. WebMvcConfigurer has the method configureAsyncSupport
while <mvc:annotation-driven> has an <async-support> sub-element.
Those allow you to configure the default timeout value to use for async requests, which if
not set depends on the underlying Servlet container (e.g. 10 seconds on Tomcat). You can
also configure an AsyncTaskExecutor to use for executing Callable instances
returned from controller methods. It is highly recommended to configure this property since
by default Spring MVC uses SimpleAsyncTaskExecutor. The MVC Java config and
the MVC namespace also allow you to register CallableProcessingInterceptor
and DeferredResultProcessingInterceptor instances.
If you need to override the default timeout value for a specific DeferredResult, you can
do so by using the appropriate class constructor. Similarly, for a Callable, you can wrap
it in a WebAsyncTask and use the appropriate class constructor to customize the timeout
value. The class constructor of WebAsyncTask also allows providing an
AsyncTaskExecutor.
17.3.5 Testing Controllers

The spring-test module offers first class support for testing annotated controllers. See
Section 11.3.6, Spring MVC Test Framework.
17.4 Handler mappings

In previous versions of Spring, users were required to define one or more
HandlerMapping beans in the web application context to map incoming web requests to
appropriate handlers. With the introduction of annotated controllers, you generally don't
need to do that because the RequestMappingHandlerMapping automatically looks
for @RequestMapping annotations on all @Controller beans. However, do keep in
mind that all HandlerMapping classes extending from AbstractHandlerMapping
have the following properties that you can use to customize their behavior:
interceptors
List of interceptors to use. HandlerInterceptors are discussed in
Section 17.4.1, Intercepting requests with a HandlerInterceptor.
defaultHandler
Default handler to use, when this handler mapping does not result in a matching
handler.
order
Based on the value of the order property (see the
org.springframework.core.Ordered interface), Spring sorts all handler
mappings available in the context and applies the first matching handler.
alwaysUseFullPath
If true , Spring uses the full path within the current Servlet context to find an
appropriate handler. If false (the default), the path within the current Servlet
mapping is used. For example, if a Servlet is mapped using /testing/* and the
alwaysUseFullPath property is set to true, /testing/viewPage.html is
used, whereas if the property is set to false, /viewPage.html is used.
urlDecode
Defaults to true, as of Spring 2.5. If you prefer to compare encoded paths, set this
flag to false. However, the HttpServletRequest always exposes the Servlet
path in decoded form. Be aware that the Servlet path will not match when compared
with encoded paths.
The following example shows how to configure an interceptor:
<beans>
<bean id="handlerMapping" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerMapping"
<property name="interceptors">
<bean class="example.MyInterceptor"/>
</property>
</bean>
<beans>
17.4.1 Intercepting requests with a HandlerInterceptor

Spring's handler mapping mechanism includes handler interceptors, which are useful
when you want to apply specific functionality to certain requests, for example, checking for
a principal.
Interceptors located in the handler mapping must implement HandlerInterceptor
from the org.springframework.web.servlet package. This interface defines three
methods: preHandle(..) is called before the actual handler is executed;
postHandle(..) is called after the handler is executed; and afterCompletion(..)
is called after the complete request has finished. These three methods should provide
enough flexibility to do all kinds of preprocessing and postprocessing.
The preHandle(..) method returns a boolean value. You can use this method to break
or continue the processing of the execution chain. When this method returns true, the
handler execution chain will continue; when it returns false, the DispatcherServlet
assumes the interceptor itself has taken care of requests (and, for example, rendered an
appropriate view) and does not continue executing the other interceptors and the actual
handler in the execution chain.
Interceptors can be configured using the interceptors property, which is present on all
HandlerMapping classes extending from AbstractHandlerMapping. This is shown
in the example below:
<beans>
<bean id="handlerMapping"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerMapping">
<list>
<ref bean="officeHoursInterceptor"/>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="officeHoursInterceptor"
class="samples.TimeBasedAccessInterceptor">
<property name="openingTime" value="9"/>
<property name="closingTime" value="18"/>
</bean>
<beans>
package samples;
public class TimeBasedAccessInterceptor extends HandlerInterceptorAdapter {
private int openingTime;
private int closingTime;
public void setOpeningTime(int openingTime) {
this.openingTime = openingTime;
}
public void setClosingTime(int closingTime) {
this.closingTime = closingTime;
}
public boolean preHandle(
HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response,
Object handler) throws Exception {
Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
int hour = cal.get(HOUR_OF_DAY);
if (openingTime <= hour && hour < closingTime) {
return true;
} else {
response.sendRedirect("http://host.com/outsideOfficeHours.html");
return false;
}
}
Any request handled by this mapping is intercepted by the

TimeBasedAccessInterceptor. If the current time is outside office hours, the user is
redirected to a static HTML file that says, for example, you can only access the website
during office hours.
Note
When using the RequestMappingHandlerMapping the actual
handler is an instance of HandlerMethod which identifies the
specific controller method that will be invoked.
As you can see, the Spring adapter class HandlerInterceptorAdapter makes it
easier to extend the HandlerInterceptor interface.
Tip
In the example above, the configured interceptor will apply to all
requests handled with annotated controller methods. If you want to
narrow down the URL paths to which an interceptor applies, you can
use the MVC namespace or the MVC Java config, or declare bean
instances of type MappedInterceptor to do that. See Enabling the
MVC Java Config or the MVC XML Namespace.
17.5 Resolving views

All MVC frameworks for web applications provide a way to address views. Spring provides
view resolvers, which enable you to render models in a browser without tying you to a
specific view technology. Out of the box, Spring enables you to use JSPs, Velocity
templates and XSLT views, for example. See Chapter 18, View technologies for a
discussion of how to integrate and use a number of disparate view technologies.
The two interfaces that are important to the way Spring handles views are
ViewResolver and View. The ViewResolver provides a mapping between view
names and actual views. The View interface addresses the preparation of the request and
hands the request over to one of the view technologies.
17.5.1 Resolving views with the ViewResolver interface

As discussed in Section 17.3, Implementing Controllers, all handler methods in the
Spring Web MVC controllers must resolve to a logical view name, either explicitly (e.g., by
returning a String, View, or ModelAndView) or implicitly (i.e., based on conventions).
Views in Spring are addressed by a logical view name and are resolved by a view
resolver. Spring comes with quite a few view resolvers. This table lists most of them; a
couple of examples follow.
Table 17.3. View resolvers

ViewResolver
Description
AbstractCachingViewResolver
Abstract view resolver that caches views.

Often views need preparation before they
can be used; extending this view resolver
provides caching.
XmlViewResolver
Implementation of ViewResolver that

accepts a configuration file written in XML
with the same DTD as Spring's XML bean
factories. The default configuration file is
/WEB-INF/views.xml.
Implementation of ViewResolver that
uses bean definitions in a
ResourceBundle, specified by the bundle

base name. Typically you define the bundle
in a properties file, located in the classpath.
The default file name is
views.properties.
Simple implementation of the

ViewResolver interface that effects the
direct resolution of logical view names to
URLs, without an explicit mapping
definition. This is appropriate if your logical
names match the names of your view
resources in a straightforward manner,
without the need for arbitrary mappings.
InternalResourceViewResolver
Convenient subclass of
UrlBasedViewResolver that supports
InternalResourceView (in effect,
Servlets and JSPs) and subclasses such as
JstlView and TilesView. You can
specify the view class for all views
generated by this resolver by using
setViewClass(..). See the Javadocs
for the UrlBasedViewResolver class for
details.
VelocityViewResolver /
FreeMarkerViewResolver
Convenient subclass of
UrlBasedViewResolver that supports
VelocityView (in effect, Velocity
templates) or FreeMarkerView
,respectively, and custom subclasses of
them.
Implementation of the ViewResolver

interface that resolves a view based on the
ContentNegotiatingViewResolver request file name or Accept header. See
Section 17.5.4,
ContentNegotiatingViewResolver.
As an example, with JSP as a view technology, you can use the

UrlBasedViewResolver. This view resolver translates a view name to a URL and
hands the request over to the RequestDispatcher to render the view.
<bean id="viewResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.UrlBasedViewResolver">
<property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView"/>
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/"/>
<property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/>
</bean>
When returning test as a logical view name, this view resolver forwards the request to
the RequestDispatcher that will send the request to /WEB-INF/jsp/test.jsp.
When you combine different view technologies in a web application, you can use the
ResourceBundleViewResolver:
<bean id="viewResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.ResourceBundleViewResolver">
<property name="basename" value="views"/>
<property name="defaultParentView" value="parentView"/>
</bean>
The ResourceBundleViewResolver inspects the ResourceBundle identified by

the basename, and for each view it is supposed to resolve, it uses the value of the property
[viewname].(class) as the view class and the value of the property
[viewname].url as the view url. Examples can be found in the next chapter which
covers view technologies. As you can see, you can identify a parent view, from which all
views in the properties file extend. This way you can specify a default view class, for
example.
Note
Subclasses of AbstractCachingViewResolver cache view
instances that they resolve. Caching improves performance of certain
view technologies. It's possible to turn off the cache by setting the
cache property to false. Furthermore, if you must refresh a certain
view at runtime (for example when a Velocity template is modified), you
can use the removeFromCache(String viewName, Locale
loc) method.
17.5.2 Chaining ViewResolvers

Spring supports multiple view resolvers. Thus you can chain resolvers and, for example,
override specific views in certain circumstances. You chain view resolvers by adding more
than one resolver to your application context and, if necessary, by setting the order
property to specify ordering. Remember, the higher the order property, the later the view
resolver is positioned in the chain.
In the following example, the chain of view resolvers consists of two resolvers, an
InternalResourceViewResolver, which is always automatically positioned as the
last resolver in the chain, and an XmlViewResolver for specifying Excel views. Excel
views are not supported by the InternalResourceViewResolver.
<bean id="jspViewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
</bean>
<bean id="excelViewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.XmlViewResolver">
<property name="location" value="/WEB-INF/views.xml"/>
</bean>

<beans>
<bean name="report" class="org.springframework.example.ReportExcelView"/>
</beans>
If a specific view resolver does not result in a view, Spring examines the context for other
view resolvers. If additional view resolvers exist, Spring continues to inspect them until a
view is resolved. If no view resolver returns a view, Spring throws a ServletException.
The contract of a view resolver specifies that a view resolver can return null to indicate the
view could not be found. Not all view resolvers do this, however, because in some cases,
the resolver simply cannot detect whether or not the view exists. For example, the
InternalResourceViewResolver uses the RequestDispatcher internally, and
dispatching is the only way to figure out if a JSP exists, but this action can only execute
once. The same holds for the VelocityViewResolver and some others. Check the
Javadoc for the view resolver to see whether it reports non-existing views. Thus, putting an
InternalResourceViewResolver in the chain in a place other than the last, results
in the chain not being fully inspected, because the InternalResourceViewResolver
will always return a view!
17.5.3 Redirecting to views

As mentioned previously, a controller typically returns a logical view name, which a view
resolver resolves to a particular view technology. For view technologies such as JSPs that
are processed through the Servlet or JSP engine, this resolution is usually handled
through the combination of InternalResourceViewResolver and
InternalResourceView, which issues an internal forward or include via the Servlet
API's RequestDispatcher.forward(..) method or
RequestDispatcher.include() method. For other view technologies, such as

Velocity, XSLT, and so on, the view itself writes the content directly to the response stream.
It is sometimes desirable to issue an HTTP redirect back to the client, before the view is
rendered. This is desirable, for example, when one controller has been called with POSTed
data, and the response is actually a delegation to another controller (for example on a
successful form submission). In this case, a normal internal forward will mean that the other
controller will also see the same POST data, which is potentially problematic if it can
confuse it with other expected data. Another reason to perform a redirect before displaying
the result is to eliminate the possibility of the user submitting the form data multiple times.
In this scenario, the browser will first send an initial POST; it will then receive a response to
redirect to a different URL; and finally the browser will perform a subsequent GET for the
URL named in the redirect response. Thus, from the perspective of the browser, the current
page does not reflect the result of a POST but rather of a GET. The end effect is that there is
no way the user can accidentally re-POST the same data by performing a refresh. The
refresh forces a GET of the result page, not a resend of the initial POST data.
RedirectView
One way to force a redirect as the result of a controller response is for the controller to
create and return an instance of Spring's RedirectView. In this case,
DispatcherServlet does not use the normal view resolution mechanism. Rather
because it has been given the (redirect) view already, the DispatcherServlet simply
instructs the view to do its work.
The RedirectView issues an HttpServletResponse.sendRedirect() call that
returns to the client browser as an HTTP redirect. By default all model attributes are
considered to be exposed as URI template variables in the redirect URL. Of the remaining
attributes those that are primitive types or collections/arrays of primitive types are
automatically appended as query parameters.
Appending primitive type attributes as query parameters may be the desired result if a
model instance was prepared specifically for the redirect. However, in annotated
controllers the model may contain additional attributes added for rendering purposes (e.g.
drop-down field values). To avoid the possibility of having such attributes appear in the
URL an annotated controller can declare an argument of type RedirectAttributes
and use it to specify the exact attributes to make available to RedirectView. If the
controller method decides to redirect, the content of RedirectAttributes is used.
Otherwise the content of the model is used.
Note that URI template variables from the present request are automatically made
available when expanding a redirect URL and do not need to be added explicitly neither
through Model nor RedirectAttributes. For example:
@RequestMapping(value = "/files/{path}", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String upload(...) {
// ...
return "redirect:files/{path}";
}
If you use RedirectView and the view is created by the controller itself, it is
recommended that you configure the redirect URL to be injected into the controller so that it
is not baked into the controller but configured in the context along with the view names.
The next section discusses this process.
The redirect: prefix

While the use of RedirectView works fine, if the controller itself creates the
RedirectView, there is no avoiding the fact that the controller is aware that a redirection
is happening. This is really suboptimal and couples things too tightly. The controller should
not really care about how the response gets handled. In general it should operate only in
terms of view names that have been injected into it.
The special redirect: prefix allows you to accomplish this. If a view name is returned
that has the prefix redirect:, the UrlBasedViewResolver (and all subclasses) will
recognize this as a special indication that a redirect is needed. The rest of the view name
will be treated as the redirect URL.
The net effect is the same as if the controller had returned a RedirectView, but now the
controller itself can simply operate in terms of logical view names. A logical view name
such as redirect:/myapp/some/resource will redirect relative to the current Servlet
context, while a name such as
redirect:http://myhost.com/some/arbitrary/path will redirect to an
absolute URL.
The forward: prefix

It is also possible to use a special forward: prefix for view names that are ultimately
resolved by UrlBasedViewResolver and subclasses. This creates an
InternalResourceView (which ultimately does a
RequestDispatcher.forward()) around the rest of the view name, which is
considered a URL. Therefore, this prefix is not useful with
InternalResourceViewResolver and InternalResourceView (for JSPs for
example). But the prefix can be helpful when you are primarily using another view
technology, but still want to force a forward of a resource to be handled by the Servlet/JSP
engine. (Note that you may also chain multiple view resolvers, instead.)
As with the redirect: prefix, if the view name with the forward: prefix is injected into
the controller, the controller does not detect that anything special is happening in terms of
handling the response.
17.5.4 ContentNegotiatingViewResolver
The ContentNegotiatingViewResolver does not resolve views itself but rather
delegates to other view resolvers, selecting the view that resembles the representation
requested by the client. Two strategies exist for a client to request a representation from the
server:
Use a distinct URI for each resource, typically by using a different file extension in the
URI. For example, the URI http://www.example.com/users/fred.pdf
requests a PDF representation of the user fred, and
http://www.example.com/users/fred.xml requests an XML representation.
Use the same URI for the client to locate the resource, but set the Accept HTTP
request header to list the media types that it understands. For example, an HTTP
request for http://www.example.com/users/fred with an Accept header set
to application/pdf requests a PDF representation of the user fred, while
http://www.example.com/users/fred with an Accept header set to
text/xml requests an XML representation. This strategy is known as content
negotiation.
Note
One issue with the Accept header is that it is impossible to set it in a web browser
within HTML. For example, in Firefox, it is fixed to:
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
For this reason it is common to see the use of a distinct URI for each representation
when developing browser based web applications.
To support multiple representations of a resource, Spring provides the
ContentNegotiatingViewResolver to resolve a view based on the file extension or
Accept header of the HTTP request. ContentNegotiatingViewResolver does not

perform the view resolution itself but instead delegates to a list of view resolvers that you
specify through the bean property ViewResolvers.
The ContentNegotiatingViewResolver selects an appropriate View to handle the
request by comparing the request media type(s) with the media type (also known as
Content-Type) supported by the View associated with each of its ViewResolvers.
The first View in the list that has a compatible Content-Type returns the representation
to the client. If a compatible view cannot be supplied by the ViewResolver chain, then
the list of views specified through the DefaultViews property will be consulted. This
latter option is appropriate for singleton Views that can render an appropriate
representation of the current resource regardless of the logical view name. The Accept
header may include wild cards, for example text/*, in which case a View whose
Content-Type was text/xml is a compatible match.
To support the resolution of a view based on a file extension, use the
ContentNegotiatingViewResolver bean property mediaTypes to specify a
mapping of file extensions to media types. For more information on the algorithm used to
determine the request media type, refer to the API documentation for
ContentNegotiatingViewResolver.
Here is an example configuration of a ContentNegotiatingViewResolver:
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.ContentNegotiatingViewResolver">
<property name="mediaTypes">
<map>
<entry key="atom" value="application/atom+xml"/>
<entry key="html" value="text/html"/>
<entry key="json" value="application/json"/>
</map>
</property>
<property name="viewResolvers">
<list>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.BeanNameViewResolver"/>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
</bean>
</list>
</property>
<property name="defaultViews">
<list>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.json.MappingJackson2JsonView" />
</list>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="content" class="com.springsource.samples.rest.SampleContentAtomView"/>
The InternalResourceViewResolver handles the translation of view names and

JSP pages, while the BeanNameViewResolver returns a view based on the name of a
bean. (See "Resolving views with the ViewResolver interface" for more details on how
Spring looks up and instantiates a view.) In this example, the content bean is a class
that inherits from AbstractAtomFeedView, which returns an Atom RSS feed. For more
information on creating an Atom Feed representation, see the section Atom Views.
In the above configuration, if a request is made with an .html extension, the view resolver
looks for a view that matches the text/html media type. The
InternalResourceViewResolver provides the matching view for text/html. If the
request is made with the file extension .atom, the view resolver looks for a view that
matches the application/atom+xml media type. This view is provided by the
BeanNameViewResolver that maps to the SampleContentAtomView if the view
name returned is content. If the request is made with the file extension .json, the
MappingJackson2JsonViewinstance from the DefaultViews list will be selected
regardless of the view name. Alternatively, client requests can be made without a file
extension but with the Accept header set to the preferred media-type, and the same
resolution of request to views would occur.
Note
If ContentNegotiatingViewResolver's list of ViewResolvers is
not configured explicitly, it automatically uses any ViewResolvers
defined in the application context.
The corresponding controller code that returns an Atom RSS feed for a URI of the form
http://localhost/content.atom or http://localhost/content with an
Accept header of application/atom+xml is shown below.
@Controller
public class ContentController {
private List<SampleContent> contentList = new ArrayList<SampleContent>();
@RequestMapping(value="/content", method=RequestMethod.GET)
public ModelAndView getContent() {
ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView();
mav.setViewName("content");
mav.addObject("sampleContentList", contentList);
return mav;
}
}
17.6 Using flash attributes

Flash attributes provide a way for one request to store attributes intended for use in
another. This is most commonly needed when redirecting for example, the
Post/Redirect/Get pattern. Flash attributes are saved temporarily before the redirect
(typically in the session) to be made available to the request after the redirect and removed
immediately.
Spring MVC has two main abstractions in support of flash attributes. FlashMap is used to
hold flash attributes while FlashMapManager is used to store, retrieve, and manage
FlashMap instances.
Flash attribute support is always "on" and does not need to enabled explicitly although if
not used, it never causes HTTP session creation. On each request there is an "input"
FlashMap with attributes passed from a previous request (if any) and an "output"
FlashMap with attributes to save for a subsequent request. Both FlashMap instances are
accessible from anywhere in Spring MVC through static methods in
RequestContextUtils.
Annotated controllers typically do not need to work with FlashMap directly. Instead an
@RequestMapping method can accept an argument of type RedirectAttributes
and use it to add flash attributes for a redirect scenario. Flash attributes added via
RedirectAttributes are automatically propagated to the "output" FlashMap. Similarly
after the redirect attributes from the "input" FlashMap are automatically added to the
Model of the controller serving the target URL.
Matching requests to flash

attributes
The concept of flash attributes
exists in many other Web
frameworks and has proven to
be exposed sometimes to
concurrency issues. This is
because by definition flash
attributes are to be stored until
the next request. However the
very "next" request may not be
the intended recipient but
another asynchronous request
(e.g. polling or resource
requests) in which case the flash

attributes are removed too early.
To reduce the possibility of such
issues, RedirectView
automatically "stamps"
FlashMap instances with the
path and query parameters of
the target redirect URL. In turn
the default
FlashMapManager matches
that information to incoming
requests when looking up the
"input" FlashMap .
This does not eliminate the
possibility of a concurrency issue
entirely but nevertheless reduces
it greatly with information that is
already available in the redirect
URL. Therefore the use of flash
attributes is recommended
mainly for redirect scenarios .
17.7 Building URIs

Spring MVC provides a mechanism for building and encoding a URI using
UriComponentsBuilder and UriComponents.
For example you can expand and encode a URI template string:
UriComponents uriComponents =
UriComponentsBuilder.fromUriString("http://example.com/hotels/{hotel}/bookings/{booking}").build();
URI uri = uriComponents.expand("42", "21").encode().toUri();
Note that UriComponents is immutable and the expand() and encode() operations
return new instances if necessary.
You can also expand and encode using individual URI components:
UriComponentsBuilder.newInstance()
.scheme("http").host("example.com").path("/hotels/{hotel}/bookings/{booking}").build()
.expand("42", "21")
.encode();
In a Servlet environment the ServletUriComponentsBuilder sub-class provides

static factory methods to copy available URL information from a Servlet requests:
HttpServletRequest request = ...
// Re-use host, scheme, port, path and query string
// Replace the "accountId" query param
ServletUriComponentsBuilder ucb =
ServletUriComponentsBuilder.fromRequest(request).replaceQueryParam("accountId", "{id}").build()
.expand("123")
.encode();
Alternatively, you may choose to copy a subset of the available information up to and
including the context path:
// Re-use host, port and context path
// Append "/accounts" to the path
ServletUriComponentsBuilder.fromContextPath(request).path("/accounts").build()
Or in cases where the DispatcherServlet is mapped by name (e.g. /main/*), you
can also have the literal part of the servlet mapping included:
// Re-use host, port, context path
// Append the literal part of the servlet mapping to the path
// Append "/accounts" to the path
ServletUriComponentsBuilder.fromServletMapping(request).path("/accounts").build()
17.8 Using locales

Most parts of Spring's architecture support internationalization, just as the Spring web MVC
framework does. DispatcherServlet enables you to automatically resolve messages
using the client's locale. This is done with LocaleResolver objects.
When a request comes in, the DispatcherServlet looks for a locale resolver, and if it
finds one it tries to use it to set the locale. Using the RequestContext.getLocale()
method, you can always retrieve the locale that was resolved by the locale resolver.
In addition to automatic locale resolution, you can also attach an interceptor to the handler
mapping (see Section 17.4.1, Intercepting requests with a HandlerInterceptor for
more information on handler mapping interceptors) to change the locale under specific
circumstances, for example, based on a parameter in the request.
Locale resolvers and interceptors are defined in the
org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n package and are configured in your
application context in the normal way. Here is a selection of the locale resolvers included
in Spring.
17.8.1 AcceptHeaderLocaleResolver
This locale resolver inspects the accept-language header in the request that was sent
by the client (e.g., a web browser). Usually this header field contains the locale of the
client's operating system.
17.8.2 CookieLocaleResolver
This locale resolver inspects a Cookie that might exist on the client to see if a locale is
specified. If so, it uses the specified locale. Using the properties of this locale resolver, you
can specify the name of the cookie as well as the maximum age. Find below an example of
defining a CookieLocaleResolver.
<bean id="localeResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.CookieLocaleResolver">
<property name="cookieName" value="clientlanguage"/>

<property name="cookieMaxAge" value="100000">
</bean>
Table 17.4. CookieLocaleResolver properties

Property
Default
cookieName
classname +
LOCALE
Description
The name of the cookie
The maximum time a cookie will stay

persistent on the client. If -1 is specified, the
cookieMaxAge Integer.MAX_INT cookie will not be persisted; it will only be
available until the client shuts down his or
her browser.
cookiePath
Limits the visibility of the cookie to a certain

part of your site. When cookiePath is
cookiePath
specified, the cookie will only be visible to

that path and the paths below it.
17.8.3 SessionLocaleResolver
The SessionLocaleResolver allows you to retrieve locales from the session that
might be associated with the user's request.
17.8.4 LocaleChangeInterceptor
You can enable changing of locales by adding the LocaleChangeInterceptor to one
of the handler mappings (see Section 17.4, Handler mappings). It will detect a parameter
in the request and change the locale. It calls setLocale() on the LocaleResolver
that also exists in the context. The following example shows that calls to all *.view
resources containing a parameter named siteLanguage will now change the locale. So,
for example, a request for the following URL, http://www.sf.net/home.view?
siteLanguage=nl will change the site language to Dutch.
<bean id="localeChangeInterceptor"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.LocaleChangeInterceptor">
<property name="paramName" value="siteLanguage"/>
</bean>
<bean id="localeResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.CookieLocaleResolver"/>
<bean id="urlMapping"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping">
<list>
<ref bean="localeChangeInterceptor"/>
</list>
</property>
<property name="mappings">
<value>/**/*.view=someController</value>
</property>
</bean>
17.9 Using themes

17.9.1 Overview of themes
You can apply Spring Web MVC framework themes to set the overall look-and-feel of your
application, thereby enhancing user experience. A theme is a collection of static resources,
typically style sheets and images, that affect the visual style of the application.
17.9.2 Defining themes

To use themes in your web application, you must set up an implementation of the
org.springframework.ui.context.ThemeSource interface. The
WebApplicationContext interface extends ThemeSource but delegates its
responsibilities to a dedicated implementation. By default the delegate will be an
org.springframework.ui.context.support.ResourceBundleThemeSource
implementation that loads properties files from the root of the classpath. To use a custom
ThemeSource implementation or to configure the base name prefix of the
ResourceBundleThemeSource, you can register a bean in the application context with
the reserved name themeSource. The web application context automatically detects a
bean with that name and uses it.
When using the ResourceBundleThemeSource, a theme is defined in a simple
properties file. The properties file lists the resources that make up the theme. Here is an
example:
styleSheet=/themes/cool/style.css
background=/themes/cool/img/coolBg.jpg
The keys of the properties are the names that refer to the themed elements from view code.
For a JSP, you typically do this using the spring:theme custom tag, which is very
similar to the spring:message tag. The following JSP fragment uses the theme defined
in the previous example to customize the look and feel:
<%@ taglib prefix="spring" uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags"%>
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<spring:theme code='styleSheet'/>" type="text/css"/>
</head>
<body style="background=<spring:theme code='background'/>">
...
</body>
</html>
By default, the ResourceBundleThemeSource uses an empty base name prefix. As a

result, the properties files are loaded from the root of the classpath. Thus you would put the
cool.properties theme definition in a directory at the root of the classpath, for
example, in /WEB-INF/classes. The ResourceBundleThemeSource uses the
standard Java resource bundle loading mechanism, allowing for full internationalization of
themes. For example, we could have a /WEB-INF/classes/cool_nl.properties
that references a special background image with Dutch text on it.
17.9.3 Theme resolvers

After you define themes, as in the preceding section, you decide which theme to use. The
DispatcherServlet will look for a bean named themeResolver to find out which
ThemeResolver implementation to use. A theme resolver works in much the same way
as a LocaleResolver. It detects the theme to use for a particular request and can also
alter the request's theme. The following theme resolvers are provided by Spring:
Table 17.5. ThemeResolver implementations

Class
FixedThemeResolver
Description
Selects a fixed theme, set using the
defaultThemeName property.
The theme is maintained in the user's HTTP

SessionThemeResolver session. It only needs to be set once for each
session, but is not persisted between sessions.
CookieThemeResolver
The selected theme is stored in a cookie on the

client.
Spring also provides a ThemeChangeInterceptor that allows theme changes on

every request with a simple request parameter.
17.10 Spring's multipart (file upload) support

17.10.1 Introduction
Spring's built-in multipart support handles file uploads in web applications. You enable this
multipart support with pluggable MultipartResolver objects, defined in the
org.springframework.web.multipart package. Spring provides one
MultipartResolver implementation for use with Commons FileUpload and another for
use with Servlet 3.0 multipart request parsing.
By default, Spring does no multipart handling, because some developers want to handle
multiparts themselves. You enable Spring multipart handling by adding a multipart resolver
to the web application's context. Each request is inspected to see if it contains a multipart.
If no multipart is found, the request continues as expected. If a multipart is found in the
request, the MultipartResolver that has been declared in your context is used. After
that, the multipart attribute in your request is treated like any other attribute.
17.10.2 Using a MultipartResolver with Commons FileUpload

The following example shows how to use the CommonsMultipartResolver:
<bean id="multipartResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.multipart.commons.CommonsMultipartResolver">

<property name="maxUploadSize" value="100000"/>
</bean>
Of course you also need to put the appropriate jars in your classpath for the multipart
resolver to work. In the case of the CommonsMultipartResolver, you need to use
commons-fileupload.jar.
When the Spring DispatcherServlet detects a multi-part request, it activates the
resolver that has been declared in your context and hands over the request. The resolver
then wraps the current HttpServletRequest into a
MultipartHttpServletRequest that supports multipart file uploads. Using the
MultipartHttpServletRequest, you can get information about the multiparts
contained by this request and actually get access to the multipart files themselves in your
controllers.
17.10.3 Using a MultipartResolver with Servlet 3.0

In order to use Servlet 3.0 based multipart parsing, you need to mark the
DispatcherServlet with a "multipart-config" section in web.xml, or with a
javax.servlet.MultipartConfigElement in programmatic Servlet registration, or
in case of a custom Servlet class possibly with a
javax.servlet.annotation.MultipartConfig annotation on your Servlet class.
Configuration settings such as maximum sizes or storage locations need to be applied at
that Servlet registration level as Servlet 3.0 does not allow for those settings to be done
from the MultipartResolver.
Once Servlet 3.0 multipart parsing has been enabled in one of the above mentioned ways
you can add the StandardServletMultipartResolver to your Spring configuration:
<bean id="multipartResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.multipart.support.StandardServletMultipartResolver">
</bean>
17.10.4 Handling a file upload in a form

After the MultipartResolver completes its job, the request is processed like any other.
First, create a form with a file input that will allow the user to upload a form. The encoding
attribute (enctype="multipart/form-data") lets the browser know how to encode
the form as multipart request:
<html>
<head>
<title>Upload a file please</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Please upload a file</h1>
<form method="post" action="/form" enctype="multipart/form-data">
<input type="text" name="name"/>
<input type="file" name="file"/>
<input type="submit"/>
</form>
</body>
</html>
The next step is to create a controller that handles the file upload. This controller is very
similar to a normal annotated @Controller, except that we use
MultipartHttpServletRequest or MultipartFile in the method parameters:
@Controller
public class FileUploadController {
@RequestMapping(value = "/form", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String handleFormUpload(@RequestParam("name") String name,
@RequestParam("file") MultipartFile file) {
if (!file.isEmpty()) {
byte[] bytes = file.getBytes();
// store the bytes somewhere
return "redirect:uploadSuccess";
} else {
return "redirect:uploadFailure";
}
}
}
Note how the @RequestParam method parameters map to the input elements declared in
the form. In this example, nothing is done with the byte[], but in practice you can save it
in a database, store it on the file system, and so on.
When using Servlet 3.0 multipart parsing you can also use
javax.servlet.http.Part for the method parameter:
@Controller
public class FileUploadController {
@RequestMapping(value = "/form", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String handleFormUpload(@RequestParam("name") String name,
@RequestParam("file") Part file) {
InputStream inputStream = file.getInputStream();
// store bytes from uploaded file somewhere
return "redirect:uploadSuccess";
}
}
17.10.5 Handling a file upload request from programmatic clients

Multipart requests can also be submitted from non-browser clients in a RESTful service
scenario. All of the above examples and configuration apply here as well. However, unlike
browsers that typically submit files and simple form fields, a programmatic client can also
send more complex data of a specific content type for example a multipart request with a
file and second part with JSON formatted data:
POST /someUrl
Content-Type: multipart/mixed
--edt7Tfrdusa7r3lNQc79vXuhIIMlatb7PQg7Vp
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="meta-data"
Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
{
"name": "value"
}
--edt7Tfrdusa7r3lNQc79vXuhIIMlatb7PQg7Vp
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="file-data"; filename="file.properties"
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
... File Data ...
You could access the part named "meta-data" with a @RequestParam("meta-data")

String metadata controller method argument. However, you would probably prefer to
accept a strongly typed object initialized from the JSON formatted data in the body of the
request part, very similar to the way @RequestBody converts the body of a non-multipart
request to a target object with the help of an HttpMessageConverter.
You can use the @RequestPart annotation instead of the @RequestParam annotation
for this purpose. It allows you to have the content of a specific multipart passed through an
HttpMessageConverter taking into consideration the 'Content-Type' header of

the multipart:
@RequestMapping(value="/someUrl", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String onSubmit(@RequestPart("meta-data") MetaData metadata,
@RequestPart("file-data") MultipartFile file) {
// ...
}
Notice how MultipartFile method arguments can be accessed with

@RequestParam or with @RequestPart interchangeably. However, the
@RequestPart("meta-data") MetaData method argument in this case is read as
JSON content based on its 'Content-Type' header and converted with the help of the
MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter.
17.11 Handling exceptions

17.11.1 HandlerExceptionResolver
Spring HandlerExceptionResolver implementations deal with unexpected
exceptions that occur during controller execution. A HandlerExceptionResolver
somewhat resembles the exception mappings you can define in the web application
descriptor web.xml. However, they provide a more flexible way to do so. For example
they provide information about which handler was executing when the exception was
thrown. Furthermore, a programmatic way of handling exceptions gives you more options
for responding appropriately before the request is forwarded to another URL (the same end
result as when you use the Servlet specific exception mappings).
Besides implementing the HandlerExceptionResolver interface, which is only a
matter of implementing the resolveException(Exception, Handler) method and
returning a ModelAndView, you may also use the provided
SimpleMappingExceptionResolver or create @ExceptionHandler methods.
The SimpleMappingExceptionResolver enables you to take the class name of any
exception that might be thrown and map it to a view name. This is functionally equivalent to
the exception mapping feature from the Servlet API, but it is also possible to implement
more finely grained mappings of exceptions from different handlers. The
@ExceptionHandler annotation on the other hand can be used on methods that should
be invoked to handle an exception. Such methods may be defined locally within an
@Controller or may apply globally to all @RequestMapping methods when defined
within an @ControllerAdvice class. The following sections explain this in more detail.
17.11.2 @ExceptionHandler
The HandlerExceptionResolver interface and the
SimpleMappingExceptionResolver implementations allow you to map Exceptions
to specific views declaratively along with some optional Java logic before forwarding to
those views. However, in some cases, especially when relying on @ResponseBody
methods rather than on view resolution, it may be more convenient to directly set the status
of the response and optionally write error content to the body of the response.
You can do that with @ExceptionHandler methods. When declared within a controller
such methods apply to exceptions raised by @RequestMapping methods of that
contoroller (or any of its sub-classes). You can also declare an @ExceptionHandler
method within an @ControllerAdvice class in which case it handles exceptions from
@RequestMapping methods from any controller. The @ControllerAdvice annotation
is a component annotation, which can be used with classpath scanning. It is automatically
enabled when using the MVC namespace and the MVC Java config, or otherwise
depending on whether the ExceptionHandlerExceptionResolver is configured or
not. Below is an example of a controller-local @ExceptionHandler method:
@Controller
public class SimpleController {
// @RequestMapping methods omitted ...
@ExceptionHandler(IOException.class)
public ResponseEntity<String> handleIOException(IOException ex) {
// prepare responseEntity
return responseEntity;
}
}
The @ExceptionHandler value can be set to an array of Exception types. If an

exception is thrown that matches one of the types in the list, then the method annotated
with the matching @ExceptionHandler will be invoked. If the annotation value is not set
then the exception types listed as method arguments are used.
Much like standard controller methods annotated with a @RequestMapping annotation,
the method arguments and return values of @ExceptionHandler methods can be
flexible. For example, the HttpServletRequest can be accessed in Servlet
environments and the PortletRequest in Portlet environments. The return type can be
a String, which is interpreted as a view name, a ModelAndView object, a
ResponseEntity, or you can also add the @ResponseBody to have the method return
value converted with message converters and written to the response stream.
17.11.3 Handling Standard Spring MVC Exceptions

Spring MVC may raise a number of exceptions while processing a request. The
SimpleMappingExceptionResolver can easily map any exception to a default error
view as needed. However, when working with clients that interpret responses in an
automated way you will want to set specific status code on the response. Depending on
the exception raised the status code may indicate a client error (4xx) or a server error (5xx).
The DefaultHandlerExceptionResolver translates Spring MVC exceptions to
specific error status codes. It is registered by default with the MVC namespace, the MVC
Java config, and also by the the DispatcherServlet (i.e. when not using the MVC
namespace or Java config). Listed below are some of the exceptions handled by this
resolver and the corresponding status codes:
Exception
HTTP Status Code
BindException
400 (Bad Request)
ConversionNotSupportedException
500 (Internal Server Error)
HttpMediaTypeNotAcceptableException
406 (Not Acceptable)
HttpMediaTypeNotSupportedException
415 (Unsupported Media

Type)
HttpMessageNotReadableException
400 (Bad Request)
HttpMessageNotWritableException
500 (Internal Server Error)
HttpRequestMethodNotSupportedException
405 (Method Not Allowed)
MethodArgumentNotValidException
400 (Bad Request)
MissingServletRequestParameterException
400 (Bad Request)
MissingServletRequestPartException
400 (Bad Request)
NoSuchRequestHandlingMethodException
404 (Not Found)
TypeMismatchException
400 (Bad Request)
The DefaultHandlerExceptionResolver works transparently by setting the status

of the response. However, it stops short of writing any error content to the body of the
response while your application may need to add developer-friendly content to every error
response for example when providing a REST API. You can prepare a ModelAndView
and render error content through view resolution -- i.e. by configuring a
ContentNegotiatingViewResolver, MappingJacksonJsonView, and so on.
However, you may prefer to use @ExceptionHandler methods instead.
If you prefer to write error content via @ExceptionHandler methods you can extend
ResponseEntityExceptionHandler instead. This is a convenient base for
@ControllerAdvice classes providing an @ExceptionHandler method to handle
standard Spring MVC exceptions and return ResponseEntity. That allows you to
customize the response and write error content with message converters. See the Javadoc
of ResponseEntityExceptionHandler for more details.
17.11.4 Annotating Business Exceptions With @ResponseStatus

A business exception can be annotated with @ResponseStatus. When the exception is
raised, the ResponseStatusExceptionResolver handles it by setting the status of
the response accordingly. By default the DispatcherServlet registers the
ResponseStatusExceptionResolver and it is available for use.
17.11.5 Customizing the Default Servlet Container Error Page

When the status of the response is set to an error status code and the body of the response
is empty, Servlet containers commonly render an HTML formatted error page. To
customize the default error page of the container, you can declare an <error-page>
element in web.xml. Up until Servlet 3, that element had to be mapped to a specific status
code or exception type. Starting with Servlet 3 an error page does not need to be mapped,
which effectively means the specified location customizes the default Servlet container
error page.
<error-page>
<location>/error</location>
</error-page>
Note that the actual location for the error page can be a JSP page or some other URL
within the container including one handled through an @Controller method:
When writing error information, the status code and the error message set on the
HttpServletResponse can be accessed through request attributes in a controller:
@Controller
public class ErrorController {
@RequestMapping(value="/error", produces="application/json")
@ResponseBody
public Map<String, Object> handle(HttpServletRequest request) {
Map<String, Object> map = new HashMap<String, Object>();
map.put("status", request.getAttribute("javax.servlet.error.status_code"));
map.put("reason", request.getAttribute("javax.servlet.error.message"));
return map;
}
}
or in a JSP:
<%@ page contentType="application/json" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
{
status:<%=request.getAttribute("javax.servlet.error.status_code") %>,
reason:<%=request.getAttribute("javax.servlet.error.message") %>
}
17.12 Convention over configuration support

For a lot of projects, sticking to established conventions and having reasonable defaults is
just what they (the projects) need, and Spring Web MVC now has explicit support for
convention over configuration. What this means is that if you establish a set of naming
conventions and suchlike, you can substantially cut down on the amount of configuration
that is required to set up handler mappings, view resolvers, ModelAndView instances,
etc. This is a great boon with regards to rapid prototyping, and can also lend a degree of
(always good-to-have) consistency across a codebase should you choose to move forward
with it into production.
Convention-over-configuration support addresses the three core areas of MVC: models,
views, and controllers.
17.12.1 The Controller ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping

The ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping class is a HandlerMapping
implementation that uses a convention to determine the mapping between request URLs
and the Controller instances that are to handle those requests.
Consider the following simple Controller implementation. Take special notice of the
name of the class.
public class ViewShoppingCartController implements Controller {
public ModelAndView handleRequest(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) {
// the implementation is not hugely important for this example...
}
}
Here is a snippet from the corresponding Spring Web MVC configuration file:
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.support.ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping"/>
<bean id="viewShoppingCart" class="x.y.z.ViewShoppingCartController">

</bean>
The ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping finds all of the various handler (or

Controller) beans defined in its application context and strips Controller off the
name to define its handler mappings. Thus, ViewShoppingCartController maps to
the /viewshoppingcart* request URL.
Let's look at some more examples so that the central idea becomes immediately familiar.
(Notice all lowercase in the URLs, in contrast to camel-cased Controller class names.)
WelcomeController maps to the /welcome* request URL
HomeController maps to the /home* request URL
IndexController maps to the /index* request URL
RegisterController maps to the /register* request URL
In the case of MultiActionController handler classes, the mappings generated are
slightly more complex. The Controller names in the following examples are assumed
to be MultiActionController implementations:
AdminController maps to the /admin/* request URL
CatalogController maps to the /catalog/* request URL
If you follow the convention of naming your Controller implementations as
xxxController, the ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping saves you the tedium
of defining and maintaining a potentially looooong SimpleUrlHandlerMapping (or
suchlike).
The ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping class extends the
AbstractHandlerMapping base class so you can define HandlerInterceptor
instances and everything else just as you would with many other HandlerMapping
implementations.
17.12.2 The Model ModelMap (ModelAndView)

The ModelMap class is essentially a glorified Map that can make adding objects that are
to be displayed in (or on) a View adhere to a common naming convention. Consider the
following Controller implementation; notice that objects are added to the
ModelAndView without any associated name specified.
public class DisplayShoppingCartController implements Controller {
List cartItems = // get a List of CartItem objects
User user = // get the User doing the shopping
ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView("displayShoppingCart"); <-- the logical view name
mav.addObject(cartItems); <-- look ma, no name, just the object
mav.addObject(user); <-- and again ma!
return mav;
}
}
The ModelAndView class uses a ModelMap class that is a custom Map implementation
that automatically generates a key for an object when an object is added to it. The strategy
for determining the name for an added object is, in the case of a scalar object such as
User, to use the short class name of the object's class. The following examples are names
that are generated for scalar objects put into a ModelMap instance.
An x.y.User instance added will have the name user generated.
An x.y.Registration instance added will have the name registration
generated.
An x.y.Foo instance added will have the name foo generated.
A java.util.HashMap instance added will have the name hashMap generated.
You probably want to be explicit about the name in this case because hashMap is
less than intuitive.
Adding null will result in an IllegalArgumentException being thrown. If the
object (or objects) that you are adding could be null, then you will also want to be
explicit about the name.
The strategy for generating a name after adding a
Set or a List is to peek into the collection, take
the short class name of the first object in the
collection, and use that with List appended to
the name. The same applies to arrays although
with arrays it is not necessary to peek into the
array contents. A few examples will make the
semantics of name generation for collections
clearer:
An x.y.User[] array with zero or more
x.y.User elements added will have the
name userList generated.
An x.y.Foo[] array with zero or more
What, no automatic
pluralization?
Spring Web MVC's conventionover-configuration support does
not support automatic
pluralization. That is, you cannot
add a List of Person objects
to a ModelAndView and have
the generated name be
people .
This decision was made after
some debate, with the Principle
of Least Surprise winning out in
the end.
x.y.User elements added will have the

name fooList generated.
A java.util.ArrayList with one or more x.y.User elements added will have
the name userList generated.
A java.util.HashSet with one or more x.y.Foo elements added will have the
name fooList generated.
An empty java.util.ArrayList will not be added at all (in effect, the
addObject(..) call will essentially be a no-op).
17.12.3 The View - RequestToViewNameTranslator

The RequestToViewNameTranslator interface determines a logical View name
when no such logical view name is explicitly supplied. It has just one implementation, the
DefaultRequestToViewNameTranslator class.
The DefaultRequestToViewNameTranslator maps request URLs to logical view
names, as with this example:
public class RegistrationController implements Controller {
// process the request...
ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView();
// add data as necessary to the model...
return mav;
// notice that no View or logical view name has been set
}
}


<bean id="viewNameTranslator"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.DefaultRequestToViewNameTranslator"/>
<bean class="x.y.RegistrationController">

</bean>

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.support.ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping"/>
<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
</bean>
</beans>
Notice how in the implementation of the handleRequest(..) method no View or

logical view name is ever set on the ModelAndView that is returned. The
DefaultRequestToViewNameTranslator is tasked with generating a logical view
name from the URL of the request. In the case of the above
RegistrationController, which is used in conjunction with the
ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping, a request URL of
http://localhost/registration.html results in a logical view name of
registration being generated by the DefaultRequestToViewNameTranslator.
This logical view name is then resolved into the /WEB-INF/jsp/registration.jsp
view by the InternalResourceViewResolver bean.
Tip
You do not need to define a
DefaultRequestToViewNameTranslator bean explicitly. If you
like the default settings of the
DefaultRequestToViewNameTranslator, you can rely on the
Spring Web MVC DispatcherServlet to instantiate an instance of
this class if one is not explicitly configured.
Of course, if you need to change the default settings, then you do need to configure your
own DefaultRequestToViewNameTranslator bean explicitly. Consult the
comprehensive Javadoc for the DefaultRequestToViewNameTranslator class for
details of the various properties that can be configured.
17.13 ETag support

An ETag (entity tag) is an HTTP response header returned by an HTTP/1.1 compliant web
server used to determine change in content at a given URL. It can be considered to be the
more sophisticated successor to the Last-Modified header. When a server returns a
representation with an ETag header, the client can use this header in subsequent GETs, in
an If-None-Match header. If the content has not changed, the server returns 304:
Not Modified.
Support for ETags is provided by the Servlet filter ShallowEtagHeaderFilter. It is a
plain Servlet Filter, and thus can be used in combination with any web framework. The
ShallowEtagHeaderFilter filter creates so-called shallow ETags (as opposed to
deep ETags, more about that later).The filter caches the content of the rendered JSP (or
other content), generates an MD5 hash over that, and returns that as an ETag header in
the response. The next time a client sends a request for the same resource, it uses that
hash as the If-None-Match value. The filter detects this, renders the view again, and
compares the two hashes. If they are equal, a 304 is returned. This filter will not save
processing power, as the view is still rendered. The only thing it saves is bandwidth, as the
rendered response is not sent back over the wire.
You configure the ShallowEtagHeaderFilter in web.xml:
<filter>
<filter-name>etagFilter</filter-name>
<filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.ShallowEtagHeaderFilter</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>etagFilter</filter-name>
<servlet-name>petclinic</servlet-name>
</filter-mapping>
17.14 Code-based Servlet container initialization

In a Servlet 3.0+ environment, you have the option of configuring the Servlet container
programmatically as an alternative or in combination with a web.xml file. Below is an
example of registering a DispatcherServlet:
import org.springframework.web.WebApplicationInitializer;
public class MyWebApplicationInitializer implements WebApplicationInitializer {
@Override
public void onStartup(ServletContext container) {
XmlWebApplicationContext appContext = new XmlWebApplicationContext();
appContext.setConfigLocation("/WEB-INF/spring/dispatcher-config.xml");
ServletRegistration.Dynamic registration = container.addServlet("dispatcher", new DispatcherServlet(appContext));
registration.setLoadOnStartup(1);
registration.addMapping("/");
}
}
WebApplicationInitializer is an interface provided by Spring MVC that ensures

your implementation is detected and automatically used to initialize any Servlet 3
container. An abstract base class implementation of WebApplicationInitializer
named AbstractDispatcherServletInitializer makes it even easier to register
the DispatcherServlet by simply overriding methods to specify the servlet mapping
and the location of the DispatcherServlet configuration:
public class MyWebAppInitializer extends AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer {
@Override
protected Class<?>[] getRootConfigClasses() {
return null;
}
@Override
protected Class<?>[] getServletConfigClasses() {

return new Class[] { MyWebConfig.class };
}
@Override
protected String[] getServletMappings() {
return new String[] { "/" };
}
}
The above example is for an application that uses Java-based Spring configuration. If
using XML-based Spring configuration, extend directly from
AbstractDispatcherServletInitializer:
public class MyWebAppInitializer extends AbstractDispatcherServletInitializer {
@Override
protected WebApplicationContext createRootApplicationContext() {
return null;
}
@Override
protected WebApplicationContext createServletApplicationContext() {
XmlWebApplicationContext cxt = new XmlWebApplicationContext();
cxt.setConfigLocation("/WEB-INF/spring/dispatcher-config.xml");
return cxt;
}
@Override
protected String[] getServletMappings() {
return new String[] { "/" };
}
}
AbstractDispatcherServletInitializer also provides a convenient way to add

Filter instances and have them automatically mapped to the DispatcherServlet:
public class MyWebAppInitializer extends AbstractDispatcherServletInitializer {
// ...
@Override
protected Filter[] getServletFilters() {
return new Filter[] { new HiddenHttpMethodFilter(), new CharacterEncodingFilter() };
}
}
Each filter is added with a default name based on its concrete type and automatically
mapped to the DispatcherServlet.
The isAsyncSupported protected method of
AbstractDispatcherServletInitializer provides a single place to enable
async support on the DispatcherServlet and all filters mapped to it. By default this
flag is set to true.
17.15 Configuring Spring MVC

Section 17.2.1, Special Bean Types In the WebApplicationContext and
Section 17.2.2, Default DispatcherServlet Configuration explained about Spring MVC's
special beans and the default implementations used by the DispatcherServlet. In this
section you'll learn about two additional ways of configuring Spring MVC. Namely the MVC
Java config and the MVC XML namespace.
The MVC Java config and the MVC namespace provide similar default configuration that
overrides the DispatcherServlet defaults. The goal is to spare most applications from
having to having to create the same configuration and also to provide higher-level
constructs for configuring Spring MVC that serve as a simple starting point and require little
or no prior knowledge of the underlying configuration.
You can choose either the MVC Java config or the MVC namespace depending on your
preference. Also as you will see further below, with the MVC Java config it is easier to see
the underlying configuration as well as to make fine-grained customizations directly to the
created Spring MVC beans. But let's start from the beginning.
17.15.1 Enabling the MVC Java Config or the MVC XML Namespace
To enable MVC Java config add the annotation @EnableWebMvc to one of your
@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig {
}
To achieve the same in XML use the mvc:annotation-driven element:

<mvc:annotation-driven />
</beans>
The above registers a RequestMappingHandlerMapping, a

RequestMappingHandlerAdapter, and an
ExceptionHandlerExceptionResolver (among others) in support of processing
requests with annotated controller methods using annotations such as
@RequestMapping , @ExceptionHandler, and others.
It also enables the following:
1. Spring 3 style type conversion through a ConversionService instance in addition to the
JavaBeans PropertyEditors used for Data Binding.
2. Support for formatting Number fields using the @NumberFormat annotation through
the ConversionService.
3. Support for formatting Date, Calendar, Long, and Joda Time fields using the
@DateTimeFormat annotation.
4. Support for validating @Controller inputs with @Valid, if a JSR-303 Provider is
present on the classpath.
5. HttpMessageConverter support for @RequestBody method parameters and
@ResponseBody method return values from @RequestMapping or
@ExceptionHandler methods.
This is the complete list of HttpMessageConverters set up by mvc:annotation-driven:
ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter converts byte arrays.
StringHttpMessageConverter converts strings.
ResourceHttpMessageConverter converts to/from
org.springframework.core.io.Resource for all media types.
SourceHttpMessageConverter converts to/from a
javax.xml.transform.Source.
FormHttpMessageConverter converts form data to/from a
MultiValueMap<String, String>.
Jaxb2RootElementHttpMessageConverter converts Java objects to/from
XML added if JAXB2 is present on the classpath.
MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter) converts to/from JSON added
if Jackson 2 (or Jackson) is present on the classpath.
AtomFeedHttpMessageConverter converts Atom feeds added if Rome is

present on the classpath.
RssChannelHttpMessageConverter converts RSS feeds added if Rome
is present on the classpath.
17.15.2 Customizing the Provided Configuration

To customize the default configuration in Java you simply implement the
WebMvcConfigurer interface or more likely extend the class
WebMvcConfigurerAdapter and override the methods you need. Below is an example
of some of the available methods to override. See WebMvcConifgurer for a list of all
methods and the Javadoc for further details:
@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {
@Override
protected void addFormatters(FormatterRegistry registry) {
// Add formatters and/or converters
}
@Override
public void configureMessageConverters(List<HttpMessageConverter<?>> converters) {
// Configure the list of HttpMessageConverters to use
}
}
To customize the default configuration of <mvc:annotation-driven /> check what

attributes and sub-elements it supports. You can view the Spring MVC XML schema or use
the code completion feature of your IDE to discover what attributes and sub-elements are
available. The sample below shows a subset of what is available:
<mvc:annotation-driven conversion-service="conversionService">
<mvc:message-converters>
<bean class="org.example.MyHttpMessageConverter"/>
<bean class="org.example.MyOtherHttpMessageConverter"/>
</mvc:message-converters>
</mvc:annotation-driven>
<bean id="conversionService" class="org.springframework.format.support.FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean">
<list>
<bean class="org.example.MyFormatter"/>
<bean class="org.example.MyOtherFormatter"/>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
17.15.3 Configuring Interceptors

You can configure HandlerInterceptors or WebRequestInterceptors to be
applied to all incoming requests or restricted to specific URL path patterns.
An example of registering interceptors in Java:
@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@Override
public void addInterceptors(InterceptorRegistry registry) {
registry.addInterceptor(new LocaleInterceptor());
registry.addInterceptor(new ThemeInterceptor()).addPathPatterns("/**").excludePathPatterns("/admin/**");
registry.addInterceptor(new SecurityInterceptor()).addPathPatterns("/secure/*");
}
}
And in XML use the <mvc:interceptors> element:

<mvc:interceptors>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.LocaleChangeInterceptor" />
<mvc:interceptor>
<mvc:interceptor>
<mapping path="/**"/>
<exclude-mapping path="/admin/**"/>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.theme.ThemeChangeInterceptor" />
</mvc:interceptor>
<mvc:interceptor>
<mapping path="/secure/*"/>
<bean class="org.example.SecurityInterceptor" />
</mvc:interceptor>
</mvc:interceptors>
17.15.4 Configuring Content Negotiation

Staring with Spring Framework 3.2, you can configure how Spring MVC determines the
requested media types from the client for request mapping as well as for content
negotiation purposes. The available options are to check the file extension in the request
URI, the "Accept" header, a request parameter, as well as to fall back on a default content
type. By default, file extension in the request URI is checked first and the "Accept" header
is checked next.
For file extensions in the request URI, the MVC Java config and the MVC namespace,
automatically register extensions such as .json, .xml, .rss, and .atom if the
corresponding dependencies such as Jackson, JAXB2, or Rome are present on the
classpath. Additional extensions may be not need to be registered explicitly if they can be
discovered via ServletContext.getMimeType(String) or the Java Activation
Framework (see javax.activation.MimetypesFileTypeMap).
Below is an example of customizing content negotiation options through the MVC Java
config:
@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@Override
public void configureContentNegotiation(ContentNegotiationConfigurer configurer) {
configurer.favorPathExtension(false).favorParameter(true);
}
}
In the MVC namespace, the <mvc:annotation-driven> element has a contentnegotiation-manager attribute, which expects a ContentNegotiationManager
that in turn can be created with a ContentNegotiationManagerFactoryBean:
<mvc:annotation-driven content-negotiation-manager="contentNegotiationManager" />
<bean id="contentNegotiationManager" class="org.springframework.web.accept.ContentNegotiationManagerFactoryBean">
<property name="favorPathExtension" value="false" />
<property name="favorParameter" value="true" />
<property name="mediaTypes" >
<value>
json=application/json
xml=application/xml
</value>
</property>
</bean>
If not using the MVC Java config or the MVC namespace, you'll need to create an instance
of ContentNegotiationManager and use it to configure
RequestMappingHandlerMapping for request mapping purposes, and
RequestMappingHandlerAdapter and
ExceptionHandlerExceptionResolver for content negotiation purposes.
Note that ContentNegotiatingViewResolver now can also be configured with a
ContentNegotiatingViewResolver, so you can use one instance throughout
Spring MVC.
In more advanced cases, it may be useful to configure multiple
ContentNegotiationManager instances that in turn may contain custom
ContentNegotiationStrategy implementations. For example you could configure
ExceptionHandlerExceptionResolver with a ContentNegotiationManager

that always resolves the requested media type to "application/json". Or you may
want to plug a custom strategy that has some logic to select a default content type (e.g.
either XML or JSON) if no content types were requested.
17.15.5 Configuring View Controllers

This is a shortcut for defining a ParameterizableViewController that immediately
forwards to a view when invoked. Use it in static cases when there is no Java controller
logic to execute before the view generates the response.
An example of forwarding a request for "/" to a view called "home" in Java:
@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@Override
public void addViewControllers(ViewControllerRegistry registry) {
registry.addViewController("/").setViewName("home");
}
}
And the same in XML use the <mvc:view-controller> element:

<mvc:view-controller path="/" view-name="home"/>
17.15.6 Configuring Serving of Resources

This option allows static resource requests following a particular URL pattern to be served
by a ResourceHttpRequestHandler from any of a list of Resource locations. This
provides a convenient way to serve static resources from locations other than the web
application root, including locations on the classpath. The cache-period property may
be used to set far future expiration headers (1 year is the recommendation of optimization
tools such as Page Speed and YSlow) so that they will be more efficiently utilized by the
client. The handler also properly evaluates the Last-Modified header (if present) so
that a 304 status code will be returned as appropriate, avoiding unnecessary overhead for
resources that are already cached by the client. For example, to serve resource requests
with a URL pattern of /resources/** from a public-resources directory within the
web application root you would use:
@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@Override
public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) {
registry.addResourceHandler("/resources/**").addResourceLocations("/public-resources/");
}
}
And the same in XML:

<mvc:resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/public-resources/"/>
To serve these resources with a 1-year future expiration to ensure maximum use of the
browser cache and a reduction in HTTP requests made by the browser:
@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@Override
registry.addResourceHandler("/resources/**").addResourceLocations("/public-resources/").setCachePeriod(31556926);
}
}
And in XML:
<mvc:resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/public-resources/" cache-period="31556926"/>
The mapping attribute must be an Ant pattern that can be used by

SimpleUrlHandlerMapping, and the location attribute must specify one or more
valid resource directory locations. Multiple resource locations may be specified using a
comma-separated list of values. The locations specified will be checked in the specified
order for the presence of the resource for any given request. For example, to enable the
serving of resources from both the web application root and from a known path of /METAINF/public-web-resources/ in any jar on the classpath use:
@EnableWebMvc
@Configuration
@Override
registry.addResourceHandler("/resources/**")
.addResourceLocations("/", "classpath:/META-INF/public-web-resources/");
}
}
And in XML:
<mvc:resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/, classpath:/META-INF/public-web-resources/"/>
When serving resources that may change when a new version of the application is
deployed, it is recommended that you incorporate a version string into the mapping pattern
used to request the resources, so that you may force clients to request the newly deployed
version of your application's resources. Such a version string can be parameterized and
accessed using SpEL so that it may be easily managed in a single place when deploying
new versions.
As an example, let's consider an application that uses a performance-optimized custom
build (as recommended) of the Dojo JavaScript library in production, and that the build is
generally deployed within the web application at a path of /publicresources/dojo/dojo.js. Since different parts of Dojo may be incorporated into the
custom build for each new version of the application, the client web browsers need to be
forced to re-download that custom-built dojo.js resource any time a new version of the
application is deployed. A simple way to achieve this would be to manage the version of
the application in a properties file, such as:
application.version=1.0.0
and then to make the properties file's values accessible to SpEL as a bean using the
util:properties tag:
<util:properties id="applicationProps" location="/WEB-INF/spring/application.properties"/>
With the application version now accessible via SpEL, we can incorporate this into the use
of the resources tag:
<mvc:resources mapping="/resources-#{applicationProps['application.version']}/**" location="/public-resources/"/>
In Java, you can use the @PropertySouce annotation and then inject the
Environment abstraction for access to all defined properties:
@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@PropertySource("/WEB-INF/spring/application.properties")
@Inject Environment env;

@Override
registry.addResourceHandler("/resources-" + env.getProperty("application.version") + "/**")
.addResourceLocations("/public-resources/");
}
}
and finally, to request the resource with the proper URL, we can take advantage of the
Spring JSP tags:
<spring:eval expression="@applicationProps['application.version']" var="applicationVersion"/>
<spring:url value="/resources-{applicationVersion}" var="resourceUrl">
<spring:param name="applicationVersion" value="${applicationVersion}"/>
</spring:url>
<script src="${resourceUrl}/dojo/dojo.js" type="text/javascript"> </script>
17.15.7 mvc:default-servlet-handler
This tag allows for mapping the DispatcherServlet to "/" (thus overriding the mapping
of the container's default Servlet), while still allowing static resource requests to be
handled by the container's default Servlet. It configures a
DefaultServletHttpRequestHandler with a URL mapping of "/**" and the lowest
priority relative to other URL mappings.
This handler will forward all requests to the default Servlet. Therefore it is important that it
remains last in the order of all other URL HandlerMappings. That will be the case if you
use <mvc:annotation-driven> or alternatively if you are setting up your own
customized HandlerMapping instance be sure to set its order property to a value lower
than that of the DefaultServletHttpRequestHandler, which is
Integer.MAX_VALUE.
To enable the feature using the default setup use:
@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@Override
public void configureDefaultServletHandling(DefaultServletHandlerConfigurer configurer) {
configurer.enable();
}
}
Or in XML:
<mvc:default-servlet-handler/>
The caveat to overriding the "/" Servlet mapping is that the RequestDispatcher for the
default Servlet must be retrieved by name rather than by path. The
DefaultServletHttpRequestHandler will attempt to auto-detect the default Servlet
for the container at startup time, using a list of known names for most of the major Servlet
containers (including Tomcat, Jetty, GlassFish, JBoss, Resin, WebLogic, and
WebSphere). If the default Servlet has been custom configured with a different name, or if a
different Servlet container is being used where the default Servlet name is unknown, then
the default Servlet's name must be explicitly provided as in the following example:
@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@Override
public void configureDefaultServletHandling(DefaultServletHandlerConfigurer configurer) {
configurer.enable("myCustomDefaultServlet");
}
Or in XML:
<mvc:default-servlet-handler default-servlet-name="myCustomDefaultServlet"/>
17.15.8 More Spring Web MVC Resources

See the following links and pointers for more resources about Spring Web MVC:
There are many excellent articles and tutorials that show how to build web
applications with Spring MVC. Read them at the Spring Documentation page.
Expert Spring Web MVC and Web Flow by Seth Ladd and others (published by
Apress) is an excellent hard copy source of Spring Web MVC goodness.
17.15.9 Advanced Customizations with MVC Java Config

As you can see from the above examples, MVC Java config and the MVC namespace
provide higher level constructs that do not require deep knowledge of the underlying beans
created for you. Instead it helps you to focus on your application needs. However, at some
point you may need more fine-grained control or you may simply wish to understand the
underlying configuration.
The first step towards more fine-grained control is to see the underlying beans created for
you. In MVC Java config you can see the Javadoc and the @Bean methods in
WebMvcConfigurationSupport. The configuration in this class is automatically
imported through the @EnableWebMvc annotation. In fact if you open @EnableWebMvc
you can see the @Import statement.
The next step towards more fine-grained control is to customize a property on one of the
beans created in WebMvcConfigurationSupport or perhaps to provide your own
instance. This requires two things -- remove the @EnableWebMvc annotation in order to
prevent the import and then extend directly from WebMvcConfigurationSupport.
Here is an example:
@Configuration
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurationSupport {
@Override
public void addInterceptors(InterceptorRegistry registry){
// ...
}
@Override
@Bean
public RequestMappingHandlerAdapter requestMappingHandlerAdapter() {
// Create or let "super" create the adapter
// Then customize one of its properties
}
}
Note that modifying beans in this way does not prevent you from using any of the higherlevel constructs shown earlier in this section.
17.15.10 Advanced Customizations with the MVC Namespace

Fine-grained control over the configuration created for you is a bit harder with the MVC
namespace.
If you do need to do that, rather than replicating the configuration it provides, consider
configuring a BeanPostProcessor that detects the bean you want to customize by type
and then modifying its properties as necessary. For example:
@Component
public class MyPostProcessor implements BeanPostProcessor {
public Object postProcessBeforeInitialization(Object bean, String name) throws BeansException {

if (bean instanceof RequestMappingHandlerAdapter) {
// Modify properties of the adapter
}
}
}
Note that MyPostProcessor needs to be included in an <component scan /> in

order for it to be detected or if you prefer you can declare it explicitly with an XML bean
declaration.
18. View technologies

18.1 Introduction
One of the areas in which Spring excels is in the separation of view technologies from the
rest of the MVC framework. For example, deciding to use Velocity or XSLT in place of an
existing JSP is primarily a matter of configuration. This chapter covers the major view
technologies that work with Spring and touches briefly on how to add new ones. This
chapter assumes you are already familiar with Section 17.5, Resolving views which
covers the basics of how views in general are coupled to the MVC framework.
18.2 JSP & JSTL

Spring provides a couple of out-of-the-box solutions for JSP and JSTL views. Using JSP or
JSTL is done using a normal view resolver defined in the WebApplicationContext.
Furthermore, of course you need to write some JSPs that will actually render the view.
Note
Setting up your application to use JSTL is a common source of error,
mainly caused by confusion over the different servlet spec., JSP and
JSTL version numbers, what they mean and how to declare the taglibs
correctly. The article How to Reference and Use JSTL in your Web
Application provides a useful guide to the common pitfalls and how to
avoid them. Note that as of Spring 3.0, the minimum supported servlet
version is 2.4 (JSP 2.0 and JSTL 1.1), which reduces the scope for
confusion somewhat.
18.2.1 View resolvers

Just as with any other view technology you're integrating with Spring, for JSPs you'll need
a view resolver that will resolve your views. The most commonly used view resolvers when
developing with JSPs are the InternalResourceViewResolver and the
ResourceBundleViewResolver. Both are declared in the
WebApplicationContext:

<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.ResourceBundleViewResolver">
</bean>
# And a sample properties file is uses (views.properties in WEB-INF/classes):
welcome.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView
welcome.url=/WEB-INF/jsp/welcome.jsp
productList.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView
productList.url=/WEB-INF/jsp/productlist.jsp
As you can see, the ResourceBundleViewResolver needs a properties file defining

the view names mapped to 1) a class and 2) a URL. With a
ResourceBundleViewResolver you can mix different types of views using only one
resolver.
<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">

</bean>
The InternalResourceBundleViewResolver can be configured for using JSPs as

described above. As a best practice, we strongly encourage placing your JSP files in a
directory under the 'WEB-INF' directory, so there can be no direct access by clients.
18.2.2 'Plain-old' JSPs versus JSTL

When using the Java Standard Tag Library you must use a special view class, the
JstlView, as JSTL needs some preparation before things such as the I18N features will
work.
18.2.3 Additional tags facilitating development

Spring provides data binding of request parameters to command objects as described in
earlier chapters. To facilitate the development of JSP pages in combination with those data
binding features, Spring provides a few tags that make things even easier. All Spring tags
have HTML escaping features to enable or disable escaping of characters.
The tag library descriptor (TLD) is included in the spring-webmvc.jar. Further
information about the individual tags can be found in the appendix entitled Appendix G,
spring.tld.
18.2.4 Using Spring's form tag library

As of version 2.0, Spring provides a comprehensive set of data binding-aware tags for
handling form elements when using JSP and Spring Web MVC. Each tag provides support
for the set of attributes of its corresponding HTML tag counterpart, making the tags familiar
and intuitive to use. The tag-generated HTML is HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0 compliant.
Unlike other form/input tag libraries, Spring's form tag library is integrated with Spring Web
MVC, giving the tags access to the command object and reference data your controller
deals with. As you will see in the following examples, the form tags make JSPs easier to
develop, read and maintain.
Let's go through the form tags and look at an example of how each tag is used. We have
included generated HTML snippets where certain tags require further commentary.
Configuration
The form tag library comes bundled in spring-webmvc.jar. The library descriptor is
called spring-form.tld.
To use the tags from this library, add the following directive to the top of your JSP page:
<%@ taglib prefix="form" uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags/form" %>
... where form is the tag name prefix you want to use for the tags from this library.
The form tag

This tag renders an HTML 'form' tag and exposes a binding path to inner tags for binding. It
puts the command object in the PageContext so that the command object can be
accessed by inner tags. All the other tags in this library are nested tags of the form tag.
Let's assume we have a domain object called User. It is a JavaBean with properties such
as firstName and lastName. We will use it as the form backing object of our form
controller which returns form.jsp. Below is an example of what form.jsp would look
like:
<form:form>
<table>
<tr>
<td>First Name:</td>
<td><form:input path="firstName" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Last Name:</td>
<td><form:input path="lastName" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">
<input type="submit" value="Save Changes" />
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form:form>
The firstName and lastName values are retrieved from the command object placed in
the PageContext by the page controller. Keep reading to see more complex examples of
how inner tags are used with the form tag.
The generated HTML looks like a standard form:
<form method="POST">
<table>
<tr>
<td><input name="firstName" type="text" value="Harry"/></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Last Name:</td>
<td><input name="lastName" type="text" value="Potter"/></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
The preceding JSP assumes that the variable name of the form backing object is
'command'. If you have put the form backing object into the model under another name
(definitely a best practice), then you can bind the form to the named variable like so:
<form:form commandName="user">
<table>
<tr>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Last Name:</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form:form>
The input tag

This tag renders an HTML 'input' tag using the bound value and type='text' by default. For
an example of this tag, see the section called The form tag. Starting with Spring 3.1 you
can use other types such HTML5-specific types like 'email', 'tel', 'date', and others.
The checkbox tag

This tag renders an HTML 'input' tag with type 'checkbox'.
Let's assume our User has preferences such as newsletter subscription and a list of
hobbies. Below is an example of the Preferences class:
public class Preferences {
private boolean receiveNewsletter;
private String[] interests;
private String favouriteWord;

public boolean isReceiveNewsletter() {
return receiveNewsletter;
}
public void setReceiveNewsletter(boolean receiveNewsletter) {
this.receiveNewsletter = receiveNewsletter;
}
public String[] getInterests() {
return interests;
}
public void setInterests(String[] interests) {
this.interests = interests;
}
public String getFavouriteWord() {
return favouriteWord;
}
public void setFavouriteWord(String favouriteWord) {
this.favouriteWord = favouriteWord;
}
}
The form.jsp would look like:

<form:form>
<table>
<tr>
<td>Subscribe to newsletter?:</td>
<%-- Approach 1: Property is of type java.lang.Boolean --%>
<td><form:checkbox path="preferences.receiveNewsletter"/></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Interests:</td>
<td>
<%-- Approach 2: Property is of an array or of type java.util.Collection --%>
Quidditch: <form:checkbox path="preferences.interests" value="Quidditch"/>
Herbology: <form:checkbox path="preferences.interests" value="Herbology"/>
Defence Against the Dark Arts: <form:checkbox path="preferences.interests"
value="Defence Against the Dark Arts"/>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Favourite Word:</td>
<td>
<%-- Approach 3: Property is of type java.lang.Object --%>
Magic: <form:checkbox path="preferences.favouriteWord" value="Magic"/>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form:form>
There are 3 approaches to the checkbox tag which should meet all your checkbox needs.
Approach One - When the bound value is of type java.lang.Boolean, the
input(checkbox) is marked as 'checked' if the bound value is true. The value
attribute corresponds to the resolved value of the setValue(Object) value
property.
Approach Two - When the bound value is of type array or
java.util.Collection, the input(checkbox) is marked as 'checked' if the
configured setValue(Object) value is present in the bound Collection.
Approach Three - For any other bound value type, the input(checkbox) is marked
as 'checked' if the configured setValue(Object) is equal to the bound value.
Note that regardless of the approach, the same HTML structure is generated. Below is an
HTML snippet of some checkboxes:
<tr>
<td>Interests:</td>
<td>
Quidditch: <input name="preferences.interests" type="checkbox" value="Quidditch"/>
<input type="hidden" value="1" name="_preferences.interests"/>
Herbology: <input name="preferences.interests" type="checkbox" value="Herbology"/>
Defence Against the Dark Arts: <input name="preferences.interests" type="checkbox"
value="Defence Against the Dark Arts"/>

</td>
</tr>
What you might not expect to see is the additional hidden field after each checkbox. When
a checkbox in an HTML page is not checked, its value will not be sent to the server as part
of the HTTP request parameters once the form is submitted, so we need a workaround for
this quirk in HTML in order for Spring form data binding to work. The checkbox tag
follows the existing Spring convention of including a hidden parameter prefixed by an
underscore ("_") for each checkbox. By doing this, you are effectively telling Spring that
the checkbox was visible in the form and I want my object to which the form data will be
bound to reflect the state of the checkbox no matter what .
The checkboxes tag

This tag renders multiple HTML 'input' tags with type 'checkbox'.
Building on the example from the previous checkbox tag section. Sometimes you prefer
not to have to list all the possible hobbies in your JSP page. You would rather provide a list
at runtime of the available options and pass that in to the tag. That is the purpose of the
checkboxes tag. You pass in an Array, a List or a Map containing the available
options in the "items" property. Typically the bound property is a collection so it can hold
multiple values selected by the user. Below is an example of the JSP using this tag:
<form:form>
<table>
<tr>
<td>Interests:</td>
<td>
<%-- Property is of an array or of type java.util.Collection --%>
<form:checkboxes path="preferences.interests" items="${interestList}"/>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form:form>
This example assumes that the "interestList" is a List available as a model attribute
containing strings of the values to be selected from. In the case where you use a Map, the
map entry key will be used as the value and the map entry's value will be used as the label
to be displayed. You can also use a custom object where you can provide the property
names for the value using "itemValue" and the label using "itemLabel".
The radiobutton tag

This tag renders an HTML 'input' tag with type 'radio'.
A typical usage pattern will involve multiple tag instances bound to the same property but
with different values.
<tr>
<td>Sex:</td>
<td>Male: <form:radiobutton path="sex" value="M"/> <br/>
Female: <form:radiobutton path="sex" value="F"/> </td>
</tr>
The radiobuttons tag

This tag renders multiple HTML 'input' tags with type 'radio'.
Just like the checkboxes tag above, you might want to pass in the available options as a
runtime variable. For this usage you would use the radiobuttons tag. You pass in an
Array, a List or a Map containing the available options in the "items" property. In the
case where you use a Map, the map entry key will be used as the value and the map
entry's value will be used as the label to be displayed. You can also use a custom object
where you can provide the property names for the value using "itemValue" and the label
using "itemLabel".
<tr>
<td>Sex:</td>
<td><form:radiobuttons path="sex" items="${sexOptions}"/></td>
</tr>
The password tag

This tag renders an HTML 'input' tag with type 'password' using the bound value.
<tr>
<td>Password:</td>
<td>
<form:password path="password" />
</td>
</tr>
Please note that by default, the password value is not shown. If you do want the password
value to be shown, then set the value of the 'showPassword' attribute to true, like so.
<tr>
<td>Password:</td>
<td>
<form:password path="password" value="^76525bvHGq" showPassword="true" />
</td>
</tr>
The select tag

This tag renders an HTML 'select' element. It supports data binding to the selected option
as well as the use of nested option and options tags.
Let's assume a User has a list of skills.
<tr>
<td>Skills:</td>
<td><form:select path="skills" items="${skills}"/></td>
</tr>
If the User's skill were in Herbology, the HTML source of the 'Skills' row would look like:
<tr>
<td>Skills:</td>
<td><select name="skills" multiple="true">
<option value="Potions">Potions</option>
<option value="Herbology" selected="selected">Herbology</option>
<option value="Quidditch">Quidditch</option></select>
</td>
</tr>
The option tag

This tag renders an HTML 'option'. It sets 'selected' as appropriate based on the bound
value.
<tr>
<td>House:</td>
<td>
<form:select path="house">
<form:option value="Gryffindor"/>
<form:option value="Hufflepuff"/>
<form:option value="Ravenclaw"/>
<form:option value="Slytherin"/>
</form:select>
</td>
</tr>
If the User's house was in Gryffindor, the HTML source of the 'House' row would look
like:
<tr>
<td>House:</td>
<td>
<select name="house">
<option value="Gryffindor" selected="selected">Gryffindor</option>
<option value="Hufflepuff">Hufflepuff</option>
<option value="Ravenclaw">Ravenclaw</option>
<option value="Slytherin">Slytherin</option>
</select>
</td>
</tr>
The options tag

This tag renders a list of HTML 'option' tags. It sets the 'selected' attribute as appropriate
based on the bound value.
<tr>
<td>Country:</td>
<td>
<form:select path="country">
<form:option value="-" label="--Please Select"/>
<form:options items="${countryList}" itemValue="code" itemLabel="name"/>
</form:select>
</td>
</tr>
If the User lived in the UK, the HTML source of the 'Country' row would look like:
<tr>
<td>Country:</td>
<td>
<select name="country">
<option value="-">--Please Select</option>
<option value="AT">Austria</option>
<option value="UK" selected="selected">United Kingdom</option>
<option value="US">United States</option>
</select>
</td>
</tr>
As the example shows, the combined usage of an option tag with the options tag
generates the same standard HTML, but allows you to explicitly specify a value in the JSP
that is for display only (where it belongs) such as the default string in the example: "-Please Select".
The items attribute is typically populated with a collection or array of item objects.
itemValue and itemLabel simply refer to bean properties of those item objects, if
specified; otherwise, the item objects themselves will be stringified. Alternatively, you may
specify a Map of items, in which case the map keys are interpreted as option values and
the map values correspond to option labels. If itemValue and/or itemLabel happen to
be specified as well, the item value property will apply to the map key and the item label
property will apply to the map value.
The textarea tag

This tag renders an HTML 'textarea'.
<tr>
<td>Notes:</td>
<td><form:textarea path="notes" rows="3" cols="20" /></td>
<td><form:errors path="notes" /></td>
</tr>
The hidden tag

This tag renders an HTML 'input' tag with type 'hidden' using the bound value. To submit
an unbound hidden value, use the HTML input tag with type 'hidden'.
<form:hidden path="house" />
If we choose to submit the 'house' value as a hidden one, the HTML would look like:
<input name="house" type="hidden" value="Gryffindor"/>
The errors tag

This tag renders field errors in an HTML 'span' tag. It provides access to the errors created
in your controller or those that were created by any validators associated with your
controller.
Let's assume we want to display all error messages for the firstName and lastName
fields once we submit the form. We have a validator for instances of the User class called
UserValidator.
public class UserValidator implements Validator {
public boolean supports(Class candidate) {
return User.class.isAssignableFrom(candidate);
}
public void validate(Object obj, Errors errors) {
ValidationUtils.rejectIfEmptyOrWhitespace(errors, "firstName", "required", "Field is required.");
ValidationUtils.rejectIfEmptyOrWhitespace(errors, "lastName", "required", "Field is required.");
}
}
The form.jsp would look like:

<form:form>
<table>
<tr>
<%-- Show errors for firstName field --%>
<td><form:errors path="firstName" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Last Name:</td>
<%-- Show errors for lastName field --%>
<td><form:errors path="lastName" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="3">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form:form>
If we submit a form with empty values in the firstName and lastName fields, this is
what the HTML would look like:
<table>
<tr>
<td><input name="firstName" type="text" value=""/></td>
<%-- Associated errors to firstName field displayed --%>
<td><span name="firstName.errors">Field is required.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Last Name:</td>
<td><input name="lastName" type="text" value=""/></td>
<%-- Associated errors to lastName field displayed --%>
<td><span name="lastName.errors">Field is required.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="3">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
What if we want to display the entire list of errors for a given page? The example below
shows that the errors tag also supports some basic wildcarding functionality.
path="*" - displays all errors
path="lastName" - displays all errors associated with the lastName field
if path is omitted - object errors only are displayed
The example below will display a list of errors at the top of the page, followed by fieldspecific errors next to the fields:
<form:form>
<form:errors path="*" cssClass="errorBox" />
<table>
<tr>
<td><form:errors path="firstName" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Last Name:</td>
<td><form:errors path="lastName" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="3">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form:form>
The HTML would look like:

<span name="*.errors" class="errorBox">Field is required.<br/>Field is required.</span>
<table>
<tr>
<td><input name="firstName" type="text" value=""/></td>
<td><span name="firstName.errors">Field is required.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Last Name:</td>
<td><input name="lastName" type="text" value=""/></td>
<td><span name="lastName.errors">Field is required.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="3">
</td>
</tr>
</form>
HTTP Method Conversion

A key principle of REST is the use of the Uniform Interface. This means that all resources
(URLs) can be manipulated using the same four HTTP methods: GET, PUT, POST, and
DELETE. For each method, the HTTP specification defines the exact semantics. For
instance, a GET should always be a safe operation, meaning that is has no side effects,
and a PUT or DELETE should be idempotent, meaning that you can repeat these
operations over and over again, but the end result should be the same. While HTTP
defines these four methods, HTML only supports two: GET and POST. Fortunately, there
are two possible workarounds: you can either use JavaScript to do your PUT or DELETE,
or simply do a POST with the 'real' method as an additional parameter (modeled as a
hidden input field in an HTML form). This latter trick is what Spring's
HiddenHttpMethodFilter does. This filter is a plain Servlet Filter and therefore it can
be used in combination with any web framework (not just Spring MVC). Simply add this
filter to your web.xml, and a POST with a hidden _method parameter will be converted into
the corresponding HTTP method request.
To support HTTP method conversion the Spring MVC form tag was updated to support
setting the HTTP method. For example, the following snippet taken from the updated
Petclinic sample
<form:form method="delete">
<p class="submit"><input type="submit" value="Delete Pet"/></p>
</form:form>
This will actually perform an HTTP POST, with the 'real' DELETE method hidden behind a
request parameter, to be picked up by the HiddenHttpMethodFilter, as defined in
web.xml:
<filter>
<filter-name>httpMethodFilter</filter-name>
<filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.HiddenHttpMethodFilter</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>httpMethodFilter</filter-name>
<servlet-name>petclinic</servlet-name>
</filter-mapping>
The corresponding @Controller method is shown below:

@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.DELETE)
public String deletePet(@PathVariable int ownerId, @PathVariable int petId) {
this.clinic.deletePet(petId);
return "redirect:/owners/" + ownerId;
}
HTML5 Tags
Starting with Spring 3, the Spring form tag library allows entering dynamic attributes, which
means you can enter any HTML5 specific attributes.
In Spring 3.1, the form input tag supports entering a type attribute other than 'text'. This is
intended to allow rendering new HTML5 specific input types such as 'email', 'date', 'range',
and others. Note that entering type='text' is not required since 'text' is the default type.
18.3 Tiles
It is possible to integrate Tiles - just as any other view technology - in web applications
using Spring. The following describes in a broad way how to do this.
NOTE: This section focuses on Spring's support for Tiles 2 (the standalone version of
Tiles, requiring Java 5+) in the
org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2 package as as well as Tiles
3 in the org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles3 package. Spring also
continues to support Tiles 1.x (a.k.a. "Struts Tiles", as shipped with Struts 1.1+; compatible
with Java 1.4) in the original org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles
package.
18.3.1 Dependencies
To be able to use Tiles you have to have a couple of additional dependencies included in
your project. The following is the list of dependencies you need.
Tiles version 2.1.2 or higher
Commons BeanUtils
Commons Digester
Commons Logging
18.3.2 How to integrate Tiles

To be able to use Tiles, you have to configure it using files containing definitions (for basic
information on definitions and other Tiles concepts, please have a look at
http://tiles.apache.org). In Spring this is done using the TilesConfigurer. Have a look
at the following piece of example ApplicationContext configuration:
<bean id="tilesConfigurer" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer">
<property name="definitions">
<list>
<value>/WEB-INF/defs/general.xml</value>
<value>/WEB-INF/defs/widgets.xml</value>
<value>/WEB-INF/defs/administrator.xml</value>
<value>/WEB-INF/defs/customer.xml</value>
<value>/WEB-INF/defs/templates.xml</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
As you can see, there are five files containing definitions, which are all located in the
'WEB-INF/defs' directory. At initialization of the WebApplicationContext, the files
will be loaded and the definitions factory will be initialized. After that has been done, the
Tiles includes in the definition files can be used as views within your Spring web
application. To be able to use the views you have to have a ViewResolver just as with
any other view technology used with Spring. Below you can find two possibilities, the
UrlBasedViewResolver and the ResourceBundleViewResolver.
The UrlBasedViewResolver instantiates the given viewClass for each view it has to
resolve.
<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.UrlBasedViewResolver">
<property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesView"/>
</bean>
The ResourceBundleViewResolver has to be provided with a property file containing
viewnames and viewclasses the resolver can use:
</bean>
...
welcomeView.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesView
welcomeView.url=welcome (this is the name of a Tiles definition)
vetsView.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesView
vetsView.url=vetsView (again, this is the name of a Tiles definition)
findOwnersForm.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView
findOwnersForm.url=/WEB-INF/jsp/findOwners.jsp
...
As you can see, when using the ResourceBundleViewResolver, you can easily mix
different view technologies.
Note that the TilesView class for Tiles 2 supports JSTL (the JSP Standard Tag Library)
out of the box, whereas there is a separate TilesJstlView subclass in the Tiles 1.x
support.
SimpleSpringPreparerFactory and SpringBeanPreparerFactory
As an advanced feature, Spring also supports two special Tiles 2 PreparerFactory
implementations. Check out the Tiles documentation for details on how to use
ViewPreparer references in your Tiles definition files.
Specify SimpleSpringPreparerFactory to autowire ViewPreparer instances based
on specified preparer classes, applying Spring's container callbacks as well as applying
configured Spring BeanPostProcessors. If Spring's context-wide annotation-config has
been activated, annotations in ViewPreparer classes will be automatically detected and
applied. Note that this expects preparer classes in the Tiles definition files, just like the
default PreparerFactory does.
Specify SpringBeanPreparerFactory to operate on specified preparer names
instead of classes, obtaining the corresponding Spring bean from the DispatcherServlet's
application context. The full bean creation process will be in the control of the Spring
application context in this case, allowing for the use of explicit dependency injection
configuration, scoped beans etc. Note that you need to define one Spring bean definition
per preparer name (as used in your Tiles definitions).
<bean id="tilesConfigurer" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer">
<property name="definitions">
<list>
<value>/WEB-INF/defs/general.xml</value>
<value>/WEB-INF/defs/widgets.xml</value>
<value>/WEB-INF/defs/administrator.xml</value>
<value>/WEB-INF/defs/customer.xml</value>
<value>/WEB-INF/defs/templates.xml</value>
</list>
</property>

<property name="preparerFactoryClass"
value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.SpringBeanPreparerFactory"/>
</bean>
18.4 Velocity & FreeMarker

Velocity and FreeMarker are two templating languages that can be used as view
technologies within Spring MVC applications. The languages are quite similar and serve
similar needs and so are considered together in this section. For semantic and syntactic
differences between the two languages, see the FreeMarker web site.
18.4.1 Dependencies
Your web application will need to include velocity-1.x.x.jar or freemarker2.x.jar in order to work with Velocity or FreeMarker respectively and commonscollections.jar is required for Velocity. Typically they are included in the WEBINF/lib folder where they are guaranteed to be found by a Java EE server and added to
the classpath for your application. It is of course assumed that you already have the
spring-webmvc.jar in your 'WEB-INF/lib' directory too! If you make use of
Spring's 'dateToolAttribute' or 'numberToolAttribute' in your Velocity views, you will also
need to include the velocity-tools-generic-1.x.jar
18.4.2 Context configuration

A suitable configuration is initialized by adding the relevant configurer bean definition to
your '*-servlet.xml' as shown below:
<!-This bean sets up the Velocity environment for us based on a root path for templates.
Optionally, a properties file can be specified for more control over the Velocity
environment, but the defaults are pretty sane for file based template loading.
-->
<bean id="velocityConfig" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.velocity.VelocityConfigurer">
<property name="resourceLoaderPath" value="/WEB-INF/velocity/"/>
</bean>
<!-View resolvers can also be configured with ResourceBundles or XML files. If you need
different view resolving based on Locale, you have to use the resource bundle resolver.
-->
<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.velocity.VelocityViewResolver">
<property name="cache" value="true"/>
<property name="prefix" value=""/>
<property name="suffix" value=".vm"/>
</bean>


<bean id="freemarkerConfig" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.freemarker.FreeMarkerConfigurer">
<property name="templateLoaderPath" value="/WEB-INF/freemarker/"/>
</bean>
<!-View resolvers can also be configured with ResourceBundles or XML files. If you need
different view resolving based on Locale, you have to use the resource bundle resolver.
-->
<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.freemarker.FreeMarkerViewResolver">
<property name="prefix" value=""/>
<property name="suffix" value=".ftl"/>
</bean>
Note
For non web-apps add a VelocityConfigurationFactoryBean
or a FreeMarkerConfigurationFactoryBean to your
application context definition file.
18.4.3 Creating templates

Your templates need to be stored in the directory specified by the *Configurer bean
shown above. This document does not cover details of creating templates for the two
languages - please see their relevant websites for information. If you use the view
resolvers highlighted, then the logical view names relate to the template file names in
similar fashion to InternalResourceViewResolver for JSP's. So if your controller
returns a ModelAndView object containing a view name of "welcome" then the resolvers
will look for the /WEB-INF/freemarker/welcome.ftl or /WEBINF/velocity/welcome.vm template as appropriate.
18.4.4 Advanced configuration

The basic configurations highlighted above will be suitable for most application
requirements, however additional configuration options are available for when unusual or
advanced requirements dictate.
velocity.properties
This file is completely optional, but if specified, contains the values that are passed to the
Velocity runtime in order to configure velocity itself. Only required for advanced
configurations, if you need this file, specify its location on the VelocityConfigurer
bean definition above.
<property name="configLocation" value="/WEB-INF/velocity.properties"/>
</bean>
Alternatively, you can specify velocity properties directly in the bean definition for the
Velocity config bean by replacing the "configLocation" property with the following inline
properties.
<property name="velocityProperties">
<props>
<prop key="resource.loader">file</prop>
<prop key="file.resource.loader.class">
org.apache.velocity.runtime.resource.loader.FileResourceLoader
</prop>
<prop key="file.resource.loader.path">${webapp.root}/WEB-INF/velocity</prop>
<prop key="file.resource.loader.cache">false</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
Refer to the API documentation for Spring configuration of Velocity, or the Velocity
documentation for examples and definitions of the 'velocity.properties' file itself.
FreeMarker
FreeMarker 'Settings' and 'SharedVariables' can be passed directly to the FreeMarker
Configuration object managed by Spring by setting the appropriate bean properties on
the FreeMarkerConfigurer bean. The freemarkerSettings property requires a
java.util.Properties object and the freemarkerVariables property requires a
java.util.Map.
<bean id="freemarkerConfig" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.freemarker.FreeMarkerConfigurer">
<property name="templateLoaderPath" value="/WEB-INF/freemarker/"/>
<property name="freemarkerVariables">
<map>
<entry key="xml_escape" value-ref="fmXmlEscape"/>
</map>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="fmXmlEscape" class="freemarker.template.utility.XmlEscape"/>
See the FreeMarker documentation for details of settings and variables as they apply to the
Configuration object.
18.4.5 Bind support and form handling

Spring provides a tag library for use in JSP's that contains (amongst other things) a
<spring:bind/> tag. This tag primarily enables forms to display values from form
backing objects and to show the results of failed validations from a Validator in the web
or business tier. From version 1.1, Spring now has support for the same functionality in
both Velocity and FreeMarker, with additional convenience macros for generating form
input elements themselves.
The bind macros

A standard set of macros are maintained within the spring-webmvc.jar file for both
languages, so they are always available to a suitably configured application.
Some of the macros defined in the Spring libraries are considered internal (private) but no
such scoping exists in the macro definitions making all macros visible to calling code and
user templates. The following sections concentrate only on the macros you need to be
directly calling from within your templates. If you wish to view the macro code directly, the
files are called spring.vm / spring.ftl and are in the packages
org.springframework.web.servlet.view.velocity or
org.springframework.web.servlet.view.freemarker respectively.
Simple binding
In your html forms (vm / ftl templates) that act as the 'formView' for a Spring form controller,
you can use code similar to the following to bind to field values and display error
messages for each input field in similar fashion to the JSP equivalent. Note that the name
of the command object is "command" by default, but can be overridden in your MVC
configuration by setting the 'commandName' bean property on your form controller.
Example code is shown below for the personFormV and personFormF views
configured earlier;

<html>
...
<form action="" method="POST">
Name:
#springBind( "command.name" )
<input type="text"
name="${status.expression}"
value="$!status.value" /><br>
#foreach($error in $status.errorMessages) <b>$error</b> <br> #end
<br>
...
<input type="submit" value="submit"/>
</form>
...
</html>

<#import "/spring.ftl" as spring />
<html>
...
<form action="" method="POST">
Name:
<@spring.bind "command.name" />
<input type="text"
name="${spring.status.expression}"
value="${spring.status.value?default("")}" /><br>
<#list spring.status.errorMessages as error> <b>${error}</b> <br> </#list>
<br>
...
<input type="submit" value="submit"/>
</form>
...
</html>
#springBind / <@spring.bind> requires a 'path' argument which consists of the

name of your command object (it will be 'command' unless you changed it in your
FormController properties) followed by a period and the name of the field on the command
object you wish to bind to. Nested fields can be used too such as
"command.address.street". The bind macro assumes the default HTML escaping
behavior specified by the ServletContext parameter defaultHtmlEscape in web.xml
The optional form of the macro called #springBindEscaped /
<@spring.bindEscaped> takes a second argument and explicitly specifies whether
HTML escaping should be used in the status error messages or values. Set to true or false
as required. Additional form handling macros simplify the use of HTML escaping and these
macros should be used wherever possible. They are explained in the next section.
Form input generation macros

Additional convenience macros for both languages simplify both binding and form
generation (including validation error display). It is never necessary to use these macros to
generate form input fields, and they can be mixed and matched with simple HTML or calls
direct to the spring bind macros highlighted previously.
The following table of available macros show the VTL and FTL definitions and the
parameter list that each takes.
Table 18.1. Table of macro definitions

macro
VTL definition
FTL definition
message (output a
string from a
resource bundle
based on the code
parameter)
#springMessage($code)
<@spring.message code/>
messageText
(output a string from
a resource bundle
based on the code
parameter, falling
back to the value of
the default
parameter)
#springMessageText($code
$text)
<@spring.messageText code,
text/>
url (prefix a relative

URL with the
application's context
root)
#springUrl($relativeUrl)
<@spring.url relativeUrl/>
formInput (standard
input field for
gathering user input)
#springFormInput($path
$attributes)
<@spring.formInput path,
attributes, fieldType/>
formHiddenInput *
(hidden input field for #springFormHiddenInput($path
$attributes)
submitting non-user
input)
<@spring.formHiddenInput
path, attributes/>
formPasswordInput
* (standard input field
for gathering
#springFormPasswordInput($path <@spring.formPasswordInput
passwords. Note that $attributes)
path, attributes/>
no value will ever be
populated in fields of
this type)
formTextarea (large
text field for
gathering long,
freeform text input)
#springFormTextarea($path
$attributes)
<@spring.formTextarea
path, attributes/>
formSingleSelect
(drop down box of
options allowing a
single required value
to be selected)
<@spring.formSingleSelect
#springFormSingleSelect( $path
path, options,
$options $attributes)
attributes/>
formMultiSelect (a
list box of options
allowing the user to
select 0 or more
values)
#springFormMultiSelect($path
$options $attributes)
<@spring.formMultiSelect
path, options,
attributes/>
formRadioButtons
(a set of radio
#springFormRadioButtons($path
buttons allowing a
$options $separator
single selection to be $attributes)
made from the
available choices)
<@spring.formRadioButtons
path, options separator,
attributes/>
formCheckboxes (a
set of checkboxes
allowing 0 or more
values to be
selected)
#springFormCheckboxes($path
$options $separator
$attributes)
<@spring.formCheckboxes
path, options, separator,
attributes/>
formCheckbox (a
single checkbox)
#springFormCheckbox($path
$attributes)
<@spring.formCheckbox
path, attributes/>
showErrors
(simplify display of
validation errors for
the bound field)
#springShowErrors($separator
$classOrStyle)
<@spring.showErrors
separator, classOrStyle/>
* In FTL (FreeMarker), these two macros are not actually required as you can use the
normal formInput macro, specifying 'hidden' or 'password' as the value for the
fieldType parameter.
The parameters to any of the above macros have consistent meanings:
path: the name of the field to bind to (ie "command.name")
options: a Map of all the available values that can be selected from in the input field.
The keys to the map represent the values that will be POSTed back from the form and
bound to the command object. Map objects stored against the keys are the labels
displayed on the form to the user and may be different from the corresponding values
posted back by the form. Usually such a map is supplied as reference data by the
controller. Any Map implementation can be used depending on required behavior. For
strictly sorted maps, a SortedMap such as a TreeMap with a suitable Comparator
may be used and for arbitrary Maps that should return values in insertion order, use a
LinkedHashMap or a LinkedMap from commons-collections.
separator: where multiple options are available as discreet elements (radio buttons or
checkboxes), the sequence of characters used to separate each one in the list (ie
"<br>").
attributes: an additional string of arbitrary tags or text to be included within the HTML
tag itself. This string is echoed literally by the macro. For example, in a textarea field
you may supply attributes as 'rows="5" cols="60"' or you could pass style information
such as 'style="border:1px solid silver"'.
classOrStyle: for the showErrors macro, the name of the CSS class that the span tag
wrapping each error will use. If no information is supplied (or the value is empty) then
the errors will be wrapped in <b></b> tags.
Examples of the macros are outlined below some in FTL and some in VTL. Where usage
differences exist between the two languages, they are explained in the notes.
Input Fields

...
Name:
#springFormInput("command.name" "")<br>
#springShowErrors("<br>" "")<br>
The formInput macro takes the path parameter (command.name) and an additional
attributes parameter which is empty in the example above. The macro, along with all other
form generation macros, performs an implicit spring bind on the path parameter. The
binding remains valid until a new bind occurs so the showErrors macro doesn't need to
pass the path parameter again - it simply operates on whichever field a bind was last
created for.
The showErrors macro takes a separator parameter (the characters that will be used to
separate multiple errors on a given field) and also accepts a second parameter, this time a
class name or style attribute. Note that FreeMarker is able to specify default values for the
attributes parameter, unlike Velocity, and the two macro calls above could be expressed as
follows in FTL:
<@spring.formInput "command.name"/>
<@spring.showErrors "<br>"/>
Output is shown below of the form fragment generating the name field, and displaying a
validation error after the form was submitted with no value in the field. Validation occurs
through Spring's Validation framework.
The generated HTML looks like this:
Name:
<input type="text" name="name" value=""
>
<br>
<b>required</b>
<br>
<br>
The formTextarea macro works the same way as the formInput macro and accepts the
same parameter list. Commonly, the second parameter (attributes) will be used to pass
style information or rows and cols attributes for the textarea.
Selection Fields
Four selection field macros can be used to generate common UI value selection inputs in
your HTML forms.
formSingleSelect
formMultiSelect
formRadioButtons
formCheckboxes
Each of the four macros accepts a Map of options containing the value for the form field,
and the label corresponding to that value. The value and the label can be the same.
An example of radio buttons in FTL is below. The form backing object specifies a default
value of 'London' for this field and so no validation is necessary. When the form is
rendered, the entire list of cities to choose from is supplied as reference data in the model
under the name 'cityMap'.
...
Town:
<@spring.formRadioButtons "command.address.town", cityMap, "" /><br><br>
This renders a line of radio buttons, one for each value in cityMap using the separator "".
No additional attributes are supplied (the last parameter to the macro is missing). The
cityMap uses the same String for each key-value pair in the map. The map's keys are what
the form actually submits as POSTed request parameters, map values are the labels that
the user sees. In the example above, given a list of three well known cities and a default
value in the form backing object, the HTML would be

Town:
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="London"
>
London
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="Paris"
checked="checked"
>
Paris
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="New York"
>
New York
If your application expects to handle cities by internal codes for example, the map of codes
would be created with suitable keys like the example below.
protected Map referenceData(HttpServletRequest request) throws Exception {
Map cityMap = new LinkedHashMap();
cityMap.put("LDN", "London");
cityMap.put("PRS", "Paris");
cityMap.put("NYC", "New York");
Map m = new HashMap();
m.put("cityMap", cityMap);
return m;
}
The code would now produce output where the radio values are the relevant codes but the
user still sees the more user friendly city names.
Town:
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="LDN"
>
London
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="PRS"
checked="checked"
>
Paris
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="NYC"
>
New York
HTML escaping and XHTML compliance

Default usage of the form macros above will result in HTML tags that are HTML 4.01
compliant and that use the default value for HTML escaping defined in your web.xml as
used by Spring's bind support. In order to make the tags XHTML compliant or to override
the default HTML escaping value, you can specify two variables in your template (or in
your model where they will be visible to your templates). The advantage of specifying them
in the templates is that they can be changed to different values later in the template
processing to provide different behavior for different fields in your form.
To switch to XHTML compliance for your tags, specify a value of 'true' for a model/context
variable named xhtmlCompliant:
## for Velocity..
#set($springXhtmlCompliant = true)
<#-- for FreeMarker -->
<#assign xhtmlCompliant = true in spring>
Any tags generated by the Spring macros will now be XHTML compliant after processing
this directive.
In similar fashion, HTML escaping can be specified per field:
<#-- until this point, default HTML escaping is used -->
<#assign htmlEscape = true in spring>
<#-- next field will use HTML escaping -->
<@spring.formInput "command.name" />
<#assign htmlEscape = false in spring>
<#-- all future fields will be bound with HTML escaping off -->
18.5 XSLT
XSLT is a transformation language for XML and is popular as a view technology within
web applications. XSLT can be a good choice as a view technology if your application
naturally deals with XML, or if your model can easily be converted to XML. The following
section shows how to produce an XML document as model data and have it transformed
with XSLT in a Spring Web MVC application.
18.5.1 My First Words

This example is a trivial Spring application that creates a list of words in the Controller
and adds them to the model map. The map is returned along with the view name of our
XSLT view. See Section 17.3, Implementing Controllers for details of Spring Web MVC's
Controller interface. The XSLT view will turn the list of words into a simple XML
document ready for transformation.
Bean definitions
Configuration is standard for a simple Spring application. The dispatcher servlet config file
contains a reference to a ViewResolver, URL mappings and a single controller bean...
<bean id="homeController"class="xslt.HomeController"/>
... that encapsulates our word generation logic.
Standard MVC controller code

The controller logic is encapsulated in a subclass of AbstractController, with the
handler method being defined like so...
protected ModelAndView handleRequestInternal(
HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
Map map = new HashMap();
List wordList = new ArrayList();
wordList.add("hello");
wordList.add("world");
map.put("wordList", wordList);
return new ModelAndView("home", map);
}
So far we've done nothing that's XSLT specific. The model data has been created in the
same way as you would for any other Spring MVC application. Depending on the
configuration of the application now, that list of words could be rendered by JSP/JSTL by
having them added as request attributes, or they could be handled by Velocity by adding
the object to the VelocityContext. In order to have XSLT render them, they of course
have to be converted into an XML document somehow. There are software packages
available that will automatically 'domify' an object graph, but within Spring, you have
complete flexibility to create the DOM from your model in any way you choose. This
prevents the transformation of XML playing too great a part in the structure of your model
data which is a danger when using tools to manage the domification process.
Convert the model data to XML

In order to create a DOM document from our list of words or any other model data, we must
subclass the (provided)
org.springframework.web.servlet.view.xslt.AbstractXsltView class.
In doing so, we must also typically implement the abstract method
createXsltSource(..) method. The first parameter passed to this method is our
model map. Here's the complete listing of the HomePage class in our trivial word
application:
package xslt;
// imports omitted for brevity
public class HomePage extends AbstractXsltView {
protected Source createXsltSource(Map model, String rootName, HttpServletRequest
request, HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
Document document = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().newDocument();
Element root = document.createElement(rootName);
List words = (List) model.get("wordList");
for (Iterator it = words.iterator(); it.hasNext();) {
String nextWord = (String) it.next();
Element wordNode = document.createElement("word");
Text textNode = document.createTextNode(nextWord);
wordNode.appendChild(textNode);
root.appendChild(wordNode);
}
return new DOMSource(root);
}
}
A series of parameter name/value pairs can optionally be defined by your subclass which
will be added to the transformation object. The parameter names must match those defined
in your XSLT template declared with <xsl:param
name="myParam">defaultValue</xsl:param>. To specify the parameters,
override the getParameters() method of the AbstractXsltView class and return a
Map of the name/value pairs. If your parameters need to derive information from the current
request, you can override the getParameters(HttpServletRequest request)
method instead.
Defining the view properties

The views.properties file (or equivalent xml definition if you're using an XML based view
resolver as we did in the Velocity examples above) looks like this for the one-view
application that is 'My First Words':
home.(class)=xslt.HomePage
home.stylesheetLocation=/WEB-INF/xsl/home.xslt
home.root=words
Here, you can see how the view is tied in with the HomePage class just written which
handles the model domification in the first property '.(class)'. The
'stylesheetLocation' property points to the XSLT file which will handle the XML
transformation into HTML for us and the final property '.root' is the name that will be
used as the root of the XML document. This gets passed to the HomePage class above in
the second parameter to the createXsltSource(..) method(s).
Document transformation
Finally, we have the XSLT code used for transforming the above document. As shown in
the above 'views.properties' file, the stylesheet is called 'home.xslt' and it
lives in the war file in the 'WEB-INF/xsl' directory.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="html" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<head><title>Hello!</title></head>
<body>
<h1>My First Words</h1>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="word">
<xsl:value-of select="."/><br/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
18.5.2 Summary
A summary of the files discussed and their location in the WAR file is shown in the
simplified WAR structure below.
ProjectRoot
|
+- WebContent
|
+- WEB-INF
|
+- classes
|
|
|
+- xslt
|
|
|
|
|
+- HomePageController.class
|
|
+- HomePage.class
|
|
|
+- views.properties
|
+- lib
|
|
|
+- spring-*.jar
|
+- xsl
|
|
|
+- home.xslt
|
+- frontcontroller-servlet.xml
You will also need to ensure that an XML parser and an XSLT engine are available on the
classpath. JDK 1.4 provides them by default, and most Java EE containers will also make
them available by default, but it's a possible source of errors to be aware of.
18.6 Document views (PDF/Excel)

18.6.1 Introduction
Returning an HTML page isn't always the best way for the user to view the model output,
and Spring makes it simple to generate a PDF document or an Excel spreadsheet
dynamically from the model data. The document is the view and will be streamed from the
server with the correct content type to (hopefully) enable the client PC to run their
spreadsheet or PDF viewer application in response.
In order to use Excel views, you need to add the 'poi' library to your classpath, and for PDF
generation, the iText library.
18.6.2 Configuration and setup

Document based views are handled in an almost identical fashion to XSLT views, and the
following sections build upon the previous one by demonstrating how the same controller
used in the XSLT example is invoked to render the same model as both a PDF document
and an Excel spreadsheet (which can also be viewed or manipulated in Open Office).
Document view definitions

First, let's amend the views.properties file (or xml equivalent) and add a simple view
definition for both document types. The entire file now looks like this with the XSLT view
shown from earlier:
home.(class)=xslt.HomePage
home.stylesheetLocation=/WEB-INF/xsl/home.xslt
home.root=words
xl.(class)=excel.HomePage
pdf.(class)=pdf.HomePage
If you want to start with a template spreadsheet or a fillable PDF form to add your model
data to, specify the location as the 'url' property in the view definition
Controller code
The controller code we'll use remains exactly the same from the XSLT example earlier
other than to change the name of the view to use. Of course, you could be clever and have
this selected based on a URL parameter or some other logic - proof that Spring really is
very good at decoupling the views from the controllers!
Subclassing for Excel views

Exactly as we did for the XSLT example, we'll subclass suitable abstract classes in order
to implement custom behavior in generating our output documents. For Excel, this involves
writing a subclass of
org.springframework.web.servlet.view.document.AbstractExcelView
(for Excel files generated by POI) or
org.springframework.web.servlet.view.document.AbstractJExcelView
(for JExcelApi-generated Excel files) and implementing the buildExcelDocument()
method.
Here's the complete listing for our POI Excel view which displays the word list from the
model map in consecutive rows of the first column of a new spreadsheet:
package excel;
public class HomePage extends AbstractExcelView {
protected void buildExcelDocument(
Map model,
HSSFWorkbook wb,
HttpServletRequest req,
HttpServletResponse resp)
throws Exception {
HSSFSheet sheet;
HSSFRow sheetRow;
HSSFCell cell;
// Go to the first sheet
// getSheetAt: only if wb is created from an existing document
// sheet = wb.getSheetAt(0);
sheet = wb.createSheet("Spring");
sheet.setDefaultColumnWidth((short) 12);
// write a text at A1
cell = getCell(sheet, 0, 0);
setText(cell, "Spring-Excel test");
for (int i=0; i < words.size(); i++) {
cell = getCell(sheet, 2+i, 0);
setText(cell, (String) words.get(i));
}
}
}
And the following is a view generating the same Excel file, now using JExcelApi:
package excel;
public class HomePage extends AbstractJExcelView {
protected void buildExcelDocument(Map model,
WritableWorkbook wb,
HttpServletResponse response)
throws Exception {
WritableSheet sheet = wb.createSheet("Spring", 0);
sheet.addCell(new Label(0, 0, "Spring-Excel test"));
for (int i = 0; i < words.size(); i++) {
sheet.addCell(new Label(2+i, 0, (String) words.get(i)));
}
}
}
Note the differences between the APIs. We've found that the JExcelApi is somewhat more
intuitive, and furthermore, JExcelApi has slightly better image-handling capabilities. There
have been memory problems with large Excel files when using JExcelApi however.
If you now amend the controller such that it returns xl as the name of the view (return
new ModelAndView("xl", map);) and run your application again, you should find
that the Excel spreadsheet is created and downloaded automatically when you request the
same page as before.
Subclassing for PDF views

The PDF version of the word list is even simpler. This time, the class extends
org.springframework.web.servlet.view.document.AbstractPdfView
and implements the buildPdfDocument() method as follows:
package pdf;
public class PDFPage extends AbstractPdfView {
protected void buildPdfDocument(
Map model,
Document doc,
PdfWriter writer,
HttpServletRequest req,
HttpServletResponse resp)
throws Exception {
for (int i=0; i<words.size(); i++)
doc.add( new Paragraph((String) words.get(i)));
}
}
Once again, amend the controller to return the pdf view with return new
ModelAndView("pdf", map);, and reload the URL in your application. This time a
PDF document should appear listing each of the words in the model map.
18.7 JasperReports
JasperReports (http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net) is a powerful open-source reporting
engine that supports the creation of report designs using an easily understood XML file
format. JasperReports is capable of rendering reports in four different formats: CSV, Excel,
HTML and PDF.
18.7.1 Dependencies
Your application will need to include the latest release of JasperReports, which at the time
of writing was 0.6.1. JasperReports itself depends on the following projects:
BeanShell
Commons BeanUtils
Commons Collections
Commons Digester
Commons Logging
iText
POI
JasperReports also requires a JAXP compliant XML parser.
18.7.2 Configuration
To configure JasperReports views in your Spring container configuration you need to
define a ViewResolver to map view names to the appropriate view class depending on
which format you want your report rendered in.
Configuring the ViewResolver

Typically, you will use the ResourceBundleViewResolver to map view names to
view classes and files in a properties file.
</bean>
Here we've configured an instance of the ResourceBundleViewResolver class that

will look for view mappings in the resource bundle with base name views. (The content of
this file is described in the next section.)
Configuring the Views

The Spring Framework contains five different View implementations for JasperReports,
four of which correspond to one of the four output formats supported by JasperReports, and
one that allows for the format to be determined at runtime:
Table 18.2. JasperReports View classes

Class Name
Render Format
JasperReportsCsvView
CSV
JasperReportsHtmlView
HTML
JasperReportsPdfView
PDF
JasperReportsXlsView
Microsoft Excel
JasperReportsMultiFormatView
The view is decided upon at runtime
Mapping one of these classes to a view name and a report file is a matter of adding the
appropriate entries in the resource bundle configured in the previous section as shown
here:
simpleReport.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.jasperreports.JasperReportsPdfView
simpleReport.url=/WEB-INF/reports/DataSourceReport.jasper
Here you can see that the view with name simpleReport is mapped to the
JasperReportsPdfView class, causing the output of this report to be rendered in PDF
format. The url property of the view is set to the location of the underlying report file.
About Report Files

JasperReports has two distinct types of report file: the design file, which has a .jrxml
extension, and the compiled report file, which has a .jasper extension. Typically, you
use the JasperReports Ant task to compile your .jrxml design file into a .jasper file
before deploying it into your application. With the Spring Framework you can map either of
these files to your report file and the framework will take care of compiling the .jrxml file
on the fly for you. You should note that after a .jrxml file is compiled by the Spring
Framework, the compiled report is cached for the lifetime of the application. Thus, to make
changes to the file you will need to restart your application.
Using JasperReportsMultiFormatView
The JasperReportsMultiFormatView allows for the report format to be specified at
runtime. The actual rendering of the report is delegated to one of the other JasperReports
view classes - the JasperReportsMultiFormatView class simply adds a wrapper

layer that allows for the exact implementation to be specified at runtime.
The JasperReportsMultiFormatView class introduces two concepts: the format key
and the discriminator key. The JasperReportsMultiFormatView class uses the
mapping key to look up the actual view implementation class, and it uses the format key to
lookup up the mapping key. From a coding perspective you add an entry to your model
with the format key as the key and the mapping key as the value, for example:
public ModelAndView handleSimpleReportMulti(HttpServletRequest request,
String uri = request.getRequestURI();
String format = uri.substring(uri.lastIndexOf(".") + 1);
Map model = getModel();
model.put("format", format);
return new ModelAndView("simpleReportMulti", model);
}
In this example, the mapping key is determined from the extension of the request URI and
is added to the model under the default format key: format. If you wish to use a different
format key then you can configure this using the formatKey property of the
JasperReportsMultiFormatView class.
By default the following mapping key mappings are configured in
JasperReportsMultiFormatView:
Table 18.3. JasperReportsMultiFormatView Default Mapping Key

Mappings
Mapping Key
View Class
csv
JasperReportsCsvView
html
JasperReportsHtmlView
pdf
JasperReportsPdfView
xls
JasperReportsXlsView
So in the example above a request to URI /foo/myReport.pdf would be mapped to the

JasperReportsPdfView class. You can override the mapping key to view class
mappings using the formatMappings property of
JasperReportsMultiFormatView.
18.7.3 Populating the ModelAndView

In order to render your report correctly in the format you have chosen, you must supply
Spring with all of the data needed to populate your report. For JasperReports this means
you must pass in all report parameters along with the report datasource. Report parameters
are simple name/value pairs and can be added to the Map for your model as you would
add any name/value pair.
When adding the datasource to the model you have two approaches to choose from. The
first approach is to add an instance of JRDataSource or a Collection type to the
model Map under any arbitrary key. Spring will then locate this object in the model and
treat it as the report datasource. For example, you may populate your model like so:
private Map getModel() {
Map model = new HashMap();
Collection beanData = getBeanData();
model.put("myBeanData", beanData);
return model;
}
The second approach is to add the instance of JRDataSource or Collection under a

specific key and then configure this key using the reportDataKey property of the view
class. In both cases Spring will wrap instances of Collection in a
JRBeanCollectionDataSource instance. For example:
private Map getModel() {
Collection beanData = getBeanData();
Collection someData = getSomeData();
model.put("myBeanData", beanData);
model.put("someData", someData);
return model;
}
Here you can see that two Collection instances are being added to the model. To
ensure that the correct one is used, we simply modify our view configuration as
appropriate:
simpleReport.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.jasperreports.JasperReportsPdfView
simpleReport.url=/WEB-INF/reports/DataSourceReport.jasper
simpleReport.reportDataKey=myBeanData
Be aware that when using the first approach, Spring will use the first instance of
JRDataSource or Collection that it encounters. If you need to place multiple
instances of JRDataSource or Collection into the model you need to use the second
approach.
18.7.4 Working with Sub-Reports

JasperReports provides support for embedded sub-reports within your master report files.
There are a wide variety of mechanisms for including sub-reports in your report files. The
easiest way is to hard code the report path and the SQL query for the sub report into your
design files. The drawback of this approach is obvious: the values are hard-coded into
your report files reducing reusability and making it harder to modify and update report
designs. To overcome this you can configure sub-reports declaratively, and you can
include additional data for these sub-reports directly from your controllers.
Configuring Sub-Report Files

To control which sub-report files are included in a master report using Spring, your report
file must be configured to accept sub-reports from an external source. To do this you
declare a parameter in your report file like so:
<parameter name="ProductsSubReport" class="net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperReport"/>
Then, you define your sub-report to use this sub-report parameter:

<subreport>
<reportElement isPrintRepeatedValues="false" x="5" y="25" width="325"
height="20" isRemoveLineWhenBlank="true" backcolor="#ffcc99"/>
<subreportParameter name="City">
<subreportParameterExpression><![CDATA[$F{city}]]></subreportParameterExpression>
</subreportParameter>
<dataSourceExpression><![CDATA[$P{SubReportData}]]></dataSourceExpression>
<subreportExpression class="net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperReport">
<![CDATA[$P{ProductsSubReport}]]></subreportExpression>
</subreport>
This defines a master report file that expects the sub-report to be passed in as an instance
of net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperReports under the parameter
ProductsSubReport. When configuring your Jasper view class, you can instruct Spring
to load a report file and pass it into the JasperReports engine as a sub-report using the
subReportUrls property:
<property name="subReportUrls">
<map>
<entry key="ProductsSubReport" value="/WEB-INF/reports/subReportChild.jrxml"/>

</map>
</property>
Here, the key of the Map corresponds to the name of the sub-report parameter in the report
design file, and the entry is the URL of the report file. Spring will load this report file,
compiling it if necessary, and pass it into the JasperReports engine under the given key.
Configuring Sub-Report Data Sources

This step is entirely optional when using Spring to configure your sub-reports. If you wish,
you can still configure the data source for your sub-reports using static queries. However, if
you want Spring to convert data returned in your ModelAndView into instances of
JRDataSource then you need to specify which of the parameters in your
ModelAndView Spring should convert. To do this, configure the list of parameter names
using the subReportDataKeys property of your chosen view class:
<property name="subReportDataKeys" value="SubReportData"/>
Here, the key you supply must correspond to both the key used in your ModelAndView
and the key used in your report design file.
18.7.5 Configuring Exporter Parameters

If you have special requirements for exporter configuration -- perhaps you want a specific
page size for your PDF report -- you can configure these exporter parameters declaratively
in your Spring configuration file using the exporterParameters property of the view
class. The exporterParameters property is typed as a Map. In your configuration the
key of an entry should be the fully-qualified name of a static field that contains the exporter
parameter definition, and the value of an entry should be the value you want to assign to
the parameter. An example of this is shown below:
<bean id="htmlReport" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.jasperreports.JasperReportsHtmlView">
<property name="url" value="/WEB-INF/reports/simpleReport.jrxml"/>
<property name="exporterParameters">
<map>
<entry key="net.sf.jasperreports.engine.export.JRHtmlExporterParameter.HTML_FOOTER">
<value>Footer by Spring!
</td><td width="50%">  </td></tr>
</table></body></html>
</value>
</entry>
</map>
</property>
</bean>
Here you can see that the JasperReportsHtmlView is configured with an exporter
parameter for
net.sf.jasperreports.engine.export.JRHtmlExporterParameter.HTML_FOOTER
which will output a footer in the resulting HTML.
18.8 Feed Views

Both AbstractAtomFeedView and AbstractRssFeedView inherit from the base
class AbstractFeedView and are used to provide Atom and RSS Feed views
respectfully. They are based on java.net's ROME project and are located in the package
org.springframework.web.servlet.view.feed.
AbstractAtomFeedView requires you to implement the buildFeedEntries()
method and optionally override the buildFeedMetadata() method (the default
implementation is empty), as shown below.
public class SampleContentAtomView extends AbstractAtomFeedView {
@Override
protected void buildFeedMetadata(Map<String, Object> model, Feed feed,
HttpServletRequest request) {
}
@Override
protected List<Entry> buildFeedEntries(Map<String, Object> model,
HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
throws Exception {
}
}
Similar requirements apply for implementing AbstractRssFeedView, as shown below.

public class SampleContentAtomView extends AbstractRssFeedView {
@Override
protected void buildFeedMetadata(Map<String, Object> model, Channel feed,
HttpServletRequest request) {
}
@Override
protected List<Item> buildFeedItems(Map<String, Object> model,
HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
throws Exception {
}
}
The buildFeedItems() and buildFeedEntires() methods pass in the HTTP

request in case you need to access the Locale. The HTTP response is passed in only for
the setting of cookies or other HTTP headers. The feed will automatically be written to the
response object after the method returns.
For an example of creating an Atom view please refer to Alef Arendsen's SpringSource
Team Blog entry.
18.9 XML Marshalling View

The MarhsallingView uses an XML Marshaller defined in the
org.springframework.oxm package to render the response content as XML. The
object to be marshalled can be set explicitly using MarhsallingView's modelKey bean
property. Alternatively, the view will iterate over all model properties and marshal only
those types that are supported by the Marshaller. For more information on the
functionality in the org.springframework.oxm package refer to the chapter
Marshalling XML using O/X Mappers.
18.10 JSON Mapping View

The MappingJackson2JsonView (or MappingJacksonJsonView depending on the
the Jackson version you have) uses the Jackson library's ObjectMapper to render the
response content as JSON. By default, the entire contents of the model map (with the
exception of framework-specific classes) will be encoded as JSON. For cases where the
contents of the map need to be filtered, users may specify a specific set of model attributes
to encode via the RenderedAttributes property. The
extractValueFromSingleKeyModel property may also be used to have the value in
single-key models extracted and serialized directly rather than as a map of model
attributes.
JSON mapping can be customized as needed through the use of Jackson's provided
annotations. When further control is needed, a custom ObjectMapper can be injected
through the ObjectMapper property for cases where custom JSON
serializers/deserializers need to be provided for specific types.
19. Integrating with other web frameworks
19.1 Introduction
This chapter details Spring's integration with third party web frameworks such as JSF,
Struts, WebWork, and Tapestry.
One of the core value propositions of the Spring
Framework is that of enabling choice. In a general
sense, Spring does not force one to use or buy
into any particular architecture, technology, or
methodology (although it certainly recommends
some over others). This freedom to pick and
choose the architecture, technology, or
methodology that is most relevant to a developer
and his or her development team is arguably most
evident in the web area, where Spring provides its
own web framework (Spring MVC), while at the
same time providing integration with a number of
popular third party web frameworks. This allows
one to continue to leverage any and all of the skills
one may have acquired in a particular web
framework such as Struts, while at the same time
being able to enjoy the benefits afforded by Spring
in other areas such as data access, declarative
transaction management, and flexible
configuration and application assembly.
Having dispensed with the woolly sales patter (c.f.
the previous paragraph), the remainder of this
chapter will concentrate upon the meaty details of
integrating your favorite web framework with
Spring Web Flow

page flow.
solution.
processes.
Flow website.
Spring. One thing that is often commented upon by

developers coming to Java from other languages
is the seeming super-abundance of web frameworks available in Java. There are indeed a
great number of web frameworks in the Java space; in fact there are far too many to cover
with any semblance of detail in a single chapter. This chapter thus picks four of the more
popular web frameworks in Java, starting with the Spring configuration that is common to
all of the supported web frameworks, and then detailing the specific integration options for
each supported web framework.
Note
Please note that this chapter does not attempt to explain how to use
any of the supported web frameworks. For example, if you want to use
Struts for the presentation layer of your web application, the
assumption is that you are already familiar with Struts. If you need
further details about any of the supported web frameworks themselves,
please do consult Section 19.7, Further Resources at the end of this
chapter.
19.2 Common configuration

Before diving into the integration specifics of each supported web framework, let us first
take a look at the Spring configuration that is not specific to any one web framework. (This
section is equally applicable to Spring's own web framework, Spring MVC.)
One of the concepts (for want of a better word) espoused by (Spring's) lightweight
application model is that of a layered architecture. Remember that in a 'classic' layered
architecture, the web layer is but one of many layers; it serves as one of the entry points
into a server side application and it delegates to service objects (facades) defined in a
service layer to satisfy business specific (and presentation-technology agnostic) use
cases. In Spring, these service objects, any other business-specific objects, data access
objects, etc. exist in a distinct 'business context', which contains no web or presentation
layer objects (presentation objects such as Spring MVC controllers are typically configured
in a distinct 'presentation context'). This section details how one configures a Spring
container (a WebApplicationContext) that contains all of the 'business beans' in
one's application.
On to specifics: all that one need do is to declare a ContextLoaderListener in the
standard Java EE servlet web.xml file of one's web application, and add a
contextConfigLocation <context-param/> section (in the same file) that defines
which set of Spring XML configuration files to load.
Find below the <listener/> configuration:
<listener>
</listener>
Find below the <context-param/> configuration:

<context-param>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/applicationContext*.xml</param-value>
</context-param>
If you don't specify the contextConfigLocation context parameter, the

ContextLoaderListener will look for a file called /WEBINF/applicationContext.xml to load. Once the context files are loaded, Spring
creates a WebApplicationContext object based on the bean definitions and stores it
in the ServletContext of the web application.
All Java web frameworks are built on top of the Servlet API, and so one can use the
following code snippet to get access to this 'business context' ApplicationContext
created by the ContextLoaderListener.
WebApplicationContext ctx = WebApplicationContextUtils.getWebApplicationContext(servletContext);
The WebApplicationContextUtils class is for convenience, so you don't have to

remember the name of the ServletContext attribute. Its getWebApplicationContext()
method will return null if an object doesn't exist under the
WebApplicationContext.ROOT_WEB_APPLICATION_CONTEXT_ATTRIBUTE key.
Rather than risk getting NullPointerExceptions in your application, it's better to use
the getRequiredWebApplicationContext() method. This method throws an
exception when the ApplicationContext is missing.
Once you have a reference to the WebApplicationContext, you can retrieve beans by
their name or type. Most developers retrieve beans by name and then cast them to one of
their implemented interfaces.
Fortunately, most of the frameworks in this section have simpler ways of looking up beans.
Not only do they make it easy to get beans from a Spring container, but they also allow you
to use dependency injection on their controllers. Each web framework section has more
detail on its specific integration strategies.
19.3 JavaServer Faces 1.1 and 1.2

JavaServer Faces (JSF) is the JCP's standard component-based, event-driven web user
interface framework. As of Java EE 5, it is an official part of the Java EE umbrella.
For a popular JSF runtime as well as for popular JSF component libraries, check out the
Apache MyFaces project. The MyFaces project also provides common JSF extensions
such as MyFaces Orchestra: a Spring-based JSF extension that provides rich conversation
scope support.
Note
Spring Web Flow 2.0 provides rich JSF support through its newly
established Spring Faces module, both for JSF-centric usage (as
described in this section) and for Spring-centric usage (using JSF
views within a Spring MVC dispatcher). Check out the Spring Web
Flow website for details!
The key element in Spring's JSF integration is the JSF 1.1 VariableResolver
mechanism. On JSF 1.2, Spring supports the ELResolver mechanism as a nextgeneration version of JSF EL integration.
19.3.1 DelegatingVariableResolver (JSF 1.1/1.2)

The easiest way to integrate one's Spring middle-tier with one's JSF web layer is to use
the DelegatingVariableResolver class. To configure this variable resolver in one's
application, one will need to edit one's faces-context.xml file. After the opening <facesconfig/> element, add an <application/> element and a <variableresolver/> element within it. The value of the variable resolver should reference
Spring's DelegatingVariableResolver; for example:
<faces-config>
<application>
<variable-resolver>org.springframework.web.jsf.DelegatingVariableResolver</variable-resolver>
<locale-config>
<default-locale>en</default-locale>
<supported-locale>en</supported-locale>
<supported-locale>es</supported-locale>
</locale-config>
<message-bundle>messages</message-bundle>
</application>
</faces-config>
The DelegatingVariableResolver will first delegate value lookups to the default

resolver of the underlying JSF implementation and then to Spring's 'business context'
WebApplicationContext. This allows one to easily inject dependencies into one's
JSF-managed beans.
Managed beans are defined in one's faces-config.xml file. Find below an example
where #{userManager} is a bean that is retrieved from the Spring 'business context'.
<managed-bean>
<managed-bean-name>userList</managed-bean-name>
<managed-bean-class>com.whatever.jsf.UserList</managed-bean-class>
<managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>
<managed-property>
<property-name>userManager</property-name>
<value>#{userManager}</value>
</managed-property>
</managed-bean>
19.3.2 SpringBeanVariableResolver (JSF 1.1/1.2)

SpringBeanVariableResolver is a variant of DelegatingVariableResolver. It
delegates to the Spring's 'business context' WebApplicationContext first and then to
the default resolver of the underlying JSF implementation. This is useful in particular when
using request/session-scoped beans with special Spring resolution rules, e.g. Spring
FactoryBean implementations.
Configuration-wise, simply define SpringBeanVariableResolver in your facescontext.xml file:
<faces-config>
<application>
<variable-resolver>org.springframework.web.jsf.SpringBeanVariableResolver</variable-resolver>
...
</application>
</faces-config>
19.3.3 SpringBeanFacesELResolver (JSF 1.2+)

SpringBeanFacesELResolver is a JSF 1.2 compliant ELResolver implementation,
integrating with the standard Unified EL as used by JSF 1.2 and JSP 2.1. Like
SpringBeanVariableResolver, it delegates to the Spring's 'business context'
WebApplicationContext first, then to the default resolver of the underlying JSF
implementation.
Configuration-wise, simply define SpringBeanFacesELResolver in your JSF 1.2
faces-context.xml file:
<faces-config>
<application>
<el-resolver>org.springframework.web.jsf.el.SpringBeanFacesELResolver</el-resolver>
...
</application>
</faces-config>
19.3.4 FacesContextUtils
A custom VariableResolver works well when mapping one's properties to beans in
faces-config.xml, but at times one may need to grab a bean explicitly. The
FacesContextUtils class makes this easy. It is similar to
WebApplicationContextUtils, except that it takes a FacesContext parameter
rather than a ServletContext parameter.
ApplicationContext ctx = FacesContextUtils.getWebApplicationContext(FacesContext.getCurrentInstance());
19.4 Apache Struts 1.x and 2.x

Struts used to be the de facto web framework for Java applications, mainly because it was
one of the first to be released (June 2001). It has now been renamed to Struts 1 (as
opposed to Struts 2). Many applications still use it. Invented by Craig McClanahan, Struts
is an open source project hosted by the Apache Software Foundation. At the time, it greatly
simplified the JSP/Servlet programming paradigm and won over many developers who
were using proprietary frameworks. It simplified the programming model, it was open
source (and thus free as in beer), and it had a large community, which allowed the project
to grow and become popular among Java web developers.
Note
The following section discusses Struts 1 a.k.a. "Struts Classic".
Struts 2 is effectively a different product - a successor of WebWork 2.2
(as discussed in Section 19.5, WebWork 2.x), carrying the Struts
brand now. Check out the Struts 2 Spring Plugin for the built-in Spring
integration shipped with Struts 2. In general, Struts 2 is closer to
WebWork 2.2 than to Struts 1 in terms of its Spring integration
implications.
To integrate your Struts 1.x application with Spring, you have two options:
Configure Spring to manage your Actions as beans, using the
ContextLoaderPlugin, and set their dependencies in a Spring context file.
Subclass Spring's ActionSupport classes and grab your Spring-managed beans
explicitly using a getWebApplicationContext() method.
19.4.1 ContextLoaderPlugin
The ContextLoaderPlugin is a Struts 1.1+ plug-in that loads a Spring context file for
the Struts ActionServlet. This context refers to the root WebApplicationContext
(loaded by the ContextLoaderListener) as its parent. The default name of the context
file is the name of the mapped servlet, plus -servlet.xml. If ActionServlet is defined in
web.xml as <servlet-name>action</servlet-name>, the default is /WEBINF/action-servlet.xml.
To configure this plug-in, add the following XML to the plug-ins section near the bottom of
your struts-config.xml file:
<plug-in className="org.springframework.web.struts.ContextLoaderPlugIn"/>
The location of the context configuration files can be customized using the
'contextConfigLocation' property.
<plug-in className="org.springframework.web.struts.ContextLoaderPlugIn">
<set-property property="contextConfigLocation"
value="/WEB-INF/action-servlet.xml,/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml"/>
</plug-in>
It is possible to use this plugin to load all your context files, which can be useful when
using testing tools like StrutsTestCase. StrutsTestCase's MockStrutsTestCase won't
initialize Listeners on startup so putting all your context files in the plugin is a workaround.
(A bug has been filed for this issue, but has been closed as 'Wont Fix').
After configuring this plug-in in struts-config.xml, you can configure your Action to be
managed by Spring. Spring (1.1.3+) provides two ways to do this:
Override Struts' default RequestProcessor with Spring's
DelegatingRequestProcessor.
Use the DelegatingActionProxy class in the type attribute of your <actionmapping>.
Both of these methods allow you to manage your Actions and their dependencies in the
action-servlet.xml file. The bridge between the Action in struts-config.xml and actionservlet.xml is built with the action-mapping's "path" and the bean's "name". If you have the
following in your struts-config.xml file:
<action path="/users" .../>
You must define that Action's bean with the "/users" name in action-servlet.xml:
<bean name="/users" .../>
DelegatingRequestProcessor
To configure the DelegatingRequestProcessor in your struts-config.xml file,
override the "processorClass" property in the <controller> element. These lines follow the
<action-mapping> element.
<controller>
<set-property property="processorClass"
value="org.springframework.web.struts.DelegatingRequestProcessor"/>
</controller>
After adding this setting, your Action will automatically be looked up in Spring's context file,
no matter what the type. In fact, you don't even need to specify a type. Both of the following
snippets will work:
<action path="/user" type="com.whatever.struts.UserAction"/>
<action path="/user"/>
If you're using Struts' modules feature, your bean names must contain the module prefix.
For example, an action defined as <action path="/user"/> with module prefix
"admin" requires a bean name with <bean name="/admin/user"/>.
Note
If you are using Tiles in your Struts application, you must configure your
<controller> with the DelegatingTilesRequestProcessor
instead.
DelegatingActionProxy
If you have a custom RequestProcessor and can't use the
DelegatingRequestProcessor or DelegatingTilesRequestProcessor
approaches, you can use the DelegatingActionProxy as the type in your actionmapping.
<action path="/user" type="org.springframework.web.struts.DelegatingActionProxy"
name="userForm" scope="request" validate="false" parameter="method">
<forward name="list" path="/userList.jsp"/>
<forward name="edit" path="/userForm.jsp"/>
</action>
The bean definition in action-servlet.xml remains the same, whether you use a custom
RequestProcessor or the DelegatingActionProxy.
If you define your Action in a context file, the full feature set of Spring's bean container
will be available for it: dependency injection as well as the option to instantiate a new
Action instance for each request. To activate the latter, add scope="prototype" to your
Action's bean definition.
<bean name="/user" scope="prototype" autowire="byName"
class="org.example.web.UserAction"/>
19.4.2 ActionSupport Classes

As previously mentioned, you can retrieve the WebApplicationContext from the
ServletContext using the WebApplicationContextUtils class. An easier way is
to extend Spring's Action classes for Struts. For example, instead of subclassing Struts'
Action class, you can subclass Spring's ActionSupport class.
The ActionSupport class provides additional convenience methods, like
getWebApplicationContext(). Below is an example of how you might use this in an Action:
public class UserAction extends DispatchActionSupport {
public ActionForward execute(ActionMapping mapping,
ActionForm form,
if (log.isDebugEnabled()) {
log.debug("entering 'delete' method...");
}
WebApplicationContext ctx = getWebApplicationContext();
UserManager mgr = (UserManager) ctx.getBean("userManager");
// talk to manager for business logic
return mapping.findForward("success");
}
}
Spring includes subclasses for all of the standard Struts Actions - the Spring versions
merely have Support appended to the name:
ActionSupport,
DispatchActionSupport,
LookupDispatchActionSupport and
MappingDispatchActionSupport.
The recommended strategy is to use the approach that best suits your project. Subclassing
makes your code more readable, and you know exactly how your dependencies are
resolved. In contrast, using the ContextLoaderPlugin allows you to easily add new
dependencies in your context XML file. Either way, Spring provides some nice options for
integrating with Struts.
19.5 WebWork 2.x

From the WebWork homepage:
WebWork is a Java web-application development framework. It is built specifically with
developer productivity and code simplicity in mind, providing robust support for building
reusable UI templates, such as form controls, UI themes, internationalization, dynamic form
parameter mapping to JavaBeans, robust client and server side validation, and much
more.
Web work's architecture and concepts are easy to understand, and the framework also has
an extensive tag library as well as nicely decoupled validation.
One of the key enablers in WebWork's technology stack is an IoC container to manage
Webwork Actions, handle the "wiring" of business objects, etc. Prior to WebWork version
2.2, WebWork used its own proprietary IoC container (and provided integration points so
that one could integrate an IoC container such as Spring's into the mix). However, as of
WebWork version 2.2, the default IoC container that is used within WebWork is Spring.
This is obviously great news if one is a Spring developer, because it means that one is
immediately familiar with the basics of IoC configuration, idioms, and suchlike within
WebWork.
Now in the interests of adhering to the DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principle, it would be
foolish to document the Spring-WebWork integration in light of the fact that the WebWork
team have already written such a writeup. Please consult the Spring-WebWork integration
page on the WebWork wiki for the full lowdown.
Note that the Spring-WebWork integration code was developed (and continues to be
maintained and improved) by the WebWork developers themselves. So please refer first to
the WebWork site and forums if you are having issues with the integration. But feel free to
post comments and queries regarding the Spring-WebWork integration on the Spring
support forums, too.
19.6 Tapestry 3.x and 4.x

From the Tapestry homepage:
Tapestry is an open-source framework for creating dynamic, robust, highly scalable web
applications in Java. Tapestry complements and builds upon the standard Java Servlet
API, and so it works in any servlet container or application server.
While Spring has its own powerful web layer, there are a number of unique advantages to
building an enterprise Java application using a combination of Tapestry for the web user
interface and the Spring container for the lower layers. This section of the web integration
chapter attempts to detail a few best practices for combining these two frameworks.
A typical layered enterprise Java application built with Tapestry and Spring will consist of a
top user interface (UI) layer built with Tapestry, and a number of lower layers, all wired
together by one or more Spring containers. Tapestry's own reference documentation
contains the following snippet of best practice advice. (Text that the author of this Spring
section has added is contained within [] brackets.)
A very successful design pattern in Tapestry is to keep pages and components very
simple, and delegate as much logic as possible out to HiveMind [or Spring, or whatever]
services. Listener methods should ideally do little more than marshal together the correct
information and pass it over to a service.
The key question then is: how does one supply Tapestry pages with collaborating
services? The answer, ideally, is that one would want to dependency inject those services
directly into one's Tapestry pages. In Tapestry, one can effect this dependency injection by
a variety of means. This section is only going to enumerate the dependency injection
means afforded by Spring. The real beauty of the rest of this Spring-Tapestry integration is
that the elegant and flexible design of Tapestry itself makes doing this dependency
injection of Spring-managed beans a cinch. (Another nice thing is that this Spring-Tapestry
integration code was written - and continues to be maintained - by the Tapestry creator
Howard M. Lewis Ship, so hats off to him for what is really some silky smooth integration).
19.6.1 Injecting Spring-managed beans

Assume we have the following simple Spring container definition (in the ubiquitous XML
format):
http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee/spring-jee.xsd">
<beans>

<jee:jndi-lookup id="dataSource" jndi-name="java:DefaultDS"/>
<bean id="hibSessionFactory"
</bean>
<bean id="mapper"
class="com.whatever.dataaccess.mapper.hibernate.MapperImpl">
<property name="sessionFactory" ref="hibSessionFactory"/>
</bean>

<bean id="authenticationService"
<bean class="com.whatever.services.service.user.AuthenticationServiceImpl">
<property name="mapper" ref="mapper"/>
</bean>
</property>
<property name="proxyInterfacesOnly" value="true"/>
<value>
*=PROPAGATION_REQUIRED
</value>
</property>
</bean>

<bean class="com.whatever.services.service.user.UserServiceImpl">
<property name="mapper" ref="mapper"/>
</bean>
</property>
<property name="proxyInterfacesOnly" value="true"/>
<value>
*=PROPAGATION_REQUIRED
</value>
</property>
</bean>
</beans>
Inside the Tapestry application, the above bean definitions need to be loaded into a Spring
container, and any relevant Tapestry pages need to be supplied (injected) with the
authenticationService and userService beans, which implement the
AuthenticationService and UserService interfaces, respectively.
At this point, the application context is available to a web application by calling Spring's
static utility function
WebApplicationContextUtils.getApplicationContext(servletContext),
where servletContext is the standard ServletContext from the Java EE Servlet
specification. As such, one simple mechanism for a page to get an instance of the
UserService, for example, would be with code such as:
WebApplicationContext appContext = WebApplicationContextUtils.getApplicationContext(
getRequestCycle().getRequestContext().getServlet().getServletContext());
UserService userService = (UserService) appContext.getBean("userService");
// ... some code which uses UserService
This mechanism does work. Having said that, it can be made a lot less verbose by
encapsulating most of the functionality in a method in the base class for the page or
component. However, in some respects it goes against the IoC principle; ideally you would
like the page to not have to ask the context for a specific bean by name, and in fact, the
page would ideally not know about the context at all.
Luckily, there is a mechanism to allow this. We rely upon the fact that Tapestry already has
a mechanism to declaratively add properties to a page, and it is in fact the preferred
approach to manage all properties on a page in this declarative fashion, so that Tapestry
can properly manage their lifecycle as part of the page and component lifecycle.
Note
This next section is applicable to Tapestry 3.x. If you are using
Tapestry version 4.x, please consult the section entitled the section
called Dependency Injecting Spring Beans into Tapestry pages Tapestry 4.x style.
Dependency Injecting Spring Beans into Tapestry pages

First we need to make the ApplicationContext available to the Tapestry page or
Component without having to have the ServletContext; this is because at the stage in
the page's/component's lifecycle when we need to access the ApplicationContext,
the ServletContext won't be easily available to the page, so we can't use
WebApplicationContextUtils.getApplicationContext(servletContext)
directly. One way is by defining a custom version of the Tapestry IEngine which exposes
this for us:
package com.whatever.web.xportal;
// import ...
public class MyEngine extends org.apache.tapestry.engine.BaseEngine {
public static final String APPLICATION_CONTEXT_KEY = "appContext";
/**
* @see org.apache.tapestry.engine.AbstractEngine#setupForRequest(org.apache.tapestry.request.RequestContext)
*/
protected void setupForRequest(RequestContext context) {
super.setupForRequest(context);
// insert ApplicationContext in global, if not there
Map global = (Map) getGlobal();
ApplicationContext ac = (ApplicationContext) global.get(APPLICATION_CONTEXT_KEY);
if (ac == null) {
ac = WebApplicationContextUtils.getWebApplicationContext(
context.getServlet().getServletContext()
);
global.put(APPLICATION_CONTEXT_KEY, ac);
}
}
}
This engine class places the Spring Application Context as an attribute called
"appContext" in this Tapestry app's 'Global' object. Make sure to register the fact that this
special IEngine instance should be used for this Tapestry application, with an entry in the
Tapestry application definition file. For example:
file: xportal.application:
<!DOCTYPE application PUBLIC
"-//Apache Software Foundation//Tapestry Specification 3.0//EN"
"http://jakarta.apache.org/tapestry/dtd/Tapestry_3_0.dtd">
<application
name="Whatever xPortal"
engine-class="com.whatever.web.xportal.MyEngine">
</application>
Component definition files

Now in our page or component definition file (*.page or *.jwc), we simply add propertyspecification elements to grab the beans we need out of the ApplicationContext, and
create page or component properties for them. For example:
<property-specification name="userService"
type="com.whatever.services.service.user.UserService">
global.appContext.getBean("userService")
</property-specification>
<property-specification name="authenticationService"
type="com.whatever.services.service.user.AuthenticationService">
global.appContext.getBean("authenticationService")
The OGNL expression inside the property-specification specifies the initial value for the
property, as a bean obtained from the context. The entire page definition might look like
this:
<!DOCTYPE page-specification PUBLIC
"-//Apache Software Foundation//Tapestry Specification 3.0//EN"
"http://jakarta.apache.org/tapestry/dtd/Tapestry_3_0.dtd">
<page-specification class="com.whatever.web.xportal.pages.Login">
<property-specification
name="username" type="java.lang.String"/>
name="password" type="java.lang.String"/>
name="error" type="java.lang.String"/>
name="callback" type="org.apache.tapestry.callback.ICallback" persistent="yes"/>
name="userService"
type="com.whatever.services.service.user.UserService">
global.appContext.getBean("userService")
<property-specification name="authenticationService"
type="com.whatever.services.service.user.AuthenticationService">
global.appContext.getBean("authenticationService")
<bean name="delegate" class="com.whatever.web.xportal.PortalValidationDelegate"/>
<bean name="validator" class="org.apache.tapestry.valid.StringValidator" lifecycle="page">
<set-property name="required" expression="true"/>
<set-property name="clientScriptingEnabled" expression="true"/>
</bean>
<component id="inputUsername" type="ValidField">
<static-binding name="displayName" value="Username"/>
<binding name="value" expression="username"/>
<binding name="validator" expression="beans.validator"/>
</component>
<component id="inputPassword" type="ValidField">
<binding name="value" expression="password"/>
<binding name="validator" expression="beans.validator"/>
<static-binding name="displayName" value="Password"/>
<binding name="hidden" expression="true"/>
</component>
</page-specification>
Adding abstract accessors

Now in the Java class definition for the page or component itself, all we need to do is add
an abstract getter method for the properties we have defined (in order to be able to access
the properties).
// our
public
// our
public
UserService implementation; will come from page definition

abstract UserService getUserService();
AuthenticationService implementation; will come from page definition
abstract AuthenticationService getAuthenticationService();
For the sake of completeness, the entire Java class, for a login page in this example, might
look like this:
package com.whatever.web.xportal.pages;
/**
* Allows the user to login, by providing username and password.
* After successfully logging in, a cookie is placed on the client browser
* that provides the default username for future logins (the cookie
* persists for a week).
*/
public abstract class Login extends BasePage implements ErrorProperty, PageRenderListener {
/** the key under which the authenticated user object is stored in the visit as */
public static final String USER_KEY = "user";
/** The name of the cookie that identifies a user **/
private static final String COOKIE_NAME = Login.class.getName() + ".username";
private final static int ONE_WEEK = 7 * 24 * 60 * 60;
public abstract String getUsername();
public abstract void setUsername(String username);
public abstract String getPassword();
public abstract void setPassword(String password);
public abstract ICallback getCallback();
public abstract void setCallback(ICallback value);
public abstract UserService getUserService();
public abstract AuthenticationService getAuthenticationService();
protected IValidationDelegate getValidationDelegate() {
return (IValidationDelegate) getBeans().getBean("delegate");
}
protected void setErrorField(String componentId, String message) {
IFormComponent field = (IFormComponent) getComponent(componentId);
IValidationDelegate delegate = getValidationDelegate();
delegate.setFormComponent(field);
delegate.record(new ValidatorException(message));
}
/**
* Attempts to login.
* <p>
* If the user name is not known, or the password is invalid, then an error
* message is displayed.
**/
public void attemptLogin(IRequestCycle cycle) {
String password = getPassword();
// Do a little extra work to clear out the password.
setPassword(null);
IValidationDelegate delegate = getValidationDelegate();
delegate.setFormComponent((IFormComponent) getComponent("inputPassword"));
delegate.recordFieldInputValue(null);
// An error, from a validation field, may already have occurred.
if (delegate.getHasErrors()) {
return;
}
try {
User user = getAuthenticationService().login(getUsername(), getPassword());
loginUser(user, cycle);
}
catch (FailedLoginException ex) {
this.setError("Login failed: " + ex.getMessage());
return;
}
}
/**
* Sets up the {@link User} as the logged in user, creates
* a cookie for their username (for subsequent logins),
* and redirects to the appropriate page, or
* a specified page).
**/
public void loginUser(User user, IRequestCycle cycle) {
String username = user.getUsername();
// Get the visit object; this will likely force the
// creation of the visit object and an HttpSession
Map visit = (Map) getVisit();
visit.put(USER_KEY, user);
// After logging in, go to the MyLibrary page, unless otherwise specified
ICallback callback = getCallback();
if (callback == null) {
cycle.activate("Home");
}
else {
callback.performCallback(cycle);
}
IEngine engine = getEngine();
Cookie cookie = new Cookie(COOKIE_NAME, username);
cookie.setPath(engine.getServletPath());
cookie.setMaxAge(ONE_WEEK);
// Record the user's username in a cookie
cycle.getRequestContext().addCookie(cookie);
engine.forgetPage(getPageName());
}
public void pageBeginRender(PageEvent event) {
if (getUsername() == null) {
setUsername(getRequestCycle().getRequestContext().getCookieValue(COOKIE_NAME));
}
}
}
Dependency Injecting Spring Beans into Tapestry pages - Tapestry 4.x

style
Effecting the dependency injection of Spring-managed beans into Tapestry pages in
Tapestry version 4.x is so much simpler. All that is needed is a single add-on library, and
some (small) amount of (essentially boilerplate) configuration. Simply package and deploy
this library with the (any of the) other libraries required by your web application (typically in
WEB-INF/lib).
You will then need to create and expose the Spring container using the method detailed
previously. You can then inject Spring-managed beans into Tapestry very easily; if we are
using Java 5, consider the Login page from above: we simply need to annotate the
appropriate getter methods in order to dependency inject the Spring-managed
userService and authenticationService objects (lots of the class definition has
been elided for clarity).
package com.whatever.web.xportal.pages;
public abstract class Login extends BasePage implements ErrorProperty, PageRenderListener {
@InjectObject("spring:userService")
public abstract UserService getUserService();
@InjectObject("spring:authenticationService")
public abstract AuthenticationService getAuthenticationService();
}
We are almost done. All that remains is the HiveMind configuration that exposes the
Spring container stored in the ServletContext as a HiveMind service; for example:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<module id="com.javaforge.tapestry.spring" version="0.1.1">
<service-point id="SpringApplicationInitializer"
interface="org.apache.tapestry.services.ApplicationInitializer"
visibility="private">
<invoke-factory>
<construct class="com.javaforge.tapestry.spring.SpringApplicationInitializer">
<set-object property="beanFactoryHolder"
value="service:hivemind.lib.DefaultSpringBeanFactoryHolder" />
</construct>
</invoke-factory>
</service-point>

<contribution
configuration-id="tapestry.init.ApplicationInitializers">
<command id="spring-context"
object="service:SpringApplicationInitializer" />
</contribution>
</module>
If you are using Java 5 (and thus have access to annotations), then that really is it.
If you are not using Java 5, then one obviously doesn't annotate one's Tapestry page
classes with annotations; instead, one simply uses good old fashioned XML to declare the
dependency injection; for example, inside the .page or .jwc file for the Login page (or
component):
<inject property="userService" object="spring:userService"/>
<inject property="authenticationService" object="spring:authenticationService"/>
In this example, we've managed to allow service beans defined in a Spring container to be
provided to the Tapestry page in a declarative fashion. The page class does not know
where the service implementations are coming from, and in fact it is easy to slip in another
implementation, for example, during testing. This inversion of control is one of the prime
goals and benefits of the Spring Framework, and we have managed to extend it throughout
the stack in this Tapestry application.

Find below links to further resources about the various web frameworks described in this
chapter.
The JSF homepage
The Struts homepage
The WebWork homepage
The Tapestry homepage
20. Portlet MVC Framework

20.1 Introduction
In addition to supporting conventional (servletbased) Web development, Spring also supports
JSR-168 Portlet development. As much as
possible, the Portlet MVC framework is a mirror
image of the Web MVC framework, and also uses
the same underlying view abstractions and
integration technology. So, be sure to review the
chapters entitled Chapter 17, Web MVC
JSR-168 The Java Portlet

Specification
For more general information
about portlet development,
please review a whitepaper from
Sun entitled "Introduction to JSR
168", and of course the JSR-168
Specification itself.
framework and Chapter 18, View technologies

before continuing with this chapter.
Note
Bear in mind that while the concepts of Spring MVC are the same in
Spring Portlet MVC, there are some notable differences created by the
unique workflow of JSR-168 portlets.
The main way in which portlet workflow differs from servlet workflow is that the request to
the portlet can have two distinct phases: the action phase and the render phase. The
action phase is executed only once and is where any 'backend' changes or actions occur,
such as making changes in a database. The render phase then produces what is
displayed to the user each time the display is refreshed. The critical point here is that for a
single overall request, the action phase is executed only once, but the render phase may
be executed multiple times. This provides (and requires) a clean separation between the
activities that modify the persistent state of your system and the activities that generate
what is displayed to the user.
The dual phases of portlet requests are one of the
real strengths of the JSR-168 specification. For
example, dynamic search results can be updated
routinely on the display without the user explicitly
Spring Web Flow

rerunning the search. Most other portlet MVC

frameworks attempt to completely hide the two
phases from the developer and make it look as
much like traditional servlet development as
possible - we think this approach removes one of
the main benefits of using portlets. So, the
separation of the two phases is preserved
throughout the Spring Portlet MVC framework. The
primary manifestation of this approach is that
where the servlet version of the MVC classes will
have one method that deals with the request, the
portlet version of the MVC classes will have two
methods that deal with the request: one for the
action phase and one for the render phase. For
example, where the servlet version of
AbstractController has the
handleRequestInternal(..) method, the
portlet version of AbstractController has
handleActionRequestInternal(..) and
handleRenderRequestInternal(..)

page flow.
solution.
processes.
Flow website.
methods.
The framework is designed around a
DispatcherPortlet that dispatches requests to handlers, with configurable handler
mappings and view resolution, just as the DispatcherServlet in the web framework
does. File upload is also supported in the same way.
Locale resolution and theme resolution are not supported in Portlet MVC - these areas are
in the purview of the portal/portlet container and are not appropriate at the Spring level.
However, all mechanisms in Spring that depend on the locale (such as internationalization
of messages) will still function properly because DispatcherPortlet exposes the
current locale in the same way as DispatcherServlet.
20.1.1 Controllers - The C in MVC

The default handler is still a very simple Controller interface, offering just two methods:
void handleActionRequest(request,response)
ModelAndView handleRenderRequest(request,response)
The framework also includes most of the same controller implementation hierarchy, such
as AbstractController, SimpleFormController, and so on. Data binding,
command object usage, model handling, and view resolution are all the same as in the
servlet framework.
20.1.2 Views - The V in MVC

All the view rendering capabilities of the servlet framework are used directly via a special
bridge servlet named ViewRendererServlet. By using this servlet, the portlet request
is converted into a servlet request and the view can be rendered using the entire normal
servlet infrastructure. This means all the existing renderers, such as JSP, Velocity, etc.,
can still be used within the portlet.
20.1.3 Web-scoped beans

Spring Portlet MVC supports beans whose lifecycle is scoped to the current HTTP request
or HTTP Session (both normal and global). This is not a specific feature of Spring Portlet
MVC itself, but rather of the WebApplicationContext container(s) that Spring Portlet
MVC uses. These bean scopes are described in detail in Section 5.5.4, Request, session,
and global session scopes
20.2 The DispatcherPortlet

Portlet MVC is a request-driven web MVC framework, designed around a portlet that
dispatches requests to controllers and offers other functionality facilitating the development
of portlet applications. Spring's DispatcherPortlet however, does more than just that.
It is completely integrated with the Spring ApplicationContext and allows you to use
every other feature Spring has.
Like ordinary portlets, the DispatcherPortlet is declared in the portlet.xml file of
your web application:
<portlet>
<portlet-name>sample</portlet-name>
<portlet-class>org.springframework.web.portlet.DispatcherPortlet</portlet-class>
<supports>
<mime-type>text/html</mime-type>
<portlet-mode>view</portlet-mode>
</supports>
<portlet-info>
<title>Sample Portlet</title>
</portlet-info>
</portlet>
The DispatcherPortlet now needs to be configured.

In the Portlet MVC framework, each DispatcherPortlet has its own
WebApplicationContext, which inherits all the beans already defined in the Root
WebApplicationContext. These inherited beans can be overridden in the portletspecific scope, and new scope-specific beans can be defined local to a given portlet
instance.
The framework will, on initialization of a DispatcherPortlet, look for a file named
[portlet-name]-portlet.xml in the WEB-INF directory of your web application
and create the beans defined there (overriding the definitions of any beans defined with the
same name in the global scope).
The config location used by the DispatcherPortlet can be modified through a portlet
initialization parameter (see below for details).
The Spring DispatcherPortlet has a few special beans it uses, in order to be able to
process requests and render the appropriate views. These beans are included in the
Spring framework and can be configured in the WebApplicationContext, just as any
other bean would be configured. Each of those beans is described in more detail below.
Right now, we'll just mention them, just to let you know they exist and to enable us to go on
talking about the DispatcherPortlet. For most of the beans, defaults are provided so
you don't have to worry about configuring them.
Table 20.1. Special beans in the WebApplicationContext

Expression
Explanation
handler
mapping(s)
(Section 20.5, Handler mappings) a list of pre- and postprocessors and controllers that will be executed if they match
certain criteria (for instance a matching portlet mode specified
with the controller)
controller(s)
(Section 20.4, Controllers) the beans providing the actual

functionality (or at least, access to the functionality) as part of the
MVC triad
view resolver
(Section 20.6, Views and resolving them) capable of resolving

view names to view definitions
multipart
resolver
(Section 20.7, Multipart (file upload) support) offers functionality

to process file uploads from HTML forms
handler
exception
resolver
(Section 20.8, Handling exceptions) offers functionality to map

exceptions to views or implement other more complex exception
handling code
When a DispatcherPortlet is setup for use and a request comes in for that specific
DispatcherPortlet, it starts processing the request. The list below describes the
complete process a request goes through if handled by a DispatcherPortlet:
1. The locale returned by PortletRequest.getLocale() is bound to the request to
let elements in the process resolve the locale to use when processing the request
(rendering the view, preparing data, etc.).
2. If a multipart resolver is specified and this is an ActionRequest, the request is
inspected for multiparts and if they are found, it is wrapped in a
MultipartActionRequest for further processing by other elements in the process.
(See Section 20.7, Multipart (file upload) support for further information about
multipart handling).
3. An appropriate handler is searched for. If a handler is found, the execution chain
associated with the handler (pre-processors, post-processors, controllers) will be
executed in order to prepare a model.
4. If a model is returned, the view is rendered, using the view resolver that has been
configured with the WebApplicationContext. If no model is returned (which could
be due to a pre- or post-processor intercepting the request, for example, for security
reasons), no view is rendered, since the request could already have been fulfilled.
Exceptions that are thrown during processing of the request get picked up by any of the
handler exception resolvers that are declared in the WebApplicationContext. Using
these exception resolvers you can define custom behavior in case such exceptions get
thrown.
You can customize Spring's DispatcherPortlet by adding context parameters in the
portlet.xml file or portlet init-parameters. The possibilities are listed below.
Table 20.2. DispatcherPortlet initialization parameters

Parameter
contextClass
Explanation
Class that implements
WebApplicationContext, which will be used
to instantiate the context used by this portlet. If
this parameter isn't specified, the
XmlPortletApplicationContext will be
used.
String which is passed to the context instance

(specified by contextClass) to indicate where
context(s) can be found. The String is potentially
contextConfigLocation split up into multiple Strings (using a comma as a
delimiter) to support multiple contexts (in case of
multiple context locations, for beans that are
defined twice, the latest takes precedence).
namespace
The namespace of the

WebApplicationContext. Defaults to
[portlet-name]-portlet.
viewRendererUrl
The URL at which DispatcherPortlet can

access an instance of ViewRendererServlet
(see Section 20.3, The
ViewRendererServlet).
20.3 The ViewRendererServlet

The rendering process in Portlet MVC is a bit more complex than in Web MVC. In order to
reuse all the view technologies from Spring Web MVC, we must convert the
PortletRequest / PortletResponse to HttpServletRequest /
HttpServletResponse and then call the render method of the View. To do this,
DispatcherPortlet uses a special servlet that exists for just this purpose: the
ViewRendererServlet.
In order for DispatcherPortlet rendering to work, you must declare an instance of the
ViewRendererServlet in the web.xml file for your web application as follows:
<servlet>
<servlet-name>ViewRendererServlet</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.ViewRendererServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>ViewRendererServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/WEB-INF/servlet/view</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
To perform the actual rendering, DispatcherPortlet does the following:

1. Binds the WebApplicationContext to the request as an attribute under the same
WEB_APPLICATION_CONTEXT_ATTRIBUTE key that DispatcherServlet uses.
2. Binds the Model and View objects to the request to make them available to the
ViewRendererServlet.
3. Constructs a PortletRequestDispatcher and performs an include using the
/WEB- INF/servlet/view URL that is mapped to the ViewRendererServlet.
The ViewRendererServlet is then able to call the render method on the View with
the appropriate arguments.
The actual URL for the ViewRendererServlet can be changed using
DispatcherPortlets viewRendererUrl configuration parameter.
20.4 Controllers
The controllers in Portlet MVC are very similar to the Web MVC Controllers, and porting
code from one to the other should be simple.
The basis for the Portlet MVC controller architecture is the
org.springframework.web.portlet.mvc.Controller interface, which is listed
below.
public interface Controller {
/**
* Process the render request and return a ModelAndView object which the
* DispatcherPortlet will render.
*/
ModelAndView handleRenderRequest(RenderRequest request, RenderResponse response)
throws Exception;
/**
* Process the action request. There is nothing to return.
*/
void handleActionRequest(ActionRequest request, ActionResponse response)
throws Exception;
}
As you can see, the Portlet Controller interface requires two methods that handle the
two phases of a portlet request: the action request and the render request. The action
phase should be capable of handling an action request, and the render phase should be
capable of handling a render request and returning an appropriate model and view. While
the Controller interface is quite abstract, Spring Portlet MVC offers several controllers
that already contain a lot of the functionality you might need; most of these are very similar
to controllers from Spring Web MVC. The Controller interface just defines the most
common functionality required of every controller: handling an action request, handling a
render request, and returning a model and a view.
20.4.1 AbstractController and PortletContentGenerator

Of course, just a Controller interface isn't enough. To provide a basic infrastructure, all
of Spring Portlet MVC's Controllers inherit from AbstractController, a class
offering access to Spring's ApplicationContext and control over caching.
Table 20.3. Features offered by the AbstractController

Parameter
Explanation
requireSession
Indicates whether or not this Controller requires

a session to do its work. This feature is offered to all
controllers. If a session is not present when such a
controller receives a request, the user is informed
using a SessionRequiredException.
synchronizeSession
Use this if you want handling by this controller to be

synchronized on the user's session. To be more
specific, the extending controller will override the
handleRenderRequestInternal(..) and
handleActionRequestInternal(..)
methods, which will be synchronized on the users
session if you specify this variable.
If you want your controller to actually render the view

when the portlet is in a minimized state, set this to
renderWhenMinimized true. By default, this is set to false so that portlets
that are in a minimized state dont display any
content.
cacheSeconds
When you want a controller to override the default

cache expiration defined for the portlet, specify a
positive integer here. By default it is set to -1, which
does not change the default caching. Setting it to 0
will ensure the result is never cached.
The requireSession and cacheSeconds properties are declared on the

PortletContentGenerator class, which is the superclass of
AbstractController) but are included here for completeness.
When using the AbstractController as a base class for your controllers (which is not
recommended since there are a lot of other controllers that might already do the job for
you) you only have to override either the
handleActionRequestInternal(ActionRequest, ActionResponse) method
or the handleRenderRequestInternal(RenderRequest, RenderResponse)
method (or both), implement your logic, and return a ModelAndView object (in the case of
handleRenderRequestInternal).
The default implementations of both handleActionRequestInternal(..) and
handleRenderRequestInternal(..) throw a PortletException. This is
consistent with the behavior of GenericPortlet from the JSR- 168 Specification API.
So you only need to override the method that your controller is intended to handle.
Here is short example consisting of a class and a declaration in the web application
context.
package samples;
import javax.portlet.RenderRequest;
import javax.portlet.RenderResponse;
import org.springframework.web.portlet.mvc.AbstractController;
import org.springframework.web.portlet.ModelAndView;
public class SampleController extends AbstractController {
public ModelAndView handleRenderRequestInternal(RenderRequest request, RenderResponse response) {
ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView("foo");
mav.addObject("message", "Hello World!");
return mav;
}
}
<bean id="sampleController" class="samples.SampleController">
<property name="cacheSeconds" value="120"/>
</bean>
The class above and the declaration in the web application context is all you need besides
setting up a handler mapping (see Section 20.5, Handler mappings) to get this very
simple controller working.
20.4.2 Other simple controllers

Although you can extend AbstractController, Spring Portlet MVC provides a
number of concrete implementations which offer functionality that is commonly used in
simple MVC applications.
The ParameterizableViewController is basically the same as the example above,
except for the fact that you can specify the view name that it will return in the web
application context (no need to hard-code the view name).
The PortletModeNameViewController uses the current mode of the portlet as the
view name. So, if your portlet is in View mode (i.e. PortletMode.VIEW) then it uses
"view" as the view name.
20.4.3 Command Controllers

Spring Portlet MVC has the exact same hierarchy of command controllers as Spring Web
MVC. They provide a way to interact with data objects and dynamically bind parameters
from the PortletRequest to the data object specified. Your data objects don't have to
implement a framework-specific interface, so you can directly manipulate your persistent
objects if you desire. Let's examine what command controllers are available, to get an
overview of what you can do with them:
AbstractCommandController - a command controller you can use to create your
own command controller, capable of binding request parameters to a data object you
specify. This class does not offer form functionality, it does however offer validation
features and lets you specify in the controller itself what to do with the command object
that has been filled with the parameters from the request.
AbstractFormController - an abstract controller offering form submission
support. Using this controller you can model forms and populate them using a
command object you retrieve in the controller. After a user has filled the form,
AbstractFormController binds the fields, validates, and hands the object back
to the controller to take appropriate action. Supported features are: invalid form
submission (resubmission), validation, and normal form workflow. You implement
methods to determine which views are used for form presentation and success. Use
this controller if you need forms, but don't want to specify what views you're going to
show the user in the application context.
SimpleFormController - a concrete AbstractFormController that provides
even more support when creating a form with a corresponding command object. The
SimpleFormController lets you specify a command object, a viewname for the
form, a viewname for the page you want to show the user when form submission has
succeeded, and more.
AbstractWizardFormController a concrete AbstractFormController

that provides a wizard-style interface for editing the contents of a command object
across multiple display pages. Supports multiple user actions: finish, cancel, or page
change, all of which are easily specified in request parameters from the view.
These command controllers are quite powerful, but they do require a detailed
understanding of how they operate in order to use them efficiently. Carefully review the
Javadocs for this entire hierarchy and then look at some sample implementations before
you start using them.
20.4.4 PortletWrappingController
Instead of developing new controllers, it is possible to use existing portlets and map
requests to them from a DispatcherPortlet. Using the
PortletWrappingController, you can instantiate an existing Portlet as a
Controller as follows:
<bean id="myPortlet" class="org.springframework.web.portlet.mvc.PortletWrappingController">
<property name="portletClass" value="sample.MyPortlet"/>
<property name="portletName" value="my-portlet"/>
<property name="initParameters">
<value>config=/WEB-INF/my-portlet-config.xml</value>
</property>
</bean>
This can be very valuable since you can then use interceptors to pre-process and postprocess requests going to these portlets. Since JSR-168 does not support any kind of filter
mechanism, this is quite handy. For example, this can be used to wrap the Hibernate
OpenSessionInViewInterceptor around a MyFaces JSF Portlet.
20.5 Handler mappings

Using a handler mapping you can map incoming portlet requests to appropriate handlers.
There are some handler mappings you can use out of the box, for example, the
PortletModeHandlerMapping, but let's first examine the general concept of a
HandlerMapping.
Note: We are intentionally using the term Handler here instead of Controller.
DispatcherPortlet is designed to be used with other ways to process requests than
just Spring Portlet MVCs own Controllers. A Handler is any Object that can handle portlet
requests. Controllers are an example of Handlers, and they are of course the default. To
use some other framework with DispatcherPortlet, a corresponding implementation
of HandlerAdapter is all that is needed.
The functionality a basic HandlerMapping provides is the delivering of a
HandlerExecutionChain, which must contain the handler that matches the incoming
request, and may also contain a list of handler interceptors that are applied to the request.
When a request comes in, the DispatcherPortlet will hand it over to the handler
mapping to let it inspect the request and come up with an appropriate
HandlerExecutionChain. Then the DispatcherPortlet will execute the handler
and interceptors in the chain (if any). These concepts are all exactly the same as in Spring
Web MVC.
The concept of configurable handler mappings that can optionally contain interceptors
(executed before or after the actual handler was executed, or both) is extremely powerful. A
lot of supporting functionality can be built into a custom HandlerMapping. Think of a
custom handler mapping that chooses a handler not only based on the portlet mode of the
request coming in, but also on a specific state of the session associated with the request.
In Spring Web MVC, handler mappings are commonly based on URLs. Since there is
really no such thing as a URL within a Portlet, we must use other mechanisms to control
mappings. The two most common are the portlet mode and a request parameter, but
anything available to the portlet request can be used in a custom handler mapping.
The rest of this section describes three of Spring Portlet MVC's most commonly used
handler mappings. They all extend AbstractHandlerMapping and share the following
properties:
interceptors: The list of interceptors to use. HandlerInterceptors are
discussed in Section 20.5.4, Adding HandlerInterceptors.
defaultHandler: The default handler to use, when this handler mapping does not
result in a matching handler.
order: Based on the value of the order property (see the
org.springframework.core.Ordered interface), Spring will sort all handler
mappings available in the context and apply the first matching handler.
lazyInitHandlers: Allows for lazy initialization of singleton handlers (prototype
handlers are always lazily initialized). Default value is false. This property is directly
implemented in the three concrete Handlers.
20.5.1 PortletModeHandlerMapping
This is a simple handler mapping that maps incoming requests based on the current mode
of the portlet (e.g. view, edit, help). An example:
<bean class="org.springframework.web.portlet.handler.PortletModeHandlerMapping">
<property name="portletModeMap">
<map>
<entry key="view" value-ref="viewHandler"/>
<entry key="edit" value-ref="editHandler"/>
<entry key="help" value-ref="helpHandler"/>
</map>
</property>
</bean>
20.5.2 ParameterHandlerMapping
If we need to navigate around to multiple controllers without changing portlet mode, the
simplest way to do this is with a request parameter that is used as the key to control the
mapping.
ParameterHandlerMapping uses the value of a specific request parameter to control
the mapping. The default name of the parameter is 'action', but can be changed using
the 'parameterName' property.
The bean configuration for this mapping will look something like this:
<bean class="org.springframework.web.portlet.handler.ParameterHandlerMapping>
<property name="parameterMap">
<map>
<entry key="add" value-ref="addItemHandler"/>
<entry key="edit" value-ref="editItemHandler"/>
<entry key="delete" value-ref="deleteItemHandler"/>
</map>
</property>
</bean>
20.5.3 PortletModeParameterHandlerMapping
The most powerful built-in handler mapping,
PortletModeParameterHandlerMapping combines the capabilities of the two
previous ones to allow different navigation within each portlet mode.
Again the default name of the parameter is "action", but can be changed using the
parameterName property.
By default, the same parameter value may not be used in two different portlet modes. This
is so that if the portal itself changes the portlet mode, the request will no longer be valid in
the mapping. This behavior can be changed by setting the allowDupParameters
property to true. However, this is not recommended.

The bean configuration for this mapping will look something like this:
<bean class="org.springframework.web.portlet.handler.PortletModeParameterHandlerMapping">
<property name="portletModeParameterMap">
<map>
<entry key="view"> 
<map>
<entry key="add" value-ref="addItemHandler"/>
<entry key="edit" value-ref="editItemHandler"/>
<entry key="delete" value-ref="deleteItemHandler"/>
</map>
</entry>
<entry key="edit"> 
<map>
<entry key="prefs" value-ref="prefsHandler"/>
<entry key="resetPrefs" value-ref="resetPrefsHandler"/>
</map>
</entry>
</map>
</property>
</bean>
This mapping can be chained ahead of a PortletModeHandlerMapping, which can

then provide defaults for each mode and an overall default as well.
20.5.4 Adding HandlerInterceptors

Spring's handler mapping mechanism has a notion of handler interceptors, which can be
extremely useful when you want to apply specific functionality to certain requests, for
example, checking for a principal. Again Spring Portlet MVC implements these concepts in
the same way as Web MVC.
Interceptors located in the handler mapping must implement HandlerInterceptor
from the org.springframework.web.portlet package. Just like the servlet version,
this interface defines three methods: one that will be called before the actual handler will
be executed (preHandle), one that will be called after the handler is executed
(postHandle), and one that is called after the complete request has finished
(afterCompletion). These three methods should provide enough flexibility to do all
kinds of pre- and postprocessing.
The preHandle method returns a boolean value. You can use this method to break or
continue the processing of the execution chain. When this method returns true, the
handler execution chain will continue. When it returns false, the DispatcherPortlet
assumes the interceptor itself has taken care of requests (and, for example, rendered an
appropriate view) and does not continue executing the other interceptors and the actual
handler in the execution chain.
The postHandle method is only called on a RenderRequest. The preHandle and
afterCompletion methods are called on both an ActionRequest and a
RenderRequest. If you need to execute logic in these methods for just one type of
request, be sure to check what kind of request it is before processing it.
20.5.5 HandlerInterceptorAdapter
As with the servlet package, the portlet package has a concrete implementation of
HandlerInterceptor called HandlerInterceptorAdapter. This class has empty
versions of all the methods so that you can inherit from this class and implement just one or
two methods when that is all you need.
20.5.6 ParameterMappingInterceptor
The portlet package also has a concrete interceptor named
ParameterMappingInterceptor that is meant to be used directly with
ParameterHandlerMapping and PortletModeParameterHandlerMapping.
This interceptor will cause the parameter that is being used to control the mapping to be
forwarded from an ActionRequest to the subsequent RenderRequest. This will help

ensure that the RenderRequest is mapped to the same Handler as the
ActionRequest. This is done in the preHandle method of the interceptor, so you can
still modify the parameter value in your handler to change where the RenderRequest will
be mapped.
Be aware that this interceptor is calling setRenderParameter on the
ActionResponse, which means that you cannot call sendRedirect in your handler
when using this interceptor. If you need to do external redirects then you will either need to
forward the mapping parameter manually or write a different interceptor to handle this for
you.
20.6 Views and resolving them

As mentioned previously, Spring Portlet MVC directly reuses all the view technologies
from Spring Web MVC. This includes not only the various View implementations
themselves, but also the ViewResolver implementations. For more information, refer to
Chapter 18, View technologies and Section 17.5, Resolving views respectively.
A few items on using the existing View and ViewResolver implementations are worth
mentioning:
Most portals expect the result of rendering a portlet to be an HTML fragment. So, things
like JSP/JSTL, Velocity, FreeMarker, and XSLT all make sense. But it is unlikely that
views that return other document types will make any sense in a portlet context.
There is no such thing as an HTTP redirect from within a portlet (the
sendRedirect(..) method of ActionResponse cannot be used to stay within
the portal). So, RedirectView and use of the 'redirect:' prefix will not work
correctly from within Portlet MVC.
It may be possible to use the 'forward:' prefix from within Portlet MVC. However,
remember that since you are in a portlet, you have no idea what the current URL looks
like. This means you cannot use a relative URL to access other resources in your web
application and that you will have to use an absolute URL.
Also, for JSP development, the new Spring Taglib and the new Spring Form Taglib both
work in portlet views in exactly the same way that they work in servlet views.
20.7 Multipart (file upload) support

Spring Portlet MVC has built-in multipart support to handle file uploads in portlet
applications, just like Web MVC does. The design for the multipart support is done with
pluggable PortletMultipartResolver objects, defined in the
org.springframework.web.portlet.multipart package. Spring provides a
PortletMultipartResolver for use with Commons FileUpload. How uploading files
is supported will be described in the rest of this section.
By default, no multipart handling will be done by Spring Portlet MVC, as some developers
will want to handle multiparts themselves. You will have to enable it yourself by adding a
multipart resolver to the web application's context. After you have done that,
DispatcherPortlet will inspect each request to see if it contains a multipart. If no
multipart is found, the request will continue as expected. However, if a multipart is found in
the request, the PortletMultipartResolver that has been declared in your context
will be used. After that, the multipart attribute in your request will be treated like any other
attribute.
Note
Any configured PortletMultipartResolver bean must have the
following id (or name): "portletMultipartResolver". If you have
defined your PortletMultipartResolver with any other name,
then the DispatcherPortlet will not find your

PortletMultipartResolver, and consequently no multipart
support will be in effect.
20.7.1 Using the PortletMultipartResolver

The following example shows how to use the CommonsPortletMultipartResolver:
<bean id="portletMultipartResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.portlet.multipart.CommonsPortletMultipartResolver">

<property name="maxUploadSize" value="100000"/>
</bean>
Of course you also need to put the appropriate jars in your classpath for the multipart
resolver to work. In the case of the CommonsMultipartResolver, you need to use
commons-fileupload.jar. Be sure to use at least version 1.1 of Commons
FileUpload as previous versions do not support JSR-168 Portlet applications.
Now that you have seen how to set Portlet MVC up to handle multipart requests, let's talk
about how to actually use it. When DispatcherPortlet detects a multipart request, it
activates the resolver that has been declared in your context and hands over the request.
What the resolver then does is wrap the current ActionRequest in a
MultipartActionRequest that has support for multipart file uploads. Using the
MultipartActionRequest you can get information about the multiparts contained by
this request and actually get access to the multipart files themselves in your controllers.
Note that you can only receive multipart file uploads as part of an ActionRequest, not
as part of a RenderRequest.
20.7.2 Handling a file upload in a form

After the PortletMultipartResolver has finished doing its job, the request will be
processed like any other. To use the PortletMultipartResolver, create a form with
an upload field (see example below), then let Spring bind the file onto your form (backing
object). To actually let the user upload a file, we have to create a (JSP/HTML) form:
<h1>Please upload a file</h1>
<form method="post" action="<portlet:actionURL/>" enctype="multipart/form-data">
<input type="file" name="file"/>
<input type="submit"/>
</form>
As you can see, we've created a field named file that matches the property of the bean
that holds the byte[] array. Furthermore we've added the encoding attribute
(enctype="multipart/form-data"), which is necessary to let the browser know
how to encode the multipart fields (do not forget this!).
Just as with any other property that's not automagically convertible to a string or primitive
type, to be able to put binary data in your objects you have to register a custom editor with
the PortletRequestDataBinder. There are a couple of editors available for handling
files and setting the results on an object. There's a StringMultipartFileEditor
capable of converting files to Strings (using a user-defined character set), and there is a
ByteArrayMultipartFileEditor which converts files to byte arrays. They function
analogous to the CustomDateEditor.
So, to be able to upload files using a form, declare the resolver, a mapping to a controller
that will process the bean, and the controller itself.
<bean id="portletMultipartResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.portlet.multipart.CommonsPortletMultipartResolver"/>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.portlet.handler.PortletModeHandlerMapping">
<property name="portletModeMap">
<map>
<entry key="view" value-ref="fileUploadController"/>
</map>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="fileUploadController" class="examples.FileUploadController">
<property name="commandClass" value="examples.FileUploadBean"/>
<property name="formView" value="fileuploadform"/>
<property name="successView" value="confirmation"/>
</bean>
After that, create the controller and the actual class to hold the file property.
public class FileUploadController extends SimpleFormController {
public void onSubmitAction(ActionRequest request, ActionResponse response,
Object command, BindException errors) throws Exception {
// cast the bean
FileUploadBean bean = (FileUploadBean) command;
// let's see if there's content there
byte[] file = bean.getFile();
if (file == null) {
// hmm, that's strange, the user did not upload anything
}
// do something with the file here
}
protected void initBinder(
PortletRequest request, PortletRequestDataBinder binder) throws Exception {
// to actually be able to convert Multipart instance to byte[]
// we have to register a custom editor
binder.registerCustomEditor(byte[].class, new ByteArrayMultipartFileEditor());
// now Spring knows how to handle multipart object and convert
}
}
public class FileUploadBean {
private byte[] file;
public void setFile(byte[] file) {
this.file = file;
}
public byte[] getFile() {
return file;
}
}
As you can see, the FileUploadBean has a property of type byte[] that holds the file.
The controller registers a custom editor to let Spring know how to actually convert the
multipart objects the resolver has found to properties specified by the bean. In this
example, nothing is done with the byte[] property of the bean itself, but in practice you
can do whatever you want (save it in a database, mail it to somebody, etc).
An equivalent example in which a file is bound straight to a String-typed property on a form
backing object might look like this:
// cast the bean
String file = bean.getFile();
if (file == null) {
}
}
protected void initBinder(
PortletRequest request, PortletRequestDataBinder binder) throws Exception {
// to actually be able to convert Multipart instance to a String
// we have to register a custom editor
binder.registerCustomEditor(String.class,
new StringMultipartFileEditor());
// now Spring knows how to handle multipart objects and convert
}
}
private String file;
public void setFile(String file) {
this.file = file;
}
public String getFile() {
return file;
}
}
Of course, this last example only makes (logical) sense in the context of uploading a plain
text file (it wouldn't work so well in the case of uploading an image file).
The third (and final) option is where one binds directly to a MultipartFile property
declared on the (form backing) object's class. In this case one does not need to register
any custom property editor because there is no type conversion to be performed.
// cast the bean
MultipartFile file = bean.getFile();
if (file == null) {
}
}
}
private MultipartFile file;
public void setFile(MultipartFile file) {
this.file = file;
}
public MultipartFile getFile() {
return file;
}
}
20.8 Handling exceptions

Just like Servlet MVC, Portlet MVC provides HandlerExceptionResolvers to ease
the pain of unexpected exceptions that occur while your request is being processed by a
handler that matched the request. Portlet MVC also provides a portlet-specific, concrete
SimpleMappingExceptionResolver that enables you to take the class name of any
exception that might be thrown and map it to a view name.
20.9 Annotation-based controller configuration

Spring 2.5 introduced an annotation-based programming model for MVC controllers, using
annotations such as @RequestMapping, @RequestParam, @ModelAttribute, etc.
This annotation support is available for both Servlet MVC and Portlet MVC. Controllers
implemented in this style do not have to extend specific base classes or implement specific
interfaces. Furthermore, they do not usually have direct dependencies on Servlet or Portlet
API's, although they can easily get access to Servlet or Portlet facilities if desired.
The following sections document these annotations and how they are most commonly
used in a Portlet environment.
20.9.1 Setting up the dispatcher for annotation support

@RequestMapping will only be processed if a corresponding HandlerMapping (for
type level annotations) and/or HandlerAdapter (for method level annotations) is present
in the dispatcher. This is the case by default in both DispatcherServlet and
DispatcherPortlet.
However, if you are defining custom HandlerMappings or HandlerAdapters, then
you need to make sure that a corresponding custom
DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping and/or
AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter is defined as well - provided that you intend to
use @RequestMapping.
<bean class="org.springframework.web.portlet.mvc.annotation.DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping"/>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.portlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter"/>
// ... (controller bean definitions) ...
</beans>
Defining a DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping and/or

AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter explicitly also makes sense if you would like to
customize the mapping strategy, e.g. specifying a custom WebBindingInitializer
(see below).
20.9.2 Defining a controller with @Controller

The @Controller annotation indicates that a particular class serves the role of a
controller. There is no need to extend any controller base class or reference the Portlet
API. You are of course still able to reference Portlet-specific features if you need to.
The basic purpose of the @Controller annotation is to act as a stereotype for the
annotated class, indicating its role. The dispatcher will scan such annotated classes for
mapped methods, detecting @RequestMapping annotations (see the next section).
Annotated controller beans may be defined explicitly, using a standard Spring bean
definition in the dispatcher's context. However, the @Controller stereotype also allows
for autodetection, aligned with Spring 2.5's general support for detecting component
classes in the classpath and auto-registering bean definitions for them.
To enable autodetection of such annotated controllers, you have to add component
scanning to your configuration. This is easily achieved by using the spring-context schema
as shown in the following XML snippet:
<context:component-scan base-package="org.springframework.samples.petportal.portlet"/>
// ...
</beans>
20.9.3 Mapping requests with @RequestMapping

The @RequestMapping annotation is used to map portlet modes like 'VIEW'/'EDIT' onto
an entire class or a particular handler method. Typically the type-level annotation maps a
specific mode (or mode plus parameter condition) onto a form controller, with additional
method-level annotations 'narrowing' the primary mapping for specific portlet request
parameters.
Tip
@RequestMapping at the type level may be used for plain
implementations of the Controller interface as well. In this case, the
request processing code would follow the traditional
handle(Action|Render)Request signature, while the controller's
mapping would be expressed through an @RequestMapping
annotation. This works for pre-built Controller base classes, such
as SimpleFormController, too.
In the following discussion, we'll focus on controllers that are based on
annotated handler methods.
The following is an example of a form controller from the PetPortal sample application
using this annotation:
@Controller
@RequestMapping("EDIT")
@SessionAttributes("site")
public class PetSitesEditController {
private Properties petSites;
public void setPetSites(Properties petSites) {
this.petSites = petSites;
}
@ModelAttribute("petSites")
public Properties getPetSites() {
return this.petSites;
}
@RequestMapping // default (action=list)
public String showPetSites() {
return "petSitesEdit";
}
@RequestMapping(params = "action=add") // render phase
public String showSiteForm(Model model) {
// Used for the initial form as well as for redisplaying with errors.
if (!model.containsAttribute("site")) {
model.addAttribute("site", new PetSite());
}
return "petSitesAdd";
}
@RequestMapping(params = "action=add") // action phase
public void populateSite(
@ModelAttribute("site") PetSite petSite, BindingResult result,
SessionStatus status, ActionResponse response) {
new PetSiteValidator().validate(petSite, result);
if (!result.hasErrors()) {
this.petSites.put(petSite.getName(), petSite.getUrl());
status.setComplete();
response.setRenderParameter("action", "list");
}
}
@RequestMapping(params = "action=delete")
public void removeSite(@RequestParam("site") String site, ActionResponse response) {
this.petSites.remove(site);
}
}
20.9.4 Supported handler method arguments

Handler methods which are annotated with @RequestMapping are allowed to have very
flexible signatures. They may have arguments of the following types, in arbitrary order
(except for validation results, which need to follow right after the corresponding command
object, if desired):
Request and/or response objects (Portlet API). You may choose any specific
request/response type, e.g. PortletRequest / ActionRequest / RenderRequest. An
explicitly declared action/render argument is also used for mapping specific request
types onto a handler method (in case of no other information given that differentiates
between action and render requests).
Session object (Portlet API): of type PortletSession. An argument of this type will
enforce the presence of a corresponding session. As a consequence, such an
argument will never be null.
org.springframework.web.context.request.WebRequest or
org.springframework.web.context.request.NativeWebRequest.
Allows for generic request parameter access as well as request/session attribute
access, without ties to the native Servlet/Portlet API.
java.util.Locale for the current request locale (the portal locale in a Portlet
environment).
java.io.InputStream / java.io.Reader for access to the request's content.
This will be the raw InputStream/Reader as exposed by the Portlet API.
java.io.OutputStream / java.io.Writer for generating the response's
content. This will be the raw OutputStream/Writer as exposed by the Portlet API.
@RequestParam annotated parameters for access to specific Portlet request
parameters. Parameter values will be converted to the declared method argument
type.
java.util.Map / org.springframework.ui.Model /
org.springframework.ui.ModelMap for enriching the implicit model that will be
exposed to the web view.
Command/form objects to bind parameters to: as bean properties or fields, with
customizable type conversion, depending on @InitBinder methods and/or the
HandlerAdapter configuration - see the "webBindingInitializer" property on
AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter. Such command objects along with their
validation results will be exposed as model attributes, by default using the nonqualified command class name in property notation (e.g. "orderAddress" for type
"mypackage.OrderAddress"). Specify a parameter-level ModelAttribute
annotation for declaring a specific model attribute name.
org.springframework.validation.Errors /
org.springframework.validation.BindingResult validation results for a
preceding command/form object (the immediate preceding argument).
org.springframework.web.bind.support.SessionStatus status handle
for marking form processing as complete (triggering the cleanup of session attributes
that have been indicated by the @SessionAttributes annotation at the handler
type level).
The following return types are supported for handler methods:
A ModelAndView object, with the model implicitly enriched with command objects
and the results of @ModelAttribute annotated reference data accessor methods.
A Model object, with the view name implicitly determined through a
accessor methods.
A Map object for exposing a model, with the view name implicitly determined through a
accessor methods.
A View object, with the model implicitly determined through command objects and
@ModelAttribute annotated reference data accessor methods. The handler
method may also programmatically enrich the model by declaring a Model argument
(see above).
A String value which is interpreted as view name, with the model implicitly
determined through command objects and @ModelAttribute annotated reference
data accessor methods. The handler method may also programmatically enrich the
model by declaring a Model argument (see above).
void if the method handles the response itself (e.g. by writing the response content
directly).
Any other return type will be considered a single model attribute to be exposed to the
view, using the attribute name specified through @ModelAttribute at the method
level (or the default attribute name based on the return type's class name otherwise).
The model will be implicitly enriched with command objects and the results of
@ModelAttribute annotated reference data accessor methods.
20.9.5 Binding request parameters to method parameters with

@RequestParam
The @RequestParam annotation is used to bind request parameters to a method
parameter in your controller.
The following code snippet from the PetPortal sample application shows the usage:
@Controller
// ...
public void removeSite(@RequestParam("site") String site, ActionResponse response) {
this.petSites.remove(site);
}
// ...
}
Parameters using this annotation are required by default, but you can specify that a
parameter is optional by setting @RequestParam's required attribute to false (e.g.,
@RequestParam(value="id", required=false)).
20.9.6 Providing a link to data from the model with

@ModelAttribute
@ModelAttribute has two usage scenarios in controllers. When placed on a method
parameter, @ModelAttribute is used to map a model attribute to the specific, annotated
method parameter (see the populateSite() method below). This is how the controller
gets a reference to the object holding the data entered in the form. In addition, the
parameter can be declared as the specific type of the form backing object rather than as a
generic java.lang.Object, thus increasing type safety.
@ModelAttribute is also used at the method level to provide reference data for the
model (see the getPetSites() method below). For this usage the method signature can
contain the same types as documented above for the @RequestMapping annotation.
Note: @ModelAttribute annotated methods will be executed before the chosen
@RequestMapping annotated handler method. They effectively pre-populate the implicit
model with specific attributes, often loaded from a database. Such an attribute can then
already be accessed through @ModelAttribute annotated handler method parameters
in the chosen handler method, potentially with binding and validation applied to it.
The following code snippet shows these two usages of this annotation:
@Controller
// ...
@ModelAttribute("petSites")
public Properties getPetSites() {
return this.petSites;
}
@RequestMapping(params = "action=add") // action phase
public void populateSite(
@ModelAttribute("site") PetSite petSite, BindingResult result,
SessionStatus status, ActionResponse response) {
new PetSiteValidator().validate(petSite, result);
if (!result.hasErrors()) {
this.petSites.put(petSite.getName(), petSite.getUrl());
status.setComplete();
}
}
}
20.9.7 Specifying attributes to store in a Session with

@SessionAttributes
The type-level @SessionAttributes annotation declares session attributes used by a
specific handler. This will typically list the names of model attributes or types of model
attributes which should be transparently stored in the session or some conversational
storage, serving as form-backing beans between subsequent requests.
The following code snippet shows the usage of this annotation:
@Controller
// ...
}
20.9.8 Customizing WebDataBinder initialization

To customize request parameter binding with PropertyEditors, etc. via Spring's
WebDataBinder, you can either use @InitBinder-annotated methods within your
controller or externalize your configuration by providing a custom

Annotating controller methods with @InitBinder allows you to configure web data
binding directly within your controller class. @InitBinder identifies methods which
initialize the WebDataBinder which will be used for populating command and form
object arguments of annotated handler methods.
Such init-binder methods support all arguments that @RequestMapping supports, except
for command/form objects and corresponding validation result objects. Init-binder methods
must not have a return value. Thus, they are usually declared as void. Typical arguments
include WebDataBinder in combination with WebRequest or java.util.Locale,
allowing code to register context-specific editors.
The following example demonstrates the use of @InitBinder for configuring a
CustomDateEditor for all java.util.Date form properties.
@Controller
public class MyFormController {
@InitBinder
public void initBinder(WebDataBinder binder) {
SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
binder.registerCustomEditor(Date.class, new CustomDateEditor(dateFormat, false));
}
// ...
}

To externalize data binding initialization, you can provide a custom implementation of the
WebBindingInitializer interface, which you then enable by supplying a custom
bean configuration for an AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter, thus overriding the
default configuration.
20.10 Portlet application deployment

The process of deploying a Spring Portlet MVC application is no different than deploying
any JSR-168 Portlet application. However, this area is confusing enough in general that it
is worth talking about here briefly.
Generally, the portal/portlet container runs in one webapp in your servlet container and
your portlets run in another webapp in your servlet container. In order for the portlet
container webapp to make calls into your portlet webapp it must make cross-context calls
to a well-known servlet that provides access to the portlet services defined in your
portlet.xml file.
The JSR-168 specification does not specify exactly how this should happen, so each
portlet container has its own mechanism for this, which usually involves some kind of
deployment process that makes changes to the portlet webapp itself and then registers
the portlets within the portlet container.
At a minimum, the web.xml file in your portlet webapp is modified to inject the well-known
servlet that the portlet container will call. In some cases a single servlet will service all
portlets in the webapp, in other cases there will be an instance of the servlet for each
portlet.
Some portlet containers will also inject libraries and/or configuration files into the webapp
as well. The portlet container must also make its implementation of the Portlet JSP Tag
Library available to your webapp.
The bottom line is that it is important to understand the deployment needs of your target
portal and make sure they are met (usually by following the automated deployment
process it provides). Be sure to carefully review the documentation from your portal for this
process.
Once you have deployed your portlet, review the resulting web.xml file for sanity. Some
older portals have been known to corrupt the definition of the ViewRendererServlet,
thus breaking the rendering of your portlets.
Part VI. Integration

This part of the reference documentation covers the Spring Framework's integration with a
number of Java EE (and related) technologies.
Chapter 21, Remoting and web services using Spring
Chapter 22, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) integration
Chapter 23, JMS (Java Message Service)
Chapter 24, JMX
Chapter 25, JCA CCI
Chapter 26, Email
Chapter 27, Task Execution and Scheduling
Chapter 28, Dynamic language support
Chapter 29, Cache Abstraction
21. Remoting and web services using Spring

21.1 Introduction
Spring features integration classes for remoting support using various technologies. The
remoting support eases the development of remote-enabled services, implemented by your
usual (Spring) POJOs. Currently, Spring supports the following remoting technologies:
Remote Method Invocation (RMI). Through the use of the RmiProxyFactoryBean
and the RmiServiceExporter Spring supports both traditional RMI (with
java.rmi.Remote interfaces and java.rmi.RemoteException) and
transparent remoting via RMI invokers (with any Java interface).
Spring's HTTP invoker. Spring provides a special remoting strategy which allows for
Java serialization via HTTP, supporting any Java interface (just like the RMI invoker).
The corresponding support classes are HttpInvokerProxyFactoryBean and
HttpInvokerServiceExporter.
Hessian. By using Spring's HessianProxyFactoryBean and the
HessianServiceExporter you can transparently expose your services using the
lightweight binary HTTP-based protocol provided by Caucho.
Burlap. Burlap is Caucho's XML-based alternative to Hessian. Spring provides support
classes such as BurlapProxyFactoryBean and BurlapServiceExporter.
JAX-RPC. Spring provides remoting support for web services via JAX-RPC (J2EE
1.4's web service API).
JAX-WS. Spring provides remoting support for web services via JAX-WS (the
successor of JAX-RPC, as introduced in Java EE 5 and Java 6).
JMS. Remoting using JMS as the underlying protocol is supported via the
JmsInvokerServiceExporter and JmsInvokerProxyFactoryBean classes.
While discussing the remoting capabilities of Spring, we'll use the following domain model
and corresponding services:
public class Account implements Serializable{
public String getName(){
return name;
}
this.name = name;
}
}
public interface AccountService {
public void insertAccount(Account account);
public List<Account> getAccounts(String name);
}
public interface RemoteAccountService extends Remote {
public void insertAccount(Account account) throws RemoteException;
public List<Account> getAccounts(String name) throws RemoteException;
}
// 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...
}
}
We will start exposing the service to a remote client by using RMI and talk a bit about the
drawbacks of using RMI. We'll then continue to show an example using Hessian as the
protocol.
21.2 Exposing services using RMI

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 using the RMI invoker, so you can for example plug in
security frameworks or custom security credentials here.
21.2.1 Exporting the service using the 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.
Of course, we first have to set up our service in the Spring container:
<bean id="accountService" class="example.AccountServiceImpl">

</bean>
Next we'll have to expose our service using the RmiServiceExporter:

<bean class="org.springframework.remoting.rmi.RmiServiceExporter">

<property name="serviceName" value="AccountService"/>
<property name="service" ref="accountService"/>
<property name="serviceInterface" value="example.AccountService"/>

<property name="registryPort" value="1199"/>
</bean>
As you can see, we're overriding 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 under. So right now, the service will be bound at
'rmi://HOST:1199/AccountService'. We'll use the URL later on to link in the
service at the client side.
Note
The servicePort property has been omitted (it defaults to 0). This
means that an anonymous port will be used to communicate with the
service.
21.2.2 Linking in the service at the client

Our client is a simple object using the AccountService to manage accounts:
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'll create a separate Spring container, containing the
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"/>
</bean>
That's all we need to do to support the remote account service on the client. Spring will
transparently create an invoker and remotely enable the account service through the
RmiServiceExporter. At the client we're linking it in using the
RmiProxyFactoryBean.
21.3 Using Hessian or Burlap to remotely call services

via HTTP
Hessian offers a binary HTTP-based remoting protocol. It is developed by Caucho and
more information about Hessian itself can be found at http://www.caucho.com.
21.3.1 Wiring up the DispatcherServlet for Hessian and co.

Hessian communicates via HTTP and does so using a custom servlet. Using Spring's
DispatcherServlet principles, as known from Spring Web MVC usage, you can easily
wire up such a servlet exposing your services. First we'll have to create a new servlet in
your application (this is an excerpt from 'web.xml'):
<servlet>
<servlet-name>remoting</servlet-name>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>remoting</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/remoting/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
You're probably familiar with Spring's DispatcherServlet principles and if so, you
know that now you'll 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 will be used in the next section.
Alternatively, consider the use of Spring's simpler HttpRequestHandlerServlet.
This allows you to 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. Each servlet name needs to match the bean
name of its target exporter in this case.
21.3.2 Exposing your beans by using the

HessianServiceExporter
In the newly created application context called remoting-servlet.xml, we'll create a
HessianServiceExporter exporting your services:
<bean id="accountService" class="example.AccountServiceImpl">

</bean>
<bean name="/AccountService" class="org.springframework.remoting.caucho.HessianServiceExporter">
</bean>
Now we're ready to link in the service at the client. No explicit handler mapping is
specified, mapping request URLs onto services, so BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping
will be used: Hence, the service will be exported at the URL indicated through its bean
name within the containing DispatcherServlet's mapping (as defined above):
'http://HOST:8080/remoting/AccountService'.
Alternatively, create a HessianServiceExporter in your root application context (e.g.
in 'WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml'):
<bean name="accountExporter" class="org.springframework.remoting.caucho.HessianServiceExporter">
</bean>
In the latter case, define a corresponding servlet for this exporter in 'web.xml', with the
same end result: The exporter getting mapped to the request path
/remoting/AccountService. Note that the servlet name needs to match the bean
name of the target exporter.
<servlet>
<servlet-name>accountExporter</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.context.support.HttpRequestHandlerServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<url-pattern>/remoting/AccountService</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
21.3.3 Linking in the service on the client

Using the HessianProxyFactoryBean we can link in the service at the client. The
same principles apply as with the RMI example. We'll create a separate bean factory or
application context and mention the following beans where the SimpleObject is using
the AccountService to manage accounts:
<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"/>
</bean>
21.3.4 Using Burlap

We won't discuss Burlap, the XML-based equivalent of Hessian, in detail here, since it is
configured and set up in exactly the same way as the Hessian variant explained above.
Just replace the word Hessian with Burlap and you're all set to go.
21.3.5 Applying HTTP basic authentication to a service exposed

through Hessian or Burlap
One of the advantages of Hessian and Burlap is that we can easily apply HTTP basic
authentication, because both protocols are HTTP-based. Your normal HTTP server
security mechanism can easily be applied through using the web.xml security features,
for example. Usually, you don't use per-user security credentials here, but rather shared
credentials defined at the Hessian/BurlapProxyFactoryBean level (similar to a
JDBC DataSource).
<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>
This is an example where we explicitly mention the BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping

and set an interceptor allowing only administrators and operators to call the beans
mentioned in this application context.
Note
Of course, this example doesn't 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
http://static.springsource.org/spring-security/site/.
21.4 Exposing services using HTTP invokers

As opposed to Burlap and Hessian, which are both lightweight protocols using their own
slim serialization mechanisms, Spring HTTP invokers 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 using the
serialization mechanisms Hessian and Burlap use (refer to the next section for more
considerations when choosing a remoting technology).
Under the hood, Spring uses either the standard facilities provided by J2SE to perform
HTTP calls or Commons HttpClient. Use the latter if you need more advanced and
easy-to-use functionality. Refer to jakarta.apache.org/commons/httpclient for more info.
21.4.1 Exposing the service object

Setting up the HTTP invoker infrastructure for a service object resembles closely the way
you would do the same using Hessian or Burlap. Just as Hessian support provides the
HessianServiceExporter, Spring's HttpInvoker support provides the
org.springframework.remoting.httpinvoker.HttpInvokerServiceExporter.
To expose the AccountService (mentioned above) within a Spring Web MVC
DispatcherServlet, the following configuration needs to be in place in the
dispatcher's application context:
<bean name="/AccountService" class="org.springframework.remoting.httpinvoker.HttpInvokerServiceExporter">
</bean>
Such an exporter definition will be exposed through the DispatcherServlet's standard

mapping facilities, as explained in the section on Hessian.
Alternatively, create an HttpInvokerServiceExporter in your root application
context (e.g. in 'WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml'):
<bean name="accountExporter" class="org.springframework.remoting.httpinvoker.HttpInvokerServiceExporter">
</bean>
In addition, define a corresponding servlet for this exporter in 'web.xml', with the servlet
name matching the bean name of the target exporter:
<servlet>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.context.support.HttpRequestHandlerServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<url-pattern>/remoting/AccountService</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
If you are running outside of a servlet container and are using Sun's Java 6, then you can
use the built-in HTTP server implementation. You can configure the
SimpleHttpServerFactoryBean together with a
SimpleHttpInvokerServiceExporter as is shown in this example:
<bean name="accountExporter"
class="org.springframework.remoting.httpinvoker.SimpleHttpInvokerServiceExporter">
</bean>
<bean id="httpServer"
class="org.springframework.remoting.support.SimpleHttpServerFactoryBean">
<property name="contexts">
<util:map>
<entry key="/remoting/AccountService" value-ref="accountExporter"/>
</util:map>
</property>
<property name="port" value="8080" />
</bean>
21.4.2 Linking in the service at the client

Again, linking in the service from the client much resembles the way you would do it when
using Hessian or Burlap. Using a proxy, Spring will be able to translate your calls to HTTP
POST requests to the URL pointing to the exported service.
<bean id="httpInvokerProxy" class="org.springframework.remoting.httpinvoker.HttpInvokerProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="serviceUrl" value="http://remotehost:8080/remoting/AccountService"/>
</bean>
As mentioned before, you can choose what HTTP client you want to use. By default, the
HttpInvokerProxy uses the J2SE HTTP functionality, but you can also use the
Commons HttpClient by setting the httpInvokerRequestExecutor property:
<property name="httpInvokerRequestExecutor">
<bean class="org.springframework.remoting.httpinvoker.CommonsHttpInvokerRequestExecutor"/>
</property>
21.5 Web services

Spring provides full support for standard Java web services APIs:
Exposing web services using JAX-RPC
Accessing web services using JAX-RPC
Exposing web services using JAX-WS
Accessing web services using JAX-WS
Note
Why two standard Java web services APIs?
JAX-RPC 1.1 is the standard web service API in J2EE 1.4. As its name
indicates, it focuses on on RPC bindings, which became less and less
popular in the past couple of years. As a consequence, it has been
superseded by JAX-WS 2.0 in Java EE 5, being more flexible in terms
of bindings but also being heavily annotation-based. JAX-WS 2.1 is
also included in Java 6 (or more specifically, in Sun's JDK 1.6.0_04
and above; previous Sun JDK 1.6.0 releases included JAX-WS 2.0),
integrated with the JDK's built-in HTTP server.
Spring can work with both standard Java web services APIs. On Java
EE 5 / Java 6, the obvious choice is JAX-WS. On J2EE 1.4
environments that run on Java 5, you might have the option to plug in a
JAX-WS provider; check your Java EE server's documentation.
In addition to stock support for JAX-RPC and JAX-WS in Spring Core, the Spring portfolio
also features Spring Web Services, a solution for contract-first, document-driven web
services - highly recommended for building modern, future-proof web services.
21.5.1 Exposing servlet-based web services using JAX-RPC

Spring provides a convenience base class for JAX-RPC servlet endpoint implementations
- ServletEndpointSupport. To expose our AccountService we extend Spring's
ServletEndpointSupport class and implement our business logic here, usually
delegating the call to the business layer.
/**
* JAX-RPC compliant RemoteAccountService implementation that simply delegates
* to the AccountService implementation in the root web application context.
*
* This wrapper class is necessary because JAX-RPC requires working with dedicated
* endpoint classes. If an existing service needs to be exported, a wrapper that
* extends ServletEndpointSupport for simple application context access is
* the simplest JAX-RPC compliant way.
*
* This is the class registered with the server-side JAX-RPC implementation.
* In the case of Axis, this happens in "server-config.wsdd" respectively via
* deployment calls. The web service engine manages the lifecycle of instances
* of this class: A Spring application context can just be accessed here.
*/import org.springframework.remoting.jaxrpc.ServletEndpointSupport;
public class AccountServiceEndpoint extends ServletEndpointSupport implements RemoteAccountService {
private AccountService biz;
protected void onInit() {
this.biz = (AccountService) getWebApplicationContext().getBean("accountService");
}
public void insertAccount(Account acc) throws RemoteException {
biz.insertAccount(acc);
}
public Account[] getAccounts(String name) throws RemoteException {
return biz.getAccounts(name);
}
}
Our AccountServletEndpoint needs to run in the same web application as the

Spring context to allow for access to Spring's facilities. In case of Axis, copy the
AxisServlet definition into your 'web.xml', and set up the endpoint in 'serverconfig.wsdd' (or use the deploy tool). See the sample application JPetStore where the
OrderService is exposed as a web service using Axis.
21.5.2 Accessing web services using JAX-RPC

Spring provides two factory beans to create JAX-RPC web service proxies, namely
LocalJaxRpcServiceFactoryBean and JaxRpcPortProxyFactoryBean. The
former can only return a JAX-RPC service class for us to work with. The latter is the fullfledged version that can return a proxy that implements our business service interface. In
this example we use the latter to create a proxy for the AccountService endpoint we
exposed in the previous section. You will see that Spring has great support for web
services requiring little coding efforts - most of the setup is done in the Spring configuration
file as usual:
<bean id="accountWebService" class="org.springframework.remoting.jaxrpc.JaxRpcPortProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="serviceInterface" value="example.RemoteAccountService"/>
<property name="wsdlDocumentUrl" value="http://localhost:8080/account/services/accountService?WSDL"/>
<property name="namespaceUri" value="http://localhost:8080/account/services/accountService"/>
<property name="portName" value="AccountPort"/>
</bean>
Where serviceInterface is our remote business interface the clients will use.
wsdlDocumentUrl is the URL for the WSDL file. Spring needs this at startup time to
create the JAX-RPC 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 now very easy as we have a bean factory for it that will
expose it as RemoteAccountService interface. 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 just as if it was a normal class, except
that it throws RemoteException.
public class AccountClientImpl {
private RemoteAccountService service;
public void setService(RemoteAccountService service) {
this.service = service;
}
public void foo() {
try {
service.insertAccount(...);
}
catch (RemoteException ex) {
// ouch
}
}
}
We can get rid of the checked RemoteException since Spring supports automatic
conversion to its corresponding unchecked RemoteException. This requires that we
provide a non-RMI interface also. Our configuration is now:
<bean id="accountWebService" class="org.springframework.remoting.jaxrpc.JaxRpcPortProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="portInterface" value="example.RemoteAccountService"/>
...
</bean>
Where serviceInterface is changed to our non RMI interface. Our RMI interface is
now defined using the property portInterface. Our client code can now avoid handling
java.rmi.RemoteException:
private AccountService service;
public void setService(AccountService service) {
}
public void foo() {
}
}
Note that you can also drop the "portInterface" part and specify a plain business interface
as "serviceInterface". In this case, JaxRpcPortProxyFactoryBean will automatically
switch to the JAX-RPC "Dynamic Invocation Interface", performing dynamic invocations
without a fixed port stub. The advantage is that you don't even need to have an RMIcompliant Java port interface around (e.g. in case of a non-Java target web service); all you
need is a matching business interface. Check out JaxRpcPortProxyFactoryBean's
javadoc for details on the runtime implications.
21.5.3 Registering JAX-RPC Bean Mappings

To transfer complex objects over the wire such as Account we must register bean
mappings on the client side.
Note
On the server side using Axis registering bean mappings is usually
done in the 'server-config.wsdd' file.
We will use Axis to register bean mappings on the client side. To do this we need to
register the bean mappings programmatically:
public class AxisPortProxyFactoryBean extends JaxRpcPortProxyFactoryBean {
protected void postProcessJaxRpcService(Service service) {
TypeMappingRegistry registry = service.getTypeMappingRegistry();
TypeMapping mapping = registry.createTypeMapping();
registerBeanMapping(mapping, Account.class, "Account");
registry.register("http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/", mapping);
}
protected void registerBeanMapping(TypeMapping mapping, Class type, String name) {
QName qName = new QName("http://localhost:8080/account/services/accountService", name);
mapping.register(type, qName,
new BeanSerializerFactory(type, qName),
new BeanDeserializerFactory(type, qName));
}
}
21.5.4 Registering your own JAX-RPC Handler

In this section we will register our own javax.rpc.xml.handler.Handler to the web
service proxy where we can do custom code before the SOAP message is sent over the
wire. The Handler is a callback interface. There is a convenience base class provided in
jaxrpc.jar, namely javax.rpc.xml.handler.GenericHandler that we will
extend:
public class AccountHandler extends GenericHandler {
public QName[] getHeaders() {
return null;
}
public boolean handleRequest(MessageContext context) {
SOAPMessageContext smc = (SOAPMessageContext) context;
SOAPMessage msg = smc.getMessage();
try {
SOAPEnvelope envelope = msg.getSOAPPart().getEnvelope();
SOAPHeader header = envelope.getHeader();
...
}
catch (SOAPException ex) {
throw new JAXRPCException(ex);
}
return true;
}
}
What we need to do now is to register our AccountHandler to JAX-RPC Service so it would

invoke handleRequest(..) before the message is sent over the wire. Spring has at
this time of writing no declarative support for registering handlers, so we must use the
programmatic approach. However Spring has made it very easy for us to do this as we can
override the postProcessJaxRpcService(..) method that is designed for this:
public class AccountHandlerJaxRpcPortProxyFactoryBean extends JaxRpcPortProxyFactoryBean {
protected void postProcessJaxRpcService(Service service) {
QName port = new QName(this.getNamespaceUri(), this.getPortName());
List list = service.getHandlerRegistry().getHandlerChain(port);
list.add(new HandlerInfo(AccountHandler.class, null, null));
logger.info("Registered JAX-RPC AccountHandler on port " + port);
}
}
The last thing we must remember to do is to change the Spring configuration to use our
factory bean:
<bean id="accountWebService" class="example.AccountHandlerJaxRpcPortProxyFactoryBean">
...
</bean>
21.5.5 Exposing servlet-based web services 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'll simply use Spring 2.5's
@Autowired annotation for expressing such dependencies on Spring-managed beans.
/**
* 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 5 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
@WebMethod
}
@WebMethod
public Account[] getAccounts(String name) {
}
}
Our AccountServletEndpoint 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 5 environments, using the standard contract for JAX-WS servlet endpoint deployment.
See Java EE 5 web service tutorials for details.
21.5.6 Exporting standalone web services using JAX-WS

The built-in JAX-WS provider that comes with Sun's JDK 1.6 supports exposure of web
services using the built-in HTTP server that's included in JDK 1.6 as well. Spring's
SimpleJaxWsServiceExporter detects all @WebService annotated beans in the
Spring application context, exporting them through the default JAX-WS server (the JDK 1.6
HTTP server).
In this scenario, the endpoint instances are defined and managed as Spring beans
themselves; they will be registered with the JAX-WS engine but their lifecycle will be up to
the Spring application context. This means that Spring functionality like explicit
dependency injection may be applied to the endpoint instances. Of course, annotationdriven injection through @Autowired will work as well.
<bean class="org.springframework.remoting.jaxws.SimpleJaxWsServiceExporter">
<property name="baseAddress" value="http://localhost:8080/"/>
</bean>
<bean id="accountServiceEndpoint" class="example.AccountServiceEndpoint">
...
</bean>
...
The AccountServiceEndpoint may derive from Spring's

SpringBeanAutowiringSupport but doesn't have to since the endpoint is a fully
Spring-managed bean here. This means that the endpoint implementation may look like as
follows, without any superclass declared - and Spring's @Autowired configuration
annotation still being honored:
@WebService(serviceName="AccountService")
public class AccountServiceEndpoint {
@Autowired
@WebMethod
}
@WebMethod
public List<Account> getAccounts(String name) {
}
}
21.5.7 Exporting web services using the JAX-WS RI's Spring

support
Sun'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 Springmanaged beans, similar to the standalone mode discussed in the previous section - but
this time in a Servlet environment. Note that this is not portable in a Java EE 5
environment; it is mainly intended for non-EE environments such as Tomcat, embedding
the JAX-WS RI as part of the web application.
The difference to the standard style of exporting servlet-based endpoints is that the
lifecycle of the endpoint instances themselves will be managed by Spring here, and that
there will be only one JAX-WS servlet defined in web.xml. With the standard Java EE 5
style (as illustrated above), you'll have one servlet definition per service endpoint, with
each endpoint typically delegating to Spring beans (through the use of @Autowired, as
shown above).
Check out https://jax-ws-commons.dev.java.net/spring/ for the details on setup and usage
style.
21.5.8 Accessing web services using JAX-WS

Analogous to the JAX-RPC support, Spring provides two factory beans to create JAX-WS
web service proxies, namely LocalJaxWsServiceFactoryBean and
JaxWsPortProxyFactoryBean. The former can only return 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 this example we use the latter to create a proxy for the
AccountService endpoint (again):
<bean id="accountWebService" class="org.springframework.remoting.jaxws.JaxWsPortProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="wsdlDocumentUrl" value="http://localhost:8888/AccountServiceEndpoint?WSDL"/>
<property name="namespaceUri" value="http://example/"/>
<property name="portName" value="AccountServiceEndpointPort"/>
</bean>
Where serviceInterface is our business interface the clients will use.

wsdlDocumentUrl is the URL for the WSDL file. Spring needs this a 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 now very easy as we have a bean factory for it that will
expose it as AccountService interface. 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 just as if it was a normal class:
private AccountService service;
public void setService(AccountService service) {
}
public void foo() {
}
}
NOTE: 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.
21.6 JMS
It is also possible to expose services transparently 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, and as such throughput will be very implementation dependent. Note that these
single-threaded and non-transactional constraints apply only to Spring's JMS remoting
support. See Chapter 23, 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 side.
package com.foo;
public interface CheckingAccountService {
public void cancelAccount(Long accountId);
}
The following simple implementation of the above 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 + "]");
}
}
This configuration file contains the JMS-infrastructure beans that are shared on both the
client and server.
<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>
21.6.1 Server-side configuration

On the server, you just need to expose the service object using the
JmsInvokerServiceExporter.

<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;
public class Server {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(new String[]{"com/foo/server.xml", "com/foo/jms.xml"});
}
}
21.6.2 Client-side configuration

The client merely needs to create a client-side proxy that will implement the agreed upon
interface (CheckingAccountService). The resulting object created off the back of the
following bean definition can be injected into other client side objects, and the proxy will
take care of forwarding the call to the server-side object via JMS.
<bean id="checkingAccountService"
class="org.springframework.jms.remoting.JmsInvokerProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="serviceInterface" value="com.foo.CheckingAccountService"/>
<property name="queue" ref="queue"/>
</bean>
</beans>
package com.foo;
public class Client {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(
new String[] {"com/foo/client.xml", "com/foo/jms.xml"});
CheckingAccountService service = (CheckingAccountService) ctx.getBean("checkingAccountService");
service.cancelAccount(new Long(10));
}
}
You may also wish to investigate the support provided by the Lingo project, which (to quote
the homepage blurb) ... is a lightweight POJO based remoting and messaging library
based on the Spring Framework's remoting libraries which extends it to support JMS.
21.7 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 like 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. But when exporting 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 just 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.
21.8 Considerations when choosing a technology

Each and every technology presented here has its drawbacks. You should carefully
consider your needs, the services you are exposing and the objects you'll be sending over
the wire when choosing a technology.
When using RMI, it's not possible to access the objects through the HTTP protocol, unless
you're tunneling the RMI traffic. RMI is a fairly heavy-weight protocol in that it supports fullobject serialization which is important when using 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, just using HTTP as
transport. Note that HTTP invokers are not only limited to Java-to-Java remoting but also to
Spring on both the client and server side. (The latter also applies to Spring's RMI invoker
for non-RMI interfaces.)
Hessian and/or Burlap 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 allowing the JMS broker to take
care of load balancing, discovery and auto-failover. By default: Java serialization is used
when using JMS remoting but the JMS provider could use a different mechanism for the
wire formatting, such as XStream to allow servers to 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: There are just appropriate hooks for plugging in thirdparty or custom solutions here.
21.9 Accessing RESTful services on the Client

The RestTemplate is the core class for client-side access to RESTful services. It is
conceptually similar to other template classes in Spring, such as JdbcTemplate and
JmsTemplate and other template classes found in other Spring portfolio projects.
RestTemplate's behavior is customized by providing callback methods and configuring
the HttpMessageConverter used to marshal objects into the HTTP request body and
to unmarshal any response back into an object. As it is common to use XML as a message
format, Spring provides a MarshallingHttpMessageConverter that uses the Object-
to-XML framework that is part of the org.springframework.oxm package. This gives

you a wide range of choices of XML to Object mapping technologies to choose from.
This section describes how to use the RestTemplate and its associated
HttpMessageConverters.
21.9.1 RestTemplate
Invoking RESTful services in Java is typically done using a helper class such as Jakarta
Commons HttpClient. For common REST operations this approach is too low level as
shown below.
String uri = "http://example.com/hotels/1/bookings";
PostMethod post = new PostMethod(uri);
String request = // create booking request content
post.setRequestEntity(new StringRequestEntity(request));
httpClient.executeMethod(post);
if (HttpStatus.SC_CREATED == post.getStatusCode()) {
Header location = post.getRequestHeader("Location");
if (location != null) {
System.out.println("Created new booking at :" + location.getValue());
}
}
RestTemplate provides higher level methods that correspond to each of the six main HTTP
methods that make invoking many RESTful services a one-liner and enforce REST best
practices.
Table 21.1. Overview of RestTemplate methods

HTTP
Method
RestTemplate Method
DELETE
delete
GET
getForObject
getForEntity
HEAD
headForHeaders(String url, String urlVariables)
OPTIONS
optionsForAllow(String url, String urlVariables)
POST
postForLocation(String url, Object request, String urlVariables)

postForObject(String url, Object request, Class<T> responseType,
String uriVariables)
PUT
put(String url, Object request, StringurlVariables)
The names of RestTemplate methods follow a naming convention, the first part
indicates what HTTP method is being invoked and the second part indicates what is
returned. For example, the method getForObject() will perform a GET, convert the
HTTP response into an object type of your choice and return that object. The method
postForLocation() will do a POST, converting the given object into a HTTP request
and return the response HTTP Location header where the newly created object can be
found. In case of an exception processing the HTTP request, an exception of the type
RestClientException will be thrown; this behavior can be changed by plugging in
another ResponseErrorHandler implementation into the RestTemplate.
Objects passed to and returned from these methods are converted to and from HTTP
messages by HttpMessageConverter instances. Converters for the main mime types
are registered by default, but you can also write your own converter and register it via the
messageConverters() bean property. The default converter instances registered with
the template are ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter,
StringHttpMessageConverter, FormHttpMessageConverter and

SourceHttpMessageConverter. You can override these defaults using the
messageConverters() bean property as would be required if using the
MarshallingHttpMessageConverter or
MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter.
Each method takes URI template arguments in two forms, either as a String variable
length argument or a Map<String,String>. For example,
String result = restTemplate.getForObject("http://example.com/hotels/{hotel}/bookings/{booking}",
String.class,"42", "21");
using variable length arguments and

Map<String, String> vars = Collections.singletonMap("hotel", "42");
String result =
restTemplate.getForObject("http://example.com/hotels/{hotel}/rooms/{hotel}", String.class, vars);
using a Map<String,String>.
To create an instance of RestTemplate you can simply call the default no-arg
constructor. This will use standard Java classes from the java.net package as the
underlying implementation to create HTTP requests. This can be overridden by specifying
an implementation of ClientHttpRequestFactory. Spring provides the
implementation HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory that uses the
Apache HttpComponents HttpClient to create requests.
HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory is configured using an instance of
org.apache.http.client.HttpClient which can in turn be configured with
credentials information or connection pooling functionality.
Tip
Note that the java.net implementation for HTTP requests may raise
an exception when accessing the status of a response that represents
an error (e.g. 401). If this is an issue, switch to
HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory instead.
The previous example using Apache HttpComponents HttpClient directly rewritten to
use the RestTemplate is shown below
uri = "http://example.com/hotels/{id}/bookings";
RestTemplate template = new RestTemplate();
Booking booking = // create booking object
URI location = template.postForLocation(uri, booking, "1");
The general callback interface is RequestCallback and is called when the execute
method is invoked.
public <T> T execute(String url, HttpMethod method, RequestCallback requestCallback,
ResponseExtractor<T> responseExtractor,
String... urlVariables)
// also has an overload with urlVariables as a Map<String, String>.
The RequestCallback interface is defined as

public interface RequestCallback {
void doWithRequest(ClientHttpRequest request) throws IOException;
}
and allows you to manipulate the request headers and write to the request body. When
using the execute method you do not have to worry about any resource management, the
template will always close the request and handle any errors. Refer to the API
documentation for more information on using the execute method and the meaning of its
other method arguments.
Working with the URI

For each of the main HTTP methods, the RestTemplate provides variants that either
take a String URI or java.net.URI as the first argument.
The String URI variants accept template arguments as a String variable length argument or
as a Map<String,String>. They also assume the URL String is not encoded and
needs to be encoded. For example the following:
restTemplate.getForObject("http://example.com/hotel list", String.class);
will perform a GET on http://example.com/hotel%20list. That means if the input

URL String is already encoded, it will be encoded twice -- i.e.
http://example.com/hotel%20list will become
http://example.com/hotel%2520list. If this is not the intended effect, use the
java.net.URI method variant, which assumes the URL is already encoded is also
generally useful if you want to reuse a single (fully expanded) URI multiple times.
The UriComponentsBuilder class can be used to build and encode the URI including
support for URI templates. For example you can start with a URL String:
UriComponentsBuilder.fromUriString("http://example.com/hotels/{hotel}/bookings/{booking}").build()
.expand("42", "21")
.encode();
URI uri = uriComponents.toUri();
Or specify each URI component individually:

UriComponentsBuilder.newInstance()
.scheme("http").host("example.com").path("/hotels/{hotel}/bookings/{booking}").build()
.expand("42", "21")
.encode();
URI uri = uriComponents.toUri();
Dealing with request and response headers

Besides the methods described above, the RestTemplate also has the exchange()
method, which can be used for arbitrary HTTP method execution based on the
HttpEntity class.
Perhaps most importantly, the exchange() method can be used to add request headers
and read response headers. For example:
HttpHeaders requestHeaders = new HttpHeaders();
requestHeaders.set("MyRequestHeader", "MyValue");
HttpEntity<?> requestEntity = new HttpEntity(requestHeaders);
HttpEntity<String> response = template.exchange("http://example.com/hotels/{hotel}",
HttpMethod.GET, requestEntity, String.class, "42");
String responseHeader = response.getHeaders().getFirst("MyResponseHeader");
String body = response.getBody();
In the above example, we first prepare a request entity that contains the
MyRequestHeader header. We then retrieve the response, and read the
MyResponseHeader and body.
21.9.2 HTTP Message Conversion
Objects passed to and returned from the methods getForObject(),

postForLocation(), and put() are converted to HTTP requests and from HTTP
responses by HttpMessageConverters. The HttpMessageConverter interface is
shown below to give you a better feel for its functionality
public interface HttpMessageConverter<T> {
// Indicate whether the given class and media type can be read by this converter.
boolean canRead(Class<?> clazz, MediaType mediaType);
// Indicate whether the given class and media type can be written by this converter.
boolean canWrite(Class<?> clazz, MediaType mediaType);
// Return the list of MediaType objects supported by this converter.
List<MediaType> getSupportedMediaTypes();
// Read an object of the given type from the given input message, and returns it.
T read(Class<T> clazz, HttpInputMessage inputMessage) throws IOException,
HttpMessageNotReadableException;
// Write an given object to the given output message.
void write(T t, HttpOutputMessage outputMessage) throws IOException,
HttpMessageNotWritableException;
}
Concrete implementations for the main media (mime) types are provided in the framework
and are registered by default with the RestTemplate on the client-side and with
AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter on the server-side.
The implementations of HttpMessageConverters are described in the following
sections. For all converters a default media type is used but can be overridden by setting
the supportedMediaTypes bean property
StringHttpMessageConverter
An HttpMessageConverter implementation that can read and write Strings 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 media type
application/x-www-form-urlencoded. 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. This can be
overridden by setting the supportedMediaTypes property, and overriding
getContentType(byte[]).
MarshallingHttpMessageConverter
An HttpMessageConverter implementation that can read and write XML 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. These can be injected via constructor or bean
properties. By default this converter supports (text/xml) and (application/xml).
MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter with Jackson 1.x)
An HttpMessageConverter implementation that can read and write JSON using
Jackson's ObjectMapper. JSON mapping can be customized as needed through the

use of Jackson's provided annotations. When further control is needed, a custom
ObjectMapper can be injected through the ObjectMapper property for cases where
custom JSON serializers/deserializers need to be provided for specific types. By default
this converter supports (application/json).
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.
22. Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) integration

22.1 Introduction
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 via 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'll begin
by discussing this.
22.2 Accessing EJBs

22.2.1 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, 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. For example:
Typically code using 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 simply 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 do not need to
write another Service Locator, another JNDI lookup, or duplicate methods in a hand-coded
Business Delegate unless you are actually adding real value in such code.
22.2.2 Accessing local SLSBs

Assume that we have a web controller that needs to use a local EJB. Well follow best
practice and use the EJB Business Methods Interface pattern, so that the EJBs local
interface extends a non EJB-specific business methods interface. Lets call this business
methods interface MyComponent.
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. Of
course well 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 well 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 will save the reference as an instance variable in the controller:
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 are obtaining our controller object out of a Spring container, we can (in
the same context) configure a LocalStatelessSessionProxyFactoryBean
instance, which will be the EJB proxy object. The configuration of the proxy, and setting of
the myComponent property of the controller is done with a configuration entry such as:
<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>
Theres a lot of work happening behind the scenes, courtesy of the Spring AOP framework,
although you arent 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 theres 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:
<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. If we want to
replace this EJB reference with a POJO or a mock object or other test stub, we could
simply change the myComponent bean definition without changing a line of Java code.
Additionally, we havent 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
typically undetectable in typical use. Remember that we dont want to make fine-grained
calls to EJBs anyway, as theres 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 simply is no reason to make it a prototype).
However, if that bean container pre-instantiates singletons (as do the various XML
ApplicationContext variants) you may have a problem if the bean container is loaded
before the EJB container loads the target EJB. That is because the JNDI lookup will be
performed in the init() method of this class and then cached, but the EJB will not have
been bound at the target location yet. The solution is to not pre-instantiate this factory
object, but allow it to be created on first use. In the XML containers, this is controlled via the
lazy-init attribute.
Although this will not be of interest to the majority of Spring users, those doing
programmatic AOP work with EJBs may want to look at
LocalSlsbInvokerInterceptor.
22.2.3 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 don't. Client code written for local EJBs which 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 which needs to be moved to local EJBs, can either stay
the same but do a lot of unnecessary handling of remote exceptions, or needs to 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 which 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 will be re-thrown as the non-checked RemoteAccessException class,
which is a subclass of RuntimeException. The target service can then be switched 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; there is nothing
stopping you from declaring RemoteExceptions in your business interface.
22.2.4 Accessing EJB 2.x SLSBs versus EJB 3 SLSBs
Accessing EJB 2.x Session Beans and EJB 3 Session Beans via 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 could 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> / <jee:remoteslsb> lookups simply provides consistent and more explicit EJB access configuration.
22.3 Using Spring's EJB implementation support

classes
22.3.1 EJB 2.x base classes
Spring provides convenience classes to help you implement EJBs. These are designed to
encourage the good practice of putting business logic behind EJBs in POJOs, leaving
EJBs responsible for transaction demarcation and (optionally) remoting.
To implement a Stateless or Stateful session bean, or a Message Driven bean, you need
only derive your implementation class from AbstractStatelessSessionBean,
AbstractStatefulSessionBean, and
AbstractMessageDrivenBean/AbstractJmsMessageDrivenBean, respectively.
Consider an example Stateless Session bean which actually delegates the
implementation to a plain java service object. We have the business interface:
public interface MyComponent {
public void myMethod(...);
...
}
We also have the plain Java implementation object:

public class MyComponentImpl implements MyComponent {
public String myMethod(...) {
...
}
...
}
And finally the Stateless Session Bean itself:

public class MyFacadeEJB extends AbstractStatelessSessionBean
implements MyFacadeLocal {
private MyComponent myComp;
/**
* Obtain our POJO service object from the BeanFactory/ApplicationContext
* @see org.springframework.ejb.support.AbstractStatelessSessionBean#onEjbCreate()
*/
protected void onEjbCreate() throws CreateException {
myComp = (MyComponent) getBeanFactory().getBean(
ServicesConstants.CONTEXT_MYCOMP_ID);
}
// for business method, delegate to POJO service impl.
public String myFacadeMethod(...) {
return myComp.myMethod(...);
}
...
}
The Spring EJB support base classes will by default create and load a Spring IoC
container as part of their lifecycle, which is then available to the EJB (for example, as used
in the code above to obtain the POJO service object). The loading is done via a strategy
object which is a subclass of BeanFactoryLocator. The actual implementation of
BeanFactoryLocator used by default is ContextJndiBeanFactoryLocator,

which creates the ApplicationContext from a resource locations specified as a JNDI
environment variable (in the case of the EJB classes, at
java:comp/env/ejb/BeanFactoryPath). If there is a need to change the
BeanFactory/ApplicationContext loading strategy, the default BeanFactoryLocator
implementation used may be overridden by calling the setBeanFactoryLocator()
method, either in setSessionContext(), or in the actual constructor of the EJB.
Please see the Javadocs for more details.
As described in the Javadocs, Stateful Session beans expecting to be passivated and
reactivated as part of their lifecycle, and which use a non-serializable container instance
(which is the normal case) will have to manually call unloadBeanFactory() and
loadBeanFactory() from ejbPassivate() and ejbActivate(), respectively, to
unload and reload the BeanFactory on passivation and activation, since it can not be
saved by the EJB container.
The default behavior of the ContextJndiBeanFactoryLocator class is to load an
ApplicationContext for use by an EJB, and is adequate for some situations.
However, it is problematic when the ApplicationContext is loading a number of
beans, or the initialization of those beans is time consuming or memory intensive (such as
a Hibernate SessionFactory initialization, for example), since every EJB will have their
own copy. In this case, the user may want to override the default
ContextJndiBeanFactoryLocator usage and use another
BeanFactoryLocator variant, such as the
ContextSingletonBeanFactoryLocator which can load and use a shared
container to be used by multiple EJBs or other clients. Doing this is relatively simple, by
adding code similar to this to the EJB:
/**
* Override default BeanFactoryLocator implementation
* @see javax.ejb.SessionBean#setSessionContext(javax.ejb.SessionContext)
*/
public void setSessionContext(SessionContext sessionContext) {
super.setSessionContext(sessionContext);
setBeanFactoryLocator(ContextSingletonBeanFactoryLocator.getInstance());
setBeanFactoryLocatorKey(ServicesConstants.PRIMARY_CONTEXT_ID);
}
You would then need to create a bean definition file named beanRefContext.xml. This
file defines all bean factories (usually in the form of application contexts) that may be used
in the EJB. In many cases, this file will only contain a single bean definition such as this
(where businessApplicationContext.xml contains the bean definitions for all
business service POJOs):
<beans>
<bean id="businessBeanFactory" class="org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext">
<constructor-arg value="businessApplicationContext.xml" />
</bean>
</beans>
In the above example, the ServicesConstants.PRIMARY_CONTEXT_ID constant

would be defined as follows:
public static final String ServicesConstants.PRIMARY_CONTEXT_ID = "businessBeanFactory";
Please see the respective Javadocs for the BeanFactoryLocator and

ContextSingletonBeanFactoryLocator classes for more information on their
usage.
22.3.2 EJB 3 injection interceptor

For EJB 3 Session Beans and Message-Driven Beans, Spring provides a convenient
interceptor that resolves Spring 2.5's @Autowired annotation in the EJB component
class:
org.springframework.ejb.interceptor.SpringBeanAutowiringInterceptor.
This interceptor can be applied through an @Interceptors annotation in the EJB
component class, or through an interceptor-binding XML element in the EJB
deployment descriptor.
@Stateless
@Interceptors(SpringBeanAutowiringInterceptor.class)
public class MyFacadeEJB implements MyFacadeLocal {
// automatically injected with a matching Spring bean
@Autowired
private MyComponent myComp;
// for business method, delegate to POJO service impl.
public String myFacadeMethod(...) {
return myComp.myMethod(...);
}
...
}
SpringBeanAutowiringInterceptor by default obtains target beans from a

ContextSingletonBeanFactoryLocator, with the context defined in a bean
definition file named beanRefContext.xml. By default, a single context definition is
expected, which is obtained by type rather than by name. However, if you need to choose
between multiple context definitions, a specific locator key is required. The locator key (i.e.
the name of the context definition in beanRefContext.xml) can be explicitly specified
either through overriding the getBeanFactoryLocatorKey method in a custom
SpringBeanAutowiringInterceptor subclass.
Alternatively, consider overriding SpringBeanAutowiringInterceptor's
getBeanFactory method, e.g. obtaining a shared ApplicationContext from a
custom holder class.
23. JMS (Java Message Service)

23.1 Introduction
Spring provides a JMS integration framework that simplifies the use of the JMS API much
like 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
are used to create Message-Driven POJOs (MDPs).
The package org.springframework.jms.core 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 the sending of
messages, consuming a message synchronously, and exposing the JMS session and
message producer to the user.
The package org.springframework.jms.support provides JMSException
translation functionality. The translation converts the checked JMSException hierarchy
to a mirrored hierarchy of unchecked exceptions. If there are any provider specific
subclasses of the checked javax.jms.JMSException, this exception is wrapped in
the unchecked UncategorizedJmsException.
The package org.springframework.jms.support.converter provides a

MessageConverter abstraction to convert between Java objects and JMS messages.
The package org.springframework.jms.support.destination provides
various strategies for managing JMS destinations, such as providing a service locator for
destinations stored in JNDI.
Finally, the package org.springframework.jms.connection 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.
23.2 Using Spring JMS

23.2.1 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 only needs to implement callback interfaces giving
them a clearly defined high level contract. The MessageCreator callback interface
creates a message given a Session provided by the calling code in JmsTemplate. In
order to allow for more complex usage of the JMS API, the callback SessionCallback
provides the user with the JMS session and the callback 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 which uses default values. Since there are many send methods in
JmsTemplate, the setting of 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 using the property setReceiveTimeout.
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
MessageProducer's send method send(Destination destination, Message
message) will use 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.
Note
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.
23.2.2 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 there are three intermediate
objects that are created and destroyed. To optimise the resource usage and increase
performance two implementations of IConnectionFactory are provided.
SingleConnectionFactory
Spring provides an implementation of the ConnectionFactory interface,
SingleConnectionFactory, that will return the same Connection on all
createConnection() calls and ignore 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.
CachingConnectionFactory
The CachingConnectionFactory extends the functionality of
SingleConnectionFactory and adds the caching of Sessions, MessageProducers,
and MessageConsumers. The initial cache size is set to 1, use the property
SessionCacheSize to increase the number of cached sessions. Note that the number of
actual cached sessions will be more than that number as sessions are cached based on
their acknowledgment mode, so there can be up to 4 cached session instances when
SessionCacheSize is set to one, one for each AcknowledgementMode.
MessageProducers and MessageConsumers 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).
23.2.3 Destination Management

Destinations, like ConnectionFactories, are JMS administered objects that can be stored
and retrieved in JNDI. When configuring a Spring application context you can use the JNDI
factory class JndiObjectFactoryBean / <jee:jndi-lookup> to perform
dependency injection on your object's references to JMS destinations. However, often this
strategy is 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 would be 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 to an
implementation of the interface DestinationResolver.
DynamicDestinationResolver is the default implementation used by
JmsTemplate and accommodates resolving dynamic destinations. A
JndiDestinationResolver is also provided that acts 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 name defined by
the user 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 TopicSession method createTopic(String
topicName) or the QueueSession method createQueue(String queueName) to
create a new destination with default destination properties. Depending on the vendor
implementation, DynamicDestinationResolver may 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, will be used. This property used by
JmsTemplate determines the behavior of dynamic destination resolution via
implementations of the DestinationResolver interface.
You can also configure the JmsTemplate with a default destination via the property
defaultDestination. The default destination will be used with send and receive operations
that do not refer to a specific destination.
23.2.4 Message Listener Containers

One of the most common uses of JMS messages in the EJB world is to drive messagedriven 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 Section 23.4.2, Asynchronous
Reception - Message-Driven POJOs for detailed coverage of Spring's MDP support.)
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 suchlike. This allows you as
an application developer to write the (possibly complex) business logic associated with
receiving a message (and possibly responding 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 specialised feature set.
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 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.
DefaultMessageListenerContainer
This message listener container is the one used in most cases. In contrast to
SimpleMessageListenerContainer, this container variant does allow for dynamic
adaption 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; so 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 transaction participation, and compatibility
with Java EE environments.
23.2.5 Transaction management

Spring provides a JmsTransactionManager that manages transactions for a single
JMS ConnectionFactory. This allows JMS applications to leverage the managed
transaction features of Spring as described in Chapter 12, Transaction Management. 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 will pool Connections and
Sessions, so those resources are efficiently reused across transactions. In a standalone
environment, using Spring's SingleConnectionFactory will 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.
JmsTemplate can also be used with the JtaTransactionManager and an XAcapable JMS ConnectionFactory for performing 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 / 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 acknowledgement 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 using
the JmsTemplate in an unmanaged environment you can specify these values through
the use of the properties sessionTransacted and sessionAcknowledgeMode.
When using a PlatformTransactionManager with JmsTemplate, the template will
always be given a transactional JMS Session.
23.3 Sending a Message

The JmsTemplate contains many convenience methods to send a message. There are
send methods that specify the destination using a javax.jms.Destination object and
those that specify the destination using a string for use in a JNDI lookup. The send method
that takes no destination argument uses the default destination. Here is an example that
sends a message to a queue using the 1.0.2 implementation.
import
import
import
import
import
javax.jms.ConnectionFactory;
javax.jms.JMSException;
javax.jms.Message;
javax.jms.Queue;
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");
}
});
}
}
This example uses the MessageCreator callback to create a text message from the
supplied Session object. 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 method send(String destinationName, MessageCreator creator) lets
you send a message 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.
23.3.1 Using Message Converters

In order 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() 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 via 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, XMLBeans, or XStream, to create a TextMessage
representing 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 example below demonstrates 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 form:

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

While the send operations cover many common usage scenarios, there are cases when
you 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.
23.4 Receiving a message

23.4.1 Synchronous Reception
While JMS is typically associated with asynchronous processing, it is possible to 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 property receiveTimeout specifies how long the
receiver should wait before giving up waiting for a message.
23.4.2 Asynchronous Reception - Message-Driven POJOs

In a fashion similar to a Message-Driven Bean (MDB) in the EJB world, the MessageDriven POJO (MDP) acts as a receiver for JMS messages. The one restriction (but see
also below for the discussion of the MessageListenerAdapter class) on an MDP is
that it must implement the javax.jms.MessageListener interface. Please also be
aware that in the case where your POJO will be receiving messages on multiple threads, it
is important to ensure that your implementation is thread-safe.
Below is a simple implementation of an MDP:
import
import
import
import
javax.jms.JMSException;
javax.jms.Message;
javax.jms.MessageListener;
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've implemented your MessageListener, it's time to create a message listener
container.
Find below an example of how to define and configure one of the message listener
containers that ships with Spring (in this case the
DefaultMessageListenerContainer).

<bean id="messageListener" class="jmsexample.ExampleListener" />

<bean id="jmsContainer" class="org.springframework.jms.listener.DefaultMessageListenerContainer">
<property name="destination" ref="destination"/>
<property name="messageListener" ref="messageListener" />
</bean>
Please refer to the Spring Javadoc of the various message listener containers for a full
description of the features supported by each implementation.
23.4.3 The SessionAwareMessageListener interface

The SessionAwareMessageListener interface is a Spring-specific interface that
provides a similar contract to the JMS MessageListener interface, but also provides the
message handling method with access to the JMS Session from which the Message
was received.
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 (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.
Please 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 exceptions thrown.
23.4.4 The MessageListenerAdapter

The MessageListenerAdapter class is the final component in Spring's asynchronous
messaging support: in a nutshell, it allows you to expose almost any class as a MDP (there
are of course some constraints).
Consider the following interface definition. Notice that although the interface extends
neither the MessageListener nor SessionAwareMessageListener interfaces, it
can still be used as a MDP via the use of 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.
public interface MessageDelegate {
void handleMessage(String message);

void handleMessage(Map message);
void handleMessage(byte[] message);
void handleMessage(Serializable message);
}
public class DefaultMessageDelegate implements MessageDelegate {
// implementation elided for clarity...
}
In particular, note how the above implementation of the MessageDelegate interface (the
above DefaultMessageDelegate class) has no JMS dependencies at all. It truly is a
POJO that we will make into an MDP via the following configuration.

<bean id="messageListener" class="org.springframework.jms.listener.adapter.MessageListenerAdapter">
<constructor-arg>
<bean class="jmsexample.DefaultMessageDelegate"/>
</constructor-arg>
</bean>

<property name="messageListener" ref="messageListener" />
</bean>
Below is an example of another MDP that can only handle the receiving of 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 will see below). Notice also how the 'receive(..)' method is strongly typed to
receive and respond only to JMS TextMessage messages.
public interface TextMessageDelegate {
void receive(TextMessage message);
}
public class DefaultTextMessageDelegate implements TextMessageDelegate {
}
The configuration of the attendant MessageListenerAdapter would look like this:

<bean id="messageListener" class="org.springframework.jms.listener.adapter.MessageListenerAdapter">
<constructor-arg>
<bean class="jmsexample.DefaultTextMessageDelegate"/>
</constructor-arg>
<property name="defaultListenerMethod" value="receive"/>

<property name="messageConverter">
<null/>
</property>
</bean>
Please note that if the above 'messageListener' receives a JMS Message of a type
other than TextMessage, an IllegalStateException will be 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 interface and class:
public interface ResponsiveTextMessageDelegate {
// notice the return type...
String receive(TextMessage message);
}
public class DefaultResponsiveTextMessageDelegate implements ResponsiveTextMessageDelegate {
}
If the above DefaultResponsiveTextMessageDelegate is used in conjunction with

a MessageListenerAdapter then any non-null value that is returned from the
execution of the 'receive(..)' method will (in the default configuration) be converted
into a TextMessage. The resulting TextMessage will then be 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 then an
InvalidDestinationException will be thrown (and please note that this exception
will not be swallowed and will propagate up the call stack).
23.4.5 Processing messages within transactions

Invoking a message listener within a transaction only requires reconfiguration of the
listener container.
Local resource transactions can simply be activated through the sessionTransacted
flag on the listener container definition. Each message listener invocation will then operate
within an active JMS transaction, with message reception rolled back in case of listener
execution failure. Sending a response message (via
SessionAwareMessageListener) will be part of the same local transaction, but any
other resource operations (such as database access) will operate independently. This
usually requires duplicate message detection in the listener implementation, covering the
case where database processing has committed but message processing failed to commit.
<property name="messageListener" ref="messageListener"/>
<property name="sessionTransacted" value="true"/>
</bean>
For participating in an externally managed transaction, you will need to configure a

transaction manager and use a listener container which supports externally managed
transactions: typically DefaultMessageListenerContainer.
To configure a message listener container for XA transaction participation, you'll 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 allows message reception as well
as e.g. database access to be part of the same transaction (with unified commit semantics,
at the expense of XA transaction log overhead).
<bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.transaction.jta.JtaTransactionManager"/>
Then you just need to add it to our earlier container configuration. The container will take
care of the rest.
<property name="messageListener" ref="messageListener"/>
</bean>
23.5 Support for JCA Message Endpoints

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

<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 may set up a JmsMessageEndpointManager with a given

ActivationSpec object. The ActivationSpec object may also come from a JNDI
lookup (using <jee:jndi-lookup>).
<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, the target ResourceAdapter may

be configured locally as depicted in the following example.
<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 may also point to an environment-specific thread pool typically through SimpleTaskWorkManager's "asyncTaskExecutor" property.
Consider defining a shared thread pool for all your ResourceAdapter instances if you
happen to use multiple adapters.
In some environments (e.g. WebLogic 9 or above), the entire ResourceAdapter object
may be obtained from JNDI instead (using <jee:jndi-lookup>). The Spring-based
message listeners can then interact with the server-hosted ResourceAdapter, also
using the server's built-in WorkManager.
Please consult the JavaDoc for JmsMessageEndpointManager,
JmsActivationSpecConfig, and ResourceAdapterFactoryBean for more
details.
Spring also provides a generic JCA message endpoint manager which is not tied to JMS:
org.springframework.jca.endpoint.GenericMessageEndpointManager.
This component allows for using any message listener type (e.g. a CCI MessageListener)
and any provider-specific ActivationSpec object. Check out your JCA provider's
documentation to find out about the actual capabilities of your connector, and consult
GenericMessageEndpointManager's JavaDoc for the Spring-specific configuration
details.
Note
JCA-based message endpoint management is very analogous to EJB
2.1 Message-Driven Beans; it uses the same underlying resource
provider contract. Like with EJB 2.1 MDBs, any message listener
interface supported by your JCA provider can be used in the Spring
context as well. Spring nevertheless provides explicit 'convenience'
support for JMS, simply because JMS is the most common endpoint
API used with the JCA endpoint management contract.
23.6 JMS Namespace Support

Spring 2.5 introduces an XML namespace for simplifying JMS configuration. To use the
JMS namespace elements you will need to reference the JMS schema:
xmlns:jms="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jms"
http://www.springframework.org/schema/jms http://www.springframework.org/schema/jms/spring-jms.xsd">

</beans>
The namespace consists of two top-level elements: <listener-container/> and

<jca-listener-container/> both of which may contain one or more
<listener/> child elements. Here is an example of 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 example above is equivalent to creating two distinct listener container bean definitions
and two distinct MessageListenerAdapter bean definitions as demonstrated in
Section 23.4.4, The MessageListenerAdapter. In addition to the attributes shown
above, the listener element may contain several optional ones. The following table
describes all available attributes:
Table 23.1. Attributes of the JMS <listener> element

Attribute
Description
id
A bean name for the hosting listener container. If not specified, a

bean name will be 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 points to a

MessageListener or Spring
SessionAwareMessageListener, this attribute may be
omitted.
responsedestination
The name of the default response destination to send response

messages to. This will be applied in case of a request message
that does not carry a "JMSReplyTo" field. The type of this
destination will be determined by the listener-container's
"destination-type" attribute. Note: This only applies to a listener
method with a return value, for which each result object will be
converted into a response message.
subscription The name of the durable subscription, if any.

selector
An optional message selector for this listener.
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. Using these
attributes, it is possible to define highly-customized listener containers while still benefiting
from the convenience of the namespace.
<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. Consult 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 23.2. Attributes of the JMS <listener-container> element

Attribute
Description
containertype
The type of this listener container. Available options are:

default, simple, default102, or simple102 (the default
value is 'default').
connectionfactory
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.
destinationresolver
A reference to the DestinationResolver strategy for

resolving JMS Destinations.
messageconverter
A reference to the MessageConverter strategy for converting

JMS Messages to listener method arguments. Default is a
SimpleMessageConverter.
destinationtype
The JMS destination type for this listener: queue, topic or

durableTopic. The default is queue.
client-id
The JMS client id for this listener container. Needs to be specified

when using durable subscriptions.
cache
The cache level for JMS resources: none, connection,

session, consumer or auto. By default (auto), the cache
level will effectively be "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).
The native JMS acknowledge mode: auto, client, dups-ok or

transacted. A value of transacted activates a locally
acknowledge transacted Session. As an alternative, specify the
transaction-manager attribute described below. Default is
auto.
transactionmanager
A reference to an external PlatformTransactionManager

(typically an XA-based transaction coordinator, e.g. Spring's
JtaTransactionManager). If not specified, native
acknowledging will be used (see "acknowledge" attribute).
The number of concurrent sessions/consumers to start for each
listener. Can either be a simple number indicating the maximum
concurrency
prefetch
number (e.g. "5") or a range indicating the lower as well as the

upper limit (e.g. "3-5"). Note that a specified minimum is just a hint
and might be ignored at runtime. Default is 1; keep concurrency
limited to 1 in case of a topic listener or if queue ordering is
important; consider raising it for general queues.
The maximum number of messages to load into a single session.
Note that raising this number might lead to starvation of
concurrent consumers!
Configuring a JCA-based listener container with the "jms" schema support is very similar.
<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 available configuration options for the JCA variant are described in the following table:
Table 23.3. Attributes of the JMS <jca-listener-container/> element

Attribute
Description
resourceadapter
A reference to the JCA ResourceAdapter bean (the default

bean name is 'resourceAdapter').
activationspec-factory
A reference to the JmsActivationSpecFactory. The default

is to autodetect the JMS provider and its ActivationSpec
class (see DefaultJmsActivationSpecFactory)
destinationresolver
A reference to the DestinationResolver strategy for

resolving JMS Destinations.
messageconverter
A reference to the MessageConverter strategy for converting

JMS Messages to listener method arguments. Default is a
SimpleMessageConverter.
destinationtype
The JMS destination type for this listener: queue, topic or

durableTopic. The default is queue.
client-id
The JMS client id for this listener container. Needs to be specified

when using durable subscriptions.
The native JMS acknowledge mode: auto, client, dups-ok or

transacted. A value of transacted activates a locally
acknowledge transacted Session. As an alternative, specify the
transaction-manager attribute described below. Default is
auto.
transactionmanager
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 will be used (see the "acknowledge"
attribute).
concurrency
The number of concurrent sessions/consumers to start for each

listener. Can either be a simple number indicating the maximum
number (e.g. "5") or a range indicating the lower as well as the
upper limit (e.g. "3-5"). Note that a specified minimum is just a hint
and will typically be ignored at runtime when using a JCA listener
container. 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!
24. JMX
24.1 Introduction
The JMX support in Spring provides you with the features to easily and transparently
integrate your Spring application into a JMX infrastructure.
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
JMX?
This chapter is not an
introduction to JMX... it doesn't
try to explain the motivations of
why one might want to use JMX
(or indeed what the letters JMX
actually stand for). If you are new
to JMX, check out Section 24.8,
Further Resources at the end
of this chapter.
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.
24.2 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 int age;
private boolean isSuperman;
public int getAge() {
return age;
}
public void setAge(int age) {
this.age = age;
}
this.name = name;
}
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 simply configure an instance of the MBeanExporter class in your
configuration file and pass in the bean as shown below:
<beans>

<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"/>
</bean>
</beans>
The pertinent bean definition from the above 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. This behavior can be changed as described in Section 24.4, Controlling the
ObjectNames 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 (bar those inherited from the Object class)
are exposed as operations.
24.2.1 Creating an MBeanServer

The above configuration assumes that the application is running in an environment that
has one (and only one) MBeanServer already running. In this case, Spring will attempt to
locate the running MBeanServer and register your beans with that server (if any). This
behavior is useful when your application is running 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's server property to the MBeanServer value returned by
an MBeanServerFactoryBean; for example:
<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">
<map>
</map>
</property>
<property name="server" ref="mbeanServer"/>
</bean>
</bean>
</beans>
Here an instance of MBeanServer is created by the MBeanServerFactoryBean and

is supplied to the MBeanExporter via the server property. When you supply your own
MBeanServer instance, the MBeanExporter will not attempt to locate a running
MBeanServer and will use the supplied MBeanServer instance. For this to work
correctly, you must (of course) have a JMX implementation on your classpath.
24.2.2 Reusing an existing MBeanServer

If no server is specified, the MBeanExporter tries to automatically detect a running
MBeanServer. This works in most environment where only one MBeanServer instance
is used, however when multiple instances exist, the exporter might pick the wrong server.
In such cases, one should use the MBeanServer agentId to indicate which instance to
be used:
<beans>
<bean id="mbeanServer" class="org.springframework.jmx.support.MBeanServerFactoryBean">

<property name="locateExistingServerIfPossible" value="true"/>

<property name="agentId" value="<MBeanServer instance agentId>"/>
</bean>
<property name="server" ref="mbeanServer"/>
...
</bean>
</beans>
For platforms/cases where the existing MBeanServer has a dynamic (or unknown)
agentId which is retrieved through lookup methods, one should use factory-method:
<beans>
<property name="server">

<bean class="platform.package.MBeanServerLocator" factory-method="locateMBeanServer"/>
</property>

</bean>
</beans>
24.2.3 Lazy-initialized MBeans

If you configure a bean with the MBeanExporter that is also configured for lazy
initialization, then the MBeanExporter will not break this contract and will avoid
instantiating the bean. Instead, it will register a proxy with the MBeanServer and will
defer obtaining the bean from the container until the first invocation on the proxy occurs.
24.2.4 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.
MBeans can be automatically detected by the MBeanExporter by setting the
autodetect property to true:
<property name="autodetect" value="true"/>
</bean>
<bean name="spring:mbean=true" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.TestDynamicMBean"/>
Here, the bean called spring:mbean=true is already a valid JMX MBean and will be
automatically registered by Spring. By default, beans that are autodetected for JMX
registration have their bean name used as the ObjectName. This behavior can be
overridden as detailed in Section 24.4, Controlling the ObjectNames for your beans.
24.2.5 Controlling the registration behavior

Consider the scenario where a Spring MBeanExporter attempts to register an MBean
with an MBeanServer 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).
It is possible to control the behavior of 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; these registration
behaviors are summarized on the following table:
Table 24.1. Registration Behaviors

Registration behavior
Explanation
This is the default registration behavior. If

an MBean instance has already been
registered under the same ObjectName,
the MBean that is being registered will not
REGISTRATION_FAIL_ON_EXISTING
be registered and an
InstanceAlreadyExistsException
will be thrown. The existing MBean is
unaffected.
REGISTRATION_IGNORE_EXISTING
If an MBean instance has already been

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

the existing MBean that was previously
REGISTRATION_REPLACE_EXISTING registered will be unregistered and the
new MBean will be registered in its place
(the new MBean effectively replaces the
previous instance).
The above values are defined as constants on the MBeanRegistrationSupport class

(the MBeanExporter class derives from this superclass). If you want to change the
default registration behavior, you simply need to set the value of the
registrationBehaviorName property on your MBeanExporter definition to one of
those values.
The following example illustrates how to effect a change from the default registration
behavior to the REGISTRATION_REPLACE_EXISTING behavior:
<beans>
<map>
</map>
</property>
<property name="registrationBehaviorName" value="REGISTRATION_REPLACE_EXISTING"/>
</bean>
</bean>
</beans>
24.3 Controlling the management interface of your

beans
In the previous example, you had little control over the management interface of your bean;
all of the public properties and methods of each exported bean was 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.
24.3.1 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
being exposed. The default implementation,
org.springframework.jmx.export.assembler.SimpleReflectiveMBeanInfoAssembler,
simply defines a management interface that exposes all public properties and methods (as
you saw in the previous examples). Spring provides two additional implementations of the
MBeanInfoAssembler interface that allow you to control the generated management
interface using either source-level metadata or any arbitrary interface.
24.3.2 Using Source-Level Metadata (JDK 5.0 annotations)

Using the MetadataMBeanInfoAssembler you can define the management interfaces
for your beans 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 which uses JDK 5.0 annotations,
namely
org.springframework.jmx.export.annotation.AnnotationJmxAttributeSource.
The MetadataMBeanInfoAssembler must be configured 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. Each method you wish to expose as an operation must
be marked with the ManagedOperation annotation and each property you wish to
expose must be marked 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.
The example below shows the annotated version of the JmxTestBean class that you saw
earlier:
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 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")
this.name = name;
}
@ManagedAttribute(defaultValue="foo", persistPeriod=300)
return name;
}
@ManagedOperation(description="Add two numbers")
@ManagedOperationParameters({
@ManagedOperationParameter(name = "x", description = "The first number"),
@ManagedOperationParameter(name = "y", description = "The second number")})
return x + y;
}
}
}
Here 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 section
entitled Section 24.3.3, Source-Level Metadata Types.
You will also notice that 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 will cause both of these properties to be included in the management
interface as attributes, but the age attribute will be read-only.
Finally, you will notice that the add(int, int) method is marked with the
ManagedOperation attribute whereas the dontExposeMe() method is not. This will
cause the management interface to contain only one operation, add(int, int), when
using the MetadataMBeanInfoAssembler.
The configuration below shows how you configure the MBeanExporter to use the
MetadataMBeanInfoAssembler:
<beans>
<property name="assembler" ref="assembler"/>
<property name="namingStrategy" ref="namingStrategy"/>
</bean>
<bean id="jmxAttributeSource"
class="org.springframework.jmx.export.annotation.AnnotationJmxAttributeSource"/>

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

<bean id="namingStrategy"
class="org.springframework.jmx.export.naming.MetadataNamingStrategy">
<property name="attributeSource" ref="jmxAttributeSource"/>
</bean>
<bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.AnnotationTestBean">
</bean>
</beans>
Here you can see that 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.
24.3.3 Source-Level Metadata Types

The following source level metadata types are available for use in Spring JMX:
Table 24.2. 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
Method
@ManagedOperationParameters
The following configuration parameters are available for use on these source-level
metadata types:
Table 24.3. Source-Level Metadata Parameters

Parameter
Description
Applies to
ObjectName
Used by
MetadataNamingStrategy
ManagedResource
to determine the ObjectName
of a managed resource
description
Sets the friendly description of

the resource, attribute or
operation
Sets the value of the

currencyTimeLimit currencyTimeLimit
descriptor field
ManagedResource,
ManagedAttribute,
ManagedOperation,
ManagedOperationParameter
ManagedResource,
ManagedAttribute
defaultValue

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

persistPolicy descriptor
field
ManagedResource
persistPeriod

persistPeriod descriptor
field
ManagedResource
persistLocation

persistLocation
descriptor field
ManagedResource
persistName

persistName descriptor field
ManagedResource
name
Sets the display name of an

operation parameter
index
Sets the index of an operation
index
parameter
24.3.4 The AutodetectCapableMBeanInfoAssembler interface

To simplify configuration even further, Spring introduces 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 then it is allowed to "vote" on the
inclusion of beans for exposure to JMX.
Out of the box, the only implementation of the AutodetectCapableMBeanInfo
interface is the MetadataMBeanInfoAssembler which will vote to include any bean
which 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 like this:
<beans>

<property name="assembler" ref="assembler"/>
</bean>
</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 this configuration no beans are passed to the MBeanExporter; however,
the JmxTestBean will still be 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 Section 24.4, Controlling the ObjectNames for your
beans.
24.3.5 Defining management interfaces using Java interfaces

In addition to the MetadataMBeanInfoAssembler, Spring also includes the
InterfaceBasedMBeanInfoAssembler which allows you to 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, the InterfaceBasedMBeanInfoAssembler extends this
functionality by removing the need for naming conventions, allowing you to use more than
one interface and removing the need for your beans to implement the MBean interfaces.
Consider this interface that is used to define a management interface for the
JmxTestBean class that you saw 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 will be exposed as operations and
attributes on the JMX MBean. The code below shows how to configure Spring JMX to use
this interface as the definition for the management interface:
<beans>
<map>
</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>
</beans>
Here you can see that 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 case above, 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 via 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, then the InterfaceBasedMBeanInfoAssembler
will reflect on the bean and use all of the interfaces implemented by that bean to create the
management interface.
24.3.6 Using MethodNameBasedMBeanInfoAssembler

The MethodNameBasedMBeanInfoAssembler allows you to specify a list of method
names that will be exposed to JMX as attributes and operations. The code below shows a
sample configuration for this:
<map>
</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>
Here you can see that the methods add and myOperation will be exposed as JMX
operations and getName(), setName(String) and getAge() will be exposed as the
appropriate half of a JMX attribute. In the code above, the method mappings apply to
beans that are exposed to JMX. To control method exposure on a bean-by-bean basis, use
the methodMappings property of MethodNameMBeanInfoAssembler to map bean
names to lists of method names.
24.4 Controlling the ObjectNames for your beans

Behind the scenes, the MBeanExporter delegates to an implementation of the
ObjectNamingStrategy to obtain ObjectNames for each of the beans it is registering.
The default implementation, KeyNamingStrategy, will, by default, use 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 that
builds an ObjectName based on the JVM identity of the bean and the
MetadataNamingStrategy that uses source level metadata to obtain the
ObjectName.
24.4.1 Reading ObjectNames from Properties

You can configure your own KeyNamingStrategy instance and configure it to read
ObjectNames from a Properties instance rather than use bean key. The
KeyNamingStrategy will attempt to locate an entry in the Properties with a key
corresponding to the bean key. If no entry is found or if the Properties instance is null
then the bean key itself is used.
The code below shows a sample configuration for the KeyNamingStrategy:
<beans>
<map>
<entry key="testBean" value-ref="testBean"/>
</map>
</property>
</bean>
</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>
Here an instance of KeyNamingStrategy is configured 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 will be given the ObjectName 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 then the bean key name is used as
the ObjectName.
24.4.2 Using the MetadataNamingStrategy

The MetadataNamingStrategy uses the objectName property of the
ManagedResource attribute on each bean to create the ObjectName. The code below
shows the configuration for the MetadataNamingStrategy:
<beans>
<map>
<entry key="testBean" value-ref="testBean"/>
</map>
</property>
</bean>
</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, then an

ObjectName will be created with the following format: [fully-qualified-packagename]:type=[short-classname],name=[bean-name]. For example, the generated
ObjectName for the following bean would be: com.foo:type=MyClass,name=myBean.
<bean id="myBean" class="com.foo.MyClass"/>
24.4.3 Configuring annotation based MBean export

If you prefer using the annotation based approach to define your management interfaces,
then a convenience subclass of MBeanExporter is available:
AnnotationMBeanExporter. When defining an instance of this subclass, the
namingStrategy, assembler, and attributeSource configuration is no longer
needed, since it will always use 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.
@Configuration
@EnableMBeanExport
}
If you prefer XML based configuration the 'context:mbean-export' element serves

the same purpose.
<context:mbean-export/>
You can provide a reference to a particular MBean server if necessary, and the
defaultDomain attribute (a property of AnnotationMBeanExporter) accepts an
alternate value for the generated MBean ObjectNames' domains. This would be used in
place of the fully qualified package name as described in the previous section on
MetadataNamingStrategy.
@EnableMBeanExport(server="myMBeanServer", defaultDomain="myDomain")
@Configuration
ContextConfiguration {
}
<context:mbean-export server="myMBeanServer" default-domain="myDomain"/>
Note
Do not use interface-based AOP proxies in combination with
autodetection of JMX annotations in your bean classes. Interfacebased proxies 'hide' the target class, which also hides the JMX
managed resource annotations. Hence, use target-class proxies in that
case: through setting the 'proxy-target-class' flag on <aop:config/>,
<tx:annotation-driven/>, etc. Otherwise, your JMX beans
might be silently ignored at startup...
24.5 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.
24.5.1 Server-side Connectors

To have Spring JMX create, start and expose a JSR-160 JMXConnectorServer 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 J2SE 5.0 do not support JMXMP.
To specify another URL and register the JMXConnectorServer itself with the
MBeanServer use the serviceUrl and ObjectName properties respectively:
<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 will automatically register your connector with
the MBeanServer under that ObjectName. The example below shows the full set of
parameters which 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 using 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 are using
Spring to export remote services for you via RMI, then Spring will already have constructed
an RMI registry. If not, you can easily start a registry using the following snippet of
configuration:
<bean id="registry" class="org.springframework.remoting.rmi.RmiRegistryFactoryBean">

<property name="port" value="1099"/>
</bean>
24.5.2 Client-side Connectors

To create an MBeanServerConnection to a remote JSR-160 enabled MBeanServer
use the MBeanServerConnectionFactoryBean as shown below:
<bean id="clientConnector" class="org.springframework.jmx.support.MBeanServerConnectionFactoryBean">
<property name="serviceUrl" value="service:jmx:rmi://localhost/jndi/rmi://localhost:1099/jmxrmi"/>
</bean>
24.5.3 JMX over Burlap/Hessian/SOAP

JSR-160 permits extensions to the way in which communication is done between the client
and the server. The examples above are using 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 like SOAP, Hessian, Burlap over simple HTTP or SSL and others:
<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 case of the above example, MX4J 3.0.0 was used; see the official MX4J
documentation for more information.
24.6 Accessing MBeans via Proxies

Spring JMX allows you to create proxies that re-route calls to MBeans 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 code below 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>
Here you can see that a proxy is created for the MBean registered under the
ObjectName: bean:name=testBean. The set of interfaces that the proxy will
implement 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 via
an MBeanServerConnection. By default, the local MBeanServer is located and used,
but you can override this and provide an MBeanServerConnection pointing to a
remote MBeanServer to cater for proxies pointing 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>
Here you can see that we create an MBeanServerConnection pointing to a remote

machine using the MBeanServerConnectionFactoryBean. This
MBeanServerConnection is then passed to the MBeanProxyFactoryBean via the

server property. The proxy that is created will forward all invocations to the
MBeanServer via this MBeanServerConnection.
24.7 Notifications
Spring's JMX offering includes comprehensive support for JMX notifications.
24.7.1 Registering Listeners for Notifications

Spring's JMX support makes it very easy to register any number of
NotificationListeners with any number of MBeans (this includes MBeans exported
by Spring's MBeanExporter and MBeans registered via some other mechanism). By
way of an example, consider the scenario where one would like to be informed (via a
Notification) each and every time an attribute of a target MBean changes.
package com.example;
import
import
import
import
javax.management.AttributeChangeNotification;
javax.management.Notification;
javax.management.NotificationFilter;
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());
}
}
<beans>
<map>
</map>
</property>
<property name="notificationListenerMappings">
<map>
<entry key="bean:name=testBean1">
<bean class="com.example.ConsoleLoggingNotificationListener"/>
</entry>
</map>
</property>
</bean>
</bean>
</beans>
With the above 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 via
the notificationListenerMappings property will be 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:
<beans>
<map>
</map>
</property>
<map>
<entry key="testBean">
</entry>
</map>
</property>
</bean>
</bean>
</beans>
If one wants to register a single NotificationListener instance for all of the beans
that the enclosing MBeanExporter is exporting, one can use the special wildcard '*'
(sans quotes) as the key for an entry in the notificationListenerMappings
property map; for example:
<map>
<entry key="*">
</entry>
</map>
</property>
If one needs to do the inverse (that is, register a number of distinct listeners against an
MBean), then one has to use the notificationListeners list property instead (and in
preference to the notificationListenerMappings property). This time, instead of
configuring simply a NotificationListener for a single MBean, one configures
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:
<beans>
<map>
</map>
</property>
<property name="notificationListeners">
<list>
<bean class="org.springframework.jmx.export.NotificationListenerBean">
<constructor-arg>
</constructor-arg>
<property name="mappedObjectNames">
<list>
<value>bean:name=testBean1</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
</bean>
</beans>
The above example is equivalent to the first notification example. Lets assume then that
we want to be given a handback object every time a Notification is raised, and that
additionally we want to filter out extraneous Notifications by supplying a
NotificationFilter. (For a full discussion of just what a handback object is, and
indeed what a NotificationFilter is, please do consult that section of the JMX
specification (1.2) entitled 'The JMX Notification Model'.)
<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>

</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>

<bean id="customerNotificationListener" class="com.example.ConsoleLoggingNotificationListener"/>
<bean id="testBean1" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">
</bean>
<bean id="testBean2" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">
<property name="name" value="ANOTHER TEST"/>
</bean>
</beans>
24.7.2 Publishing Notifications

Spring provides support not just for registering to receive Notifications, but also for
publishing Notifications.
Note
Please note that this section is really only relevant to Spring managed
beans that have been exposed as MBeans via 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 via an MBeanExporter instance can implement the
related NotificationPublisherAware interface to gain access to a
NotificationPublisher instance. The NotificationPublisherAware interface
simply supplies an instance of a NotificationPublisher to the implementing bean
via a simple setter method, which the bean can then use to publish Notifications.
As stated in the Javadoc for the NotificationPublisher class, managed beans that
are publishing events via the NotificationPublisher mechanism are not
responsible for the state management of any notification listeners and the like ... Spring's
JMX support will take care of handling all the JMX infrastructure issues. All one need do as
an application developer is implement the NotificationPublisherAware interface
and start publishing events using the supplied NotificationPublisher instance.
Note that the NotificationPublisher will be set after the managed bean has been
registered with an MBeanServer.
Using a NotificationPublisher instance is quite straightforward... one simply
creates a JMX Notification instance (or an instance of an appropriate
Notification subclass), populates the notification with the data pertinent to the event
that is to be published, and one then invokes the
sendNotification(Notification) on the NotificationPublisher instance,
passing in the Notification.
Find below a simple example... in this scenario, exported instances of the JmxTestBean
are going to publish a NotificationEvent every time the add(int, int) operation
is invoked.
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
private
private
private
String name;
int age;
boolean isSuperman;
NotificationPublisher publisher;
// other getters and setters omitted for clarity

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

This section contains links to further resources about JMX.
The JMX homepage at Sun
The JMX specification (JSR-000003)
The JMX Remote API specification (JSR-000160)
The MX4J homepage (an Open Source implementation of various JMX specs)
Getting Started with JMX - an introductory article from Sun.
25. JCA CCI

25.1 Introduction
Java EE provides a specification to standardize access to enterprise information systems
(EIS): the JCA (J2EE Connector Architecture). This specification is divided into several
different parts:
SPI (Service provider interfaces) that the connector provider must implement. These
interfaces constitute a resource adapter which can be deployed on a Java EE

application server. In such a scenario, the server manages connection pooling,
transaction 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, leveraging the Spring Framework's general resource and transaction
management facilities.
Note
The client side of connectors doesn't alway use CCI. Some connectors
expose their own APIs, only providing JCA resource adapter to use the
system contracts of a Java EE container (connection pooling, global
transactions, security). Spring does not offer special support for such
connector-specific APIs.
25.2 Configuring CCI

25.2.1 Connector configuration
The base resource to use JCA CCI is the ConnectionFactory interface. The connector
used 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, simply use Spring's
JndiObjectFactoryBean / <jee:jndi-lookup> fetch the factory by its JNDI name.
Another way to use a connector is to embed it in your application (non-managed mode),
not using an application server to deploy and configure it. Spring offers the possibility to
configure a connector as a bean, through a provided FactoryBean
(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 got access to your ConnectionFactory instance, you can inject it into
your components. These components can either be coded against the plain CCI API or
leverage Spring's support classes for CCI access (e.g. CciTemplate).
Note
When you use a connector in non-managed mode, you can't use global
transactions because the resource is never enlisted / delisted in the
current global transaction of the current thread. The resource is simply
not aware of any global Java EE transactions that might be running.
25.2.2 ConnectionFactory configuration in Spring

In order 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 a managed mode, you access a ConnectionFactory from JNDI; its properties will be
configured in the application server.

<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.
<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>
Note
You can't 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.
25.2.3 Configuring CCI connections

JCA CCI allow the developer to configure the connections to the EIS using the
ConnectionSpec implementation of your connector. In order to configure its properties,
you need to wrap the target connection factory with a dedicated adapter,
ConnectionSpecConnectionFactoryAdapter. So, the dedicated
ConnectionSpec can be configured with the property connectionSpec (as an inner
bean).
This property is not mandatory because the CCI ConnectionFactory interface defines
two different methods to obtain a CCI connection. Some of the ConnectionSpec
properties can often be configured in the application server (in managed mode) or on the
corresponding local ManagedConnectionFactory implementation.
public interface ConnectionFactory implements Serializable, Referenceable {
...
Connection getConnection() throws ResourceException;
Connection getConnection(ConnectionSpec connectionSpec) throws ResourceException;
...
}
Spring provides a ConnectionSpecConnectionFactoryAdapter that allows for

specifying 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 variant
without argument.
<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"/>
</bean>
</property>
</bean>
25.2.4 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 will open a single connection lazily and close it when this bean is destroyed
at application shutdown. This class will expose special Connection proxies that behave
accordingly, all sharing the same underlying physical connection.
<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"
<property name="managedConnectionFactory" ref="eciManagedConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>
<bean id="eciConnectionFactory"
class="org.springframework.jca.cci.connection.SingleConnectionFactory">
<property name="targetConnectionFactory" ref="targetEciConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>
Note
This ConnectionFactory adapter cannot directly be configured
with a ConnectionSpec. Use an intermediary
ConnectionSpecConnectionFactoryAdapter that the
SingleConnectionFactory talks to if you require a single
connection for a specific ConnectionSpec.
25.3 Using Spring's CCI access support

25.3.1 Record conversion
One of the aims of the JCA CCI support is to provide convenient facilities for manipulating
CCI records. The developer can specify the strategy to create records and extract datas
from records, for use with Spring's CciTemplate. The following interfaces will configure
the strategy to use input and output records if you don't want to work with records directly in
your application.
In order to create an input Record, the developer can use a dedicated implementation of
the RecordCreator interface.
public interface RecordCreator {
Record createRecord(RecordFactory recordFactory) throws ResourceException, DataAccessException;
}
As you can see, the createRecord(..) method receives a RecordFactory instance

as parameter, which corresponds to the RecordFactory of the ConnectionFactory
used. This reference can be used to create IndexedRecord or MappedRecord
instances. The following sample shows how to use the RecordCreator interface and
indexed/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;
}
}
An output Record can be used to receive data back from the EIS. Hence, a specific
implementation of the RecordExtractor interface can be passed to Spring's
CciTemplate for extracting data from the output Record.
public interface RecordExtractor {
Object extractData(Record record) throws ResourceException, SQLException, DataAccessException;
}
The following sample 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);
return new OutputObject(Long.parseLong(field1), field2);
}
}
25.3.2 The 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 like 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:
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 will know which execute
method to call on the interaction. In any case, a correctly initialized InteractionSpec
instance is mandatory.
CciTemplate.execute(..) can be used in two ways:
With direct Record arguments. In this case, you simply need to pass the CCI input
record in, and the returned object be the corresponding CCI output record.
With application objects, using record mapping. In this case, you need to provide
corresponding RecordCreator and RecordExtractor instances.
With the first approach, the following methods of the template will be used. These methods
directly correspond to those on the Interaction interface.
public class CciTemplate implements CciOperations {
public Record execute(InteractionSpec spec, Record inputRecord)
throws DataAccessException { ... }
public void execute(InteractionSpec spec, Record inputRecord, Record outputRecord)
}
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 corresponding CciTemplate methods are the following:

public Record execute(InteractionSpec spec, RecordCreator inputCreator)
public Object execute(InteractionSpec spec, Record inputRecord, RecordExtractor outputExtractor)
public Object execute(InteractionSpec spec, RecordCreator creator, RecordExtractor extractor)
}
Unless the outputRecordCreator property is set on the template (see the following
section), every method will call the corresponding execute method of the CCI
Interaction with two parameters: InteractionSpec and input Record, receiving
an output Record as return value.
CciTemplate also provides methods to create IndexRecord and MappedRecord
outside a RecordCreator implementation, through its createIndexRecord(..) and
createMappedRecord(..) methods. This can be used within DAO implementations to
create Record instances to pass into corresponding CciTemplate.execute(..)
methods.
public IndexedRecord createIndexedRecord(String name) throws DataAccessException { ... }
public MappedRecord createMappedRecord(String name) throws DataAccessException { ... }
}
25.3.3 DAO support

Spring's CCI support provides a abstract class for DAOs, supporting injection of a
ConnectionFactory or a CciTemplate instances. The name of the class is
CciDaoSupport: It provides simple setConnectionFactory and
setCciTemplate methods. Internally, this class will create a CciTemplate instance
for a passed-in ConnectionFactory, exposing it to concrete data access
implementations in subclasses.
public abstract class CciDaoSupport {
public void setConnectionFactory(ConnectionFactory connectionFactory) { ... }
public ConnectionFactory getConnectionFactory() { ... }
public void setCciTemplate(CciTemplate cciTemplate) { ... }
public CciTemplate getCciTemplate() { ... }
}
25.3.4 Automatic output record generation

If the connector used only supports 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
will be then returned to the caller of the template.
This property simply holds an implementation of the RecordCreator interface, used for
that purpose. The RecordCreator interface has already been discussed in
Section 25.3.1, Record conversion. The outputRecordCreator property must be
directly specified on the CciTemplate. This could be done in the application code like
so:
cciTemplate.setOutputRecordCreator(new EciOutputRecordCreator());
Or (recommended) in the Spring configuration, if the CciTemplate is configured as a

dedicated bean instance:
<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>
Note
As the CciTemplate class is thread-safe, it will usually be configured
as a shared instance.
25.3.5 Summary
The following table summarizes the mechanisms of the CciTemplate class and the
corresponding methods called on the CCI Interaction interface:
Table 25.1. 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
Record)
Record
Record)
set
boolean
Record, Record)
void
Record, Record)
not set
void
Record, Record)
void
Record, Record)
set
void
Record, Record)
Record
RecordCreator)
not set
Record
Record)
Record
RecordCreator)
set
void
Record, Record)
Record
Record, RecordExtractor)
not set
Record
Record)
Record
Record, RecordExtractor)
set
void
Record, Record)
Record
RecordCreator,
RecordExtractor)
not set
Record
Record)
Record
RecordCreator,
RecordExtractor)
set
void
Record, Record)
25.3.6 Using a CCI Connection and Interaction directly

CciTemplate also offers the possibility to 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 interface ConnectionCallback provides a CCI Connection as argument, in
order to perform custom operations on it, plus the CCI ConnectionFactory which the
Connection was created with. The latter can be useful for example to get an associated
RecordFactory instance and create indexed/mapped records, for example.
public interface ConnectionCallback {
Object doInConnection(Connection connection, ConnectionFactory connectionFactory)
throws ResourceException, SQLException, DataAccessException;
}
The interface InteractionCallback provides the CCI Interaction, in order to

perform custom operations on it, plus the corresponding CCI ConnectionFactory.
public interface InteractionCallback {
Object doInInteraction(Interaction interaction, ConnectionFactory connectionFactory)
throws ResourceException, SQLException, DataAccessException;
}
Note
InteractionSpec objects can either be shared across multiple
template calls or newly created inside every callback method. This is
completely up to the DAO implementation.
25.3.7 Example for CciTemplate usage

In this section, the usage of the CciTemplate will be shown to acces to a CICS with ECI
mode, with the IBM CICS ECI connector.
Firstly, some initializations on the CCI InteractionSpec must be done to specify which
CICS program to access and how to interact with it.
ECIInteractionSpec interactionSpec = new ECIInteractionSpec();
interactionSpec.setFunctionName("MYPROG");
interactionSpec.setInteractionVerb(ECIInteractionSpec.SYNC_SEND_RECEIVE);
Then the program can use CCI via Spring's template and specify mappings between
custom objects and CCI Records.
public class MyDaoImpl extends CciDaoSupport implements MyDao {
public OutputObject getData(InputObject input) {
ECIInteractionSpec interactionSpec = ...;
OutputObject output = (ObjectOutput) getCciTemplate().execute(interactionSpec,
new RecordCreator() {
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());
return new OutputObject(Long.parseLong(field1), field2);
}
});
return output;
}
}
As discussed previously, callbacks can be used to work directly on CCI connections or

interactions.
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;
}
}
Note
With a ConnectionCallback, the Connection used will be
managed and closed by the CciTemplate, but any interactions
created on the connection must be managed by the callback
implementation.
For a more specific callback, you can implement an InteractionCallback. The
passed-in Interaction will be managed and closed by the CciTemplate in this case.
public String getData(String input) {
ECIInteractionSpec interactionSpec = ...;
String output = (String) getCciTemplate().execute(interactionSpec,
new InteractionCallback() {
public Object doInInteraction(Interaction interaction, ConnectionFactory factory)
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 examples above, the corresponding configuration of the involved Spring beans
could look like this in non-managed mode:
<bean id="managedConnectionFactory" class="com.ibm.connector2.cics.ECIManagedConnectionFactory">
<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">
</bean>
<bean id="component" class="mypackage.MyDaoImpl">
</bean>
In managed mode (that is, in a Java EE environment), the configuration could look as
follows:
<jee:jndi-lookup id="connectionFactory" jndi-name="eis/cicseci"/>
<bean id="component" class="MyDaoImpl">
</bean>
25.4 Modeling CCI access as operation objects

The org.springframework.jca.cci.object package contains support classes
that allow you to access the EIS in a different style: through reusable operation objects,
analogous to Spring's JDBC operation objects (see JDBC chapter). This will usually
encapsulate the CCI API: an application-level input object will be 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.
Note: This approach is internally based on the CciTemplate class and the
RecordCreator / RecordExtractor interfaces, reusing the machinery of Spring's
core CCI support.
25.4.1 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 a 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
Here are 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, in order to 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 result:
public abstract class MappingRecordOperation extends EisOperation {
...
public Object execute(Object inputObject) throws DataAccessException {
...
}
As you can see, contrary to the CciTemplate class, this execute(..) method does
not have an InteractionSpec as argument. Instead, the InteractionSpec is global
to the operation. The following constructor must be used to instantiate an operation object
with a specific InteractionSpec:
InteractionSpec spec = ...;
MyMappingRecordOperation eisOperation = new MyMappingRecordOperation(getConnectionFactory(), spec);
...
25.4.2 MappingCommAreaOperation
Some connectors use records based on a COMMAREA which represents an array of bytes
containing parameters to send to the EIS and 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 such special COMMAREA support. It implicitly uses the CommAreaRecord
class as input and output record type, and provides two new methods to convert an input
object into an input COMMAREA and the output COMMAREA into an output object.
object into an input COMMAREA and the output COMMAREA into an output object.
public abstract class MappingCommAreaOperation extends MappingRecordOperation {
...
protected abstract byte[] objectToBytes(Object inObject)
throws IOException, DataAccessException;
protected abstract Object bytesToObject(byte[] bytes)
throws IOException, DataAccessException;
...
}
25.4.3 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 Section 25.3.4, Automatic output record generation.
25.4.4 Summary
The operation object approach uses records in the same manner as the CciTemplate
class.
Table 25.2. Usage of Interaction execute methods

MappingRecordOperation
method signature
MappingRecordOperation
outputRecordCreator
property
execute method
called on the CCI
Interaction
Object execute(Object)
not set
Record
Record)
Object execute(Object)
set
boolean
Record, Record)
25.4.5 Example for MappingRecordOperation usage

In this section, the usage of the MappingRecordOperation will be shown to access a
database with the Blackbox CCI connector.
Note
The original version of this connector is provided by the Java EE SDK
(version 1.3), available from Sun.
Firstly, some initializations on the CCI InteractionSpec must be done to specify which
SQL request to execute. In this sample, 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)
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
argument. Note that operation object could be set up as shared instance, as it is threadsafe.
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 look 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"
</bean>
</bean>
</property>
</bean>
</bean>
follows:
<jee:jndi-lookup id="targetConnectionFactory" jndi-name="eis/blackbox"/>
</bean>
</property>
</bean>
</bean>
25.4.6 Example for MappingCommAreaOperation usage

In this section, the usage of the MappingCommAreaOperation will be shown:
accessing a CICS with ECI mode with the IBM CICS ECI connector.
Firstly, the CCI InteractionSpec needs to be initialized to specify which CICS
program to access and how to interact with it.
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 {
return new CommAreaRecord();
}
}
}
The abstract EciMappingOperation class can then be subclassed to specify mappings

between custom objects and Records.
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);
return new OutputObject(field1, field2, field3);
}
});
return (OutputObject) query.execute(new Integer(id));
}
}
The corresponding configuration of Spring beans could look as follows in non-managed

mode:
<bean id="managedConnectionFactory" class="com.ibm.connector2.cics.ECIManagedConnectionFactory">
<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">
</bean>
</bean>
follows:
<jee:jndi-lookup id="connectionFactory" jndi-name="eis/cicseci"/>
</bean>
25.5 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 CICS EPI connector), local transactions
(for example with a CICS ECI connector), global transactions (for example with an IMS
connector).
<connector>
<resourceadapter>


<transaction-support>XATransaction</transaction-support>
<resourceadapter>
<connector>
For global transactions, you can use Spring's generic transaction infrastructure to
demarcate transactions, with JtaTransactionManager as 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, fully compliant
with Spring's generic PlatformTransactionManager abstraction.
<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>
Both transaction strategies can be used 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. Simply switch between
JtaTransactionManager and CciLocalTransactionManager as needed,
keeping your transaction demarcation as-is.
For more information on Spring's transaction facilities, see the chapter entitled Chapter 12,
Transaction Management.
26. Email
26.1 Introduction
The Spring Framework provides a helpful utility
library for sending email that shields the user 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
Library dependencies
The following additional jars to
be on the classpath of your
application in order to be able to
use the Spring Framework's
email library.
the root level package for the Spring Framework's
The JavaMail mail.jar
email support. The central interface for sending
library
The JAF
emails is the MailSender interface; a simple

value object encapsulating 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 which provide a higher level of
abstraction over the lower level mail system
activation.jar
library
All of these libraries are freely
available on the web.
exceptions with the root exception being MailException. Please refer to the JavaDocs
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 for
preparation of JavaMail MIME messages, called
org.springframework.mail.javamail.MimeMessagePreparator
26.2 Usage
Let's assume there is a business interface called OrderManager:
public interface OrderManager {
void placeOrder(Order order);
}
Let us also assume that there is a requirement stating that an email message with an order
number needs to be generated and sent to a customer placing the relevant order.
26.2.1 Basic MailSender and SimpleMailMessage usage

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());
}
}
}
Find below the bean definitions for the above code:

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

<bean id="templateMessage" class="org.springframework.mail.SimpleMailMessage">
<property name="from" value="customerservice@mycompany.com"/>
<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>
26.2.2 Using the JavaMailSender and the

MimeMessagePreparator
Here is another implementation of OrderManager using the
MimeMessagePreparator callback interface. Please note in this case that the
mailSender property is of type JavaMailSender so that we are able to use the
JavaMail MimeMessage class:
import
import
import
import
javax.mail.Message;
javax.mail.MessagingException;
javax.mail.internet.InternetAddress;
javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage;
import
import
import
import
javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage;
org.springframework.mail.MailException;
org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSender;
org.springframework.mail.javamail.MimeMessagePreparator;
public class SimpleOrderManager implements OrderManager {

private JavaMailSender mailSender;
public void setMailSender(JavaMailSender 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("mail@mycompany.com"));
mimeMessage.setText(
"Dear " + order.getCustomer().getFirstName() + " "
+ order.getCustomer().getLastName()
+ ", thank you for placing 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());
}
}
}
Note
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.
Please refer to the relevant JavaDocs for more information.
26.3 Using the JavaMail MimeMessageHelper

A class that comes in pretty handy when dealing with JavaMail messages is the
org.springframework.mail.javamail.MimeMessageHelper class, which
shields you from having to use the verbose JavaMail API. Using the
MimeMessageHelper it is pretty easy to create a MimeMessage:
// 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("test@host.com");
helper.setText("Thank you for ordering!");
sender.send(message);
26.3.1 Sending attachments and inline resources

Multipart email messages allow for both attachments and inline resources. Examples of
inline resources would be images or a stylesheet you want to use in your message, but
that you don't want displayed as an attachment.
Attachments
The following example shows you how to use the MimeMessageHelper to send an
email along with a single JPEG image attachment.
// use the true flag to indicate you need a multipart message
MimeMessageHelper helper = new MimeMessageHelper(message, true);
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);
Inline resources
The following example shows you how to use the MimeMessageHelper to send an
email along with an inline image.
// use the true flag to indicate you need a multipart message
MimeMessageHelper helper = new MimeMessageHelper(message, true);
// 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);
Warning
Inline resources are added to the mime message using the specified
Content-ID (identifier1234 in the above example). The order
in which you are adding the text and the resource are very important.
Be sure to first add the text and after that the resources. If you are doing
it the other way around, it won't work!
26.3.2 Creating email content using a templating library

The code in the previous examples explicitly created the content of the email message,
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, you are not going to create the content of your
emails using the above 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...
Typically the approach taken to address these issues is to use a template library such as
FreeMarker or Velocity 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 for when the content of your emails
becomes even moderately complex, and with the Spring Framework's support classes for
FreeMarker and Velocity becomes quite easy to do. Find below an example of using the
Velocity template library to create email content.
A Velocity-based example
To use Velocity to create your email template(s), you will need to have the Velocity
libraries available on your classpath. You will also need to create one or more Velocity
templates for the email content that your application needs. Find below the Velocity
template that this example will be using. As you can see it is HTML-based, and since it is
plain text it can be created using your favorite HTML or text editor.
# in the com/foo/package
<html>
<body>
<h3>Hi ${user.userName}, welcome to the Chipping Sodbury On-the-Hill message boards!</h3>
<div>
Your email address is <a href="mailto:${user.emailAddress}">${user.emailAddress}</a>.
</div>
</body>
</html>
Find below some simple code and Spring XML configuration that makes use of the above
Velocity template to create email content and send email(s).
package com.foo;
import
import
import
import
import
org.apache.velocity.app.VelocityEngine;
org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSender;
org.springframework.mail.javamail.MimeMessageHelper;
org.springframework.mail.javamail.MimeMessagePreparator;
org.springframework.ui.velocity.VelocityEngineUtils;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;
public class SimpleRegistrationService implements RegistrationService {
private JavaMailSender mailSender;
private VelocityEngine velocityEngine;
public void setMailSender(JavaMailSender mailSender) {
}
public void setVelocityEngine(VelocityEngine velocityEngine) {
this.velocityEngine = velocityEngine;
}
public void register(User user) {
// Do the registration logic...
sendConfirmationEmail(user);
}
private void sendConfirmationEmail(final User user) {
MimeMessagePreparator preparator = new MimeMessagePreparator() {
public void prepare(MimeMessage mimeMessage) throws Exception {
MimeMessageHelper message = new MimeMessageHelper(mimeMessage);
message.setTo(user.getEmailAddress());
message.setFrom("webmaster@csonth.gov.uk"); // could be parameterized...
model.put("user", user);
String text = VelocityEngineUtils.mergeTemplateIntoString(
velocityEngine, "com/dns/registration-confirmation.vm", model);
message.setText(text, true);
}
};
this.mailSender.send(preparator);
}
}

<bean id="mailSender" class="org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSenderImpl">
<property name="host" value="mail.csonth.gov.uk"/>
</bean>
<bean id="registrationService" class="com.foo.SimpleRegistrationService">
<property name="mailSender" ref="mailSender"/>
<property name="velocityEngine" ref="velocityEngine"/>
</bean>
<bean id="velocityEngine" class="org.springframework.ui.velocity.VelocityEngineFactoryBean">
<property name="velocityProperties">
<value>
resource.loader=class
class.resource.loader.class=org.apache.velocity.runtime.resource.loader.ClasspathResourceLoader
</value>
</property>
</bean>
</beans>
27. Task Execution and Scheduling

27.1 Introduction
The Spring Framework provides abstractions for 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 for supporting scheduling with the Timer, part of
the JDK since 1.3, and the Quartz Scheduler (http://quartz-scheduler.org). Both of those
schedulers are set up 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 allows you to invoke a method of an existing
target object (analogous to the normal MethodInvokingFactoryBean operation).
27.2 The Spring TaskExecutor abstraction

Spring 2.0 introduces a new abstraction for dealing with executors. Executors are the Java
5 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 Java SE 1.4, Java SE 5 and Java EE environments.
Spring's TaskExecutor interface is identical to the
java.util.concurrent.Executor interface. In fact, its primary reason for existence
is 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, it is possible to use this abstraction for your own needs.
27.2.1 TaskExecutor types

There are a number of pre-built implementations of TaskExecutor included with the
Spring distribution. In all likelihood, you shouldn't ever need to implement your own.
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 which will block any
invocations that are over the limit until a slot has been freed up. If you're looking for
true pooling, keep scrolling further down the page.
SyncTaskExecutor
This implementation doesn't execute invocations asynchronously. Instead, each
invocation takes place in the calling thread. It is primarily used in situations where
multithreading isn't necessary such as simple test cases.
ConcurrentTaskExecutor
This implementation is a wrapper for a Java 5
java.util.concurrent.Executor. There is an alternative,
ThreadPoolTaskExecutor, that exposes the Executor configuration parameters
as bean properties. It is rare to need to use the ConcurrentTaskExecutor but if
the ThreadPoolTaskExecutor isn't robust enough for your needs, the
ConcurrentTaskExecutor is an alternative.
SimpleThreadPoolTaskExecutor
This implementation is actually a subclass of Quartz's SimpleThreadPool which
listens to Spring's lifecycle callbacks. This is typically used when you have a thread
pool that may need to be shared by both Quartz and non-Quartz components.
ThreadPoolTaskExecutor
This implementation can only be used in a Java
used one in that environment. It exposes bean
It is not possible to use any

backport or alternate versions
of the
properties for configuring a
java.util.concurrent
5 environment but is also the most commonly
package with this

implementation. Both Doug
Lea's and Dawid Kurzyniec's
implementations use different
package structures which will
prevent them from working
correctly.
java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor and wraps it in a

TaskExecutor. If you need something advanced such as a
ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor, it is recommended that you use a
ConcurrentTaskExecutor instead.
TimerTaskExecutor
This implementation uses a single TimerTask as its backing implementation. It's
different from the SyncTaskExecutor in that the method invocations are executed in
a separate thread, although they are synchronous in that thread.
WorkManagerTaskExecutor
This implementation uses the CommonJ
WorkManager as its backing implementation
and is the central convenience class for setting
up a CommonJ WorkManager reference in a
Spring context. Similar to the
SimpleThreadPoolTaskExecutor, this
class implements the WorkManager interface
and therefore can be used directly as a
WorkManager as well.
CommonJ is a set of
specifications jointly developed
between BEA and IBM. These
specifications are not Java EE
standards, but are standard
across BEA's and IBM's
Application Server
implementations.
27.2.2 Using a TaskExecutor

Spring's TaskExecutor implementations are used as simple JavaBeans. In the example
below, 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() {
}
}
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 yourself, you
add your Runnable to the queue and the TaskExecutor uses its internal rules to
decide when the task gets executed.
To configure the rules that the TaskExecutor will use, simple bean properties have
been exposed.
<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>
27.3 The Spring TaskScheduler abstraction

In addition to the TaskExecutor abstraction, Spring 3.0 introduces a TaskScheduler
with a variety of methods for scheduling tasks to run at some point in the future.
public interface TaskScheduler {
ScheduledFuture schedule(Runnable task, Trigger trigger);
ScheduledFuture schedule(Runnable task, Date startTime);
ScheduledFuture scheduleAtFixedRate(Runnable task, Date startTime, long period);
ScheduledFuture scheduleAtFixedRate(Runnable task, long period);
ScheduledFuture scheduleWithFixedDelay(Runnable task, Date startTime, long delay);
ScheduledFuture scheduleWithFixedDelay(Runnable task, long delay);
}
The simplest method is the one named 'schedule' that takes a Runnable and Date only.
That will cause 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.
27.3.1 The Trigger interface

The Trigger interface is essentially inspired by JSR-236, which, as of Spring 3.0, has
not yet been 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:
public interface Trigger {
Date nextExecutionTime(TriggerContext triggerContext);
}
As you can see, 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). Here you can see what methods are available for Trigger implementations.
public interface TriggerContext {
Date lastScheduledExecutionTime();
Date lastActualExecutionTime();
Date lastCompletionTime();
}
27.3.2 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 being scheduled to run 15 minutes past each hour but only
during the 9-to-5 "business hours" on weekdays.
scheduler.schedule(task, new CronTrigger("* 15 9-17 * * MON-FRI"));
The other out-of-the-box 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 it can be used 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 such Triggers
could be configured externally.
27.3.3 TaskScheduler implementations

As with Spring's TaskExecutor abstraction, the primary benefit of the TaskScheduler
is that code relying on scheduling behavior need not be coupled to a particular scheduler
implementation. The flexibility this provides is particularly relevant when running within
Application Server environments where threads should not be created directly by the
application itself. For such cases, Spring provides a TimerManagerTaskScheduler
that delegates to a CommonJ TimerManager instance, typically configured with a JNDIlookup.
A simpler alternative, the ThreadPoolTaskScheduler, can be used whenever external
thread management is not a requirement. Internally, it delegates to a
ScheduledExecutorService instance. ThreadPoolTaskScheduler actually

implements Spring's TaskExecutor interface as well, so that a single instance can be
used for asynchronous execution as soon as possible as well as scheduled, and
potentially recurring, executions.
27.4 Annotation Support for Scheduling and

Asynchronous Execution
Spring provides annotation support for both task scheduling and asynchronous method
execution.
27.4.1 Enable scheduling annotations

To enable support for @Scheduled and @Async annotations add
@EnableScheduling and @EnableAsync to one of your @Configuration classes:
@Configuration
@EnableAsync
@EnableScheduling
}
You are free to pick and choose the relevant annotations for your application. For example,
if you only need support for @Scheduled, simply omit @EnableAsync. For more finegrained control you can additionally implement the SchedulingConfigurer and/or
AsyncConfigurer interfaces. See the Javadoc for full details.
If you prefer XML configuration use the <task:annotation-driven> element.
<task:annotation-driven executor="myExecutor" scheduler="myScheduler"/>
<task:executor id="myExecutor" pool-size="5"/>
<task:scheduler id="myScheduler" pool-size="10"/>}
Notice with the above XML that 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.
27.4.2 The @Scheduled Annotation

The @Scheduled annotation can be added to a method along with trigger metadata. For
example, the following method would be invoked every 5 seconds with a fixed delay,
meaning that the period will be measured from the completion time of each preceding
invocation.
@Scheduled(fixedDelay=5000)
public void doSomething() {
// something that should execute periodically
}
If a fixed rate execution is desired, simply change the property name specified within the
annotation. The following would be executed every 5 seconds measured between the
successive start times of each invocation.
@Scheduled(fixedRate=5000)
}
For fixed-delay and fixed-rate tasks, an initial delay may be specified indicating the number
of milliseconds to wait before the first execution of the method.
@Scheduled(initialDelay=1000, fixedRate=5000)
}
If simple periodic scheduling is not expressive enough, then a cron expression may be
provided. For example, the following will only execute on weekdays.

@Scheduled(cron="*/5 * * * * MON-FRI")
// something that should execute on weekdays only
}
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,
then those would typically have been provided through dependency injection.
Note
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 which are
annotated with @Scheduled and registered as regular Spring beans
with the container: You would get double initialization otherwise, once
through the container and once through the @Configurable aspect,
with the consequence of each @Scheduled method being invoked
twice.
27.4.3 The @Async Annotation

The @Async annotation can be provided on a method so that invocation of that method
will occur asynchronously. In other words, the caller will return immediately upon
invocation and the actual execution of the method will occur in a task that has been
submitted to a Spring TaskExecutor. In the simplest case, the annotation may be
applied to a void-returning method.
@Async
void doSomething() {
// this will be executed asynchronously
}
Unlike the methods annotated with the @Scheduled annotation, these methods can
expect arguments, because they will be invoked in the "normal" way by callers at runtime
rather than from a scheduled task being managed by the container. For example, the
following is a legitimate application of the @Async annotation.
@Async
void doSomething(String s) {
}
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.
@Async
Future<String> returnSomething(int i) {
}
@Async can not be used in conjunction with lifecycle callbacks such as

@PostConstruct. To asynchronously initialize Spring beans you currently have to use a
separate initializing Spring bean that invokes the @Async annotated method on the target
then.
public class SampleBeanImpl implements SampleBean {
@Async
void doSomething() { }
}
public class SampleBeanInititalizer {
private final SampleBean bean;

public SampleBeanInitializer(SampleBean bean) {
this.bean = bean;
}
@PostConstruct
public void initialize() {
bean.doSomething();
}
}
27.4.4 Executor qualification with @Async

By default when specifying @Async on a method, the executor that will be used is the one
supplied to the 'annotation-driven' element as described above. However, the value
attribute of the @Async annotation can be used when needing to indicate that an executor
other than the default should be used when executing a given method.
@Async("otherExecutor")
void doSomething(String s) {
// this will be executed asynchronously by "otherExecutor"
}
In this case, "otherExecutor" may be the name of any Executor bean in the Spring
container, or may be the name of a qualifier associated with any Executor, e.g. as
specified with the <qualifier> element or Spring's @Qualifier annotation.
27.5 The Task Namespace

Beginning with Spring 3.0, there is an XML namespace for configuring TaskExecutor
and TaskScheduler instances. It also provides a convenient way to configure tasks to
be scheduled with a trigger.
27.5.1 The 'scheduler' element

The following element will create a ThreadPoolTaskScheduler instance with the
specified thread pool size.
<task:scheduler id="scheduler" pool-size="10"/>
The value provided for the 'id' attribute will be used as the prefix for thread names within
the pool. The 'scheduler' element is relatively straightforward. If you do not provide a 'poolsize' attribute, the default thread pool will only have a single thread. There are no other
configuration options for the scheduler.
27.5.2 The 'executor' element

The following will create a ThreadPoolTaskExecutor instance:
<task:executor id="executor" pool-size="10"/>
As with the scheduler above, the value provided for the 'id' attribute will be 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 just a single size, an executor's thread pool may have different values for the core and
the max size. If a single value is provided then the executor will have 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".
<task:executor id="executorWithPoolSizeRange"
pool-size="5-25"
queue-capacity="100"/>
As you can see from that 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, consult the documentation for ThreadPoolExecutor. The main idea is that when a
task is submitted, the executor will first try 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, then the task
will be added to the queue as long as its capacity has not yet been reached. Only then, if
the queue's capacity has been reached, will the executor create a new thread beyond the
core size. If the max size has also been reached, then the executor will reject 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, then the max size has no effect
at all. Since the executor will always try 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).
In a moment, we will review the effects of the keep-alive setting which adds yet another
factor to consider when providing a pool size configuration. First, let's consider the case, as
mentioned above, when a task is rejected. By default, when a task is rejected, a thread
pool executor will throw 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, either the DiscardPolicy or DiscardOldestPolicy may
be configured instead. 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 will simply force the thread that is calling the
submit method to run the task itself. The idea is that such a caller will be 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. Any of these options can
be chosen from an enumeration of values available for the 'rejection-policy' attribute on the
'executor' element.
<task:executor id="executorWithCallerRunsPolicy"
pool-size="5-25"
queue-capacity="100"
rejection-policy="CALLER_RUNS"/>
27.5.3 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 Springmanaged object, and the "method" attribute provides the name of a method to be invoked
on that object. Here is 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"/>
As you can see, 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 an 'initial-delay' parameter may be
specified indicating the number of milliseconds to wait before the first execution of the
method. For more control, a "cron" attribute may be provided instead. Here is an example
demonstrating 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"/>
27.6 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, have a look at http://quartz-scheduler.org. For
convenience purposes, Spring offers a couple of classes that simplify the usage of Quartz
within Spring-based applications.
27.6.1 Using the JobDetailBean

JobDetail objects contain all information needed to run a job. The Spring Framework
provides a JobDetailBean that makes the JobDetail more of an actual JavaBean
with sensible defaults. Let's have a look at an example:
<bean name="exampleJob" class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.JobDetailBean">
<property name="jobClass" value="example.ExampleJob" />
<property name="jobDataAsMap">
<map>
<entry key="timeout" value="5" />
</map>
</property>
</bean>
The job detail bean has all 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 JobDetailBean
also maps the properties from the job data map to properties of the actual job. So in this
case, if the ExampleJob contains a property named timeout, the JobDetailBean will
automatically apply it:
package example;
public class ExampleJob extends QuartzJobBean {
private int timeout;
/**
* Setter called after the ExampleJob is instantiated
* with the value from the JobDetailBean (5)
*/
public void setTimeout(int timeout) {
this.timeout = timeout;
}
protected void executeInternal(JobExecutionContext ctx) throws JobExecutionException {
// do the actual work
}
}
All additional settings from the job detail bean are of course available to you as well.
Note: 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 job
detail bean (in the example above, this is exampleJob).
27.6.2 Using the MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean

Often you just need to invoke a method on a specific object. Using the
MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean you can do exactly this:
<bean id="jobDetail" class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean">
<property name="targetObject" ref="exampleBusinessObject" />
<property name="targetMethod" value="doIt" />

</bean>
The above example will result in the doIt method being called on the
exampleBusinessObject method (see below):
public class ExampleBusinessObject {
// properties and collaborators
public void doIt() {
// do the actual work
}
}
<bean id="exampleBusinessObject" class="examples.ExampleBusinessObject"/>
Using the MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean, you don't need to create oneline jobs that just invoke a method, and you only need to 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 might be possible that
before the first job has finished, the second one will start. If JobDetail classes
implement the Stateful interface, this won't happen. The second job will not start before
the first one has finished. To make jobs resulting from the
MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean non-concurrent, set the concurrent flag
to false.
<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>
Note
By default, jobs will run in a concurrent fashion.
27.6.3 Wiring up jobs using triggers and the

SchedulerFactoryBean
We've created job details and jobs. We've also reviewed the convenience bean that allows
you to invoke a method on a specific object. Of course, we still need to schedule the jobs
themselves. This is done 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.
Find below a couple of examples:
<bean id="simpleTrigger" class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.SimpleTriggerFactoryBean">

<property name="jobDetail" ref="jobDetail" />

<property name="startDelay" value="10000" />

<property name="repeatInterval" value="50000" />
</bean>
<bean id="cronTrigger" class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.CronTriggerFactoryBean">
<property name="jobDetail" ref="exampleJob" />

<property name="cronExpression" value="0 0 6 * * ?" />
</bean>
Now we've set up two triggers, one running every 50 seconds with a starting delay of 10
seconds and one every morning at 6 AM. To finalize everything, we need to set up the
SchedulerFactoryBean:
<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 for you to set, such as
the calendars used by the job details, properties to customize Quartz with, etc. Have a look
at the SchedulerFactoryBean Javadoc for more information.
28. Dynamic language support

28.1 Introduction
Spring 2.0 introduces comprehensive support for
using classes and objects that have been defined
using a dynamic language (such as JRuby) with
Spring. This support allows you to write any
number of classes in a supported dynamic
language, and have the Spring container
transparently instantiate, configure and
dependency inject the resulting objects.
The dynamic languages currently supported are:
JRuby 0.9 / 1.0
Groovy 1.0 / 1.5
BeanShell 2.0
Fully working examples of where this dynamic
language support can be immediately useful are
described in Section 28.4, Scenarios.
Why only these languages?

The supported languages were
chosen because a) the
languages have a lot of traction
in the Java enterprise
community, b) no requests were
made for other languages within
the Spring 2.0 development
timeframe, and c) the Spring
developers were most familiar
with them.
There is nothing stopping the
inclusion of further languages
though. If you want to see
support for <insert your favourite
dynamic language here>, you
can always raise an issue on
Spring's JIRA page (or
implement such support
yourself).
Note: Only the specific versions as listed above

are supported in Spring 2.5. In particular, JRuby
1.1 (which introduced many incompatible API changes) is not supported at this point of
time.
28.2 A first example

This bulk of this chapter is concerned with describing the dynamic language support in
detail. Before diving into all of the ins and outs of the dynamic language support, let's look
at a quick example of a bean defined in a dynamic language. The dynamic language for
this first bean is Groovy (the basis of this example was taken from the Spring test suite, so
if you want to see equivalent examples in any of the other supported languages, take a
look at the source code).
Find below the Messenger interface that the Groovy bean is going to be implementing,
and note that this interface is defined in plain Java. Dependent objects that are injected
with a reference to the Messenger won't know that the underlying implementation is a
Groovy script.
package org.springframework.scripting;
public interface Messenger {
String getMessage();
}
Here is the definition of a class that has a dependency on the Messenger interface.
public class DefaultBookingService implements BookingService {
private Messenger messenger;
public void setMessenger(Messenger messenger) {
this.messenger = messenger;
}
public void processBooking() {
// use the injected Messenger object...
}
}
Here is an implementation of the Messenger interface in Groovy.

// from the file 'Messenger.groovy'
package org.springframework.scripting.groovy;
// import the Messenger interface (written in Java) that is to be implemented
import org.springframework.scripting.Messenger
// define the implementation in Groovy
class GroovyMessenger implements Messenger {
String message
}
Finally, here are the bean definitions that will effect the injection of the Groovy-defined
Messenger implementation into an instance of the DefaultBookingService class.
Note
To use the custom dynamic language tags to define dynamiclanguage-backed beans, you need to have the XML Schema preamble
at the top of your Spring XML configuration file. You also need to be
using a Spring ApplicationContext implementation as your IoC
container. Using the dynamic-language-backed beans with a plain
BeanFactory implementation is supported, but you have to manage
the plumbing of the Spring internals to do so.
For more information on schema-based configuration, see Appendix E,
XML Schema-based configuration.

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

<lang:groovy id="messenger" script-source="classpath:Messenger.groovy">
<lang:property name="message" value="I Can Do The Frug" />
</lang:groovy>

<bean id="bookingService" class="x.y.DefaultBookingService">
<property name="messenger" ref="messenger" />
</bean>
</beans>
The bookingService bean (a DefaultBookingService) can now use its private

messenger member variable as normal because the Messenger instance that was
injected into it is a Messenger instance. There is nothing special going on here, just plain
Java and plain Groovy.
Hopefully the above XML snippet is self-explanatory, but don't worry unduly if it isn't. Keep
reading for the in-depth detail on the whys and wherefores of the above configuration.
28.3 Defining beans that are backed by dynamic

languages
This section describes exactly how you define Spring managed beans in any of the
supported dynamic languages.
Please note that this chapter does not attempt to explain the syntax and idioms of the
supported dynamic languages. For example, if you want to use Groovy to write certain of
the classes in your application, then the assumption is that you already know Groovy. If
you need further details about the dynamic languages themselves, please consult
Section 28.6, Further Resources at the end of this chapter.
28.3.1 Common concepts

The steps involved in using dynamic-language-backed beans are as follows:
1. Write the test for the dynamic language source code (naturally)
2. Then write the dynamic language source code itself :)
3. Define your dynamic-language-backed beans using the appropriate
<lang:language/> element in the XML configuration (you can of course define
such beans programmatically using the Spring API - although you will have to consult
the source code for directions on how to do this as this type of advanced configuration
is not covered in this chapter). Note this is an iterative step. You will need at least one
bean definition per dynamic language source file (although the same dynamic
language source file can of course be referenced by multiple bean definitions).
The first two steps (testing and writing your dynamic language source files) are beyond the
scope of this chapter. Refer to the language specification and / or reference manual for
your chosen dynamic language and crack on with developing your dynamic language
source files. You will first want to read the rest of this chapter though, as Spring's dynamic
language support does make some (small) assumptions about the contents of your
dynamic language source files.
The <lang:language/> element

The final step involves defining dynamiclanguage-backed bean definitions, one for each
bean that you want to configure (this is no different
from normal JavaBean configuration). However,
instead of specifying the fully qualified classname
of the class that is to be instantiated and
XML Schema
All of the configuration examples
in this chapter make use of the
new XML Schema support that
was added in Spring 2.0.
Each of the supported languages has a
It is possible to forego the use of

XML Schema and stick with the
old-style DTD based validation of
your Spring XML files, but then
you lose out on the convenience
offered by the
corresponding <lang:language/> element:
<lang:language/>
configured by the container, you use the

<lang:language/> element to define the
dynamic language-backed bean.
<lang:jruby/> (JRuby)
<lang:groovy/> (Groovy)
<lang:bsh/> (BeanShell)
The exact attributes and child elements that are
available for configuration depends on exactly
which language the bean has been defined in (the
language-specific sections below provide the full
lowdown on this).
Refreshable beans
element. See the Spring test

suite for examples of the older
style configuration that doesn't
require XML Schema-based
validation (it is quite verbose and
doesn't hide any of the
underlying Spring
implementation from you).
One of the (if not the) most compelling value adds of the dynamic language support in
Spring is the 'refreshable bean' feature.
A refreshable bean is a dynamic-language-backed bean that with a small amount of
configuration, a dynamic-language-backed bean can monitor changes in its underlying
source file resource, and then reload itself when the dynamic language source file is
changed (for example when a developer edits and saves changes to the file on the
filesystem).
This allows a developer to deploy any number of dynamic language source files as part of
an application, configure the Spring container to create beans backed by dynamic
language source files (using the mechanisms described in this chapter), and then later, as
requirements change or some other external factor comes into play, simply edit a dynamic
language source file and have any change they make reflected in the bean that is backed
by the changed dynamic language source file. There is no need to shut down a running
application (or redeploy in the case of a web application). The dynamic-language-backed
bean so amended will pick up the new state and logic from the changed dynamic language
source file.
Note
Please note that this feature is off by default.
Let's take a look at an example to see just how easy it is to start using refreshable beans.
To turn on the refreshable beans feature, you simply have to specify exactly one additional
attribute on the <lang:language/> element of your bean definition. So if we stick with
the example from earlier in this chapter, here's what we would change in the Spring XML
configuration to effect refreshable beans:
<beans>

<lang:groovy id="messenger"
refresh-check-delay="5000" 
script-source="classpath:Messenger.groovy">
</lang:groovy>
</bean>
</beans>
That really is all you have to do. The 'refresh-check-delay' attribute defined on the
'messenger' bean definition is the number of milliseconds after which the bean will be
refreshed with any changes made to the underlying dynamic language source file. You can
turn off the refresh behavior by assigning a negative value to the 'refresh-checkdelay' attribute. Remember that, by default, the refresh behavior is disabled. If you don't
want the refresh behavior, then simply don't define the attribute.
If we then run the following application we can exercise the refreshable feature; please do
excuse the 'jumping-through-hoops-to-pause-the-execution' shenanigans in this next slice
of code. The System.in.read() call is only there so that the execution of the program
pauses while I (the author) go off and edit the underlying dynamic language source file so
that the refresh will trigger on the dynamic-language-backed bean when the program
resumes execution.
import org.springframework.scripting.Messenger;
ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("beans.xml");
Messenger messenger = (Messenger) ctx.getBean("messenger");
System.out.println(messenger.getMessage());
// pause execution while I go off and make changes to the source file...
System.in.read();
System.out.println(messenger.getMessage());
}
}
Let's assume then, for the purposes of this example, that all calls to the getMessage()
method of Messenger implementations have to be changed such that the message is
surrounded by quotes. Below are the changes that I (the author) make to the
Messenger.groovy source file when the execution of the program is paused.
package org.springframework.scripting
private String message = "Bingo"
public String getMessage() {
// change the implementation to surround the message in quotes
return "'" + this.message + "'"
}
public void setMessage(String message) {
this.message = message
}
}
When the program executes, the output before the input pause will be I Can Do The
Frug. After the change to the source file is made and saved, and the program resumes
execution, the result of calling the getMessage() method on the dynamic-languagebacked Messenger implementation will be 'I Can Do The Frug' (notice the
inclusion of the additional quotes).
It is important to understand that changes to a script will not trigger a refresh if the changes
occur within the window of the 'refresh-check-delay' value. It is equally important
to understand that changes to the script are not actually 'picked up' until a method is called
on the dynamic-language-backed bean. It is only when a method is called on a dynamiclanguage-backed bean that it checks to see if its underlying script source has changed.
Any exceptions relating to refreshing the script (such as encountering a compilation error,
or finding that the script file has been deleted) will result in a fatal exception being
propagated to the calling code.
The refreshable bean behavior described above does not apply to dynamic language
source files defined using the <lang:inline-script/> element notation (see the
section called Inline dynamic language source files). Additionally, it only applies to beans
where changes to the underlying source file can actually be detected; for example, by code
that checks the last modified date of a dynamic language source file that exists on the
filesystem.
Inline dynamic language source files

The dynamic language support can also cater for dynamic language source files that are
embedded directly in Spring bean definitions. More specifically, the <lang:inlinescript/> element allows you to define dynamic language source immediately inside a
Spring configuration file. An example will perhaps make the inline script feature crystal
clear:
<lang:groovy id="messenger">
<lang:inline-script>
String message
}
</lang:inline-script>
</lang:groovy>
If we put to one side the issues surrounding whether it is good practice to define dynamic
language source inside a Spring configuration file, the <lang:inline-script/>
element can be useful in some scenarios. For instance, we might want to quickly add a
Spring Validator implementation to a Spring MVC Controller. This is but a
moment's work using inline source. (See Section 28.4.2, Scripted Validators for such an
example.)
Find below an example of defining the source for a JRuby-based bean directly in a Spring
XML configuration file using the inline: notation. (Notice the use of the < characters to
denote a '<' character. In such a case surrounding the inline source in a <![CDATA[]]>
region might be better.)
<lang:jruby id="messenger" script-interfaces="org.springframework.scripting.Messenger">
<lang:inline-script>
require 'java'
include_class 'org.springframework.scripting.Messenger'
class RubyMessenger < Messenger
def setMessage(message)
@@message = message
end
def getMessage
@@message
end
end
</lang:inline-script>
<lang:property name="message" value="Hello World!" />
</lang:jruby>
Understanding Constructor Injection in the context of dynamic-languagebacked beans

There is one very important thing to be aware of with regard to Spring's dynamic language
support. Namely, it is not (currently) possible to supply constructor arguments to dynamiclanguage-backed beans (and hence constructor-injection is not available for dynamiclanguage-backed beans). In the interests of making this special handling of constructors
and properties 100% clear, the following mixture of code and configuration will not work.
// from the file 'Messenger.groovy'
GroovyMessenger() {}
// this constructor is not available for Constructor Injection
GroovyMessenger(String message) {
this.message = message;
}
String message
String anotherMessage
}
<lang:groovy id="badMessenger"
script-source="classpath:Messenger.groovy">

<!-in fact, this isn't even allowed according to the schema -->
<constructor-arg value="This will *not* work" />

<lang:property name="anotherMessage" value="Passed straight through to the dynamic-language-backed object" />
</lang>
In practice this limitation is not as significant as it first appears since setter injection is the
injection style favored by the overwhelming majority of developers anyway (let's leave the
discussion as to whether that is a good thing to another day).
28.3.2 JRuby beans

From the JRuby homepage...
JRuby is an 100% pure-Java implementation of
the Ruby programming language.
In keeping with the Spring philosophy of offering
choice, Spring's dynamic language support also
The JRuby library

dependencies
The JRuby scripting support in
Spring requires the following
libraries to be on the classpath of
your application.
supports beans defined in the JRuby language.

The JRuby language is based on the quite
jruby.jar
intuitive Ruby language, and has support for inline

regular expressions, blocks (closures), and a
whole host of other features that do make solutions for some domain problems a whole lot
easier to develop.
The implementation of the JRuby dynamic language support in Spring is interesting in that
what happens is this: Spring creates a JDK dynamic proxy implementing all of the
interfaces that are specified in the 'script-interfaces' attribute value of the
<lang:ruby> element (this is why you must supply at least one interface in the value of
the attribute, and (accordingly) program to interfaces when using JRuby-backed beans).
Let us look at a fully working example of using a JRuby-based bean. Here is the JRuby
implementation of the Messenger interface that was defined earlier in this chapter (for
your convenience it is repeated below).
}
require 'java'
class RubyMessenger
include org.springframework.scripting.Messenger
def setMessage(message)
@@message = message
end
def getMessage
@@message
end
end
# this last line is not essential (but see below)
RubyMessenger.new
And here is the Spring XML that defines an instance of the RubyMessenger JRuby bean.
<lang:jruby id="messageService"
script-interfaces="org.springframework.scripting.Messenger"
script-source="classpath:RubyMessenger.rb">
</lang:jruby>
Take note of the last line of that JRuby source ('RubyMessenger.new'). When using
JRuby in the context of Spring's dynamic language support, you are encouraged to
instantiate and return a new instance of the JRuby class that you want to use as a
dynamic-language-backed bean as the result of the execution of your JRuby source. You
can achieve this by simply instantiating a new instance of your JRuby class on the last line
of the source file like so:
require 'java'
include_class 'org.springframework.scripting.Messenger'
# class definition same as above...
# instantiate and return a new instance of the RubyMessenger class

RubyMessenger.new
If you forget to do this, it is not the end of the world; this will however result in Spring having
to trawl (reflectively) through the type representation of your JRuby class looking for a class
to instantiate. In the grand scheme of things this will be so fast that you'll never notice it, but
it is something that can be avoided by simply having a line such as the one above as the
last line of your JRuby script. If you don't supply such a line, or if Spring cannot find a
JRuby class in your script to instantiate then an opaque
ScriptCompilationException will be thrown immediately after the source is
executed by the JRuby interpreter. The key text that identifies this as the root cause of an
exception can be found immediately below (so if your Spring container throws the
following exception when creating your dynamic-language-backed bean and the following
text is there in the corresponding stacktrace, this will hopefully allow you to identify and
then easily rectify the issue):
org.springframework.scripting.ScriptCompilationException:
Compilation of JRuby script returned ''
To rectify this, simply instantiate a new instance of whichever class you want to expose as
a JRuby-dynamic-language-backed bean (as shown above). Please also note that you can
actually define as many classes and objects as you want in your JRuby script; what is
important is that the source file as a whole must return an object (for Spring to configure).
See Section 28.4, Scenarios for some scenarios where you might want to use JRubybased beans.
28.3.3 Groovy beans

From the Groovy homepage...
Groovy is an agile dynamic language for the
Java 2 Platform that has many of the features that
people like so much in languages like Python,
Ruby and Smalltalk, making them available to
Java developers using a Java-like syntax.
If you have read this chapter straight from the top,
you will already have seen an example of a
Groovy-dynamic-language-backed bean. Let's
The Groovy library

dependencies
The Groovy scripting support in
Spring requires the following
your application.
groovy-1.5.5.jar
asm-2.2.2.jar
antlr-2.7.6.jar
look at another example (again using an example

from the Spring test suite).
public interface Calculator {
int add(int x, int y);
}
Here is an implementation of the Calculator interface in Groovy.

// from the file 'calculator.groovy'
package org.springframework.scripting.groovy
class GroovyCalculator implements Calculator {
int add(int x, int y) {
x + y
}
}
<-- from the file 'beans.xml' -->
<beans>
<lang:groovy id="calculator" script-source="classpath:calculator.groovy"/>
</beans>
Lastly, here is a small application to exercise the above configuration.

public class Main {
public static void Main(String[] args) {
ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("beans.xml");
Calculator calc = (Calculator) ctx.getBean("calculator");
System.out.println(calc.add(2, 8));
}
}
The resulting output from running the above program will be (unsurprisingly) 10. (Exciting
example, huh? Remember that the intent is to illustrate the concept. Please consult the
dynamic language showcase project for a more complex example, or indeed Section 28.4,
Scenarios later in this chapter).
It is important that you do not define more than one class per Groovy source file. While this
is perfectly legal in Groovy, it is (arguably) a bad practice: in the interests of a consistent
approach, you should (in the opinion of this author) respect the standard Java conventions
of one (public) class per source file.
Customising Groovy objects via a callback

The GroovyObjectCustomizer interface is a callback that allows you to hook
additional creation logic into the process of creating a Groovy-backed bean. For example,
implementations of this interface could invoke any required initialization method(s), or set
some default property values, or specify a custom MetaClass.
public interface GroovyObjectCustomizer {
void customize(GroovyObject goo);
}
The Spring Framework will instantiate an instance of your Groovy-backed bean, and will
then pass the created GroovyObject to the specified GroovyObjectCustomizer if
one has been defined. You can do whatever you like with the supplied GroovyObject
reference: it is expected that the setting of a custom MetaClass is what most folks will
want to do with this callback, and you can see an example of doing that below.
public final class SimpleMethodTracingCustomizer implements GroovyObjectCustomizer {
public void customize(GroovyObject goo) {
DelegatingMetaClass metaClass = new DelegatingMetaClass(goo.getMetaClass()) {
public Object invokeMethod(Object object, String methodName, Object[] arguments) {
System.out.println("Invoking '" + methodName + "'.");
return super.invokeMethod(object, methodName, arguments);
}
};
metaClass.initialize();
goo.setMetaClass(metaClass);
}
}
A full discussion of meta-programming in Groovy is beyond the scope of the Spring

reference manual. Consult the relevant section of the Groovy reference manual, or do a
search online: there are plenty of articles concerning this topic. Actually making use of a
GroovyObjectCustomizer is easy if you are using the Spring 2.0 namespace support.

<bean id="tracingCustomizer" class="example.SimpleMethodTracingCustomizer" />

<lang:groovy id="calculator"
script-source="classpath:org/springframework/scripting/groovy/Calculator.groovy"
customizer-ref="tracingCustomizer" />
If you are not using the Spring 2.0 namespace support, you can still use the
GroovyObjectCustomizer functionality.
<bean id="calculator" class="org.springframework.scripting.groovy.GroovyScriptFactory">
<constructor-arg value="classpath:org/springframework/scripting/groovy/Calculator.groovy"/>

<constructor-arg>
<bean id="tracingCustomizer" class="example.SimpleMethodTracingCustomizer" />
</constructor-arg>
</bean>
<bean class="org.springframework.scripting.support.ScriptFactoryPostProcessor"/>
28.3.4 BeanShell beans

From the BeanShell homepage...
BeanShell is a small, free, embeddable Java
source interpreter with dynamic language features,
written in Java. BeanShell dynamically executes
standard Java syntax and extends it with common
scripting conveniences such as loose types,
commands, and method closures like those in Perl
The BeanShell library

dependencies
The BeanShell scripting support
in Spring requires the following
your application.
bsh-2.0b4.jar
and JavaScript.
In contrast to Groovy, BeanShell-backed bean
definitions require some (small) additional configuration. The implementation of the
BeanShell dynamic language support in Spring is interesting in that what happens is this:
Spring creates a JDK dynamic proxy implementing all of the interfaces that are specified in
the 'script-interfaces' attribute value of the <lang:bsh> element (this is why
you must supply at least one interface in the value of the attribute, and (accordingly)
program to interfaces when using BeanShell-backed beans). This means that every
method call on a BeanShell-backed object is going through the JDK dynamic proxy
invocation mechanism.
Let's look at a fully working example of using a BeanShell-based bean that implements the
Messenger interface that was defined earlier in this chapter (repeated below for your
convenience).
}
Here is the BeanShell 'implementation' (the term is used loosely here) of the Messenger
interface.
String message;
String getMessage() {
return message;
}
void setMessage(String aMessage) {
message = aMessage;
}
And here is the Spring XML that defines an 'instance' of the above 'class' (again, the term
is used very loosely here).
<lang:bsh id="messageService" script-source="classpath:BshMessenger.bsh"
script-interfaces="org.springframework.scripting.Messenger">
</lang:bsh>
See Section 28.4, Scenarios for some scenarios where you might want to use BeanShellbased beans.
28.4 Scenarios
The possible scenarios where defining Spring managed beans in a scripting language
would be beneficial are, of course, many and varied. This section describes two possible
use cases for the dynamic language support in Spring.
28.4.1 Scripted Spring MVC Controllers

One group of classes that may benefit from using dynamic-language-backed beans is that
of Spring MVC controllers. In pure Spring MVC applications, the navigational flow through
a web application is to a large extent determined by code encapsulated within your Spring
MVC controllers. As the navigational flow and other presentation layer logic of a web
application needs to be updated to respond to support issues or changing business
requirements, it may well be easier to effect any such required changes by editing one or
more dynamic language source files and seeing those changes being immediately
reflected in the state of a running application.
Remember that in the lightweight architectural model espoused by projects such as
Spring, you are typically aiming to have a really thin presentation layer, with all the meaty
business logic of an application being contained in the domain and service layer classes.
Developing Spring MVC controllers as dynamic-language-backed beans allows you to
change presentation layer logic by simply editing and saving text files; any changes to
such dynamic language source files will (depending on the configuration) automatically be
reflected in the beans that are backed by dynamic language source files.
Note
In order to effect this automatic 'pickup' of any changes to dynamiclanguage-backed beans, you will have had to enable the 'refreshable
beans' functionality. See the section called Refreshable beans for a
full treatment of this feature.
Find below an example of an
org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.Controller implemented using the
Groovy dynamic language.
// from the file '/WEB-INF/groovy/FortuneController.groovy'
package org.springframework.showcase.fortune.web
import
import
import
import
org.springframework.showcase.fortune.service.FortuneService
org.springframework.showcase.fortune.domain.Fortune
org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView
org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.Controller
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse
class FortuneController implements Controller {
@Property FortuneService fortuneService
ModelAndView handleRequest(
HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse httpServletResponse) {
return new ModelAndView("tell", "fortune", this.fortuneService.tellFortune())
}
}
<lang:groovy id="fortune"
refresh-check-delay="3000"
script-source="/WEB-INF/groovy/FortuneController.groovy">
<lang:property name="fortuneService" ref="fortuneService"/>
</lang:groovy>
28.4.2 Scripted Validators

Another area of application development with Spring that may benefit from the flexibility
afforded by dynamic-language-backed beans is that of validation. It may be easier to
express complex validation logic using a loosely typed dynamic language (that may also
have support for inline regular expressions) as opposed to regular Java.
Again, developing validators as dynamic-language-backed beans allows you to change
validation logic by simply editing and saving a simple text file; any such changes will
(depending on the configuration) automatically be reflected in the execution of a running
application and would not require the restart of an application.
Note
Please note that in order to effect the automatic 'pickup' of any changes
to dynamic-language-backed beans, you will have had to enable the
'refreshable beans' feature. See the section called Refreshable beans
for a full and detailed treatment of this feature.
Find below an example of a Spring
org.springframework.validation.Validator implemented using the Groovy
dynamic language. (See Section 7.2, Validation using Spring's Validator interface for
a discussion of the Validator interface.)
import org.springframework.validation.Validator
import org.springframework.validation.Errors
import org.springframework.beans.TestBean
class TestBeanValidator implements Validator {
boolean supports(Class clazz) {
return TestBean.class.isAssignableFrom(clazz)
}
void validate(Object bean, Errors errors) {
if(bean.name?.trim()?.size() > 0) {
return
}
errors.reject("whitespace", "Cannot be composed wholly of whitespace.")
}
}
28.5 Bits and bobs

This last section contains some bits and bobs related to the dynamic language support.
28.5.1 AOP - advising scripted beans

It is possible to use the Spring AOP framework to advise scripted beans. The Spring AOP
framework actually is unaware that a bean that is being advised might be a scripted bean,
so all of the AOP use cases and functionality that you may be using or aim to use will work
with scripted beans. There is just one (small) thing that you need to be aware of when
advising scripted beans... you cannot use class-based proxies, you must use interfacebased proxies.
You are of course not just limited to advising scripted beans... you can also write aspects
themselves in a supported dynamic language and use such beans to advise other Spring
beans. This really would be an advanced use of the dynamic language support though.
28.5.2 Scoping
In case it is not immediately obvious, scripted beans can of course be scoped just like any
other bean. The scope attribute on the various <lang:language/> elements allows
you to control the scope of the underlying scripted bean, just as it does with a regular bean.
(The default scope is singleton, just as it is with 'regular' beans.)
Find below an example of using the scope attribute to define a Groovy bean scoped as a
prototype.
<lang:groovy id="messenger" script-source="classpath:Messenger.groovy" scope="prototype">
<lang:property name="message" value="I Can Do The RoboCop" />
</lang:groovy>
</bean>
</beans>
See Section 5.5, Bean scopes in Chapter 5, The IoC container for a fuller discussion of
the scoping support in the Spring Framework.

Find below links to further resources about the various dynamic languages described in
this chapter.
The JRuby homepage
The Groovy homepage
The BeanShell homepage
Some of the more active members of the Spring community have also added support for a
number of additional dynamic languages above and beyond the ones covered in this
chapter. While it is possible that such third party contributions may be added to the list of
languages supported by the main Spring distribution, your best bet for seeing if your
favourite scripting language is supported is the Spring Modules project.
29. Cache Abstraction

29.1 Introduction
Since version 3.1, Spring Framework provides support for transparently adding caching
into 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.
29.2 Understanding the cache abstraction

At its core, the abstraction applies caching to Java
methods, reducing thus the number of executions
based on the information available in the cache.
That is, each time a targeted method is invoked,
the abstraction will apply a caching behavior
checking whether the method has been already
executed for the given arguments. If it has, then
the cached result is returned without having to
execute the actual method; if it has not, then
method is executed, the result 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.
Important
Cache vs Buffer
The terms "buffer" and "cache"
tend to be used interchangeably;
note however they represent
different things. A buffer is used
traditionally as an intermediate
temporary store for data
between a fast and a slow entity.
As one party would have to wait
for the other affecting
performance, the buffer
alleviates this by allowing entire
blocks of data to move at once
rather then in small chunks. The
data is written and read only
once from the buffer.
Furthermore, the buffers are
visible to at least one party which
is aware of it.
A cache on the other hand by
definition is hidden and neither
party is aware that caching
occurs.It as well improves
performance but does that by
Obviously 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 being executed.
performance but does that by

allowing the same data to be
read multiple times in a fast
fashion.
A further explanation of the
differences between two can be
found here.
To use the cache abstraction, the developer needs

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 read from
Note that just like other services in Spring Framework, the caching service is an
abstraction (not a cache implementation) and requires the use of an actual storage to store
the cache data - that is, the abstraction frees the developer from having to write the caching
logic but does not provide the actual stores. There are two integrations available out of the
box, for JDK java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentMap and EhCache - see
Section 29.6, Plugging-in different back-end caches for more information on plugging in
other cache stores/providers.
29.3 Declarative annotation-based caching

For caching declaration, the abstraction provides two Java annotations: @Cacheable and
@CacheEvict which allow methods to trigger cache population or cache eviction. Let us
take a closer look at each annotation:
29.3.1 @Cacheable annotation

As the name implies, @Cacheable is used to demarcate methods that are cacheable that is, methods for whom the result is stored into the cache so 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:
@Cacheable("books")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn) {...}
In the snippet above, the method findBook is associated with the cache named books.
Each time the method is called, the cache is checked to see whether the invocation has
been already executed and does not have to be repeated. While in most cases, only one
cache is declared, the annotation allows multiple names to be specified so that more then
one cache are being used. In this case, each of the caches will be checked before
executing the method - if at least one cache is hit, then the associated value will be
returned:
Note
All the other caches that do not contain the method will be updated as
well even though the cached method was not actually executed.
@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. Out of the box, the caching
abstraction uses a simple KeyGenerator based on the following algorithm:
If no params are given, return 0.
If only one param is given, return that instance.
If more the one param is given, return a key computed from the hashes of all
parameters.
This approach works well for objects with natural keys as long as the hashCode()
reflects that. If that is not the case then for distributed or persistent environments, the
strategy needs to be changed as the objects hashCode is not preserved. In fact, depending
on the JVM implementation or running conditions, the same hashCode can be reused for
different objects, in the same VM instance.
To provide a different default key generator, one needs to implement the
org.springframework.cache.KeyGenerator interface. Once configured, the
generator will be used for each declaration that does not specify its own key generation
strategy (see below).
Custom Key Generation Declaration

Since caching is generic, it is quite likely the target methods have various signatures that
cannot be simply 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). For 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. Further more what if only one of the two is important while
the other is not?
For such cases, the @Cacheable annotation allows the user to specify how the key is
generated through its key attribute. The developer 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
does for all methods.
Below are some examples of various SpEL declarations - if you are not familiar with it, do
yourself a favour and read Chapter 8, Spring Expression Language (SpEL):
@Cacheable(value="books", key="#isbn"
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)
@Cacheable(value="books", key="#isbn.rawNumber")
@Cacheable(value="books", key="T(someType).hash(#isbn)")
The snippets above, show how easy it is to select a certain argument, one of its properties
or even an arbitrary (static) method.
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 conditional 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 executed every since time no matter what values are in the cache or
what arguments are used. A quick example - the following method will be cached, only if
the argument name has a length shorter then 32:
@Cacheable(value="book", condition="#name.length < 32")
public Book findBook(String name)
In addition the conditional parameter, the unless parameter can be used to veto the
adding of a value to the cache. Unlike conditional, unless SpEL expressions are
evalulated after the method has been called. Expanding on the previous example perhaps we only want to cache paperback books:
@Cacheable(value="book", condition="#name.length < 32", unless="#result.hardback")
public Book findBook(String name)
Available caching SpEL evaluation context

Each SpEL expression evaluates again a dedicated context. In addition to the build in
parameters, the framework provides dedicated caching related metadata such as the
argument names. The next table lists the items made available to the context so one can
use them for key and conditional(see next section) computations:
Table 29.1. Cache SpEL available metadata

Name
Location
methodName root object
Description
Example
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
evaluation
context
Name of any of the method

argument. If for some
reason the names are not
available (ex: no debug
information), the argument
names are also available
under the a<#arg> where
#arg stands for the
argument index (starting
from 0).
argument
name
result
evaluation
context
The result of the method

call (the value to be
cached). Only available in
'unless' expressions and
'cache evict'
expression (when
beforeInvocation is
false).
iban
or
a0
(one can also use

p0
or p<#arg> notation
as an alias).
#result
29.3.2 @CachePut annotation

For cases where the cache needs to be updated without interfering with the method
execution, one can use the @CachePut annotation. That is, the method will always be
executed and its result placed into the cache (according to the @CachePut options). It
supports the same options as @Cacheable and should be used for cache population
rather then method flow optimization.
Note that using @CachePut and @Cacheable annotations on the same method is
generally 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.
29.3.3 @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. Opposed to
@Cacheable, annotation @CacheEvict demarcates methods that perform cache
eviction, that is methods that act as triggers for removing data from the cache. Just like its
sibling, @CacheEvict requires one to specify one (or multiple) caches that are affected
by the action, allows a key or a condition to be specified but in addition, features an extra
parameter allEntries which indicates whether a cache-wide eviction needs to be
performed rather then just an entry one (based on the key):
@CacheEvict(value = "books", allEntries=true)
public void loadBooks(InputStream batch)
This option comes in handy when an entire cache region needs to be cleared out - rather
then evicting each entry (which would take a long time since it is inefficient), all the entires
are removed in one operation as shown above. Note that the framework will ignore any key
specified in this scenario as it does not apply (the entire cache is evicted not just one
entry).
One can also indicate whether the eviction should occur after (the default) or before the
method executes through 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 occur always, before the method is
invoked - this is useful in cases where the eviction does not need to be tied to the method
outcome.
It is important to note that void methods can be used with @CacheEvict - as the methods
act as triggers, the return values are ignored (as they don't interact with the cache) - this is
not the case with @Cacheable which adds/update data into the cache and thus requires a
result.
29.3.4 @Caching annotation

There are cases when 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. Unfortunately Java does not support such
declarations however there is a workaround - using a enclosing annotation, in this case,
@Caching. @Caching allows multiple nested @Cacheable, @CachePut and
@CacheEvict to be used on the same method:
@Caching(evict = { @CacheEvict("primary"), @CacheEvict(value = "secondary", key = "#p0") })
public Book importBooks(String deposit, Date date)
29.3.5 Enable caching annotations

It is important to note that even though declaring the cache annotations does not
automatically triggers 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 then all the annotations in your
code).
To enable caching annotations add the annotation @EnableCaching to one of your

@Configuration
@EnableCaching
}
Alternatively for XML configuration use the cache:annotation-driven element:

xmlns:cache="http://www.springframework.org/schema/cache"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.
http://www.springframework.org/schema/cache http://www.springframework.org/schema/cache/spring-cache.xsd">
<cache:annotation-driven />
</beans>
Both the cache:annotation-driven element and @EnableCaching annotation

allow various options to be specified that influence the way the caching behavior is added
to the application through AOP. The configuration is intentionally similar with that of
@Transactional:
Table 29.2. Cache annotation settings

XML
Attribute
cachemanager
mode
Annotation Attribute
Default
N/A (See
CachingConfigurer cacheManager
Javadoc)
mode
proxy
Description
Name of cache
manager to use.
Only required if
the name of the
cache manager
is not
cacheManager,
as in the
example above.
The default mode
"proxy"
processes
annotated beans
to be proxied
using Spring's
AOP framework
(following proxy
semantics, as
discussed above,
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 springaspects.jar in the
classpath as well
as load-time
weaving (or
compile-time
weaving)
enabled. (See
the section called
Spring
configuration for
details on how to
set up load-time
weaving.)
proxytargetclass
order
Applies to proxy
mode only.
Controls what
type of caching
proxies are
created for
classes
annotated with
the
@Cacheable or
@CacheEvict
annotations. If
the proxytarget-class
attribute is set to
true, then
class-based
proxies are
created. If
proxytarget-class
is false or if the
attribute is
omitted, then
standard JDK
interface-based
proxies are
created. (See
Section 9.6,
Proxying
mechanisms for
a detailed
examination of
the different
proxy types.)
proxyTargetClass
false
order
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 of
Ordered.LOWEST_PRECEDENCE
AOP advice, see
the section called
Advice
ordering.) No
specified
ordering means
that the AOP
subsystem
determines the
order of the
advice.
Note
<cache:annotation-driven/> only looks for
@Cacheable/@CacheEvict on beans in the same application
context it is defined in. This means that, if you put
<cache:annotation-driven/> in a
WebApplicationContext for a DispatcherServlet, it only
checks for @Cacheable/@CacheEvict beans in your controllers,
and not your services. See Section 17.2, The DispatcherServlet
for more information.
Tip
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 are using
interface-based proxies. The fact
that Java annotations are not
inherited from interfaces means
that if you are using class-based
proxies (proxy-targetclass="true") or the weavingbased aspect
(mode="aspectj"), then the
caching settings are not
recognized by the proxying and
weaving infrastructure, and the
object will not be wrapped in a
caching proxy, which would be
decidedly bad.
Method visibility and
@Cacheable/@CachePut/@CacheEvict
When using proxies, you should
apply the @Cache* annotations
only to methods with public
visibility. If you do annotate
protected, private or packagevisible methods with these
annotations, no error is raised,
but the annotated method does
not exhibit the configured
caching settings. Consider the
use of AspectJ (see below) if you
need to annotate non-public
methods as it changes the
bytecode itself.
Note
In proxy mode (which is 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 calling another method of the
target object, will not lead to an actual caching at runtime even if the
invoked method is marked with @Cacheable - considering using the
aspectj mode in this case.
29.3.6 Using custom annotations

The caching abstraction allows one to use her own annotations to identify what method
trigger cache population or eviction. This is quite handy as a template mechanism as it
eliminates the need to duplicate cache annotation declarations (especially useful if the key
or condition are specified) or if the foreign imports (org.springframework) are not
allowed in your code base. Similar to the rest of the stereotype annotations, both
@Cacheable and @CacheEvict can be used as meta-annotations, that is annotations
that can annotate other annotations. To wit, let us replace a common @Cacheable
declaration with our own, custom annotation:
@Target({ElementType.METHOD})
@Cacheable(value=books, key="#isbn")
public @interface SlowService {
}
Above, we have defined our own SlowService annotation which itself is annotated with
@Cacheable - now we can replace the following code:
@Cacheable(value="books", key="#isbn")
with:
@SlowService
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 above,
the annotation-driven behavior needs to be enabled.
29.4 Declarative XML-based caching

If annotations are not an option (no access to the sources or no external code), one can
use XML for declarative caching. So instead of annotating the methods for caching, one
specifies the target method and the caching directives externally (similar to the declarative
transaction management advice). The previous example can be translated into:

<bean id="bookService" class="x.y.service.DefaultBookService"/>

<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>

<aop:config>
<aop:advisor advice-ref="cacheAdvice" pointcut="execution(* x.y.BookService.*(..))"/>
</aop:config>
...
// cache manager definition omitted
In the configuration above, the bookService is made cacheable. The caching semantics
to apply are encapsulated in the cache:advice definition which instructs method
findBooks to be used for putting data into the cache while method loadBooks for
evicting data. Both definitions are working 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
Chapter 9, Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring). In the example above, all methods
from the BookService are considered and the cache advice applied to them.
The declarative XML caching supports all of the annotation-based model so moving
between the two should be fairly easy - further more 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 with 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, the AspectJ pointcut can be
used to cherry pick the target methods and apply the appropriate caching functionality.
However through XML, it is easier to apply a package/group/interface-wide caching (again
due to the AspectJ pointcut) and to create template-like definitions (as we did in the
example above by defining the target cache through the cache:definitions cache
attribute).
29.5 Configuring the cache storage

Out of the box, the cache abstraction provides integration with two storages - one on top of
the JDK ConcurrentMap and one for ehcache library. To use them, one needs to simply
declare an appropriate CacheManager - an entity that controls and manages Caches
and can be used to retrieve these for storage.
29.5.1 JDK ConcurrentMap-based Cache

The JDK-based Cache implementation resides under
org.springframework.cache.concurrent package. It allows one to use
ConcurrentHashMap as a backing Cache store.

<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 snippet above uses the SimpleCacheManager to create a CacheManager for the
two, nested Concurrent Cache implementations 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 or persistence capabilities nor eviction contracts.
29.5.2 EhCache-based Cache

The EhCache implementation is located under
org.springframework.cache.ehcache package. Again, to use it, one simply
needs to declare the appropriate CacheManager:
<bean id="cacheManager" class="org.springframework.cache.ehcache.EhCacheCacheManager" p:cache-manager-ref="ehcache"/>

<bean id="ehcache" class="org.springframework.cache.ehcache.EhCacheManagerFactoryBean" p:config-location="ehcache.xml"
This setup bootstraps ehcache library inside Spring IoC (through bean ehcache) which is
then wired into the dedicated CacheManager implementation. Note the entire ehcachespecific configuration is read from the resource ehcache.xml.
29.5.3 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), please refer to the Spring GemFire reference
documentation.
29.5.4 Dealing with caches without a backing store

Sometimes when switching environments or doing testing, one might have cache
declarations without an actual backing cache configured. As this is an invalid
configuration, at runtime an exception will be through since the caching infrastructure is
unable to find a suitable store. In situations like this, rather then removing the cache
declarations (which can prove tedious), one can wire in a simple, dummy cache that
performs no caching - that is, forces the cached methods to be executed every time:
<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 above chains multiple CacheManagers and
additionally, through the fallbackToNoOpCache flag, adds a no op cache that for all the
definitions not handled by the configured cache managers. That is, every cache definition
not found in either jdkCache or gemfireCache (configured above) will be handled by
the no op cache, which will not store any information causing the target method to be
executed every time.
29.6 Plugging-in different back-end caches

Clearly there are plenty of caching products out there that can be used as a backing store.
To plug them in, one needs to provide a CacheManager and Cache implementation
since unfortunately there is no available standard that we can use instead. This may sound
harder then 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 can
show. Most CacheManager classes can use the classes in
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.
29.7 How can I set the TTL/TTI/Eviction policy/XXX

feature?
Directly through your cache provider. The cache abstraction is... well, an abstraction not a
cache implementation. The solution you are using might support various data policies and
different topologies which other solutions do not (take for example the JDK
ConcurrentHashMap) - exposing that in the cache abstraction would be useless simply
because there would no backing support. Such functionality should be controlled directly
through the backing cache, when configuring it or through its native API.
Part VII. Appendices

Appendix A. Classic Spring Usage
This appendix discusses some classic Spring usage patterns as a reference for
developers maintaining legacy Spring applications. These usage patterns no longer reflect
the recommended way of using these features and the current recommended usage is
covered in the respective sections of the reference manual.
A.1 Classic ORM usage

This section documents the classic usage patterns that you might encounter in a legacy
Spring application. For the currently recommended usage patterns, please refer to the
Chapter 15, Object Relational Mapping (ORM) Data Access chapter.
A.1.1 Hibernate
For the currently recommended usage patterns for Hibernate see Section 15.3, Hibernate
The HibernateTemplate
The basic programming model for templating looks as follows, for methods that can be part
of any custom data access object or business service. There are no restrictions on the
implementation of the surrounding object at all, it just needs to provide a Hibernate
SessionFactory. It can get the latter from anywhere, but preferably as bean reference
from a Spring IoC container - via a simple setSessionFactory(..) bean property
setter. The following snippets show a DAO definition in a Spring container, referencing the
above defined SessionFactory, and an example for a DAO method implementation.

<beans>
</bean>
</beans>
private HibernateTemplate hibernateTemplate;
this.hibernateTemplate = new HibernateTemplate(sessionFactory);
}
public Collection loadProductsByCategory(String category) throws DataAccessException {
return this.hibernateTemplate.find("from test.Product product where product.category=?", category);
}
}
The HibernateTemplate class provides many methods that mirror the methods
exposed on the Hibernate Session interface, in addition to a number of convenience
methods such as the one shown above. If you need access to the Session to invoke
methods that are not exposed on the HibernateTemplate, you can always drop down
to a callback-based approach like so.
private HibernateTemplate hibernateTemplate;
this.hibernateTemplate = new HibernateTemplate(sessionFactory);
}
public Collection loadProductsByCategory(final String category) throws DataAccessException {
return this.hibernateTemplate.execute(new HibernateCallback() {
public Object doInHibernate(Session session) {
Criteria criteria = session.createCriteria(Product.class);
criteria.add(Expression.eq("category", category));
criteria.setMaxResults(6);
return criteria.list();
}
};
}
}
A callback implementation effectively can be used for any Hibernate data access.
HibernateTemplate will ensure that Session instances are properly opened and
closed, and automatically participate in transactions. The template instances are threadsafe and reusable, they can thus be kept as instance variables of the surrounding class.
For simple single step actions like a single find, load, saveOrUpdate, or delete call,
HibernateTemplate offers alternative convenience methods that can replace such one
line callback implementations. Furthermore, Spring provides a convenient
HibernateDaoSupport base class that provides a setSessionFactory(..)
method for receiving a SessionFactory, and getSessionFactory() and
getHibernateTemplate()for use by subclasses. In combination, this allows for very
simple DAO implementations for typical requirements:
public class ProductDaoImpl extends HibernateDaoSupport implements ProductDao {
return this.getHibernateTemplate().find(
"from test.Product product where product.category=?", category);
}
}
Implementing Spring-based DAOs without callbacks

As alternative to using Spring's HibernateTemplate to implement DAOs, data access
code can also be written in a more traditional fashion, without wrapping the Hibernate
code can also be written in a more traditional fashion, without wrapping the Hibernate
access code in a callback, while still respecting and participating in Spring's generic
DataAccessException hierarchy. The HibernateDaoSupport base class offers
methods to access the current transactional Session and to convert exceptions in such a
scenario; similar methods are also available as static helpers on the
SessionFactoryUtils class. Note that such code will usually pass 'false' as the
value of the getSession(..) methods 'allowCreate' argument, to enforce running
within a transaction (which avoids the need to close the returned Session, as its lifecycle
is managed by the transaction).
public class HibernateProductDao extends HibernateDaoSupport implements ProductDao {
public Collection loadProductsByCategory(String category) throws DataAccessException, MyException {
Session session = getSession(false);
try {
Query query = session.createQuery("from test.Product product where product.category=?");
query.setString(0, category);
List result = query.list();
if (result == null) {
throw new MyException("No search results.");
}
return result;
}
catch (HibernateException ex) {
throw convertHibernateAccessException(ex);
}
}
}
The advantage of such direct Hibernate access code is that it allows any checked
application exception to be thrown within the data access code; contrast this to the
HibernateTemplate class which is restricted to throwing only unchecked exceptions
within the callback. Note that you can often defer the corresponding checks and the
throwing of application exceptions to after the callback, which still allows working with
HibernateTemplate. In general, the HibernateTemplate class' convenience
methods are simpler and more convenient for many scenarios.
A.1.2 JDO
For the currently recommended usage patterns for JDO see Section 15.4, JDO
JdoTemplate and JdoDaoSupport
Each JDO-based DAO will then receive the PersistenceManagerFactory through
dependency injection. Such a DAO could be coded against plain JDO API, working with
the given PersistenceManagerFactory, but will usually rather be used with the
Spring Framework's JdoTemplate:
<beans>
</bean>
</beans>
private JdoTemplate jdoTemplate;
this.jdoTemplate = new JdoTemplate(pmf);
}
return (Collection) this.jdoTemplate.execute(new JdoCallback() {
public Object doInJdo(PersistenceManager pm) throws JDOException {
List result = query.execute(category);
// do some further stuff with the result list
return result;
}
});
}
}
A callback implementation can effectively be used for any JDO data access.
JdoTemplate will ensure that PersistenceManagers are properly opened and
closed, and automatically participate in transactions. The template instances are threadsafe and reusable, they can thus be kept as instance variables of the surrounding class.
For simple single-step actions such as a single find, load, makePersistent, or
delete call, JdoTemplate offers alternative convenience methods that can replace
such one line callback implementations. Furthermore, Spring provides a convenient
JdoDaoSupport base class that provides a
setPersistenceManagerFactory(..) method for receiving a
PersistenceManagerFactory, and getPersistenceManagerFactory() and
getJdoTemplate() for use by subclasses. In combination, this allows for very simple
DAO implementations for typical requirements:
public class ProductDaoImpl extends JdoDaoSupport implements ProductDao {
return getJdoTemplate().find(
Product.class, "category = pCategory", "String category", new Object[] {category});
}
}
As alternative to working with Spring's JdoTemplate, you can also code Spring-based
DAOs at the JDO API level, explicitly opening and closing a PersistenceManager. As
elaborated in the corresponding Hibernate section, the main advantage of this approach is
that your data access code is able to throw checked exceptions. JdoDaoSupport offers a
variety of support methods for this scenario, for fetching and releasing a transactional
PersistenceManager as well as for converting exceptions.
A.1.3 JPA
For the currently recommended usage patterns for JPA see Section 15.5, JPA
JpaTemplate and JpaDaoSupport
Each JPA-based DAO will then receive a EntityManagerFactory via dependency
injection. Such a DAO can be coded against plain JPA and work with the given
EntityManagerFactory or through Spring's JpaTemplate:
<beans>
<property name="entityManagerFactory" ref="myEmf"/>
</bean>
</beans>
public class JpaProductDao implements ProductDao {
private JpaTemplate jpaTemplate;
public void setEntityManagerFactory(EntityManagerFactory emf) {
this.jpaTemplate = new JpaTemplate(emf);
}
return (Collection) this.jpaTemplate.execute(new JpaCallback() {
public Object doInJpa(EntityManager em) throws PersistenceException {
Query query = em.createQuery("from Product as p where p.category = :category");
query.setParameter("category", category);
List result = query.getResultList();
// do some further processing with the result list
return result;
}
});
}
}
The JpaCallback implementation allows any type of JPA data access. The
JpaTemplate will ensure that EntityManagers are properly opened and closed and
automatically participate in transactions. Moreover, the JpaTemplate properly handles

exceptions, making sure resources are cleaned up and the appropriate transactions rolled
back. The template instances are thread-safe and reusable and they can be kept as
instance variable of the enclosing class. Note that JpaTemplate offers single-step
actions such as find, load, merge, etc along with alternative convenience methods that can
replace one line callback implementations.
Furthermore, Spring provides a convenient JpaDaoSupport base class that provides the
get/setEntityManagerFactory and getJpaTemplate() to be used by
subclasses:
public class ProductDaoImpl extends JpaDaoSupport implements ProductDao {
Map<String, String> params = new HashMap<String, String>();
params.put("category", category);
return getJpaTemplate().findByNamedParams("from Product as p where p.category = :category", params);
}
}
Besides working with Spring's JpaTemplate, one can also code Spring-based DAOs
against the JPA, doing one's own explicit EntityManager handling. As also elaborated
in the corresponding Hibernate section, the main advantage of this approach is that your
data access code is able to throw checked exceptions. JpaDaoSupport offers a variety
of support methods for this scenario, for retrieving and releasing a transaction
EntityManager, as well as for converting exceptions.
JpaTemplate mainly exists as a sibling of JdoTemplate and HibernateTemplate, offering
the same style for people used to it.
A.2 Classic Spring MVC

...
A.3 JMS Usage

One of the benefits of Spring's JMS support is to shield the user from differences between
the JMS 1.0.2 and 1.1 APIs. (For a description of the differences between the two APIs see
sidebar on Domain Unification). Since it is now common to encounter only the JMS 1.1 API
the use of classes that are based on the JMS 1.0.2 API has been deprecated in Spring 3.0.
This section describes Spring JMS support for the JMS 1.0.2 deprecated classes.
A.3.1 JmsTemplate
Located in the package
org.springframework.jms.core the class
JmsTemplate102 provides all of the features of
the JmsTemplate described the JMS chapter,
but is based on the JMS 1.0.2 API instead of the
JMS 1.1 API. As a consequence, if you are using
JmsTemplate102 you need to set the boolean
property pubSubDomain 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, will be used.
A.3.2 Asynchronous Message

Reception
MessageListenerAdapter's are used in
Domain Unification
There are two major releases of
the JMS specification, 1.0.2 and
1.1.
JMS 1.0.2 defined two types of
messaging domains, point-topoint (Queues) and
publish/subscribe (Topics). The
1.0.2 API reflected these two
messaging domains by providing
a parallel class hierarchy for
each domain. As a result, a client
application became domain
specific in its use of the JMS API.
JMS 1.1 introduced the concept
of domain unification that
minimized both the functional
differences and client API
differences between the two
domains. As an example of a
functional difference that was
removed, if you use a JMS 1.1
conjunction with Spring's message listener

containers to support asynchronous message
reception by exposing almost any class as a
Message-driven POJO. If you are using the JMS
1.0.2 API, you will want to use the 1.0.2 specific
removed, if you use a JMS 1.1

provider you can transactionally
consume a message from one
domain and produce a message
on the other using the same
Session.
classes such as
Note
MessageListenerAdapter102,
The JMS
1.1
specification
was
released in
April 2002
and
incorporated
as part of
J2EE 1.4 in
November
2003. As a
result,
common
J2EE 1.3
application
servers
which are
still in
widespread
use (such
as BEA
WebLogic
8.1 and IBM
WebSphere
5.1) are
based on
JMS 1.0.2.
SimpleMessageListenerContainer102,
and
DefaultMessageListenerContainer102.
These classes provide the same functionality as
the JMS 1.1 based counterparts but rely only on
the JMS 1.0.2 API.
A.3.3 Connections
The ConnectionFactory interface is part of the
JMS specification and serves as the entry point for
working with JMS. Spring provides an
implementation of the ConnectionFactory
interface, SingleConnectionFactory102,
based on the JMS 1.0.2 API that will return the
same Connection on all
createConnection() calls and ignore calls to
close(). You will need to set the boolean
property pubSubDomain to indicate which
messaging domain is used as
SingleConnectionFactory102 will always
explicitly differentiate between a
javax.jms.QueueConnection and a
javax.jmsTopicConnection.
A.3.4 Transaction Management

In a JMS 1.0.2 environment the class JmsTransactionManager102 provides support
for managing JMS transactions for a single Connection Factory. Please refer to the
reference documentation on JMS Transaction Management for more information on this
functionality.
Appendix B. Classic Spring AOP Usage

In this appendix we discuss the lower-level Spring AOP APIs and the AOP support used in
Spring 1.2 applications. For new applications, we recommend the use of the Spring 2.0
AOP support described in the AOP chapter, but when working with existing applications, or
when reading books and articles, you may come across Spring 1.2 style examples. Spring
2.0 is fully backwards compatible with Spring 1.2 and everything described in this
appendix is fully supported in Spring 2.0.
B.1 Pointcut API in Spring

Let's look at how Spring handles the crucial pointcut concept.
B.1.1 Concepts
Spring's pointcut model enables pointcut reuse independent of advice types. It's possible
to target different advice using the same pointcut.
The org.springframework.aop.Pointcut interface is the central interface, used to
target advices to particular classes and methods. The complete interface is shown below:
public interface Pointcut {

MethodMatcher getMethodMatcher();
}
Splitting the Pointcut interface into two parts allows reuse of class and method matching
parts, and fine-grained composition operations (such as performing a "union" with another
method matcher).
The ClassFilter interface is used to restrict the pointcut to a given set of target classes.
If the matches() method always returns true, all target classes will be matched:
public interface ClassFilter {
boolean matches(Class clazz);
}
The MethodMatcher interface is normally more important. The complete interface is

shown below:
public interface MethodMatcher {
boolean matches(Method m, Class targetClass);
boolean isRuntime();
boolean matches(Method m, Class targetClass, Object[] args);
}
The matches(Method, Class) method is used to test whether this pointcut will ever
match a given method on a target class. This evaluation can be performed when an AOP
proxy is created, to avoid the need for a test on every method invocation. If the 2-argument
matches method returns true for a given method, and the isRuntime() method for the
MethodMatcher returns true, the 3-argument matches method will be invoked on every
method invocation. This enables a pointcut to look at the arguments passed to the method
invocation immediately before the target advice is to execute.
Most MethodMatchers are static, meaning that their isRuntime() method returns false.
In this case, the 3-argument matches method will never be invoked.
Tip
If possible, try to make pointcuts static, allowing the AOP framework to
cache the results of pointcut evaluation when an AOP proxy is created.
B.1.2 Operations on pointcuts

Spring supports operations on pointcuts: notably, union and intersection.
Union means the methods that either pointcut matches.
Intersection means the methods that both pointcuts match.
Union is usually more useful.
Pointcuts can be composed using the static methods in the
org.springframework.aop.support.Pointcuts class, or using the ComposablePointcut
class in the same package. However, using AspectJ pointcut expressions is usually a
simpler approach.
B.1.3 AspectJ expression pointcuts

Since 2.0, the most important type of pointcut used by Spring is
org.springframework.aop.aspectj.AspectJExpressionPointcut. This is a
pointcut that uses an AspectJ supplied library to parse an AspectJ pointcut expression
string.
See the previous chapter for a discussion of supported AspectJ pointcut primitives.
B.1.4 Convenience pointcut implementations

Spring provides several convenient pointcut implementations. Some can be used out of
the box; others are intended to be subclassed in application-specific pointcuts.
Static pointcuts
Static pointcuts are based on method and target class, and cannot take into account the
method's arguments. Static pointcuts are sufficient - and best - for most usages. It's
possible for Spring to evaluate a static pointcut only once, when a method is first invoked:
after that, there is no need to evaluate the pointcut again with each method invocation.
Let's consider some static pointcut implementations included with Spring.
Regular expression pointcuts

One obvious way to specify static pointcuts is regular expressions. Several AOP
frameworks besides Spring make this possible.
org.springframework.aop.support.Perl5RegexpMethodPointcut is a
generic regular expression pointcut, using Perl 5 regular expression syntax. The
Perl5RegexpMethodPointcut class depends on Jakarta ORO for regular expression
matching. Spring also provides the JdkRegexpMethodPointcut class that uses the
regular expression support in JDK 1.4+.
Using the Perl5RegexpMethodPointcut class, you can provide a list of pattern
Strings. If any of these is a match, the pointcut will evaluate to true. (So the result is
effectively the union of these pointcuts.)
The usage is shown below:
<bean id="settersAndAbsquatulatePointcut"
class="org.springframework.aop.support.Perl5RegexpMethodPointcut">
<list>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
Spring provides a convenience class, RegexpMethodPointcutAdvisor, that allows

us to also reference an Advice (remember that an Advice can be an interceptor, before
advice, throws advice etc.). Behind the scenes, Spring will use a
JdkRegexpMethodPointcut. Using RegexpMethodPointcutAdvisor simplifies
wiring, as the one bean encapsulates both pointcut and advice, as shown below:
<bean id="settersAndAbsquatulateAdvisor"
class="org.springframework.aop.support.RegexpMethodPointcutAdvisor">
<property name="advice">
<ref local="beanNameOfAopAllianceInterceptor"/>
</property>
<list>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
RegexpMethodPointcutAdvisor can be used with any Advice type.
Attribute-driven pointcuts
An important type of static pointcut is a metadata-driven pointcut. This uses the values of
metadata attributes: typically, source-level metadata.
Dynamic pointcuts
Dynamic pointcuts are costlier to evaluate than static pointcuts. They take into account
method arguments, as well as static information. This means that they must be evaluated
with every method invocation; the result cannot be cached, as arguments will vary.
The main example is the control flow pointcut.
Control flow pointcuts

Spring control flow pointcuts are conceptually similar to AspectJ cflow pointcuts, although
less powerful. (There is currently no way to specify that a pointcut executes below a join
point matched by another pointcut.) A control flow pointcut matches the current call stack.
For example, it might fire if the join point was invoked by a method in the
com.mycompany.web package, or by the SomeCaller class. Control flow pointcuts are
specified using the
org.springframework.aop.support.ControlFlowPointcut class.
Note
Control flow pointcuts are significantly more expensive to evaluate at
runtime than even other dynamic pointcuts. In Java 1.4, the cost is
about 5 times that of other dynamic pointcuts.
B.1.5 Pointcut superclasses

Spring provides useful pointcut superclasses to help you to implement your own pointcuts.
Because static pointcuts are most useful, you'll probably subclass
StaticMethodMatcherPointcut, as shown below. This requires implementing just one
abstract method (although it's possible to override other methods to customize behavior):
class TestStaticPointcut extends StaticMethodMatcherPointcut {
public boolean matches(Method m, Class targetClass) {
// return true if custom criteria match
}
}
There are also superclasses for dynamic pointcuts.

You can use custom pointcuts with any advice type in Spring 1.0 RC2 and above.
B.1.6 Custom pointcuts

Because pointcuts in Spring AOP are Java classes, rather than language features (as in
AspectJ) it's possible to declare custom pointcuts, whether static or dynamic. Custom
pointcuts in Spring can be arbitrarily complex. However, using the AspectJ pointcut
expression language is recommended if possible.
Note
Later versions of Spring may offer support for "semantic pointcuts" as
offered by JAC: for example, "all methods that change instance
variables in the target object."
B.2 Advice API in Spring

Let's now look at how Spring AOP handles advice.
B.2.1 Advice lifecycles

Each advice is a Spring bean. An advice instance can be shared across all advised
objects, or unique to each advised object. This corresponds to per-class or per-instance
advice.
Per-class advice is used most often. It is appropriate for generic advice such as transaction
advisors. These do not depend on the state of the proxied object or add new state; they
merely act on the method and arguments.
Per-instance advice is appropriate for introductions, to support mixins. In this case, the
advice adds state to the proxied object.
It's possible to use a mix of shared and per-instance advice in the same AOP proxy.
B.2.2 Advice types in Spring

Spring provides several advice types out of the box, and is extensible to support arbitrary
advice types. Let us look at the basic concepts and standard advice types.

The most fundamental advice type in Spring is interception around advice.
Spring is compliant with the AOP Alliance interface for around advice using method
interception. MethodInterceptors implementing around advice should implement the
following interface:
public interface MethodInterceptor extends Interceptor {
Object invoke(MethodInvocation invocation) throws Throwable;
}
The MethodInvocation argument to the invoke() method exposes the method being
invoked; the target join point; the AOP proxy; and the arguments to the method. The
invoke() method should return the invocation's result: the return value of the join point.
A simple MethodInterceptor implementation looks as follows:
public class DebugInterceptor implements MethodInterceptor {
System.out.println("Before: invocation=[" + invocation + "]");
Object rval = invocation.proceed();
System.out.println("Invocation returned");
return rval;
}
}
Note the call to the MethodInvocation's proceed() method. This proceeds down the
interceptor chain towards the join point. Most interceptors will invoke this method, and
return its return value. However, a MethodInterceptor, like any around advice, can return a
different value or throw an exception rather than invoke the proceed method. However, you
don't want to do this without good reason!
Note
MethodInterceptors offer interoperability with other AOP Alliancecompliant AOP implementations. The other advice types discussed in
the remainder of this section implement common AOP concepts, but in
a Spring-specific way. While there is an advantage in using the most
specific advice type, stick with MethodInterceptor around advice if you
are likely to want to run the aspect in another AOP framework. Note that
pointcuts are not currently interoperable between frameworks, and the
AOP Alliance does not currently define pointcut interfaces.
Before advice
A simpler advice type is a before advice. This does not need a MethodInvocation
object, since it will only be called before entering the method.
The main advantage of a before advice is that there is no need to invoke the proceed()
method, and therefore no possibility of inadvertently failing to proceed down the interceptor
chain.
The MethodBeforeAdvice interface is shown below. (Spring's API design would allow
for field before advice, although the usual objects apply to field interception and it's unlikely
that Spring will ever implement it).
public interface MethodBeforeAdvice extends BeforeAdvice {
void before(Method m, Object[] args, Object target) throws Throwable;
}
Note the return type is void. Before advice can insert custom behavior before the join
point executes, but cannot change the return value. If a before advice throws an exception,
this will abort further execution of the interceptor chain. The exception will propagate back
up the interceptor chain. If it is unchecked, or on the signature of the invoked method, it will
be passed directly to the client; otherwise it will be wrapped in an unchecked exception by
the AOP proxy.
An example of a before advice in Spring, which counts all method invocations:
public class CountingBeforeAdvice implements MethodBeforeAdvice {
private int count;
public void before(Method m, Object[] args, Object target) throws Throwable {
++count;
}
return count;
}
}
Tip
Before advice can be used with any pointcut.
Throws advice
Throws advice is invoked after the return of the join point if the join point threw an
exception. Spring offers typed throws advice. Note that this means that the
org.springframework.aop.ThrowsAdvice interface does not contain any
methods: It is a tag interface identifying that the given object implements one or more typed
throws advice methods. These should be in the form of:
afterThrowing([Method, args, target], subclassOfThrowable)
Only the last argument is required. The method signatures may have either one or four
arguments, depending on whether the advice method is interested in the method and
arguments. The following classes are examples of throws advice.
The advice below is invoked if a RemoteException is thrown (including subclasses):
public class RemoteThrowsAdvice implements ThrowsAdvice {
}
}
The following advice is invoked if a ServletException is thrown. Unlike the above

advice, it declares 4 arguments, so that it has access to the invoked method, method
arguments and target object:
public class ServletThrowsAdviceWithArguments implements ThrowsAdvice {
}
}
The final example illustrates how these two methods could be used in a single class,
which handles both RemoteException and ServletException. Any number of
throws advice methods can be combined in a single class.
public static class CombinedThrowsAdvice implements ThrowsAdvice {
}
}
}
Note: If a throws-advice method throws an exception itself, it will override the original
exception (i.e. change the exception thrown to the user). The overriding exception will
typically be a RuntimeException; this is compatible with any method signature. However, if
a throws-advice method throws a checked exception, it will have to match the declared
exceptions of the target method and is hence to some degree coupled to specific target
method signatures. Do not throw an undeclared checked exception that is incompatible
with the target method's signature!
Tip
Throws advice can be used with any pointcut.

An after returning advice in Spring must implement the
org.springframework.aop.AfterReturningAdvice interface, shown below:
public interface AfterReturningAdvice extends Advice {
void afterReturning(Object returnValue, Method m, Object[] args, Object target)
throws Throwable;
}
An after returning advice has access to the return value (which it cannot modify), invoked
method, methods arguments and target.
The following after returning advice counts all successful method invocations that have not
thrown exceptions:
public class CountingAfterReturningAdvice implements AfterReturningAdvice {
private int count;
public void afterReturning(Object returnValue, Method m, Object[] args, Object target)
throws Throwable {
++count;
}
return count;
}
}
This advice doesn't change the execution path. If it throws an exception, this will be thrown
up the interceptor chain instead of the return value.
Tip
After returning advice can be used with any pointcut.
Introduction advice
Spring treats introduction advice as a special kind of interception advice.
Introduction requires an IntroductionAdvisor, and an

IntroductionInterceptor, implementing the following interface:
public interface IntroductionInterceptor extends MethodInterceptor {
boolean implementsInterface(Class intf);
}
The invoke() method inherited from the AOP Alliance MethodInterceptor

interface must implement the introduction: that is, if the invoked method is on an introduced
interface, the introduction interceptor is responsible for handling the method call - it cannot
invoke proceed().
Introduction advice cannot be used with any pointcut, as it applies only at class, rather than
method, level. You can only use introduction advice with the IntroductionAdvisor,
which has the following methods:
public interface IntroductionAdvisor extends Advisor, IntroductionInfo {
void validateInterfaces() throws IllegalArgumentException;
}
public interface IntroductionInfo {
Class[] getInterfaces();
}
There is no MethodMatcher, and hence no Pointcut, associated with introduction

advice. Only class filtering is logical.
The getInterfaces() method returns the interfaces introduced by this advisor.
The validateInterfaces() method is used internally to see whether or not the
introduced interfaces can be implemented by the configured
IntroductionInterceptor.
Let's look at a simple example from the Spring test suite. Let's suppose we want to
introduce the following interface to one or more objects:
public interface Lockable {
void lock();
void unlock();
boolean locked();
}
This illustrates a mixin. We want to be able to cast advised objects to Lockable, whatever
their type, and call lock and unlock methods. If we call the lock() method, we want all setter
methods to throw a LockedException. Thus we can add an aspect that provides the
ability to make objects immutable, without them having any knowledge of it: a good
example of AOP.
Firstly, we'll need an IntroductionInterceptor that does the heavy lifting. In this
case, we extend the
org.springframework.aop.support.DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor
convenience class. We could implement IntroductionInterceptor directly, but using
DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor is best for most cases.
The DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor is designed to delegate an introduction
to an actual implementation of the introduced interface(s), concealing the use of
interception to do so. The delegate can be set to any object using a constructor argument;
the default delegate (when the no-arg constructor is used) is this. Thus in the example
below, the delegate is the LockMixin subclass of
DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor. Given a delegate (by default itself), a
DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor instance looks for all interfaces
implemented by the delegate (other than IntroductionInterceptor), and will support
introductions against any of them. It's possible for subclasses such as LockMixin to call
the suppressInterface(Class intf) method to suppress interfaces that should
not be exposed. However, no matter how many interfaces an
IntroductionInterceptor is prepared to support, the IntroductionAdvisor
used will control which interfaces are actually exposed. An introduced interface will
conceal any implementation of the same interface by the target.
Thus LockMixin subclasses DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor and
implements Lockable itself. The superclass automatically picks up that Lockable can be
supported for introduction, so we don't need to specify that. We could introduce any
number of interfaces in this way.
Note the use of the locked instance variable. This effectively adds additional state to that
held in the target object.
public class LockMixin extends DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor
implements Lockable {
private boolean locked;
public void lock() {
this.locked = true;
}
public void unlock() {
this.locked = false;
}
public boolean locked() {
return this.locked;
}
if (locked() && invocation.getMethod().getName().indexOf("set") == 0)
throw new LockedException();
return super.invoke(invocation);
}
}
Often it isn't necessary to override the invoke() method: the

DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor implementation - which calls the delegate
method if the method is introduced, otherwise proceeds towards the join point - is usually
sufficient. In the present case, we need to add a check: no setter method can be invoked if
in locked mode.
The introduction advisor required is simple. All it needs to do is hold a distinct LockMixin
instance, and specify the introduced interfaces - in this case, just Lockable. A more
complex example might take a reference to the introduction interceptor (which would be
defined as a prototype): in this case, there's no configuration relevant for a LockMixin, so
we simply create it using new.
public class LockMixinAdvisor extends DefaultIntroductionAdvisor {
public LockMixinAdvisor() {
super(new LockMixin(), Lockable.class);
}
}
We can apply this advisor very simply: it requires no configuration. (However, it is

necessary: It's impossible to use an IntroductionInterceptor without an
IntroductionAdvisor.) As usual with introductions, the advisor must be per-instance, as it is
stateful. We need a different instance of LockMixinAdvisor, and hence LockMixin,
for each advised object. The advisor comprises part of the advised object's state.
We can apply this advisor programmatically, using the Advised.addAdvisor()
method, or (the recommended way) in XML configuration, like any other advisor. All proxy
creation choices discussed below, including "auto proxy creators," correctly handle
introductions and stateful mixins.
B.3 Advisor API in Spring

In Spring, an Advisor is an aspect that contains just a single advice object associated with
a pointcut expression.
Apart from the special case of introductions, any advisor can be used with any advice.
org.springframework.aop.support.DefaultPointcutAdvisor is the most
commonly used advisor class. For example, it can be used with a MethodInterceptor,
BeforeAdvice or ThrowsAdvice.
It is possible to mix advisor and advice types in Spring in the same AOP proxy. For
example, you could use a interception around advice, throws advice and before advice in
one proxy configuration: Spring will automatically create the necessary interceptor chain.
B.4 Using the ProxyFactoryBean to create AOP proxies

If you're using the Spring IoC container (an ApplicationContext or BeanFactory) for your
business objects - and you should be! - you will want to use one of Spring's AOP
FactoryBeans. (Remember that a factory bean introduces a layer of indirection, enabling it
to create objects of a different type.)
Note
The Spring 2.0 AOP support also uses factory beans under the covers.
The basic way to create an AOP proxy in Spring is to use the
org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean. This gives complete control over
the pointcuts and advice that will apply, and their ordering. However, there are simpler
options that are preferable if you don't need such control.
B.4.1 Basics
The ProxyFactoryBean, like other Spring FactoryBean implementations, introduces
a level of indirection. If you define a ProxyFactoryBean with name foo, what objects
referencing foo see is not the ProxyFactoryBean instance itself, but an object created
by the ProxyFactoryBean's implementation of the getObject() method. This
method will create an AOP proxy wrapping a target object.
One of the most important benefits of using a ProxyFactoryBean or another IoC-aware
class to create AOP proxies, is that it means that advices and pointcuts can also be
managed by IoC. This is a powerful feature, enabling certain approaches that are hard to
achieve with other AOP frameworks. For example, an advice may itself reference
application objects (besides the target, which should be available in any AOP framework),
benefiting from all the pluggability provided by Dependency Injection.
B.4.2 JavaBean properties

In common with most FactoryBean implementations provided with Spring, the
ProxyFactoryBean class is itself a JavaBean. Its properties are used to:
Specify the target you want to proxy.
Specify whether to use CGLIB (see below and also Section 10.5.3, JDK- and CGLIBbased proxies).
Some key properties are inherited from
org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyConfig (the superclass for all
AOP proxy factories in Spring). These key properties include:
proxyTargetClass: true if the target class is to be proxied, rather than the target
class' interfaces. If this property value is set to true, then CGLIB proxies will be
created (but see also below Section 10.5.3, JDK- and CGLIB-based proxies).
optimize: controls whether or not aggressive optimizations are applied to proxies

created via CGLIB. One should not blithely use this setting unless one fully
understands how the relevant AOP proxy handles optimization. This is currently used
only for CGLIB proxies; it has no effect with JDK dynamic proxies.
frozen: if a proxy configuration is frozen, then changes to the configuration are no
longer allowed. This is useful both as a slight optimization and for those cases when
you don't want callers to be able to manipulate the proxy (via the Advised interface)
after the proxy has been created. The default value of this property is false, so
changes such as adding additional advice are allowed.
exposeProxy: determines whether or not the current proxy should be exposed in a
ThreadLocal so that it can be accessed by the target. If a target needs to obtain the
proxy and the exposeProxy property is set to true, the target can use the
AopContext.currentProxy() method.
aopProxyFactory: the implementation of AopProxyFactory to use. Offers a way
of customizing whether to use dynamic proxies, CGLIB or any other proxy strategy.
The default implementation will choose dynamic proxies or CGLIB appropriately.
There should be no need to use this property; it is intended to allow the addition of
new proxy types in Spring 1.1.
Other properties specific to ProxyFactoryBean include:
proxyInterfaces: array of String interface names. If this isn't supplied, a CGLIB
proxy for the target class will be used (but see also below Section 10.5.3, JDK- and
CGLIB-based proxies).
interceptorNames: String array of Advisor, interceptor or other advice names to
apply. Ordering is significant, on a first come-first served basis. That is to say that the
first interceptor in the list will be the first to be able to intercept the invocation.
The names are bean names in the current factory, including bean names from
ancestor factories. You can't mention bean references here since doing so would
result in the ProxyFactoryBean ignoring the singleton setting of the advice.
You can append an interceptor name with an asterisk (*). This will result in the
application of all advisor beans with names starting with the part before the asterisk to
be applied. An example of using this feature can be found in Section 10.5.6, Using
'global' advisors.
singleton: whether or not the factory should return a single object, no matter how often
the getObject() method is called. Several FactoryBean implementations offer
such a method. The default value is true. If you want to use stateful advice - for
example, for stateful mixins - use prototype advices along with a singleton value of
false.
B.4.3 JDK- and CGLIB-based proxies

This section serves as the definitive documentation on how the ProxyFactoryBean
chooses to create one of either a JDK- and CGLIB-based proxy for a particular target
object (that is to be proxied).
Note
The behavior of the ProxyFactoryBean with regard to creating JDKor CGLIB-based proxies changed between versions 1.2.x and 2.0 of
Spring. The ProxyFactoryBean now exhibits similar semantics with
regard to auto-detecting interfaces as those of the
TransactionProxyFactoryBean class.
If the class of a target object that is to be proxied (hereafter simply referred to as the target
class) doesn't implement any interfaces, then a CGLIB-based proxy will be created. This is
the easiest scenario, because JDK proxies are interface based, and no interfaces means
JDK proxying isn't even possible. One simply plugs in the target bean, and specifies the
list of interceptors via the interceptorNames property. Note that a CGLIB-based proxy
will be created even if the proxyTargetClass property of the ProxyFactoryBean

has been set to false. (Obviously this makes no sense, and is best removed from the
bean definition because it is at best redundant, and at worst confusing.)
If the target class implements one (or more) interfaces, then the type of proxy that is created
depends on the configuration of the ProxyFactoryBean.
If the proxyTargetClass property of the ProxyFactoryBean has been set to true,
then a CGLIB-based proxy will be created. This makes sense, and is in keeping with the
principle of least surprise. Even if the proxyInterfaces property of the
ProxyFactoryBean has been set to one or more fully qualified interface names, the fact
that the proxyTargetClass property is set to true will cause CGLIB-based proxying to
be in effect.
If the proxyInterfaces property of the ProxyFactoryBean has been set to one or
more fully qualified interface names, then a JDK-based proxy will be created. The created
proxy will implement all of the interfaces that were specified in the proxyInterfaces
property; if the target class happens to implement a whole lot more interfaces than those
specified in the proxyInterfaces property, that is all well and good but those
additional interfaces will not be implemented by the returned proxy.
If the proxyInterfaces property of the ProxyFactoryBean has not been set, but the
target class does implement one (or more) interfaces, then the ProxyFactoryBean will
auto-detect the fact that the target class does actually implement at least one interface, and
a JDK-based proxy will be created. The interfaces that are actually proxied will be all of the
interfaces that the target class implements; in effect, this is the same as simply supplying a
list of each and every interface that the target class implements to the proxyInterfaces
property. However, it is significantly less work, and less prone to typos.
B.4.4 Proxying interfaces

Let's look at a simple example of ProxyFactoryBean in action. This example involves:
A target bean that will be proxied. This is the "personTarget" bean definition in the
example below.
An Advisor and an Interceptor used to provide advice.
An AOP proxy bean definition specifying the target object (the personTarget bean) and
the interfaces to proxy, along with the advices to apply.
<bean id="personTarget" class="com.mycompany.PersonImpl">
<property name="name"><value>Tony</value></property>
<property name="age"><value>51</value></property>
</bean>
<property name="someProperty"><value>Custom string property value</value></property>
</bean>
<bean id="debugInterceptor" class="org.springframework.aop.interceptor.DebugInterceptor">
</bean>
<bean id="person"
<property name="proxyInterfaces"><value>com.mycompany.Person</value></property>
<property name="target"><ref local="personTarget"/></property>
<list>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
Note that the interceptorNames property takes a list of String: the bean names of the
interceptor or advisors in the current factory. Advisors, interceptors, before, after returning
and throws advice objects can be used. The ordering of advisors is significant.
Note
You might be wondering why the list doesn't hold bean references. The
reason for this is that if the ProxyFactoryBean's singleton property is set
to false, it must be able to return independent proxy instances. If any of
the advisors is itself a prototype, an independent instance would need
to be returned, so it's necessary to be able to obtain an instance of the
prototype from the factory; holding a reference isn't sufficient.
The "person" bean definition above can be used in place of a Person implementation, as
follows:
Person person = (Person) factory.getBean("person");
Other beans in the same IoC context can express a strongly typed dependency on it, as
with an ordinary Java object:
<bean id="personUser" class="com.mycompany.PersonUser">
<property name="person"><ref local="person" /></property>
</bean>
The PersonUser class in this example would expose a property of type Person. As far as
it's concerned, the AOP proxy can be used transparently in place of a "real" person
implementation. However, its class would be a dynamic proxy class. It would be possible
to cast it to the Advised interface (discussed below).
It's possible to conceal the distinction between target and proxy using an anonymous inner
bean, as follows. Only the ProxyFactoryBean definition is different; the advice is
included only for completeness:
<property name="someProperty"><value>Custom string property value</value></property>
</bean>
<bean id="debugInterceptor" class="org.springframework.aop.interceptor.DebugInterceptor"/>
<bean id="person" class="org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="proxyInterfaces"><value>com.mycompany.Person</value></property>

<bean class="com.mycompany.PersonImpl">
<property name="name"><value>Tony</value></property>
<property name="age"><value>51</value></property>
</bean>
</property>
<list>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
This has the advantage that there's only one object of type Person: useful if we want to
prevent users of the application context from obtaining a reference to the un-advised
object, or need to avoid any ambiguity with Spring IoC autowiring. There's also arguably
an advantage in that the ProxyFactoryBean definition is self-contained. However, there are
times when being able to obtain the un-advised target from the factory might actually be an
advantage: for example, in certain test scenarios.
B.4.5 Proxying classes

What if you need to proxy a class, rather than one or more interfaces?
Imagine that in our example above, there was no Person interface: we needed to advise a
class called Person that didn't implement any business interface. In this case, you can
configure Spring to use CGLIB proxying, rather than dynamic proxies. Simply set the
proxyTargetClass property on the ProxyFactoryBean above to true. While it's best to
program to interfaces, rather than classes, the ability to advise classes that don't implement
interfaces can be useful when working with legacy code. (In general, Spring isn't
prescriptive. While it makes it easy to apply good practices, it avoids forcing a particular
approach.)
If you want to, you can force the use of CGLIB in any case, even if you do have interfaces.
CGLIB proxying works by generating a subclass of the target class at runtime. Spring
configures this generated subclass to delegate method calls to the original target: the
subclass is used to implement the Decorator pattern, weaving in the advice.
CGLIB proxying should generally be transparent to users. However, there are some issues
to consider:
Final methods can't be advised, as they can't be overridden.
As of Spring 3.2 it is no longer required to add CGLIB to your project classpath. CGLIB
classes have been repackaged under org.springframework and included directly in the
spring-core JAR. This is both for user convenience as well as to avoid potential
conflicts with other projects that have dependence on a differing version of CGLIB.
There's little performance difference between CGLIB proxying and dynamic proxies. As of
Spring 1.0, dynamic proxies are slightly faster. However, this may change in the future.
Performance should not be a decisive consideration in this case.
B.4.6 Using 'global' advisors

By appending an asterisk to an interceptor name, all advisors with bean names matching
the part before the asterisk, will be added to the advisor chain. This can come in handy if
you need to add a standard set of 'global' advisors:
<bean id="proxy" class="org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="target" ref="service"/>
<list>
<value>global*</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="global_debug" class="org.springframework.aop.interceptor.DebugInterceptor"/>
<bean id="global_performance" class="org.springframework.aop.interceptor.PerformanceMonitorInterceptor"/>
B.5 Concise proxy definitions

Especially when defining transactional proxies, you may end up with many similar proxy
definitions. The use of parent and child bean definitions, along with inner bean definitions,
can result in much cleaner and more concise proxy definitions.
First a parent, template, bean definition is created for the proxy:
<bean id="txProxyTemplate" abstract="true"
<props>
<prop key="*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
This will never be instantiated itself, so may actually be incomplete. Then each proxy
which needs to be created is just a child bean definition, which wraps the target of the
proxy as an inner bean definition, since the target will never be used on its own anyway.
<bean id="myService" parent="txProxyTemplate">
<bean class="org.springframework.samples.MyServiceImpl">
</bean>
</property>
</bean>
It is of course possible to override properties from the parent template, such as in this case,
the transaction propagation settings:

<bean id="mySpecialService" parent="txProxyTemplate">
<bean class="org.springframework.samples.MySpecialServiceImpl">
</bean>
</property>
<props>
<prop key="get*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED,readOnly</prop>
<prop key="find*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED,readOnly</prop>
<prop key="load*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED,readOnly</prop>
<prop key="store*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
Note that in the example above, we have explicitly marked the parent bean definition as
abstract by using the abstract attribute, as described previously, so that it may not actually
ever be instantiated. Application contexts (but not simple bean factories) will by default preinstantiate all singletons. It is therefore important (at least for singleton beans) that if you
have a (parent) bean definition which you intend to use only as a template, and this
definition specifies a class, you must make sure to set the abstract attribute to true,
otherwise the application context will actually try to pre-instantiate it.
B.6 Creating AOP proxies programmatically with the

ProxyFactory
It's easy to create AOP proxies programmatically using Spring. This enables you to use
Spring AOP without dependency on Spring IoC.
The following listing shows creation of a proxy for a target object, with one interceptor and
one advisor. The interfaces implemented by the target object will automatically be proxied:
ProxyFactory factory = new ProxyFactory(myBusinessInterfaceImpl);
factory.addInterceptor(myMethodInterceptor);
factory.addAdvisor(myAdvisor);
MyBusinessInterface tb = (MyBusinessInterface) factory.getProxy();
The first step is to construct an object of type

org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactory. You can create this with
a target object, as in the above example, or specify the interfaces to be proxied in an
alternate constructor.
You can add interceptors or advisors, and manipulate them for the life of the ProxyFactory.
If you add an IntroductionInterceptionAroundAdvisor you can cause the proxy to implement
additional interfaces.
There are also convenience methods on ProxyFactory (inherited from AdvisedSupport)
which allow you to add other advice types such as before and throws advice.
AdvisedSupport is the superclass of both ProxyFactory and ProxyFactoryBean.
Tip
Integrating AOP proxy creation with the IoC framework is best practice
in most applications. We recommend that you externalize configuration
from Java code with AOP, as in general.
B.7 Manipulating advised objects

However you create AOP proxies, you can manipulate them using the
org.springframework.aop.framework.Advised interface. Any AOP proxy can
be cast to this interface, whichever other interfaces it implements. This interface includes
the following methods:
Advisor[] getAdvisors();
void addAdvice(Advice advice) throws AopConfigException;
void addAdvice(int pos, Advice advice)

throws AopConfigException;
void addAdvisor(Advisor advisor) throws AopConfigException;
void addAdvisor(int pos, Advisor advisor) throws AopConfigException;
int indexOf(Advisor advisor);
boolean removeAdvisor(Advisor advisor) throws AopConfigException;
void removeAdvisor(int index) throws AopConfigException;
boolean replaceAdvisor(Advisor a, Advisor b) throws AopConfigException;
boolean isFrozen();
The getAdvisors() method will return an Advisor for every advisor, interceptor or other
advice type that has been added to the factory. If you added an Advisor, the returned
advisor at this index will be the object that you added. If you added an interceptor or other
advice type, Spring will have wrapped this in an advisor with a pointcut that always returns
true. Thus if you added a MethodInterceptor, the advisor returned for this index will
be an DefaultPointcutAdvisor returning your MethodInterceptor and a
pointcut that matches all classes and methods.
The addAdvisor() methods can be used to add any Advisor. Usually the advisor
holding pointcut and advice will be the generic DefaultPointcutAdvisor, which can
be used with any advice or pointcut (but not for introductions).
By default, it's possible to add or remove advisors or interceptors even once a proxy has
been created. The only restriction is that it's impossible to add or remove an introduction
advisor, as existing proxies from the factory will not show the interface change. (You can
obtain a new proxy from the factory to avoid this problem.)
A simple example of casting an AOP proxy to the Advised interface and examining and
manipulating its advice:
Advised advised = (Advised) myObject;
Advisor[] advisors = advised.getAdvisors();
int oldAdvisorCount = advisors.length;
System.out.println(oldAdvisorCount + " advisors");
// Add an advice like an interceptor without a pointcut
// Will match all proxied methods
// Can use for interceptors, before, after returning or throws advice
advised.addAdvice(new DebugInterceptor());
// Add selective advice using a pointcut
advised.addAdvisor(new DefaultPointcutAdvisor(mySpecialPointcut, myAdvice));
assertEquals("Added two advisors",
oldAdvisorCount + 2, advised.getAdvisors().length);
Note
It's questionable whether it's advisable (no pun intended) to modify
advice on a business object in production, although there are no doubt
legitimate usage cases. However, it can be very useful in development:
for example, in tests. I have sometimes found it very useful to be able to
add test code in the form of an interceptor or other advice, getting inside
a method invocation I want to test. (For example, the advice can get
inside a transaction created for that method: for example, to run SQL to
check that a database was correctly updated, before marking the
transaction for roll back.)
Depending on how you created the proxy, you can usually set a frozen flag, in which
case the Advised isFrozen() method will return true, and any attempts to modify
advice through addition or removal will result in an AopConfigException. The ability to
freeze the state of an advised object is useful in some cases, for example, to prevent
calling code removing a security interceptor. It may also be used in Spring 1.1 to allow
aggressive optimization if runtime advice modification is known not to be required.
B.8 Using the "autoproxy" facility

So far we've considered explicit creation of AOP proxies using a ProxyFactoryBean or
similar factory bean.
Spring also allows us to use "autoproxy" bean definitions, which can automatically proxy
selected bean definitions. This is built on Spring "bean post processor" infrastructure,
which enables modification of any bean definition as the container loads.
In this model, you set up some special bean definitions in your XML bean definition file to
configure the auto proxy infrastructure. This allows you just to declare the targets eligible
for autoproxying: you don't need to use ProxyFactoryBean.
There are two ways to do this:
Using an autoproxy creator that refers to specific beans in the current context.
A special case of autoproxy creation that deserves to be considered separately;
autoproxy creation driven by source-level metadata attributes.
B.8.1 Autoproxy bean definitions

The org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy package provides the
following standard autoproxy creators.
The BeanNameAutoProxyCreator class is a BeanPostProcessor that
automatically creates AOP proxies for beans with names matching literal values or
wildcards.
<bean class="org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy.BeanNameAutoProxyCreator">
<property name="beanNames"><value>jdk*,onlyJdk</value></property>
<list>
<value>myInterceptor</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
As with ProxyFactoryBean, there is an interceptorNames property rather than a

list of interceptors, to allow correct behavior for prototype advisors. Named "interceptors"
can be advisors or any advice type.
As with auto proxying in general, the main point of using BeanNameAutoProxyCreator
is to apply the same configuration consistently to multiple objects, with minimal volume of
configuration. It is a popular choice for applying declarative transactions to multiple
objects.
Bean definitions whose names match, such as "jdkMyBean" and "onlyJdk" in the above
example, are plain old bean definitions with the target class. An AOP proxy will be created
automatically by the BeanNameAutoProxyCreator. The same advice will be applied to
all matching beans. Note that if advisors are used (rather than the interceptor in the above
example), the pointcuts may apply differently to different beans.
A more general and extremely powerful auto proxy creator is
DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator. This will automagically apply eligible advisors
in the current context, without the need to include specific bean names in the autoproxy
advisor's bean definition. It offers the same merit of consistent configuration and avoidance
of duplication as BeanNameAutoProxyCreator.
Using this mechanism involves:
Specifying a DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator bean definition.
Specifying any number of Advisors in the same or related contexts. Note that these
must be Advisors, not just interceptors or other advices. This is necessary because
there must be a pointcut to evaluate, to check the eligibility of each advice to candidate
bean definitions.
The DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator will automatically evaluate the pointcut
contained in each advisor, to see what (if any) advice it should apply to each business
object (such as "businessObject1" and "businessObject2" in the example).
This means that any number of advisors can be applied automatically to each business
object. If no pointcut in any of the advisors matches any method in a business object, the
object will not be proxied. As bean definitions are added for new business objects, they
will automatically be proxied if necessary.
Autoproxying in general has the advantage of making it impossible for callers or
dependencies to obtain an un-advised object. Calling getBean("businessObject1") on this
ApplicationContext will return an AOP proxy, not the target business object. (The "inner
bean" idiom shown earlier also offers this benefit.)
</bean>
<bean id="customAdvisor" class="com.mycompany.MyAdvisor"/>
<bean id="businessObject1" class="com.mycompany.BusinessObject1">

</bean>
<bean id="businessObject2" class="com.mycompany.BusinessObject2"/>
The DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator is very useful if you want to apply the same

advice consistently to many business objects. Once the infrastructure definitions are in
place, you can simply add new business objects without including specific proxy
configuration. You can also drop in additional aspects very easily - for example, tracing or
performance monitoring aspects - with minimal change to configuration.
The DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator offers support for filtering (using a naming
convention so that only certain advisors are evaluated, allowing use of multiple, differently
configured, AdvisorAutoProxyCreators in the same factory) and ordering. Advisors can
implement the org.springframework.core.Ordered interface to ensure correct
ordering if this is an issue. The TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor used in the above
example has a configurable order value; the default setting is unordered.
This is the superclass of DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator. You can create your own
autoproxy creators by subclassing this class, in the unlikely event that advisor definitions
offer insufficient customization to the behavior of the framework
DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator.
B.8.2 Using metadata-driven auto-proxying

A particularly important type of autoproxying is driven by metadata. This produces a similar
programming model to .NET ServicedComponents. Instead of using XML deployment
descriptors as in EJB, configuration for transaction management and other enterprise
services is held in source-level attributes.
In this case, you use the DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator, in combination with
Advisors that understand metadata attributes. The metadata specifics are held in the
pointcut part of the candidate advisors, rather than in the autoproxy creation class itself.
This is really a special case of the DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator, but
deserves consideration on its own. (The metadata-aware code is in the pointcuts

contained in the advisors, not the AOP framework itself.)
The /attributes directory of the JPetStore sample application shows the use of
attribute-driven autoproxying. In this case, there's no need to use the
TransactionProxyFactoryBean. Simply defining transactional attributes on
business objects is sufficient, because of the use of metadata-aware pointcuts. The bean
definitions include the following code, in /WEB-INF/declarativeServices.xml.
Note that this is generic, and can be used outside the JPetStore:
</bean>
<bean class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.AttributesTransactionAttributeSource">
<property name="attributes" ref="attributes"/>
</bean>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="attributes" class="org.springframework.metadata.commons.CommonsAttributes"/>
The DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator bean definition (the name is not significant,

hence it can even be omitted) will pick up all eligible pointcuts in the current application
context. In this case, the "transactionAdvisor" bean definition, of type
TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor, will apply to classes or methods carrying a
transaction attribute. The TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor depends on a
TransactionInterceptor, via constructor dependency. The example resolves this via
autowiring. The AttributesTransactionAttributeSource depends on an
implementation of the org.springframework.metadata.Attributes interface. In
this fragment, the "attributes" bean satisfies this, using the Jakarta Commons Attributes API
to obtain attribute information. (The application code must have been compiled using the
Commons Attributes compilation task.)
The /annotation directory of the JPetStore sample application contains an analogous
example for auto-proxying driven by JDK 1.5+ annotations. The following configuration
enables automatic detection of Spring's Transactional annotation, leading to implicit
proxies for beans containing that annotation:
</bean>
<bean class="org.springframework.transaction.annotation.AnnotationTransactionAttributeSource"/>
</property>
</bean>
The TransactionInterceptor defined here depends on a

PlatformTransactionManager definition, which is not included in this generic file
(although it could be) because it will be specific to the application's transaction
requirements (typically JTA, as in this example, or Hibernate, JDO or JDBC):
Tip
If you require only declarative transaction management, using these
generic XML definitions will result in Spring automatically proxying all
classes or methods with transaction attributes. You won't need to work

directly with AOP, and the programming model is similar to that of .NET
ServicedComponents.
This mechanism is extensible. It's possible to do autoproxying based on custom attributes.
You need to:
Define your custom attribute.
Specify an Advisor with the necessary advice, including a pointcut that is triggered by
the presence of the custom attribute on a class or method. You may be able to use an
existing advice, merely implementing a static pointcut that picks up the custom
attribute.
It's possible for such advisors to be unique to each advised class (for example, mixins):
they simply need to be defined as prototype, rather than singleton, bean definitions. For
example, the LockMixin introduction interceptor from the Spring test suite, shown above,
could be used in conjunction with an attribute-driven pointcut to target a mixin, as shown
here. We use the generic DefaultPointcutAdvisor, configured using JavaBean
properties:
<bean id="lockMixin" class="org.springframework.aop.LockMixin"
scope="prototype"/>
<bean id="lockableAdvisor" class="org.springframework.aop.support.DefaultPointcutAdvisor"
scope="prototype">
<property name="pointcut" ref="myAttributeAwarePointcut"/>
<property name="advice" ref="lockMixin"/>
</bean>
<bean id="anyBean" class="anyclass" ...
If the attribute aware pointcut matches any methods in the anyBean or other bean
definitions, the mixin will be applied. Note that both lockMixin and lockableAdvisor
definitions are prototypes. The myAttributeAwarePointcut pointcut can be a
singleton definition, as it doesn't hold state for individual advised objects.
B.9 Using TargetSources

Spring offers the concept of a TargetSource, expressed in the
org.springframework.aop.TargetSource interface. This interface is responsible
for returning the "target object" implementing the join point. The TargetSource
implementation is asked for a target instance each time the AOP proxy handles a method
invocation.
Developers using Spring AOP don't normally need to work directly with TargetSources, but
this provides a powerful means of supporting pooling, hot swappable and other
sophisticated targets. For example, a pooling TargetSource can return a different target
instance for each invocation, using a pool to manage instances.
If you do not specify a TargetSource, a default implementation is used that wraps a local
object. The same target is returned for each invocation (as you would expect).
Let's look at the standard target sources provided with Spring, and how you can use them.
Tip
When using a custom target source, your target will usually need to be
a prototype rather than a singleton bean definition. This allows Spring
to create a new target instance when required.
B.9.1 Hot swappable target sources

The org.springframework.aop.target.HotSwappableTargetSource exists
to allow the target of an AOP proxy to be switched while allowing callers to keep their
references to it.
Changing the target source's target takes effect immediately. The
HotSwappableTargetSource is threadsafe.
You can change the target via the swap() method on HotSwappableTargetSource as
follows:
HotSwappableTargetSource swapper =
(HotSwappableTargetSource) beanFactory.getBean("swapper");
Object oldTarget = swapper.swap(newTarget);
The XML definitions required look as follows:

<bean id="initialTarget" class="mycompany.OldTarget"/>
<bean id="swapper" class="org.springframework.aop.target.HotSwappableTargetSource">
<constructor-arg ref="initialTarget"/>
</bean>
<bean id="swappable" class="org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="targetSource" ref="swapper"/>
</bean>
The above swap() call changes the target of the swappable bean. Clients who hold a
reference to that bean will be unaware of the change, but will immediately start hitting the
new target.
Although this example doesn't add any advice - and it's not necessary to add advice to use
a TargetSource - of course any TargetSource can be used in conjunction with
arbitrary advice.
B.9.2 Pooling target sources

Using a pooling target source provides a similar programming model to stateless session
EJBs, in which a pool of identical instances is maintained, with method invocations going
to free objects in the pool.
A crucial difference between Spring pooling and SLSB pooling is that Spring pooling can
be applied to any POJO. As with Spring in general, this service can be applied in a noninvasive way.
Spring provides out-of-the-box support for Jakarta Commons Pool 1.3, which provides a
fairly efficient pooling implementation. You'll need the commons-pool Jar on your
application's classpath to use this feature. It's also possible to subclass
org.springframework.aop.target.AbstractPoolingTargetSource to
support any other pooling API.
Sample configuration is shown below:
<bean id="businessObjectTarget" class="com.mycompany.MyBusinessObject"
scope="prototype">
... properties omitted
</bean>
<bean id="poolTargetSource" class="org.springframework.aop.target.CommonsPoolTargetSource">
<property name="maxSize" value="25"/>
</bean>
<bean id="businessObject" class="org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="targetSource" ref="poolTargetSource"/>
<property name="interceptorNames" value="myInterceptor"/>
</bean>
Note that the target object - "businessObjectTarget" in the example - must be a prototype.
This allows the PoolingTargetSource implementation to create new instances of the
target to grow the pool as necessary. See the Javadoc for
AbstractPoolingTargetSource and the concrete subclass you wish to use for
information about its properties: "maxSize" is the most basic, and always guaranteed to be
present.
In this case, "myInterceptor" is the name of an interceptor that would need to be defined in
the same IoC context. However, it isn't necessary to specify interceptors to use pooling. If
you want only pooling, and no other advice, don't set the interceptorNames property at all.
It's possible to configure Spring so as to be able to cast any pooled object to the
org.springframework.aop.target.PoolingConfig interface, which exposes
information about the configuration and current size of the pool through an introduction.
You'll need to define an advisor like this:
<bean id="poolConfigAdvisor" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean">
<property name="targetObject" ref="poolTargetSource"/>
<property name="targetMethod" value="getPoolingConfigMixin"/>
</bean>
This advisor is obtained by calling a convenience method on the

AbstractPoolingTargetSource class, hence the use of
MethodInvokingFactoryBean. This advisor's name ("poolConfigAdvisor" here) must be in
the list of interceptors names in the ProxyFactoryBean exposing the pooled object.
The cast will look as follows:
PoolingConfig conf = (PoolingConfig) beanFactory.getBean("businessObject");
System.out.println("Max pool size is " + conf.getMaxSize());
Note
Pooling stateless service objects is not usually necessary. We don't
believe it should be the default choice, as most stateless objects are
naturally thread safe, and instance pooling is problematic if resources
are cached.
Simpler pooling is available using autoproxying. It's possible to set the TargetSources
used by any autoproxy creator.
B.9.3 Prototype target sources

Setting up a "prototype" target source is similar to a pooling TargetSource. In this case, a
new instance of the target will be created on every method invocation. Although the cost of
creating a new object isn't high in a modern JVM, the cost of wiring up the new object
(satisfying its IoC dependencies) may be more expensive. Thus you shouldn't use this
approach without very good reason.
To do this, you could modify the poolTargetSource definition shown above as follows.
(I've also changed the name, for clarity.)
<bean id="prototypeTargetSource" class="org.springframework.aop.target.PrototypeTargetSource">
<property name="targetBeanName" ref="businessObjectTarget"/>
</bean>
There's only one property: the name of the target bean. Inheritance is used in the
TargetSource implementations to ensure consistent naming. As with the pooling target
source, the target bean must be a prototype bean definition.
B.9.4 ThreadLocal target sources

ThreadLocal target sources are useful if you need an object to be created for each
incoming request (per thread that is). The concept of a ThreadLocal provide a JDK-wide
facility to transparently store resource alongside a thread. Setting up a
ThreadLocalTargetSource is pretty much the same as was explained for the other
types of target source:
<bean id="threadlocalTargetSource" class="org.springframework.aop.target.ThreadLocalTargetSource">

</bean>
Note
ThreadLocals come with serious issues (potentially resulting in
memory leaks) when incorrectly using them in a multi-threaded and
multi-classloader environments. One should always consider wrapping
a threadlocal in some other class and never directly use the
ThreadLocal itself (except of course in the wrapper class). Also, one
should always remember to correctly set and unset (where the latter
simply involved a call to ThreadLocal.set(null)) the resource
local to the thread. Unsetting should be done in any case since not
unsetting it might result in problematic behavior. Spring's ThreadLocal
support does this for you and should always be considered in favor of
using ThreadLocals without other proper handling code.
B.10 Defining new Advice types

Spring AOP is designed to be extensible. While the interception implementation strategy is
presently used internally, it is possible to support arbitrary advice types in addition to the
out-of-the-box interception around advice, before, throws advice and after returning advice.
The org.springframework.aop.framework.adapter package is an SPI package
allowing support for new custom advice types to be added without changing the core
framework. The only constraint on a custom Advice type is that it must implement the
org.aopalliance.aop.Advice tag interface.
Please refer to the org.springframework.aop.framework.adapter package's
Javadocs for further information.
B.11 Further resources

Please refer to the Spring sample applications for further examples of Spring AOP:
The JPetStore's default configuration illustrates the use of the
TransactionProxyFactoryBean for declarative transaction management.
The /attributes directory of the JPetStore illustrates the use of attribute-driven
declarative transaction management.
Appendix C. Migrating to Spring Framework 3.1

In this appendix we discuss what users will want to know when upgrading to Spring
Framework 3.1. For a general overview of features, please see Chapter 3, New Features
and Enhancements in Spring Framework 3.1
C.1 Component scanning against the "org" base

package
Spring Framework 3.1 introduces a number of @Configuration classes such as
org.springframework.cache.annotation.ProxyCachingConfiguration
and
org.springframework.scheduling.annotation.ProxyAsyncConfiguration.
Because @Configuration is ultimately meta-annotated with Spring's @Component
annotation, these classes will inadvertently be scanned and processed by the container for
any component-scanning directive against the unqualified "org" package, e.g.:
<context:component-scan base-package="org"/>
Therefore, in order to avoid errors like the one reported in SPR-9843, any such directives
should be updated to at least one more level of qualification e.g.:
<context:component-scan base-package="org.xyz"/>
Alternatively, an exclude-filter may be used. See context:component-scan

documentation for details.
Appendix D. Migrating to Spring Framework 3.2

In this appendix we discuss what users will want to know when upgrading to Spring
Framework 3.2. For a general overview of features, please see Chapter 4, New Features
and Enhancements in Spring Framework 3.2
D.1 Newly optional dependencies

Certain inter-module dependencies are now optional at the Maven POM level where
they were once required. For example, spring-tx and its dependence on springcontext. This may result in ClassNotFoundErrors or other similar problems for
users that have been relying on transitive dependency management to pull in affected
downstream spring-* . To resolve this problem, simply add the appropriate missing jars
to your build configuration.
D.2 EHCache support moved to spring-context-support

Along with Spring's new JCache support, the EHCache support classes in the
org.springframework.cache.ehcache package moved from the springcontext module to spring-context-support.
D.3 Inlining of spring-asm jar

In versions 3.0 and 3.1, we published a discrete spring-asm containing repackaged
org.objectweb.asm 3.x sources. As of Spring Framework 3.2, we have upgraded to
org.objectweb.asm 4.0 and done away with the separate module jar, favoring inlining
these classes directly within spring-core. This should cause no migration issue for
most users; but on the off chance that you have spring-asm declared directly within your
project's build script, you'll want to remove it when upgrading to Spring Framework 3.2.
D.4 Explicit CGLIB dependency no longer required

In prior versions, users of Spring's subclass-based AOP proxies (e.g. via proxytarget-class="true") and @Configuration class support were required to
declare an explicit dependency on CGLIB 2.2. As of Spring Framework 3.2, we now
repackage and inline the newly-released CGLIB 3.0.
This means greater convenience for users, as well as correct functionality for Java 7 users
who are creating subclass proxies of types that contain invokedynamic bytecode
instructions. Repackaging CGLIB internally ensures no classpath conflicts with other third
party frameworks that may depend on other versions of CGLIB.
D.5 For OSGi users

OSGi metadata is no longer published within individual Spring Framework jar
MANIFEST.MF files. Please see this announcement for more information about how users
can get OSGi-ready versions of Spring Framework 3.2 jars.
D.6 MVC Java Config and MVC Namespace

As explained in Section 17.15.4, Configuring Content Negotiation, both the MVC Java
config and the MVC namespace register extensions such as .json and .xml if the
corresponding classpath dependencies are present. That means controller methods may
now return JSON or XML formatted content if those extensions are present in the request
URI, even if the 'Accept' header doesn't request those media types.
The newly added support for matrix variables is explained in the section called Matrix
Variables. To preserve backward compatibility, by default, semicolon content is removed
from incoming request URIs and therefore @MatrixVariable cannot be used without
additional configuration. However, when using the MVC Java config and the MVC
namespace, semicolon content is left in the URI so that matrix variables are automatically
supported. The removal of semicolon content is controlled through the UrlPathHelper
property of RequestMappingHandlerMapping.
D.7 Decoding of URI Variable Values

URI variable values now get decoded when UrlPathHelper.setUrlDecode is set to
false. See SPR-9098.
D.8 HTTP PATCH method

The DispatcherServlet now allows the HTTP PATCH method where previously it
didn't.
D.9 Tiles 3
Besides the version number change, the set of Tiles dependencies has also changed. You
will need to have a subset or all of tiles-request-api, tiles-api, tiles-core,
tiles-servlet, tiles-jsp, tiles-el.
D.10 Spring MVC Test standalone project

If migrating from the spring-test-mvc standalone project to the spring-test module in
Spring Framework 3.2, you will need to adjust the root package to be
org.springframework.test.web.servlet.
You will no longer be able to use the MockMvcBuilders annotationConfigSetup
and xmlConfigSetup options. Instead you'll need to switch to using the
@WebAppConfiguration support of spring-test for loading Spring configuration,
then inject a WebApplicationContext into the test and use it to create a MockMvc.
See Section 11.3.6, Spring MVC Test Framework for details.
D.11 Spring Test Dependencies

The spring-test module has been upgraded to depend on JUnit 4.11
(junit:junit), TestNG 6.5.2 (org.testng:testng), and Hamcrest Core 1.3
(org.hamcrest:hamcrest-core). Each of these dependencies is declared as an
optional dependency in the Maven POM. Furthermore, it is important to note that the JUnit
team has stopped inlining Hamcrest Core within the junit:junit Maven artifact as of
JUnit 4.11. Hamcrest Core is now a required transitive dependency of junit, and users
may therefore need to remove any exclusions on hamcrest-core that they had
previously configured for their build.
D.12 Public API changes

D.12.1 JDiff reports
Select JDiff reports are now being published to provide users with a convenient means of
understanding what's changed between versions. Going forward these will be published
between each minor version, e.g. from 3.1.3.RELEASE to 3.1.4.RELEASE; from the latest
maintenance version to the latest GA release, e.g. 3.1.3.RELEASE to 3.2.0.RELEASE;
and in between each milestone and/or RC for users who are tracking next-generation
development, e.g. 3.2.0.RC2 to 3.2.0.RELEASE.
D.12.2 Deprecations
The following packages and types have been wholly or partially deprecated in Spring
Framework 3.2 and may be removed in a future version. Click through to the linked
Javadoc for each item for exact details. See also the complete list of deprecations in the
framework.
org.springframework.orm.ibatis
org.springframework.scheduling.backportconcurrent
org.springframework.ejb.support
org.springframework.http.converter.xml.XmlAwareFormHttpMessageConverter
org.springframework.web.jsf.DelegatingVariableResolver
org.springframework.web.jsf.SpringBeanVariableResolver
org.springframework.ui.velocity.CommonsLoggingLogSystem
org.springframework.ui.velocity.VelocityEngineUtils
org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanReferenceFactoryBean
org.springframework.beans.factory.config.CommonsLogFactoryBean
org.springframework.beans.instrument.classloading.oc4j.OC4JLoadTimeWeaver
org.springframework.transaction.jta.OC4JJtaTransactionManager
org.springframework.web.util.ExpressionEvaluationUtils
org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter
org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerExceptionResolver
org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping
org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.ServletAnnotationMappingUtils
org.springframework.jmx.support.MBeanRegistrationSupport
org.springframework.test.context.ContextConfigurationAttributes
org.springframework.test.context.junit4.AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests:
use of the simpleJdbcTemplate instance variable has been deprecated in favor of
the new jdbcTemplate instance variable.
org.springframework.test.context.testng.AbstractTransactionalTestNGSpringContextTests:
use of the simpleJdbcTemplate instance variable has been deprecated in favor of
the new jdbcTemplate instance variable.
org.springframework.test.jdbc.SimpleJdbcTestUtils has been deprecated in favor of
JdbcTestUtils which now contains all of the functionality previously available in
SimpleJdbcTestUtils.
org.springframework.web.servlet.view.ContentNegotiatingViewResolver
org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionAspectUtils
org.springframework.http.HttpStatus
org.springframework.web.util.UriUtils
org.springframework.orm.jpa.vendor.TopLinkJpaDialect
org.springframework.orm.jpa.vendor.TopLinkJpaVendorAdapter
org.springframework.orm.util.CachingMapDecorator
Appendix E. XML Schema-based configuration

E.1 Introduction
This appendix details the XML Schema-based configuration introduced in Spring 2.0 and
enhanced and extended in Spring 2.5 and 3.0.
The central motivation for moving to XML Schema
based configuration files was to make Spring XML
configuration easier. The 'classic' <bean/>based approach is good, but its generic-nature
comes with a price in terms of configuration
overhead.
From the Spring IoC containers point-of-view,
DTD support?
Authoring Spring configuration
files using the older DTD style is
still fully supported.
Nothing will break if you forego
the use of the new XML Schema-
From the Spring IoC containers point-of-view,
degree of specific configuration.
based approach to authoring

Spring XML configuration files.
All that you lose out on is the
opportunity to have more
succinct and clearer
configuration. Regardless of
whether the XML configuration is
DTD- or Schema-based, in the
end it all boils down to the same
object model in the container
(namely one or more
Spring 2.0's new XML Schema-based
instances).
everything is a bean. That's great news for the

Spring IoC container, because if everything is a
bean then everything can be treated in the exact
same fashion. The same, however, is not true from
a developer's point-of-view. The objects defined in
a Spring XML configuration file are not all generic,
vanilla beans. Usually, each bean requires some
BeanDefinition
configuration addresses this issue. The <bean/>

element is still present, and if you wanted to, you
could continue to write the exact same style of Spring XML configuration using only
<bean/> elements. The new XML Schema-based configuration does, however, make
Spring XML configuration files substantially clearer to read. In addition, it allows you to
express the intent of a bean definition.
The key thing to remember is that the new custom tags work best for infrastructure or
integration beans: for example, AOP, collections, transactions, integration with 3rd-party
frameworks such as Mule, etc., while the existing bean tags are best suited to applicationspecific beans, such as DAOs, service layer objects, validators, etc.
The examples included below will hopefully convince you that the inclusion of XML
Schema support in Spring 2.0 was a good idea. The reception in the community has been
encouraging; also, please note the fact that this new configuration mechanism is totally
customisable and extensible. This means you can write your own domain-specific
configuration tags that would better represent your application's domain; the process
involved in doing so is covered in the appendix entitled Appendix F, Extensible XML
authoring.
E.2 XML Schema-based configuration

E.2.1 Referencing the schemas
To switch over from the DTD-style to the new XML Schema-style, you need to make the
following change.
<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC "-//SPRING//DTD BEAN 2.0//EN"
"http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans-2.0.dtd">
<beans>

</beans>
The equivalent file in the XML Schema-style would be...

http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">
</beans>
Note
The 'xsi:schemaLocation' fragment is not actually required, but
can be included to reference a local copy of a schema (which can be
useful during development).
The above Spring XML configuration fragment is boilerplate that you can copy and paste
(!) and then plug <bean/> definitions into like you have always done. However, the entire
point of switching over is to take advantage of the new Spring 2.0 XML tags since they
make configuration easier. The section entitled Section E.2.2, The util schema
demonstrates how you can start immediately by using some of the more common utility
tags.
The rest of this chapter is devoted to showing examples of the new Spring XML Schema
based configuration, with at least one example for every new tag. The format follows a
before and after style, with a before snippet of XML showing the old (but still 100% legal
and supported) style, followed immediately by an after example showing the equivalent in
the new XML Schema-based style.
E.2.2 The util schema

First up is coverage of the util tags. As the name implies, the util tags deal with
common, utility configuration issues, such as configuring collections, referencing
constants, and suchlike.
To use the tags in the util schema, you need to have the following preamble at the top of
your Spring XML configuration file; the text in the snippet below references the correct
schema so that the tags in the util namespace are available to you.
xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util"
http://www.springframework.org/schema/util http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util.xsd">
</beans>
<util:constant/>
Before...
<property name="isolation">
<bean id="java.sql.Connection.TRANSACTION_SERIALIZABLE"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.FieldRetrievingFactoryBean" />
</property>
</bean>
The above configuration uses a Spring FactoryBean implementation, the

FieldRetrievingFactoryBean, to set the value of the 'isolation' property on a
bean to the value of the 'java.sql.Connection.TRANSACTION_SERIALIZABLE'
constant. This is all well and good, but it is a tad verbose and (unnecessarily) exposes
Spring's internal plumbing to the end user.
The following XML Schema-based version is more concise and clearly expresses the
developer's intent ('inject this constant value'), and it just reads better.
<util:constant static-field="java.sql.Connection.TRANSACTION_SERIALIZABLE"/>
</property>
</bean>
Setting a bean property or constructor arg from a field value

FieldRetrievingFactoryBean is a FactoryBean which retrieves a static or
non-static field value. It is typically used for retrieving public static final constants,
which may then be used to set a property value or constructor arg for another bean.
Find below an example which shows how a static field is exposed, by using the
staticField property:
<bean id="myField"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.FieldRetrievingFactoryBean">
<property name="staticField" value="java.sql.Connection.TRANSACTION_SERIALIZABLE"/>
</bean>
There is also a convenience usage form where the static field is specified as the bean
name:
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.FieldRetrievingFactoryBean"/>
This does mean that there is no longer any choice in what the bean id is (so any other
bean that refers to it will also have to use this longer name), but this form is very concise to
define, and very convenient to use as an inner bean since the id doesn't have to be
specified for the bean reference:
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.FieldRetrievingFactoryBean" />
</property>
</bean>
It is also possible to access a non-static (instance) field of another bean, as described in

the API documentation for the FieldRetrievingFactoryBean class.
Injecting enum values into beans as either property or constructor arguments is very easy
to do in Spring, in that you don't actually have to do anything or know anything about the
Spring internals (or even about classes such as the FieldRetrievingFactoryBean).
Let's look at an example to see how easy injecting an enum value is; consider this JDK 5
enum:
package javax.persistence;
public enum PersistenceContextType {
TRANSACTION,
EXTENDED
}
Now consider a setter of type PersistenceContextType:

package example;
public class Client {
private PersistenceContextType persistenceContextType;
public void setPersistenceContextType(PersistenceContextType type) {
this.persistenceContextType = type;
}
}
.. and the corresponding bean definition:

<bean class="example.Client">
<property name="persistenceContextType" value="TRANSACTION" />
</bean>
This works for classic type-safe emulated enums (on JDK 1.4 and JDK 1.3) as well; Spring
will automatically attempt to match the string property value to a constant on the enum
class.
<util:property-path/>
Before...


<bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.beans.TestBean" scope="prototype">
<property name="spouse">
<bean class="org.springframework.beans.TestBean">
</bean>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="testBean.age" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPathFactoryBean"/>

PropertyPathFactoryBean, to create a bean (of type int) called 'testBean.age'
that has a value equal to the 'age' property of the 'testBean' bean.
After...

<bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.beans.TestBean" scope="prototype">
</bean>
</property>
</bean>

<util:property-path id="name" path="testBean.age"/>
The value of the 'path' attribute of the <property-path/> tag follows the form
'beanName.beanProperty'.
Using <util:property-path/> to set a bean property or constructorargument

PropertyPathFactoryBean is a FactoryBean that evaluates a property path on a
given target object. The target object can be specified directly or via a bean name. This
value may then be used in another bean definition as a property value or constructor
argument.
Here's an example where a path is used against another bean, by name:
// target bean to be referenced by name
<bean id="person" class="org.springframework.beans.TestBean" scope="prototype">
</bean>
</property>
</bean>
// will result in 11, which is the value of property 'spouse.age' of bean 'person'
<bean id="theAge"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPathFactoryBean">
<property name="targetBeanName" value="person"/>
<property name="propertyPath" value="spouse.age"/>
</bean>
In this example, a path is evaluated against an inner bean:


<bean id="theAge"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPathFactoryBean">
<property name="targetObject">
</bean>
</property>
<property name="propertyPath" value="age"/>
</bean>
There is also a shortcut form, where the bean name is the property path.

<bean id="person.age"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPathFactoryBean"/>
This form does mean that there is no choice in the name of the bean. Any reference to it
will also have to use the same id, which is the path. Of course, if used as an inner bean,
there is no need to refer to it at all:
<property name="age">
<bean id="person.age"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPathFactoryBean"/>
</property>
</bean>
The result type may be specifically set in the actual definition. This is not necessary for
most use cases, but can be of use for some. Please see the Javadocs for more info on this
feature.
<util:properties/>
Before...

<bean id="jdbcConfiguration" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertiesFactoryBean">
<property name="location" value="classpath:com/foo/jdbc-production.properties"/>
</bean>

PropertiesFactoryBean, to instantiate a java.util.Properties instance with
values loaded from the supplied Resource location).
After...

<util:properties id="jdbcConfiguration" location="classpath:com/foo/jdbc-production.properties"/>
<util:list/>
Before...

<bean id="emails" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.ListFactoryBean">
<property name="sourceList">
<list>
<value>pechorin@hero.org</value>
<value>raskolnikov@slums.org</value>
<value>stavrogin@gov.org</value>
<value>porfiry@gov.org</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>

ListFactoryBean, to create a java.util.List instance initialized with values taken
from the supplied 'sourceList'.
After...

<util:list id="emails">
</util:list>
You can also explicitly control the exact type of List that will be instantiated and
populated via the use of the 'list-class' attribute on the <util:list/> element.
For example, if we really need a java.util.LinkedList to be instantiated, we could
use the following configuration:

<util:list id="emails" list-class="java.util.LinkedList">
<value>jackshaftoe@vagabond.org</value>
<value>eliza@thinkingmanscrumpet.org</value>
<value>vanhoek@pirate.org</value>
<value>d'Arcachon@nemesis.org</value>
</util:list>
If no 'list-class' attribute is supplied, a List implementation will be chosen by the

container.
<util:map/>
Before...

<bean id="emails" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MapFactoryBean">
<property name="sourceMap">
<map>
<entry key="pechorin" value="pechorin@hero.org"/>
<entry key="raskolnikov" value="raskolnikov@slums.org"/>
<entry key="stavrogin" value="stavrogin@gov.org"/>
<entry key="porfiry" value="porfiry@gov.org"/>
</map>
</property>
</bean>

MapFactoryBean, to create a java.util.Map instance initialized with key-value pairs
taken from the supplied 'sourceMap'.
After...

<util:map id="emails">
</util:map>
You can also explicitly control the exact type of Map that will be instantiated and populated
via the use of the 'map-class' attribute on the <util:map/> element. For example, if
we really need a java.util.TreeMap to be instantiated, we could use the following
configuration:
<util:map id="emails" map-class="java.util.TreeMap">
</util:map>
If no 'map-class' attribute is supplied, a Map implementation will be chosen by the

container.
<util:set/>
Before...

<bean id="emails" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.SetFactoryBean">
<property name="sourceSet">
<set>
</set>
</property>
</bean>

SetFactoryBean, to create a java.util.Set instance initialized with values taken
from the supplied 'sourceSet'.

After...

<util:set id="emails">
</util:set>
You can also explicitly control the exact type of Set that will be instantiated and populated
via the use of the 'set-class' attribute on the <util:set/> element. For example, if
we really need a java.util.TreeSet to be instantiated, we could use the following
configuration:
<util:set id="emails" set-class="java.util.TreeSet">
</util:set>
If no 'set-class' attribute is supplied, a Set implementation will be chosen by the

container.
E.2.3 The jee schema

The jee tags deal with Java EE (Java Enterprise Edition)-related configuration issues,
such as looking up a JNDI object and defining EJB references.
To use the tags 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 tags in the jee namespace are available to you.
http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee/spring-jee.xsd">
</beans>
<jee:jndi-lookup/> (simple)
Before...
<bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">
<property name="jndiName" value="jdbc/MyDataSource"/>
</bean>
<bean id="userDao" class="com.foo.JdbcUserDao">

</bean>
After...
<jee:jndi-lookup id="dataSource" jndi-name="jdbc/MyDataSource"/>
<bean id="userDao" class="com.foo.JdbcUserDao">

</bean>
<jee:jndi-lookup/> (with single JNDI environment setting)

Before...
<bean id="simple" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">

<property name="jndiEnvironment">
<props>
<prop key="foo">bar</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
After...
<jee:jndi-lookup id="simple" jndi-name="jdbc/MyDataSource">
<jee:environment>foo=bar</jee:environment>
</jee:jndi-lookup>
<jee:jndi-lookup/> (with multiple JNDI environment settings)

Before...
<property name="jndiEnvironment">
<props>
<prop key="foo">bar</prop>
<prop key="ping">pong</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
After...
<jee:jndi-lookup id="simple" jndi-name="jdbc/MyDataSource">

<jee:environment>
foo=bar
ping=pong
</jee:environment>
</jee:jndi-lookup>
<jee:jndi-lookup/> (complex)
Before...
<property name="resourceRef" value="true"/>
<property name="lookupOnStartup" value="false"/>
<property name="expectedType" value="com.myapp.DefaultFoo"/>
<property name="proxyInterface" value="com.myapp.Foo"/>
</bean>
After...
<jee:jndi-lookup id="simple"
jndi-name="jdbc/MyDataSource"
cache="true"
resource-ref="true"
lookup-on-startup="false"
expected-type="com.myapp.DefaultFoo"
proxy-interface="com.myapp.Foo"/>
<jee:local-slsb/> (simple)
The <jee:local-slsb/> tag configures a reference to an EJB Stateless SessionBean.
Before...
<bean id="simple"
<property name="jndiName" value="ejb/RentalServiceBean"/>
<property name="businessInterface" value="com.foo.service.RentalService"/>
</bean>
After...
<jee:local-slsb id="simpleSlsb" jndi-name="ejb/RentalServiceBean"
business-interface="com.foo.service.RentalService"/>
<jee:local-slsb/> (complex)
<bean id="complexLocalEjb"
<property name="jndiName" value="ejb/RentalServiceBean"/>
<property name="cacheHome" value="true"/>
<property name="lookupHomeOnStartup" value="true"/>
</bean>
After...
<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/> tag configures a reference to a remote EJB Stateless
SessionBean.
Before...
<bean id="complexRemoteEjb"
class="org.springframework.ejb.access.SimpleRemoteStatelessSessionProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="jndiName" value="ejb/MyRemoteBean"/>
<property name="cacheHome" value="true"/>
<property name="lookupHomeOnStartup" value="true"/>
<property name="homeInterface" value="com.foo.service.RentalService"/>
<property name="refreshHomeOnConnectFailure" value="true"/>
</bean>
After...
<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">
E.2.4 The lang schema

The lang tags deal with exposing objects that have been written in a dynamic language
such as JRuby or Groovy as beans in the Spring container.
These tags (and the dynamic language support) are comprehensively covered in the
chapter entitled Chapter 28, Dynamic language support. Please do consult that chapter for
full details on this support and the lang tags themselves.
In the interest of completeness, to use the tags in the lang 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 tags in the lang namespace are
available to you.
</beans>
E.2.5 The jms schema

The jms tags deal with configuring JMS-related beans such as Spring's
MessageListenerContainers. These tags are detailed in the section of the JMS chapter
entitled Section 23.6, JMS Namespace Support. Please do consult that chapter for full
details on this support and the jms tags themselves.
In the interest of completeness, to use the tags in the jms schema, you need to have the
snippet references the correct schema so that the tags in the jms namespace are available
to you.
xmlns:jms="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jms"
http://www.springframework.org/schema/jms http://www.springframework.org/schema/jms/spring-jms.xsd">
</beans>
E.2.6 The tx (transaction) schema

The tx tags deal with configuring all of those beans in Spring's comprehensive support for
transactions. These tags are covered in the chapter entitled Chapter 12, Transaction
Management.
Tip
You are strongly encouraged to look at the 'spring-tx.xsd' file
that ships with the Spring distribution. This file is (of course), the XML
Schema for Spring's transaction configuration, and covers all of the
various tags in the tx namespace, including attribute defaults and
suchlike. This file is documented inline, and thus the information is not
repeated here in the interests of adhering to the DRY (Don't Repeat
Yourself) principle.
In the interest of completeness, to use the tags in the tx schema, you need to have the
snippet references the correct schema so that the tags in the tx namespace are available
to you.
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx.xsd
</beans>
Note
Often when using the tags in the tx namespace you will also be using
the tags from the aop namespace (since the declarative transaction
support in Spring is implemented using AOP). The above XML snippet
contains the relevant lines needed to reference the aop schema so that
the tags in the aop namespace are available to you.
E.2.7 The aop schema
The aop tags deal with configuring all things AOP in Spring: this includes Spring's own
proxy-based AOP framework and Spring's integration with the AspectJ AOP framework.
These tags are comprehensively covered in the chapter entitled Chapter 9, Aspect
Oriented Programming with Spring.
In the interest of completeness, to use the tags in the aop schema, you need to have the
snippet references the correct schema so that the tags in the aop namespace are available
to you.
</beans>
E.2.8 The context schema

The context tags deal with ApplicationContext configuration that relates to
plumbing - that is, not usually beans that are important to an end-user but rather beans that
do a lot of grunt work in Spring, such as BeanfactoryPostProcessors. The following
snippet references the correct schema so that the tags in the context namespace are
available to you.
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">
</beans>
Note
The context schema was only introduced in Spring 2.5.
<property-placeholder/>
This element activates the replacement of ${...} placeholders, resolved against the
specified properties file (as a Spring resource location). This element is a convenience
mechanism that sets up a PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer for you; if you need
more control over the PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer, just define one yourself
explicitly.
<annotation-config/>
Activates the Spring infrastructure for various annotations to be detected in bean classes:
Spring's @Required and @Autowired, as well as JSR 250's @PostConstruct,
@PreDestroy and @Resource (if available), and JPA's @PersistenceContext and
@PersistenceUnit (if available). Alternatively, you can choose to activate the
individual BeanPostProcessors for those annotations explicitly.
Note
This element does not activate processing of Spring's
@Transactional annotation. Use the <tx:annotationdriven/> element for that purpose.
<component-scan/>
This element is detailed in Section 5.9, Annotation-based container configuration.
<load-time-weaver/>
This element is detailed in Section 9.8.4, Load-time weaving with AspectJ in the Spring
Framework.
<spring-configured/>
This element is detailed in Section 9.8.1, Using AspectJ to dependency inject domain
objects with Spring.
<mbean-export/>
This element is detailed in Section 24.4.3, Configuring annotation based MBean export.
E.2.9 The tool schema

The tool tags are for use when you want to add tooling-specific metadata to your custom
configuration elements. This metadata can then be consumed by tools that are aware of
this metadata, and the tools can then do pretty much whatever they want with it (validation,
etc.).
The tool tags are not documented in this release of Spring as they are currently
undergoing review. If you are a third party tool vendor and you would like to contribute to
this review process, then do mail the Spring mailing list. The currently supported tool
tags can be found in the file 'spring-tool.xsd' in the
'src/org/springframework/beans/factory/xml' directory of the Spring
source distribution.
E.2.10 The jdbc schema

The jdbc tags allow you to quickly configure an embedded database or initialize an
existing data source. These tags are documented in Section 14.8, Embedded database
support and Section 14.9, Initializing a DataSource respectively.
To use the tags in the jdbc 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 tags in the jdbc namespace are available to you.
xmlns:jdbc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jdbc"
http://www.springframework.org/schema/jdbc http://www.springframework.org/schema/jdbc/spring-jdbc.xsd">
</beans>
E.2.11 The cache schema

The cache tags can be used to enable support for Spring's @CacheEvict, @CachePut
and @Caching annotations. It it also supports declarative XML-based caching. See
Section 29.3.5, Enable caching annotations and Section 29.4, Declarative XML-based
caching for details.
To use the tags 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 tags in the cache namespace are available to you.
xmlns:jdbc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/cache"
http://www.springframework.org/schema/cache http://www.springframework.org/schema/jdbc/spring-cache.xsd">
</beans>
E.2.12 The beans schema

Last but not least we have the tags in the beans schema. These are the same tags that
have been in Spring since the very dawn of the framework. Examples of the various tags in
the beans schema are not shown here because they are quite comprehensively covered
in Section 5.4.2, Dependencies and configuration in detail (and indeed in that entire
chapter).
One thing that is new to the beans tags themselves in Spring 2.0 is the idea of arbitrary
bean metadata. In Spring 2.0 it is now possible to add zero or more key / value pairs to
<bean/> XML definitions. What, if anything, is done with this extra metadata is totally up
to your own custom logic (and so is typically only of use if you are writing your own custom
tags as described in the appendix entitled Appendix F, Extensible XML authoring).
Find below an example of the <meta/> tag in the context of a surrounding <bean/>
(please note that without any logic to interpret it the metadata is effectively useless as-is).
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">
<meta key="cacheName" value="foo"/>
<property name="name" value="Rick"/>
</bean>
</beans>
In the case of the above example, you would assume that there is some logic that will
consume the bean definition and set up some caching infrastructure using the supplied
metadata.
Appendix F. Extensible XML authoring

F.1 Introduction
Since version 2.0, Spring has featured a mechanism for schema-based extensions to the
basic Spring XML format for defining and configuring beans. This section is devoted to
detailing how you would go about writing your own custom XML bean definition parsers
and integrating such parsers into the Spring IoC container.
To facilitate the authoring of configuration files using a schema-aware XML editor, Spring's
extensible XML configuration mechanism is based on XML Schema. If you are not familiar
with Spring's current XML configuration extensions that come with the standard Spring
distribution, please first read the appendix entitled Appendix E, XML Schema-based
configuration.
Creating new XML configuration extensions can be done by following these (relatively)
simple steps:
1. Authoring an XML schema to describe your custom element(s).
2. Coding a custom NamespaceHandler implementation (this is an easy step, don't
worry).
3. Coding one or more BeanDefinitionParser implementations (this is where the
real work is done).

4. Registering the above artifacts with Spring (this too is an easy step).
What follows is a description of each of these steps. For the example, we will create an
XML extension (a custom XML element) that allows us to configure objects of the type
SimpleDateFormat (from the java.text package) in an easy manner. When we are
done, we will be able to define bean definitions of type SimpleDateFormat like this:
<myns:dateformat id="dateFormat"
pattern="yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm"
lenient="true"/>
(Don't worry about the fact that this example is very simple; much more detailed examples
follow afterwards. The intent in this first simple example is to walk you through the basic
steps involved.)
F.2 Authoring the schema

Creating an XML configuration extension for use with Spring's IoC container starts with
authoring an XML Schema to describe the extension. What follows is the schema we'll use
to configure SimpleDateFormat objects.

<xsd:schema xmlns="http://www.mycompany.com/schema/myns"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:beans="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
targetNamespace="http://www.mycompany.com/schema/myns"
elementFormDefault="qualified"
attributeFormDefault="unqualified">
<xsd:import namespace="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"/>
<xsd:element name="dateformat">
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:complexContent>
<xsd:extension base="beans:identifiedType">
<xsd:attribute name="lenient" type="xsd:boolean"/>
<xsd:attribute name="pattern" type="xsd:string" use="required"/>
</xsd:extension>
</xsd:complexContent>
</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
</xsd:schema>
(The emphasized line contains an extension base for all tags that will be identifiable
(meaning they have an id attribute that will be used as the bean identifier in the container).
We are able to use this attribute because we imported the Spring-provided 'beans'
namespace.)
The above schema will be used to configure SimpleDateFormat objects, directly in an
XML application context file using the <myns:dateformat/> element.
<myns:dateformat id="dateFormat"
pattern="yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm"
lenient="true"/>
Note that after we've created the infrastructure classes, the above snippet of XML will
essentially be exactly the same as the following XML snippet. In other words, we're just
creating a bean in the container, identified by the name 'dateFormat' of type
SimpleDateFormat, with a couple of properties set.
<bean id="dateFormat" class="java.text.SimpleDateFormat">
<constructor-arg value="yyyy-HH-dd HH:mm"/>
<property name="lenient" value="true"/>
</bean>
Note
The schema-based approach to creating configuration format allows for
tight integration with an IDE that has a schema-aware XML editor.

Using a properly authored schema, you can use autocompletion to
have a user choose between several configuration options defined in
the enumeration.
F.3 Coding a NamespaceHandler

In addition to the schema, we need a NamespaceHandler that will parse all elements of
this specific namespace Spring encounters while parsing configuration files. The
NamespaceHandler should in our case take care of the parsing of the
myns:dateformat element.
The NamespaceHandler interface is pretty simple in that it features just three methods:
init() - allows for initialization of the NamespaceHandler and will be called by
Spring before the handler is used
BeanDefinition parse(Element, ParserContext) - called when Spring
encounters a top-level element (not nested inside a bean definition or a different
namespace). This method can register bean definitions itself and/or return a bean
definition.
BeanDefinitionHolder decorate(Node, BeanDefinitionHolder,
ParserContext) - called when Spring encounters an attribute or nested element of
a different namespace. The decoration of one or more bean definitions is used for
example with the out-of-the-box scopes Spring 2.0 supports. We'll start by highlighting
a simple example, without using decoration, after which we will show decoration in a
somewhat more advanced example.
Although it is perfectly possible to code your own NamespaceHandler for the entire
namespace (and hence provide code that parses each and every element in the
namespace), it is often the case that each top-level XML element in a Spring XML
configuration file results in a single bean definition (as in our case, where a single
<myns:dateformat/> element results in a single SimpleDateFormat bean
definition). Spring features a number of convenience classes that support this scenario. In
this example, we'll make use the NamespaceHandlerSupport class:
package org.springframework.samples.xml;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.NamespaceHandlerSupport;
public class MyNamespaceHandler extends NamespaceHandlerSupport {
registerBeanDefinitionParser("dateformat", new SimpleDateFormatBeanDefinitionParser());
}
}
The observant reader will notice that there isn't actually a whole lot of parsing logic in this
class. Indeed... the NamespaceHandlerSupport class has a built in notion of
delegation. It supports the registration of any number of BeanDefinitionParser
instances, to which it will delegate to when it needs to parse an element in its namespace.
This clean separation of concerns allows a NamespaceHandler to handle the
orchestration of the parsing of all of the custom elements in its namespace, while
delegating to BeanDefinitionParsers to do the grunt work of the XML parsing; this
means that each BeanDefinitionParser will contain just the logic for parsing a single
custom element, as we can see in the next step
F.4 Coding a BeanDefinitionParser

A BeanDefinitionParser will be used if the NamespaceHandler encounters an
XML element of the type that has been mapped to the specific bean definition parser
(which is 'dateformat' in this case). In other words, the BeanDefinitionParser is
responsible for parsing one distinct top-level XML element defined in the schema. In the
parser, we'll have access to the XML element (and thus its subelements too) so that we
can parse our custom XML content, as can be seen in the following example:
package org.springframework.samples.xml;
import
import
import
import
org.springframework.beans.factory.support.BeanDefinitionBuilder;
org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.AbstractSingleBeanDefinitionParser;
org.springframework.util.StringUtils;
org.w3c.dom.Element;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
public class SimpleDateFormatBeanDefinitionParser extends AbstractSingleBeanDefinitionParser {
protected Class getBeanClass(Element element) {
return SimpleDateFormat.class;
}
protected void doParse(Element element, BeanDefinitionBuilder bean) {
// this will never be null since the schema explicitly requires that a value be supplied
String pattern = element.getAttribute("pattern");
bean.addConstructorArg(pattern);
// this however is an optional property
String lenient = element.getAttribute("lenient");
if (StringUtils.hasText(lenient)) {
bean.addPropertyValue("lenient", Boolean.valueOf(lenient));
}
}
}
We use the Spring-provided AbstractSingleBeanDefinitionParser to

handle a lot of the basic grunt work of creating a single BeanDefinition.
We supply the AbstractSingleBeanDefinitionParser superclass with the
type that our single BeanDefinition will represent.
In this simple case, this is all that we need to do. The creation of our single
BeanDefinition is handled by the AbstractSingleBeanDefinitionParser
superclass, as is the extraction and setting of the bean definition's unique identifier.
F.5 Registering the handler and the schema

The coding is finished! All that remains to be done is to somehow make the Spring XML
parsing infrastructure aware of our custom element; we do this by registering our custom
namespaceHandler and custom XSD file in two special purpose properties files. These
properties files are both placed in a 'META-INF' directory in your application, and can,
for example, be distributed alongside your binary classes in a JAR file. The Spring XML
parsing infrastructure will automatically pick up your new extension by consuming these
special properties files, the formats of which are detailed below.
F.5.1 'META-INF/spring.handlers'
The properties file called 'spring.handlers' contains a mapping of XML Schema
URIs to namespace handler classes. So for our example, we need to write the following:
http\://www.mycompany.com/schema/myns=org.springframework.samples.xml.MyNamespaceHandler
(The ':' character is a valid delimiter in the Java properties format, and so the ':'
character in the URI needs to be escaped with a backslash.)
The first part (the key) of the key-value pair is the URI associated with your custom
namespace extension, and needs to match exactly the value of the
'targetNamespace' attribute as specified in your custom XSD schema.
F.5.2 'META-INF/spring.schemas'
The properties file called 'spring.schemas' contains a mapping of XML Schema
locations (referred to along with the schema declaration in XML files that use the schema
as part of the 'xsi:schemaLocation' attribute) to classpath resources. This file is
needed to prevent Spring from absolutely having to use a default EntityResolver that
requires Internet access to retrieve the schema file. If you specify the mapping in this
properties file, Spring will search for the schema on the classpath (in this case
'myns.xsd' in the 'org.springframework.samples.xml' package):
http\://www.mycompany.com/schema/myns/myns.xsd=org/springframework/samples/xml/myns.xsd
The upshot of this is that you are encouraged to deploy your XSD file(s) right alongside the
NamespaceHandler and BeanDefinitionParser classes on the classpath.
F.6 Using a custom extension in your Spring XML

configuration
Using a custom extension that you yourself have implemented is no different from using
one of the 'custom' extensions that Spring provides straight out of the box. Find below an
example of using the custom <dateformat/> element developed in the previous steps
in a Spring XML configuration file.
xmlns:myns="http://www.mycompany.com/schema/myns"
http://www.mycompany.com/schema/myns http://www.mycompany.com/schema/myns/myns.xsd">

<myns:dateformat id="defaultDateFormat" pattern="yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm" lenient="true"/>
<bean id="jobDetailTemplate" abstract="true">
<property name="dateFormat">

<myns:dateformat pattern="HH:mm MM-dd-yyyy"/>
</property>
</bean>
</beans>
F.7 Meatier examples

Find below some much meatier examples of custom XML extensions.
F.7.1 Nesting custom tags within custom tags

This example illustrates how you might go about writing the various artifacts required to
satisfy a target of the following configuration:
xmlns:foo="http://www.foo.com/schema/component"
http://www.foo.com/schema/component http://www.foo.com/schema/component/component.xsd">
<foo:component id="bionic-family" name="Bionic-1">
<foo:component name="Mother-1">
<foo:component name="Karate-1"/>
<foo:component name="Sport-1"/>
</foo:component>
<foo:component name="Rock-1"/>
</foo:component>
</beans>
The above configuration actually nests custom extensions within each other. The class
that is actually configured by the above <foo:component/> element is the Component
class (shown directly below). Notice how the Component class does not expose a setter
method for the 'components' property; this makes it hard (or rather impossible) to
configure a bean definition for the Component class using setter injection.
package com.foo;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
public class Component {
private List<Component> components = new ArrayList<Component> ();
// mmm, there is no setter method for the 'components'
public void addComponent(Component component) {
this.components.add(component);
}
public List<Component> getComponents() {
return components;
}
return name;
}
this.name = name;
}
}
The typical solution to this issue is to create a custom FactoryBean that exposes a setter
property for the 'components' property.
package com.foo;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.FactoryBean;
public class ComponentFactoryBean implements FactoryBean<Component> {
private Component parent;
private List<Component> children;
public void setParent(Component parent) {
this.parent = parent;
}
public void setChildren(List<Component> children) {
this.children = children;
}
public Component getObject() throws Exception {
if (this.children != null && this.children.size() > 0) {
for (Component child : children) {
this.parent.addComponent(child);
}
}
return this.parent;
}
public Class<Component> getObjectType() {
return Component.class;
}
public boolean isSingleton() {
return true;
}
}
This is all very well, and does work nicely, but exposes a lot of Spring plumbing to the end
user. What we are going to do is write a custom extension that hides away all of this Spring
plumbing. If we stick to the steps described previously, we'll start off by creating the XSD
schema to define the structure of our custom tag.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<xsd:schema xmlns="http://www.foo.com/schema/component"
targetNamespace="http://www.foo.com/schema/component"
elementFormDefault="qualified"
attributeFormDefault="unqualified">
<xsd:element name="component">
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:choice minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded">
<xsd:element ref="component"/>
</xsd:choice>
<xsd:attribute name="id" type="xsd:ID"/>
<xsd:attribute name="name" use="required" type="xsd:string"/>

</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
</xsd:schema>
We'll then create a custom NamespaceHandler.

package com.foo;
public class ComponentNamespaceHandler extends NamespaceHandlerSupport {
registerBeanDefinitionParser("component", new ComponentBeanDefinitionParser());
}
}
Next up is the custom BeanDefinitionParser. Remember that what we are creating is

a BeanDefinition describing a ComponentFactoryBean.
package com.foo;
import
import
import
import
import
import
import
import
org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanDefinition;
org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanDefinition;
org.springframework.beans.factory.support.ManagedList;
org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.AbstractBeanDefinitionParser;
org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.ParserContext;
org.springframework.util.xml.DomUtils;
org.w3c.dom.Element;
public class ComponentBeanDefinitionParser extends AbstractBeanDefinitionParser {
protected AbstractBeanDefinition parseInternal(Element element, ParserContext parserContext) {
return parseComponentElement(element);
}
private static AbstractBeanDefinition parseComponentElement(Element element) {
BeanDefinitionBuilder factory = BeanDefinitionBuilder.rootBeanDefinition(ComponentFactoryBean.class);
factory.addPropertyValue("parent", parseComponent(element));
List<Element> childElements = DomUtils.getChildElementsByTagName(element, "component");
if (childElements != null && childElements.size() > 0) {
parseChildComponents(childElements, factory);
}
return factory.getBeanDefinition();
}
private static BeanDefinition parseComponent(Element element) {
BeanDefinitionBuilder component = BeanDefinitionBuilder.rootBeanDefinition(Component.class);
component.addPropertyValue("name", element.getAttribute("name"));
return component.getBeanDefinition();
}
private static void parseChildComponents(List<Element> childElements, BeanDefinitionBuilder factory) {
ManagedList<BeanDefinition> children = new ManagedList<BeanDefinition>(childElements.size());
for (Element element : childElements) {
children.add(parseComponentElement(element));
}
factory.addPropertyValue("children", children);
}
}
Lastly, the various artifacts need to be registered with the Spring XML infrastructure.
# in 'META-INF/spring.handlers'
http\://www.foo.com/schema/component=com.foo.ComponentNamespaceHandler
# in 'META-INF/spring.schemas'
http\://www.foo.com/schema/component/component.xsd=com/foo/component.xsd
F.7.2 Custom attributes on 'normal' elements

Writing your own custom parser and the associated artifacts isn't hard, but sometimes it is
not the right thing to do. Consider the scenario where you need to add metadata to already
existing bean definitions. In this case you certainly don't want to have to go off and write
your own entire custom extension; rather you just want to add an additional attribute to the
existing bean definition element.
By way of another example, let's say that the service class that you are defining a bean
definition for a service object that will (unknown to it) be accessing a clustered JCache,
and you want to ensure that the named JCache instance is eagerly started within the
surrounding cluster:
<bean id="checkingAccountService" class="com.foo.DefaultCheckingAccountService"
jcache:cache-name="checking.account">

</bean>
What we are going to do here is create another BeanDefinition when the

'jcache:cache-name' attribute is parsed; this BeanDefinition will then initialize
the named JCache for us. We will also modify the existing BeanDefinition for the
'checkingAccountService' so that it will have a dependency on this new JCacheinitializing BeanDefinition.
package com.foo;
public class JCacheInitializer {
public JCacheInitializer(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
public void initialize() {
// lots of JCache API calls to initialize the named cache...
}
}
Now onto the custom extension. Firstly, the authoring of the XSD schema describing the
custom attribute (quite easy in this case).
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<xsd:schema xmlns="http://www.foo.com/schema/jcache"
targetNamespace="http://www.foo.com/schema/jcache"
elementFormDefault="qualified">
<xsd:attribute name="cache-name" type="xsd:string"/>
</xsd:schema>
Next, the associated NamespaceHandler.

package com.foo;
public class JCacheNamespaceHandler extends NamespaceHandlerSupport {
super.registerBeanDefinitionDecoratorForAttribute("cache-name",
new JCacheInitializingBeanDefinitionDecorator());
}
}
Next, the parser. Note that in this case, because we are going to be parsing an XML
attribute, we write a BeanDefinitionDecorator rather than a
BeanDefinitionParser.
package com.foo;
import
import
import
import
import
import
import
org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanDefinitionHolder;
org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanDefinition;
org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.BeanDefinitionDecorator;
org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.ParserContext;
org.w3c.dom.Attr;
org.w3c.dom.Node;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
public class JCacheInitializingBeanDefinitionDecorator implements BeanDefinitionDecorator {
private static final String[] EMPTY_STRING_ARRAY = new String[0];
public BeanDefinitionHolder decorate(
Node source, BeanDefinitionHolder holder, ParserContext ctx) {
String initializerBeanName = registerJCacheInitializer(source, ctx);
createDependencyOnJCacheInitializer(holder, initializerBeanName);
return holder;
}
private void createDependencyOnJCacheInitializer(BeanDefinitionHolder holder, String initializerBeanName) {
AbstractBeanDefinition definition = ((AbstractBeanDefinition) holder.getBeanDefinition());
String[] dependsOn = definition.getDependsOn();
if (dependsOn == null) {
dependsOn = new String[]{initializerBeanName};
} else {
List dependencies = new ArrayList(Arrays.asList(dependsOn));
dependencies.add(initializerBeanName);
dependsOn = (String[]) dependencies.toArray(EMPTY_STRING_ARRAY);
}
definition.setDependsOn(dependsOn);
}
private String registerJCacheInitializer(Node source, ParserContext ctx) {
String cacheName = ((Attr) source).getValue();
String beanName = cacheName + "-initializer";
if (!ctx.getRegistry().containsBeanDefinition(beanName)) {
BeanDefinitionBuilder initializer = BeanDefinitionBuilder.rootBeanDefinition(JCacheInitializer.class);
initializer.addConstructorArg(cacheName);
ctx.getRegistry().registerBeanDefinition(beanName, initializer.getBeanDefinition());
}
return beanName;
}
}
Lastly, the various artifacts need to be registered with the Spring XML infrastructure.
# in 'META-INF/spring.handlers'
http\://www.foo.com/schema/jcache=com.foo.JCacheNamespaceHandler
# in 'META-INF/spring.schemas'
http\://www.foo.com/schema/jcache/jcache.xsd=com/foo/jcache.xsd
F.8 Further Resources

Find below links to further resources concerning XML Schema and the extensible XML
support described in this chapter.
The XML Schema Part 1: Structures Second Edition
The XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes Second Edition
Appendix G. spring.tld
G.1 Introduction
One of the view technologies you can use with the Spring Framework is Java Server
Pages (JSPs). To help you implement views using Java Server Pages the Spring
Framework provides you with some tags for evaluating errors, setting themes and
outputting internationalized messages.
Please note that the various tags generated by this form tag library are compliant with the
XHTML-1.0-Strict specification and attendant DTD.
This appendix describes the spring.tld tag library.
Section G.2, The bind tag
Section G.3, The escapeBody tag
Section G.4, The hasBindErrors tag
Section G.5, The htmlEscape tag
Section G.6, The message tag

Section G.7, The nestedPath tag
Section G.8, The theme tag
Section G.9, The transform tag
Section G.10, The url tag
Section G.11, The eval tag
G.2 The bind tag

Provides BindStatus object for the given bind path. The HTML escaping flag participates in
a page-wide or application-wide setting (i.e. by HtmlEscapeTag or a "defaultHtmlEscape"
context-param in web.xml).
Table G.1. Attributes

Attribute
Required?
Runtime
Expression?
Description
false
true
Set HTML escaping for this

tag, as boolean value.
Overrides the default HTML
escaping setting for the
current page.
ignoreNestedPath false
true
Set whether to ignore a

nested path, if any. Default
is to not ignore.
true
The path to the bean or

bean property to bind status
information for. For instance
account.name,
company.address.zipCode
or just employee. The status
object will exported to the
page scope, specifically for
this bean or bean property
htmlEscape
path
true
G.3 The escapeBody tag

Escapes its enclosed body content, applying HTML escaping and/or JavaScript escaping.
The HTML escaping flag participates in a page-wide or application-wide setting (i.e. by
HtmlEscapeTag or a "defaultHtmlEscape" context-param in web.xml).

Attribute
Required?
Runtime
Expression?
Description
false
true

current page.
javaScriptEscape false
true
Set JavaScript escaping for

this tag, as boolean value.
Default is false.
htmlEscape
G.4 The hasBindErrors tag
Provides Errors instance in case of bind errors. The HTML escaping flag participates in a
page-wide or application-wide setting (i.e. by HtmlEscapeTag or a "defaultHtmlEscape"

Attribute
Required?
htmlEscape false
name
true
Runtime
Expression?
Description
true
Set HTML escaping for this tag, as

boolean value. Overrides the
default HTML escaping setting for
the current page.
true
The name of the bean in the

request, that needs to be
inspected for errors. If errors are
available for this bean, they will be
bound under the 'errors' key.
G.5 The htmlEscape tag

Sets default HTML escape value for the current page. Overrides a "defaultHtmlEscape"
context-param in web.xml, if any.

Attribute
Required?
defaultHtmlEscape true
Runtime
Expression?
true
Description
Set the default value for
HTML escaping, to be put
into the current
PageContext.
G.6 The message tag

Retrieves the message with the given code, or text if code isn't resolvable. The HTML
escaping flag participates in a page-wide or application-wide setting (i.e. by

Attribute
arguments
Required?
false
argumentSeparator false
Runtime
Expression?
Description
true
Set optional message

arguments for this tag, as a
(comma-)delimited String
(each String argument can
contain JSP EL), an Object
array (used as argument
array), or a single Object
(used as single argument).
true
The separator character to

be used for splitting the
arguments string value;
defaults to a 'comma' (',').
code
false
true
The code (key) to use when

looking up the message. If
code is not provided, the
text attribute will be used.
htmlEscape
false
true

current page.
javaScriptEscape
false
true

Default is false.
true
A
MessageSourceResolvable
argument (direct or through
JSP EL). Fits nicely when
used in conjunction with
Spring's own validation
error classes which all
implement the
interface. For example, this
allows you to iterate over all
of the errors in a form,
passing each error (using a
runtime expression) as the
value of this 'message'
attribute, thus effecting the
easy display of such error
messages.
true
The scope to use when

exporting the result to a
variable. This attribute is
only used when var is also
set. Possible values are
page, request, session and
application.
true
Default text to output when

a message for the given
code could not be found. If
both text and code are not
set, the tag will output null.
true
The string to use when

binding the result to the
page, request, session or
application scope. If not
specified, the result gets
outputted to the writer (i.e.
typically directly to the
JSP).
message
false
scope
false
text
false
var
false
G.7 The nestedPath tag

Sets a nested path to be used by the bind tag's path.

Attribute
path
Required?
true
Runtime
Expression?
true
Description
Set the path that this tag should
apply. E.g. 'customer' to allow bind
paths like 'address.street' rather
than 'customer.address.street'.
G.8 The theme tag

Retrieves the theme message with the given code, or text if code isn't resolvable. The
HTML escaping flag participates in a page-wide or application-wide setting (i.e. by

Attribute
arguments
Required?
false
argumentSeparator false
code
false
Runtime
Expression?
Description
true
Set optional message

arguments for this tag, as a
(comma-)delimited String
(each String argument can
contain JSP EL), an Object
array (used as argument
array), or a single Object
(used as single argument).
true
The separator character to

be used for splitting the
arguments string value;
defaults to a 'comma' (',').
true
The code (key) to use when

looking up the message. If
code is not provided, the
text attribute will be used.
htmlEscape
false
true

current page.
javaScriptEscape
false
true

Default is false.
true
A
argument (direct or through
JSP EL).
true
The scope to use when

exporting the result to a
variable. This attribute is
only used when var is also
set. Possible values are
application.
true
Default text to output when

a message for the given
code could not be found. If
both text and code are not
set, the tag will output null.
true
The string to use when

binding the result to the
page, request, session or
application scope. If not
specified, the result gets
outputted to the writer (i.e.
typically directly to the
JSP).
message
scope
text
var
false
false
false
false
G.9 The transform tag

Provides transformation of variables to Strings, using an appropriate custom PropertyEditor
from BindTag (can only be used inside BindTag). The HTML escaping flag participates in
a page-wide or application-wide setting (i.e. by HtmlEscapeTag or a 'defaultHtmlEscape'

Attribute
Required?
htmlEscape false
scope
value
var
false
true
false
Runtime
Expression?
Description
true
Set HTML escaping for this tag, as

boolean value. Overrides the
default HTML escaping setting for
the current page.
true
The scope to use when exported

the result to a variable. This
attribute is only used when var is
also set. Possible values are
application.
true
The value to transform. This is the

actual object you want to have
transformed (for instance a Date).
Using the PropertyEditor that is
currently in use by the 'spring:bind'
tag.
true
The string to use when binding the

result to the page, request, session
or application scope. If not
specified, the result gets outputted
to the writer (i.e. typically directly to
the JSP).
G.10 The url tag

Creates URLs with support for URI template variables, HTML/XML escaping, and
Javascript escaping. Modeled after the JSTL c:url tag with backwards compatibility in
mind.

Attribute
url
context
Required?
true
false
Runtime
Expression?
true
true
Description
The URL to build. This value
can include template
{placeholders} that are
replaced with the URL
encoded value of the named
parameter. Parameters must
be defined using the param
tag inside the body of this
tag.
Specifies a remote
application context path. The
default is the current
application context path.
true
The name of the variable to

export the URL value to. If
not specified the URL is
written as output.
true
The scope for the var.

'application', 'session',
'request' and 'page' scopes
are supported. Defaults to
page scope. This attribute
has no effect unless the var
attribute is also defined.
false
true

tag, as a boolean value.
current page.
true

this tag, as a boolean value.
Default is false.
var
false
scope
htmlEscape
false
G.11 The eval tag

Evaluates a Spring expression (SpEL) and either prints the result or assigns it to a
variable.

Attribute
expression
Required?
Description
true
The expression to evaluate.
true
The name of the variable to

export the evaluation result
to. If not specified the
evaluation result is
converted to a String and
written as output.
true
The scope for the var.

'application', 'session',
'request' and 'page' scopes
are supported. Defaults to
page scope. This attribute
has no effect unless the var
attribute is also defined.
false
true

tag, as a boolean value.
current page.
true

this tag, as a boolean value.
Default is false.
var
scope
htmlEscape
true
Runtime
Expression?
false
false
Appendix H. spring-form.tld
H.1 Introduction
One of the view technologies you can use with the Spring Framework is Java Server
Pages (JSPs). To help you implement views using Java Server Pages the Spring
Framework provides you with some tags for evaluating errors, setting themes and
outputting internationalized messages.
Please note that the various tags generated by this form tag library are compliant with the
XHTML-1.0-Strict specification and attendant DTD.
This appendix describes the spring-form.tld tag library.
Section H.2, The checkbox tag
Section H.3, The checkboxes tag
Section H.4, The errors tag
Section H.5, The form tag
Section H.6, The hidden tag
Section H.7, The input tag
Section H.8, The label tag
Section H.9, The option tag
Section H.10, The options tag
Section H.11, The password tag
Section H.12, The radiobutton tag
Section H.13, The radiobuttons tag
Section H.14, The select tag
Section H.15, The textarea tag
H.2 The checkbox tag

Renders an HTML 'input' tag with type 'checkbox'.
Table H.1. Attributes

Attribute
Required?
Runtime
Expression?
Description
accesskey
false
true
HTML Standard Attribute
cssClass
false
true
Equivalent to "class" - HTML

Optional Attribute
cssErrorClass
false
true

Optional Attribute. Used when
the bound field has errors.
cssStyle
false
true
Equivalent to "style" - HTML

Optional Attribute
dir
false
true
disabled
false
true
HTML Optional Attribute.

Setting the value of this
attribute to 'true' (without the
quotes) will disable the HTML
element.
htmlEscape
false
true
Enable/disable HTML escaping

of rendered values.
id
false
true
label
false
true
Value to be displayed as part of

the tag
lang
false
true
onblur
false
true
HTML Event Attribute
onchange
false
true
onclick
false
true
ondblclick
false
true
onfocus
false
true
onkeydown
false
true
onkeypress
false
true
onkeyup
false
true
onmousedown false
true
onmousemove false
true
onmouseout
false
true
onmouseover
false
true
onmouseup
false
true
path
true
true
Path to property for data

binding
tabindex
false
true
title
false
true
value
false
true
HTML Optional Attribute
H.3 The checkboxes tag

Renders multiple HTML 'input' tags with type 'checkbox'.

Attribute
Required?
Runtime
Expression?
Description
accesskey
false
true
cssClass
false
true

Optional Attribute
cssErrorClass
false
true

cssStyle
false
true

Optional Attribute
delimiter
false
true
Delimiter to use between each

'input' tag with type 'checkbox'.
There is no delimiter by default.
dir
false
true
true

element.
disabled
false
element
false
true
Specifies the HTML element

that is used to enclose each
'input' tag with type 'checkbox'.
Defaults to 'span'.
htmlEscape
false
true

of rendered values.
id
false
true

itemLabel
false
true
the 'input' tags with type

'checkbox'
items
true
true
The Collection, Map or array of

objects used to generate the
'input' tags with type 'checkbox'
itemValue
false
true
Name of the property mapped

to 'value' attribute of the 'input'
tags with type 'checkbox'
lang
false
true
onblur
false
true
onchange
false
true
onclick
false
true
ondblclick
false
true
onfocus
false
true
onkeydown
false
true
onkeypress
false
true
onkeyup
false
true
onmousedown false
true
onmousemove false
true
onmouseout
false
true
onmouseover
false
true
onmouseup
false
true
path
true
true

binding
tabindex
false
true
title
false
true
H.4 The errors tag

Renders field errors in an HTML 'span' tag.

Attribute
Required?
Runtime
Expression?
Description
cssClass
false
true

Optional Attribute
cssStyle
false
true

Optional Attribute
delimiter
false
true
Delimiter for displaying multiple

error messages. Defaults to the
br tag.
dir
false
true
element
false
true

that is used to render the
enclosing errors.
htmlEscape
false
true

of rendered values.
id
false
true
lang
false
true
onclick
false
true
ondblclick
false
true
onkeydown
false
true
onkeypress
false
true
onkeyup
false
true
onmousedown false
true
onmousemove false
true
onmouseout
false
true
onmouseover
false
true
onmouseup
false
true
path
false
true
Path to errors object for data

binding
tabindex
false
true
title
false
true
H.5 The form tag

Renders an HTML 'form' tag and exposes a binding path to inner tags for binding.

Attribute
Required?
Runtime
Expression?
Description
acceptCharset
false
true
Specifies the list of character

encodings for input data that is
accepted by the server
processing this form. The
value is a space- and/or
comma-delimited list of
charset values. The client
must interpret this list as an
exclusive-or list, i.e., the server
is able to accept any single
character encoding per entity
received.
action
false
true
HTML Required Attribute
commandName false
true
Name of the model attribute

under which the form object is
exposed. Defaults to
'command'.
cssClass
false
true

Optional Attribute
cssStyle
false
true

Optional Attribute
dir
false
true
enctype
false
true
htmlEscape
false
true
Enable/disable HTML
escaping of rendered values.
id
false
true
lang
false
true
method
false
true
modelAttribute
false
true
Name of the model attribute

under which the form object is
exposed. Defaults to
'command'.
name
false
true
HTML Standard Attribute added for backwards

compatibility cases
onclick
false
true
ondblclick
false
true
onkeydown
false
true
onkeypress
false
true
onkeyup
false
true
onmousedown
false
true
onmousemove
false
true
onmouseout
false
true
onmouseover
false
true
onmouseup
false
true
onreset
false
true
onsubmit
false
true
target
false
true
title
false
true
H.6 The hidden tag

Renders an HTML 'input' tag with type 'hidden' using the bound value.

Attribute
Required?
Runtime
Expression?
Description
htmlEscape false
true
Enable/disable HTML escaping of

rendered values.
id
false
true
path
true
true
Path to property for data binding
H.7 The input tag

Renders an HTML 'input' tag with type 'text' using the bound value.

Attribute
Required?
Runtime
Expression?
Description
accesskey
false
true
alt
false
true
autocomplete
false
true
Common Optional Attribute
cssClass
false
true

Optional Attribute
cssErrorClass
false
true

cssStyle
false
true

Optional Attribute
dir
false
true
disabled
false
true

element.
htmlEscape
false
true

of rendered values.
id
false
true
lang
false
true
maxlength
false
true
onblur
false
true
onchange
false
true
onclick
false
true
ondblclick
false
true
onfocus
false
true
onkeydown
false
true
onkeypress
false
true
onkeyup
false
true
onmousedown false
true
onmousemove false
true
onmouseout
false
true
onmouseover
false
true
onmouseup
false
true
onselect
false
true
path
true
true

binding
readonly
false
true

quotes) will make the HTML
element readonly.
size
false
true
tabindex
false
true
title
false
true
H.8 The label tag

Renders a form field label in an HTML 'label' tag.
Attribute
Required?
Runtime
Expression?
Description
cssClass
false
true

Optional Attribute.
cssErrorClass
false
true

Optional Attribute. Used only
when errors are present.
cssStyle
false
true

Optional Attribute
dir
false
true
for
false
true
htmlEscape
false
true

of rendered values.
id
false
true
lang
false
true
onclick
false
true
ondblclick
false
true
onkeydown
false
true
onkeypress
false
true
onkeyup
false
true
onmousedown false
true
onmousemove false
true
onmouseout
false
true
onmouseover
false
true
onmouseup
false
true
path
true
true
Path to errors object for data

binding
tabindex
false
true
title
false
true
H.9 The option tag

Renders a single HTML 'option'. Sets 'selected' as appropriate based on bound value.

Attribute
Required?
Runtime
Expression?
Description
cssClass
false
true

Optional Attribute
cssErrorClass
false
true

cssStyle
false
true

Optional Attribute
dir
false
true
true

disabled
false

element.
htmlEscape
false
true

of rendered values.
id
false
true
label
false
true
lang
false
true
onclick
false
true
ondblclick
false
true
onkeydown
false
true
onkeypress
false
true
onkeyup
false
true
onmousedown false
true
onmousemove false
true
onmouseout
false
true
onmouseover
false
true
onmouseup
false
true
tabindex
false
true
title
false
true
value
true
true
H.10 The options tag

Renders a list of HTML 'option' tags. Sets 'selected' as appropriate based on bound value.

Attribute
Required?
Runtime
Expression?
Description
cssClass
false
true

Optional Attribute
cssErrorClass
false
true

cssStyle
false
true

Optional Attribute
dir
false
true
disabled
false
true

element.
htmlEscape
false
true

of rendered values.
id
false
true
itemLabel
false
true

to the inner text of the 'option'
tag
items
true
true

items
true
true

inner 'option' tags
itemValue
false
true

to 'value' attribute of the 'option'
tag
lang
false
true
onclick
false
true
ondblclick
false
true
onkeydown
false
true
onkeypress
false
true
onkeyup
false
true
onmousedown false
true
onmousemove false
true
onmouseout
false
true
onmouseover
false
true
onmouseup
false
true
tabindex
false
true
title
false
true
H.11 The password tag

Renders an HTML 'input' tag with type 'password' using the bound value.

Attribute
Required?
Runtime
Expression?
Description
accesskey
false
true
alt
false
true
autocomplete
false
true
Common Optional Attribute
cssClass
false
true

Optional Attribute
cssErrorClass
false
true

cssStyle
false
true

Optional Attribute
dir
false
true
disabled
false
true

element.
htmlEscape
false
true
Enable/disable HTML
escaping of rendered values.
id
false
true
lang
false
true
maxlength
false
true
onblur
false
true
onchange
false
true
onclick
false
true
ondblclick
false
true
onfocus
false
true
onkeydown
false
true
onkeypress
false
true
onkeyup
false
true
onmousedown
false
true
onmousemove
false
true
onmouseout
false
true
onmouseover
false
true
onmouseup
false
true
onselect
false
true
path
true
true

binding
false
true

element readonly.
showPassword false
true
Is the password value to be

shown? Defaults to false.
size
false
true
tabindex
false
true
title
false
true
readonly
H.12 The radiobutton tag

Renders an HTML 'input' tag with type 'radio'.

Attribute
Required?
Runtime
Expression?
Description
accesskey
false
true
cssClass
false
true

Optional Attribute
cssErrorClass
false
true

cssStyle
false
true

Optional Attribute
dir
false
true
disabled
false
true

element.
htmlEscape
false
true

of rendered values.
id
false
true
label
false
true

the tag
lang
false
true
onblur
false
true
onchange
false
true
onclick
false
true
ondblclick
false
true
onfocus
false
true
onkeydown
false
true
onkeypress
false
true
onkeyup
false
true
onmousedown false
true
onmousemove false
true
onmouseout
false
true
onmouseover
false
true
onmouseup
false
true
path
true
true

binding
tabindex
false
true
title
false
true
value
false
true
H.13 The radiobuttons tag

Renders multiple HTML 'input' tags with type 'radio'.

Attribute
Required?
Runtime
Expression?
Description
accesskey
false
true
cssClass
false
true

Optional Attribute
cssErrorClass
false
true

cssStyle
false
true

Optional Attribute
delimiter
false
true
Delimiter to use between each

'input' tag with type 'radio'.
There is no delimiter by default.
dir
false
true
true

element.
disabled
false
that is used to enclose each

'input' tag with type 'radio'.
Defaults to 'span'.
element
false
true
htmlEscape
false
true

of rendered values.
id
false
true
itemLabel
false
true

the 'input' tags with type 'radio'
items
true
true

'input' tags with type 'radio'
itemValue
false
true

to 'value' attribute of the 'input'
tags with type 'radio'
lang
false
true
onblur
false
true
onchange
false
true
onclick
false
true
ondblclick
false
true
onfocus
false
true
onkeydown
false
true
onkeypress
false
true
onkeyup
false
true
onmousedown false
true
onmousemove false
true
onmouseout
false
true
onmouseover
false
true
onmouseup
false
true
path
true
true

binding
tabindex
false
true
title
false
true
H.14 The select tag

Renders an HTML 'select' element. Supports databinding to the selected option.

Attribute
Required?
Runtime
Expression?
Description
accesskey
false
true
cssClass
false
true

Optional Attribute
cssErrorClass
false
true

cssStyle
false
true

Optional Attribute
dir
false
true
disabled
false
true

element.
htmlEscape
false
true

of rendered values.
id
false
true
itemLabel
false
true

to the inner text of the 'option'
tag
items
false
true

inner 'option' tags
itemValue
false
true

to 'value' attribute of the 'option'
tag
lang
false
true
multiple
false
true
onblur
false
true
onchange
false
true
onclick
false
true
ondblclick
false
true
onfocus
false
true
onkeydown
false
true
onkeypress
false
true
onkeyup
false
true
onmousedown false
true
onmousemove false
true
onmouseout
false
true
onmouseover
false
true
onmouseup
false
true
path
true
true

binding
size
false
true
tabindex
false
true
title
false
true
H.15 The textarea tag

Renders an HTML 'textarea'.

Attribute
Required?
Runtime
Expression?
Description
accesskey
false
true
cols
false
true
cssClass
false
true

Optional Attribute
cssErrorClass
false
true

cssStyle
false
true

Optional Attribute
dir
false
true
disabled
false
true

element.
htmlEscape
false
true

of rendered values.
id
false
true
lang
false
true
onblur
false
true
onchange
false
true
onclick
false
true
ondblclick
false
true
onfocus
false
true
onkeydown
false
true
onkeypress
false
true
onkeyup
false
true
onmousedown false
true
onmousemove false
true
onmouseout
false
true
onmouseover
false
true
onmouseup
false
true
onselect
false
true
path
true
true

binding
readonly
false
true

element readonly.
rows
false
true
tabindex
false
true
title
false
true

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Spring Framework Reference

I. Overview of Spring Framework

1.2.1. Core Container

1.3. Usage scenarios

1.3.1. Dependency Management and Naming Conventions

II. What's New in Spring 3

2.5.1. Core APIs updated for Java 5

2.5.6. The Web Tier

3. New Features and Enhancements in Spring

3.15. Flash Attributes and RedirectAttributes

4. New Features and Enhancements in Spring

4.12. HTTP PATCH method

III. Core Technologies

5.2.1. Configuration metadata

5.3. Bean overview

5.3.1. Naming beans

5.4.1. Dependency injection

5.5. Bean scopes

5.5.1. The singleton scope

5.6. Customizing the nature of a bean

5.6.1. Lifecycle callbacks

5.7. Bean definition inheritance

5.8.1. Customizing beans using a BeanPostProcessor

5.9. Annotation-based container configuration

5.10. Classpath scanning and managed components

5.10.1. @Component and further stereotype annotations

5.11. Using JSR 330 Standard Annotations

5.11.1. Dependency Injection with @Inject and @Named

5.12. Java-based container configuration

5.12.1. Basic concepts: @Bean and @Configuration

5.13. Registering a LoadTimeWeaver

5.15. The BeanFactory

5.15.1. BeanFactory or ApplicationContext?

6.4. The ResourceLoader

6.7.1. Constructing application contexts

7. Validation, Data Binding, and Type Conversion

7.4.1. Setting and getting basic and nested properties

7.5. Spring 3 Type Conversion

7.5.1. Converter SPI

7.6. Spring 3 Field Formatting

7.6.1. Formatter SPI

7.7. Configuring a global date & time format

7.8.1. Overview of the JSR-303 Bean Validation API

8. Spring Expression Language (SpEL)

8.4. Expression support for defining bean definitions

8.5. Language Reference

8.5.1. Literal expressions

8.6. Classes used in the examples

9. Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring

9.1.1. AOP concepts

9.2. @AspectJ support

9.2.1. Enabling @AspectJ Support

9.3. Schema-based AOP support

9.4. Choosing which AOP declaration style to use

9.5. Mixing aspect types

9.6.1. Understanding AOP proxies

9.7. Programmatic creation of @AspectJ Proxies

9.8.1. Using AspectJ to dependency inject domain objects with Spring

9.9. Further Resources

10. Spring AOP APIs