Spring Interview Questions

Q. 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 Java EE development easier to use and
promote good programming practice by enabling a POJO-based programming
model.

Q. What are benefits of 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, with

the Inversion of Control technique. The objects give their dependencies instead
of creating or looking for dependent objects.

Aspect oriented (AOP):Spring supports Aspect oriented programming and

separates application business logic from system services.

Container:Spring contains and manages the life cycle and configuration of

application objects.

MVC Framework:Springs web framework is a well-designed web MVC

framework, which provides a great alternative to web frameworks.

Transaction Management:Spring provides a consistent transaction

management interface that can scale down to a local transaction and scale up to
global transactions (JTA).

Exception Handling:Spring provides a convenient API to translate technologyspecific exceptions (thrown by JDBC, Hibernate, or JDO) into consistent,
unchecked exceptions.

Q. Which are the Spring framework modules?

The basic modules of the Spring framework are :

Core module

Bean module

Context module

Expression Language module

JDBC module

ORM module

OXM module

Java Messaging Service(JMS) module

Transaction module

Web module

Web-Servlet module

Web-Struts module

Web-Portlet module

Q. Explain the Core Container (Application context) module

This is the basic Spring module, which provides the fundamental functionality of the
Spring framework. BeanFactory is the heart of any spring-based application. Spring
framework was built on the top of this module, which makes the Spring container.

Q. BeanFactory BeanFactory implementation example

A BeanFactory is an implementation of the factory pattern that applies Inversion of
Control to separate the applications configuration and dependencies from the
actual application code.
The most commonly used BeanFactory implementation is the XmlBeanFactory class.

Q. XMLBeanFactory
The most useful one is org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanFactory,
which loads its beans based on the definitions contained in an XML file. This
container reads the configuration metadata from an XML file and uses it to create a
fully configured system or application.

Q. Explain the AOP module

The AOP module is used for developing aspects for our Spring-enabled application.
Much of the support has been provided by the AOP Alliance in order to ensure the
interoperability between Spring and other AOP frameworks. This module also
introduces metadata programming to Spring.

Q. Explain the JDBC abstraction and DAO module

With the JDBC abstraction and DAO module we can be sure that we keep up the
database code clean and simple, and prevent problems that result from a failure to
close database resources. It provides a layer of meaningful exceptions on top of the
error messages given by several database servers. It also makes use of Springs
AOP module to provide transaction management services for objects in a Spring
application.

Q. Explain the object/relational mapping integration module

Spring also supports for using of an object/relational mapping (ORM) tool over
straight JDBC by providing the ORM module. Spring provides support to tie into
several popular ORM frameworks, including Hibernate, JDO, and iBATIS SQL Maps.
Springs transaction management supports each of these ORM frameworks as well
as JDBC.

Q. Explain the web module

The Spring web module is built on the application context module, providing a
context that is appropriate for web-based applications. This module also contains
support for several web-oriented tasks such as transparently handling multipart
requests for file uploads and programmatic binding of request parameters to your
business objects. It also contains integration support with Jakarta Struts.

Q. Explain the Spring MVC module

MVC framework is provided by Spring for building web applications. Spring can
easily be integrated with other MVC frameworks, but Springs MVC framework is a
better choice, since it uses IoC to provide for a clean separation of controller logic
from business objects. With Spring MVC you can declaratively bind request
parameters to your business objects.

Q. 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.

Q. What is Spring IoC container?

The Spring IoC is responsible for creating the objects,managing them (with
dependency injection (DI)), wiring them together, configuring them, as also
managing their complete lifecycle.

Q. What are the benefits of IOC?

IOC or dependency injection minimizes the amount of code in an application. It

makes easy to test applications, since no singletons or JNDI lookup mechanisms are
required in unit tests. Loose coupling is promoted with minimal effort and least
intrusive mechanism. IOC containers support eager instantiation and lazy loading of
services.

Q. What are the common implementations of the

ApplicationContext?
FileSystemXmlApplicationContext container loads the definitions of the beans
from an XML file. The full path of the XML bean configuration file must be provided
to the constructor.
ClassPathXmlApplicationContext container also loads the definitions of the
beans from an XML file. Here, you need to set CLASSPATH properly because this
container will look bean configuration XML file in CLASSPATH.
WebXmlApplicationContext: container loads the XML file with definitions of all
beans from within a web application.

Q. What is the difference between Bean Factory and

ApplicationContext?
Application contexts provide a means for resolving text messages, a generic way to
load file resources (such as images), they can publish events to beans that are
registered as listeners. In addition, 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.

Q. What does a Spring application look like?

An interface that defines the functions.

The implementation that contains properties, its setter and getter methods,
functions etc.,

Spring AOP

The Spring configuration XML file.

Client program that uses the function

Q. What is Dependency Injection in Spring?

Dependency Injection, an aspect of Inversion of Control (IoC), is a general concept,
and it can be expressed in many different ways.This concept says that you do not
create your objects but describe how they should be created. You dont directly
connect your components and services together in code but describe which services
are needed by which components in a configuration file. A container (the IOC
container) is then responsible for hooking it all up.

Q. What are the different types of IoC (dependency injection)?

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 no-argument static factory method to instantiate your bean.

Q. Which DI would you suggest Constructor-based or setter-based

DI?

You can use both Constructor-based and Setter-based Dependency Injection. The
best solution is using constructor arguments for mandatory dependencies and
setters for optional dependencies.

Q. What are Spring beans?

The Spring Beans are Java Objects that form the backbone of a Spring application.
They are instantiated, assembled, and managed by the Spring IoC container. These
beans are created with the configuration metadata that is supplied to the container,
for example, in the form of XML <bean/> definitions.
Beans defined in spring framework are singleton beans. There is an attribute in
bean tag named singleton if specified true then bean becomes singleton and if set
to false then the bean becomes a prototype bean. By default it is set to true. So, all
the beans in spring framework are by default singleton beans.

Q. What does a Spring Bean definition contain?

A Spring Bean definition contains all configuration metadata which is needed for the
container to know how to create a bean, its lifecycle details and its dependencies.

Q. How do you provide configuration metadata to the Spring

Container?
There are three important methods to provide configuration metadata to the Spring
Container:

XML based configuration file.

Annotation-based configuration

Java-based configuration

Q. How do you define the scope of a bean?

When defining a <bean> in Spring, we can also declare a scope for the bean. It can
be defined through the scope attribute in the bean definition. For example, when
Spring has to produce a new bean instance each time one is needed, the beans
scope attribute to be prototype. On the other hand, when the same instance of a
bean must be returned by Spring every time it is needed, the the
bean scope attribute must be set to singleton.

Q. Explain the bean scopes supported by Spring

There are five scoped provided by the Spring Framework supports following five
scopes:

singleton scope, Spring scopes the bean definition to a single instance per
Spring IoC container.

prototype scope, a single bean definition has any number of object instances.

request scope, a bean is defined to an HTTP request. This scope is valid only in
a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.

session scope, a bean definition is scoped to an HTTP session. This scope is also
valid only in a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.

global-session scope, a bean definition is scoped to a global HTTP session. This

is also a case used in a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.

The default scope of a Spring Bean is Singleton.

Q. Are Singleton beans thread safe in Spring Framework?

No, singleton beans are not thread-safe in Spring framework.

Q. Explain Bean lifecycle in Spring framework

The spring container finds the beans definition from the XML file and
instantiates the bean.

Spring populates all of the properties as specified in the bean definition (DI).

If the bean implementsBeanNameAware interface, spring passes the beans id

to setBeanName()

If Bean implementsBeanFactoryAware interface, spring passes

the beanfactory to setBeanFactory()

If there are any beanBeanPostProcessors associated with the bean, Spring

calls postProcesserBeforeInitialization()

If the bean implementsIntializingBean, its afterPropertySet() method is called. If

the bean has init method declaration, the specified initialization method is
called.

If there are any BeanPostProcessors associated with the bean, their

postProcessAfterInitialization() methods will be called.

If the bean implementsDisposableBean, it will call the destroy()

Q. Which are the important beans lifecycle methods? Can you

override them?
There are two important bean lifecycle methods. The first one is setup which is
called when the bean is loaded in to the container. The second method is
the teardown method which is called when the bean is unloaded from the container.
The bean tag has two important attributes (init-method and destroy-method) with
which you can define your own custom initialization and destroy methods. There are
also the correspondive annotations(@PostConstruct and @PreDestroy).

Q. What are inner beans in Spring?

When a bean is only used as a property of another bean it can be declared as an
inner bean. Springs XML-based configuration metadata provides the use
of <bean/> element inside the <property/> or <constructor-arg/> elements of a

bean definition, in order to define the so-called inner bean. Inner beans are always
anonymous and they are always scoped as prototypes.

Q. How can you inject a Java Collection in Spring?

Spring offers the following types of collection configuration elements:

The<list> type is used for injecting a list of values, in the case that duplicates
are allowed.

The<set> type is used for wiring a set of values but without any duplicates.

The<map> type is used to inject a collection of name-value pairs where

name and value can be of any type.

The<props> type can be used to inject a collection of name-value pairs

where the name and value are both Strings.

Q. What is bean wiring?

Wiring, or else bean wiring is the case when beans are combined together within
the Spring container. When wiring beans, the Spring container needs to know what
beans are needed and how the container should use dependency injection to tie
them together.

Q. 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 (other
beans) for a bean by inspecting the contents of the BeanFactorywithout
using <constructor-arg> and <property> elements.

Q. Explain 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. Explicit bean reference should be used for wiring.

byName:When autowiring byName, the Spring container looks at the properties

of the beans on which autowireattribute 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:When autowiring by datatype, the Spring container looks at the

properties of the beans on which autowireattribute 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:This mode is 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 bybyType.

Q. Are there limitations with autowiring?

Limitations of autowiring are:

Overriding: You can still specify dependencies using<constructorarg> and <property> settings which will always override autowiring.

Primitive data types:You cannot autowire simple properties such as primitives,

Strings, and Classes.

Confusing nature:Autowiring is less exact than explicit wiring, so if possible

prefer using explicit wiring.

Q. Can you inject null and empty string values in Spring?

Yes, you can.

Q. 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.
An example is the @Configuration annotation, that indicates that the class can be
used by the Spring IoC container as a source of bean definitions. Another example is
the@Bean annotated method that will return an object that should be registered as
a bean in the Spring application context.

Q. 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.

Q. How do you turn on annotation wiring?

Annotation wiring is not turned on in the Spring container by default. In order to use
annotation based wiring we must enable it in our Spring configuration file by
configuring <context:annotation-config/> element.

Q. @Required annotation
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.

Q. @Autowired annotation
The @Autowired annotation provides more fine-grained control over where and how
autowiring should be accomplished. It can be used to autowire bean on the setter
method just like @Required annotation, on the constructor, on a property or pn
methods with arbitrary names and/or multiple arguments.

Q. @Qualifier annotation
When there are more than one beans of the same type and only one is needed to be
wired with a property, the@Qualifier annotation is used along
with @Autowired annotation to remove the confusion by specifying which exact
bean will be wired.

Q. How can JDBC be used more efficiently in the Spring

framework?
When using the Spring JDBC framework the burden of resource management and
error handling is reduced. So developers only need to write the statements and
queries to get the data to and from the database. JDBC can be used more efficiently
with the help of a template class provided by Spring framework, which is
the JdbcTemplate

Q. JdbcTemplate

JdbcTemplate class 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.

Q. Spring DAO support

The Data Access Object (DAO) support in Spring is aimed at making it easy to work
with data access technologies like JDBC, Hibernate or JDO in a consistent way. This
allows us to switch between the persistence technologies fairly easily and to code
without worrying about catching exceptions that are specific to each technology.

Q. What are the ways to access Hibernate by using Spring?

There are two ways to access Hibernate with Spring:

Inversion of Control with a Hibernate Template and Callback.

Extending HibernateDAOSupport and Applying an AOP Interceptor node.

Q. ORMs Spring support

Spring supports the following ORMs:

Hibernate

iBatis

JPA (Java Persistence API)

TopLink

JDO (Java Data Objects)

OJB

Q. How can we integrate Spring and Hibernate using

HibernateDaoSupport?
Use Springs SessionFactory called LocalSessionFactory. The integration process is of
3 steps:

Configure the Hibernate SessionFactory

Extend a DAO Implementation fromHibernateDaoSupport

Wire in Transaction Support with AOP

Q. Types of the transaction management Spring support

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.

Q. What are the benefits of the Spring Frameworks transaction

management?

It provides a consistent programming model across different transaction APIs

such as JTA, JDBC, Hibernate, JPA, and JDO.

It provides a simpler API for programmatic transaction management than a

number of complex transaction APIs such as JTA.

It supports declarative transaction management.

It integrates very well with Springs various data access abstractions.

Q. Which Transaction management type is more preferable?

Most users of the Spring Framework choose declarative transaction management
because it is the option with the least impact on application code, and hence is
most consistent with the ideals of a non-invasive lightweight container. 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.

Q. Explain 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.

Q. Aspect
The core construct of AOP is the aspect, which encapsulates behaviors affecting
multiple classes into reusable modules. It ia 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 annotated with the @Aspect annotation (@AspectJ style).

Q. What is the difference between concern and cross-cutting

concern in Spring AOP
The Concern is behavior we want to have in a module of an application. A Concern
may be defined as a functionality we want to implement.
The cross-cutting concern is a concern which is applicable throughout the
application and it affects the entire application. For example, logging, security and

data transfer are the concerns which are needed in almost every module of an
application, hence they are cross-cutting concerns.

Q. Join point
The join point represents a point in an application where we can plug-in an AOP
aspect. It is the actual place in the application where an action will be taken using
Spring AOP framework.

Q. Advice
The advice is the actual action that will be taken either before or after the method
execution. This is actual piece of code that is invoked during the program execution
by the Spring AOP framework.
Spring aspects can work with five kinds of advice:

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.

Q. Pointcut
The pointcut is a set of one or more joinpoints where an advice should be executed.
You can specify pointcuts using expressions or patterns.

Q. What is Introduction?
An Introduction allows us to add new methods or attributes to existing classes.

Q. What is Target object?

The target object is an object being advised by one or more aspects. It will always
be a proxy object. It is also referred to as the advised object.

Q. What is a Proxy?
A proxy is an object that is created after applying advice to a target object. When
you think of client objects the target object and the proxy object are the same.

Q. What are the different types of AutoProxying?

BeanNameAutoProxyCreator

DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator

Metadata autoproxying

Q. What is Weaving? What are the different points where weaving

can be applied?
Weaving is the process of linking aspects with other application types or objects to
create an advised object.
Weaving can be done at compile time, at load time, or at runtime.

Q. Explain XML Schema-based aspect implementation?

In this implementation case, aspects are implemented using regular classes along
with XML based configuration.

Q. Explain annotation-based (@AspectJ based) aspect

implementation
This implementation case (@AspectJ based implementation) refers to a style of
declaring aspects as regular Java classes annotated with Java 5 annotations.

Q. What is Spring MVC framework?

Spring comes with a full-featured MVC framework for building web applications.
Although Spring can easily be integrated with other MVC frameworks, such as
Struts, Springs MVC framework uses IoC to provide a clean separation of controller
logic from business objects. It also allows to declaratively bind request parameters
to business objects.

Q. DispatcherServlet
The Spring Web MVC framework is designed around a DispatcherServlet that
handles all the HTTP requests and responses.

Q. 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.

Q. 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.

Q. @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.

Q. @RequestMapping annotation
@RequestMapping annotation is used to map a URL to either an entire class or a
particular handler method.