SPRING INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

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Dear readers, these Spring Interview Questions have been designed specially to get you
acquainted with the nature of questions you may encounter during your interview for the subject
of Spring. As per my experience good interviewers hardly plan to ask any particular question
during your interview, normally questions start with some basic concept of the subject and later
they continue based on further discussion and what you answer:
What is Spring?
Spring is an open source development framework for enterprise Java. The core features of the
Spring Framework can be used in developing any Java application, but there are extensions for
building web applications on top of the Java EE platform. Spring framework targets to make J2EE
development easier to use and promote good programming practice by enabling a POJO-based
programming model.
What are benefits of using spring?
Following is the list of few of the great benefits of using Spring Framework:
Lightweight: Spring is lightweight when it comes to size and transparency. The basic
version of spring framework is around 2MB.
Inversion of control IOC: Loose coupling is achieved in spring using the technique
Inversion of Control. The objects give their dependencies instead of creating or looking for
dependent objects.
Aspect oriented AOP: Spring supports Aspect oriented programming and enables cohesive
development by separating application business logic from system services.
Container: Spring contains and manages the life cycle and configuration of application
objects.
MVC Framework: Spring's web framework is a well-designed web MVC framework, which
provides a great alternative to web frameworks such as Struts or other over engineered or
less popular web frameworks.
Transaction Management: Spring provides a consistent transaction management
interface that can scale down to a local transaction usingasingledatabase, forexample and scale up
to global transactions usingJTA, forexample.
Exception Handling: Spring provides a convenient API to translate technology-specific
exceptions thrownbyJDBC, Hibernate, orJDO, forexample into consistent, unchecked exceptions.
What are the different modules in Spring framework?
Following are the modules of the Spring framework:
Core module
Bean module
Context module
Expression Language module
JDBC module
ORM module
OXM module
Java Messaging ServiceJMS module

Transaction module
Web module
Web-Servlet module
Web-Struts module
Web-Portlet module
What is Spring configuration file?
Spring configuration file is an XML file. This file contains the classes information and describes how
these classes are configured and introduced to each other.
What is Dependency Injection?
Inversion of Control IoC is a general concept, and it can be expressed in many different ways and
Dependency Injection is merely one concrete example of Inversion of Control.
This concept says that you do not create your objects but describe how they should be created.
You don't directly connect your components and services together in code but describe which
services are needed by which components in a configuration file. A container theIOCcontainer is then
responsible for hooking it all up.
What are the different types of IoC dependencyinjection?
Types of IoC are:
Constructor-based dependency injection: Constructor-based DI is accomplished when
the container invokes a class constructor with a number of arguments, each representing a
dependency on other class.
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 noargument static factory method to instantiate your bean.
Which DI would you suggest Constructor-based or setter-based 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.
What are the benefits of IOC?
The main benefits of IOC or dependency injection are:
It minimizes the amount of code in your application.
It makes your application easy to test as it doesn't require any singletons or JNDI lookup
mechanisms in your unit test cases.
Loose coupling is promoted with minimal effort and least intrusive mechanism.
IOC containers support eager instantiation and lazy loading of services.
What is AOP?
Aspect-oriented programming, or AOP, is a programming technique that allows programmers to
modularize crosscutting concerns, or behavior that cuts across the typical divisions of
responsibility, such as logging and transaction management. The core construct of AOP is the
aspect, which encapsulates behaviors affecting multiple classes into reusable modules.
What is Spring IoC container?
The Spring IoC creates the objects, wire them together, configure them, and manage their
complete lifecycle from creation till destruction. The Spring container uses dependency injection

DI to manage the components that make up an application.

What are types of IoC containers? Explain them.
There are two types of IoC containers:
Bean Factory container: This is the simplest container providing basic support for DI .The
BeanFactory is usually preferred where the resources are limited like mobile devices or
applet based applications
Spring ApplicationContext Container: This container adds more enterprise-specific
functionality such as the ability to resolve textual messages from a properties file and the
ability to publish application events to interested event listeners.
Give an example of BeanFactory implementation.
The most commonly used BeanFactory implementation is the XmlBeanFactory class. This
container reads the configuration metadata from an XML file and uses it to create a fully
configured system or application.
What are the common implementations of the ApplicationContext?
The three commonly used implementation of 'Application Context' are:
FileSystemXmlApplicationContext: This container loads the definitions of the beans from
an XML file. Here you need to provide the full path of the XML bean configuration file to the
constructor.
ClassPathXmlApplicationContext: This container loads the definitions of the beans from
an XML file. Here you do not need to provide the full path of the XML file but you need to set
CLASSPATH properly because this container will look bean configuration XML file in
CLASSPATH.
WebXmlApplicationContext: This container loads the XML file with definitions of all beans
from within a web application.
What is the difference between Bean Factory and ApplicationContext?
Following are some of the differences:
Application contexts provide a means for resolving text messages, including support for i18n
of those messages.
Application contexts provide a generic way to load file resources, such as images.
Application contexts can publish events to beans that are registered as listeners.
Certain operations on the container or beans in the container, which have to be handled in a
programmatic fashion with a bean factory, can be handled declaratively in an application
context.
The application context implements MessageSource, an interface used to obtain localized
messages, with the actual implementation being pluggable.
What are Spring beans?
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. These beans are created with the configuration metadata that
you supply to the container, for example, in the form of XML <bean/> definitions.
What does a bean definition contain?
The bean definition contains the information called configuration metadata which is needed for
the container to know the followings:
How to create a bean

Bean's lifecycle details

Bean's dependencies
How do you provide configuration metadata to the Spring Container?
There are following three important methods to provide configuration metadata to the Spring
Container:
XML based configuration file.
Annotation-based configuration
Java-based configuration
How do add a bean in spring application?
Check the following example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">
<bean >
<property name="message" value="Hello World!"/>
</bean>
</beans>

How do you define a bean scope?

When defining a <bean> in Spring, you have the option of declaring a scope for that bean. For
example, to force Spring to produce a new bean instance each time one is needed, you should
declare the bean's scope attribute to be prototype. Similar way if you want Spring to return the
same bean instance each time one is needed, you should declare the bean's scope attribute to be
singleton.
What bean scopes does Spring support? Explain them.
The Spring Framework supports following five scopes, three of which are available only if you use
a web-aware ApplicationContext.
singleton: This scopes the bean definition to a single instance per Spring IoC container.
prototype: This scopes a single bean definition to have any number of object instances.
request: This scopes a bean definition to an HTTP request. Only valid in the context of a
web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.
session: This scopes a bean definition to an HTTP session. Only valid in the context of a webaware Spring ApplicationContext.
global-session: This scopes a bean definition to a global HTTP session. Only valid in the
context of a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.
What is default scope of bean in Spring framework?
The default scope of bean is Singleton for Spring framework.
Are Singleton beans thread safe in Spring Framework?
No, singleton beans are not thread-safe in Spring framework.
Explain Bean lifecycle in Spring framework?

Following is sequence of a bean lifecycle in Spring:

Instantiate - First the spring container finds the bean's definition from the XML file and
instantiates the bean..
Populate properties - Using the dependency injection, spring populates all of the
properties as specified in the bean definition..
Set Bean Name - If the bean implements BeanNameAware interface, spring passes the
bean's id to setBeanName method.
Set Bean factory - If Bean implements BeanFactoryAware interface, spring passes the
beanfactory to setBeanFactory method.
Pre Initialization - Also called postprocess of bean. If there are any bean
BeanPostProcessors associated with the bean, Spring calls postProcesserBeforeInitialization
method.
Initialize beans - If the bean implements IntializingBean,its afterPropertySet method is
called. If the bean has init method declaration, the specified initialization method is called.
Post Initialization - If there are any BeanPostProcessors associated with the bean, their
postProcessAfterInitialization methods will be called.
Ready to use - Now the bean is ready to use by the application.
Destroy - If the bean implements DisposableBean , it will call the destroy method .
What are inner beans in Spring?
A <bean/> element inside the <property/> or <constructor-arg/> elements defines a so-called
inner 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 scoped as prototypes.
How can you inject Java Collection in Spring?
Spring offers four types of collection configuration elements which are as follows:
<list>: This helps in wiring i.e. injecting a list of values, allowing duplicates.
<set>: This helps in wiring a set of values but without any duplicates.
<map>: This can be used to inject a collection of name-value pairs where name and value
can be of any type.
<props>: This can be used to inject a collection of name-value pairs where the name and
value are both Strings.
What is bean auto wiring?
The Spring container is able to autowire relationships between collaborating beans. This means
that it is possible to automatically let Spring resolve collaborators otherbeans for your bean by
inspecting the contents of the BeanFactory without using <constructor-arg> and <property>
elements.
What are different Modes of auto wiring?
The autowiring functionality has five modes which can be used to instruct Spring container to use
autowiring for dependency injection:
no: This is default setting which means no autowiring and you should use explicit bean
reference for wiring. You have nothing to do special for this wiring. This is what you already
have seen in Dependency Injection chapter.
byName: Autowiring by property name. Spring container looks at the properties of the beans
on which autowire attribute is set to byName in the XML configuration file. It then tries to
match and wire its properties with the beans defined by the same names in the configuration

file.
byType: Autowiring by property datatype. Spring container looks at the properties of the
beans on which autowire attribute is set to byType in the XML configuration file. It then tries
to match and wire a property if its type matches with exactly one of the beans name in
configuration file. If more than one such beans exist, a fatal exception is thrown.
constructor: Similar to byType, but type applies to constructor arguments. If there is not
exactly one bean of the constructor argument type in the container, a fatal error is raised.
autodetect: Spring first tries to wire using autowire by constructor, if it does not work, Spring
tries to autowire by byType.
What are the limitations with autowiring?
Limitations of autowiring are:
Overriding possibility: You can still specify dependencies using <constructor-arg> and
<property> settings which will always override autowiring.
Primitive data types: You cannot autowire so-called simple properties such as primitives,
Strings, and Classes.
Confusing nature: Autowiring is less exact than explicit wiring, so if possible prefer using
explicit wiring.
Can you inject null and empty string values in Spring?
Yes.
What is Annotation-based container configuration?
An alternative to XML setups is provided by annotation-based configuration which relies 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.
How do you turn on annotation wiring?
Annotation wiring is not turned on in the Spring container by default. So, before we can use
annotation-based wiring, we will need to enable it in our Spring configuration file by configuring
<context:annotation-config/>.
What does @Required annotation mean?
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 BeanInitializationException if the affected bean property has not been
populated.
What does @Autowired annotation mean?
This annotation provides more fine-grained control over where and how autowiring should be
accomplished. The @Autowired annotation can be used to autowire bean on the setter method just
like @Required annotation, constructor, a property or methods with arbitrary names and/or
multiple arguments.
What does @Qualifier annotation mean?
There may be a situation when you create more than one bean of the same type and want to wire
only one of them with a property, in such case you can use @Qualifier annotation along with
@Autowired to remove the confusion by specifying which exact bean will be wired.
What are the JSR-250 Annotations? Explain them.
Spring has JSR-250 based annotations which include @PostConstruct, @PreDestroy and @Resource
annotations.

@PostConstruct: This annotation can be used as an alternate of initialization callback.

@PreDestroy: This annotation can be used as an alternate of destruction callback.
@Resource : This annotation can be used on fields or setter methods. The @Resource
annotation takes a 'name' attribute which will be interpreted as the bean name to be
injected. You can say, it follows by-name autowiring semantics.
What is Spring Java Based Configuration? Give some annotation example.
Java based configuration option enables you to write most of your Spring configuration without
XML but with the help of few Java-based annotations.
For example: Annotation @Configuration indicates that the class can be used by the Spring IoC
container as a source of bean definitions. The @Bean annotation tells Spring that a method
annotated with @Bean will return an object that should be registered as a bean in the Spring
application context.
How is event handling done in Spring?
Event handling in the ApplicationContext is provided through the ApplicationEvent class and
ApplicationListener interface. So if a bean implements the ApplicationListener, then every time an
ApplicationEvent gets published to the ApplicationContext, that bean is notified.
Describe some of the standard Spring events.
Spring provides the following standard events:
ContextRefreshedEvent: This event is published when the ApplicationContext is either
initialized or refreshed. This can also be raised using the refresh method on the
ConfigurableApplicationContext interface.
ContextStartedEvent: This event is published when the ApplicationContext is started using
the start method on the ConfigurableApplicationContext interface. You can poll your
database or you can re/start any stopped application after receiving this event.
ContextStoppedEvent: This event is published when the ApplicationContext is stopped
using the stop method on the ConfigurableApplicationContext interface. You can do required
housekeep work after receiving this event.
ContextClosedEvent: This event is published when the ApplicationContext is closed using
the close method on the ConfigurableApplicationContext interface. A closed context reaches
its end of life; it cannot be refreshed or restarted.
RequestHandledEvent: This is a web-specific event telling all beans that an HTTP request
has been serviced.
What is Aspect?
A module which has a set of APIs providing cross-cutting requirements. For example, a logging
module would be called AOP aspect for logging. An application can have any number of aspects
depending on the requirement. In Spring AOP, aspects are implemented using regular classes
theschema basedapproach or regular classes annotated with the @Aspect annotation @AspectJ style.
What is the difference between concern and cross-cutting concern in Spring AOP?
Concern: Concern is behavior which we want to have in a module of an application. Concern may
be defined as a functionality we want to implement. Issues in which we are interested define our
concerns.
Cross-cutting concern: It's a concern which is applicable throughout the application and it
affects the entire application. e.g. logging , security and data transfer are the concerns which are
needed in almost every module of an application, hence are cross-cutting concerns.
What is Join point?
This represents a point in your application where you can plug-in AOP aspect. You can also say, it is
the actual place in the application where an action will be taken using Spring AOP framework.

What is Advice?
This is the actual action to be taken either before or after the method execution. This is actual
piece of code that is invoked during program execution by Spring AOP framework.
What is Pointcut?
This is a set of one or more joinpoints where an advice should be executed. You can specify
pointcuts using expressions or patterns as we will see in our AOP examples.
What is Introduction?
An introduction allows you to add new methods or attributes to existing classes.
What is Target object?
The object being advised by one or more aspects, this object will always be a proxy object. Also
referred to as the advised object.
What is Weaving?
Weaving is the process of linking aspects with other application types or objects to create an
advised object.
What are the different points where weaving can be applied?
Weaving can be done at compile time, load time, or at runtime.
What are the types of advice?
Spring aspects can work with five kinds of advice mentioned below:
before: Run advice before the a method execution.
after: Run advice after the a method execution regardless of its outcome.
after-returning: Run advice after the a method execution only if method completes
successfully.
after-throwing: Run advice after the a method execution only if method exits by throwing
an exception.
around: Run advice before and after the advised method is invoked.
What is XML Schema based aspect implementation?
Aspects are implemented using regular classes along with XML based configuration.
What is @AspectJ? based aspect implementation?
@AspectJ refers to a style of declaring aspects as regular Java classes annotated with Java 5
annotations.
How JDBC can be used more efficiently in spring framework?
JDBC can be used more efficiently with the help of a template class provided by spring framework
called as JdbcTemplate.
How JdbcTemplate can be used?
With use of Spring JDBC framework the burden of resource management and error handling is
reduced a lot. So it leaves developers to write the statements and queries to get the data to and
from the database. JdbcTemplate provides many convenience methods for doing things such as
converting database data into primitives or objects, executing prepared and callable statements,
and providing custom database error handling.
What are the types of the transaction management Spring supports?

Spring supports two types of transaction management:

Programmatic transaction management: This means that you have managed the
transaction with the help of programming. That gives you extreme flexibility, but it is difficult
to maintain.
Declarative transaction management: This means you separate transaction
management from the business code. You only use annotations or XML based configuration
to manage the transactions.
Which of the above transaction management type is preferable?
Declarative transaction management is preferable over programmatic transaction management
though it is less flexible than programmatic transaction management, which allows you to control
transactions through your code.
What is Spring MVC framework?
The Spring web MVC framework provides model-view-controller architecture and ready
components that can be used to develop flexible and loosely coupled web applications. The MVC
pattern results in separating the different aspects of the application input logic, business logic, and
UI logic, while providing a loose coupling between these elements.
What is a DispatcherServlet?
The Spring Web MVC framework is designed around a DispatcherServlet that handles all the HTTP
requests and responses.
What is WebApplicationContext ?
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, and that it knows which servlet it is associated with.
What are the advantages of Spring MVC over Struts MVC ?
Following are some of the advantages of Spring MVC over Struts MVC:
Spring's MVC is very versatile and flexible based on interfaces but Struts forces Actions and
Form object into concrete inheritance.
Spring provides both interceptors and controllers, thus helps to factor out common behavior
to the handling of many requests.
Spring can be configured with different view technologies like Freemarker, JSP, Tiles,
Velocity, XLST etc. and also you can create your own custom view mechanism by
implementing Spring View interface.
In Spring MVC Controllers can be configured using DI IOC that makes its testing and
integration easy.
Web tier of Spring MVC is easy to test than Struts web tier, because of the avoidance of
forced concrete inheritance and explicit dependence of controllers on the dispatcher servlet.
Struts force your Controllers to extend a Struts class but Spring doesn't, there are many
convenience Controller implementations that you can choose to extend.
In Struts, Actions are coupled to the view by defining ActionForwards within a ActionMapping
or globally. SpringMVC has HandlerMapping interface to support this functionality.
With Struts, validation is usually performed implemented in the validate method of an
ActionForm. In SpringMVC, validators are business objects that are NOT dependent on the
Servlet API which makes these validators to be reused in your business logic before
persisting a domain object to a database.
What is Controller in Spring MVC framework?
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.
Explain the @Controller annotation.
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.
Explain @RequestMapping annotation.
@RequestMapping annotation is used to map a URL to either an entire class or a particular handler
method.
What are the ways to access Hibernate by using Spring?
There are two ways to access hibernate using spring:
Inversion of Control with a Hibernate Template and Callback.
Extending HibernateDAOSupport and Applying an AOP Interceptor node.
What are ORM's Spring supports ?
Spring supports the following ORM's :
Hibernate
iBatis
JPA Java Persistence API
TopLink
JDO Java Data Objects
OJB

What is Next ?
Further you can go through your past assignments you have done with the subject and make sure
you are able to speak confidently on them. If you are fresher then interviewer does not expect you
will answer very complex questions, rather you have to make your basics concepts very strong.
Second it really doesn't matter much if you could not answer few questions but it matters that
whatever you answered, you must have answered with confidence. So just feel confident during
your interview. We at tutorialspoint wish you best luck to have a good interviewer and all the very
best for your future endeavor. Cheers :-)
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