Spring Framework Reference Documentation

4.3.10.RELEASE

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 , Rob Winch , Brian Clozel , Stephane Nicoll , Sebastien Deleuze
 Copyright 2004-2016

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.
 Spring Framework Reference Documentation

Table of Contents
I. Overview of Spring Framework ................................................................................................ 1
1. Getting Started with Spring ............................................................................................. 2
2. Introduction to the Spring Framework .............................................................................. 3
2.1. Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control ...................................................... 3
2.2. Framework Modules ............................................................................................ 3
Core Container .................................................................................................. 4
AOP and Instrumentation ................................................................................... 5
Messaging ......................................................................................................... 5
Data Access/Integration ...................................................................................... 5
Web .................................................................................................................. 5
Test ................................................................................................................... 6
2.3. Usage scenarios ................................................................................................. 6
Dependency Management and Naming Conventions ............................................ 9
Spring Dependencies and Depending on Spring ......................................... 11
Maven Dependency Management ............................................................. 11
Maven "Bill Of Materials" Dependency ....................................................... 12
Gradle Dependency Management ............................................................. 12
Ivy Dependency Management ................................................................... 13
Distribution Zip Files ................................................................................. 13
Logging ............................................................................................................ 13
Using Log4j 1.2 or 2.x .............................................................................. 14
Avoiding Commons Logging ...................................................................... 15
Using SLF4J with Log4j or Logback .......................................................... 15
Using JUL (java.util.logging) ...................................................................... 16
Commons Logging on WebSphere ............................................................ 17
II. Whats New in Spring Framework 4.x .................................................................................... 18
3. New Features and Enhancements in Spring Framework 4.0 ............................................ 19
3.1. Improved Getting Started Experience .................................................................. 19
3.2. Removed Deprecated Packages and Methods .................................................... 19
3.3. Java 8 (as well as 6 and 7) ............................................................................... 19
3.4. Java EE 6 and 7 ............................................................................................... 20
3.5. Groovy Bean Definition DSL .............................................................................. 20
3.6. Core Container Improvements ............................................................................ 20
3.7. General Web Improvements ............................................................................... 21
3.8. WebSocket, SockJS, and STOMP Messaging ..................................................... 21
3.9. Testing Improvements ........................................................................................ 22
4. New Features and Enhancements in Spring Framework 4.1 ............................................ 23
4.1. JMS Improvements ............................................................................................ 23
4.2. Caching Improvements ...................................................................................... 23
4.3. Web Improvements ............................................................................................ 24
4.4. WebSocket Messaging Improvements ................................................................. 25
4.5. Testing Improvements ........................................................................................ 25
5. New Features and Enhancements in Spring Framework 4.2 ............................................ 27
5.1. Core Container Improvements ............................................................................ 27
5.2. Data Access Improvements ................................................................................ 29
5.3. JMS Improvements ............................................................................................ 29
5.4. Web Improvements ............................................................................................ 29

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5.5. WebSocket Messaging Improvements ................................................................. 30

5.6. Testing Improvements ........................................................................................ 31
6. New Features and Enhancements in Spring Framework 4.3 ............................................ 33
6.1. Core Container Improvements ............................................................................ 33
6.2. Data Access Improvements ................................................................................ 33
6.3. Caching Improvements ...................................................................................... 34
6.4. JMS Improvements ............................................................................................ 34
6.5. Web Improvements ............................................................................................ 34
6.6. WebSocket Messaging Improvements ................................................................. 35
6.7. Testing Improvements ........................................................................................ 35
6.8. Support for new library and server generations .................................................... 36
III. Core Technologies .............................................................................................................. 37
7. The IoC container ........................................................................................................ 38
7.1. Introduction to the Spring IoC container and beans .............................................. 38
7.2. Container overview ............................................................................................ 38
Configuration metadata ..................................................................................... 39
Instantiating a container .................................................................................... 40
Composing XML-based configuration metadata .......................................... 41
The Groovy Bean Definition DSL .............................................................. 42
Using the container .......................................................................................... 43
7.3. Bean overview ................................................................................................... 43
Naming beans .................................................................................................. 44
Aliasing a bean outside the bean definition ................................................ 45
Instantiating beans ........................................................................................... 46
Instantiation with a constructor .................................................................. 47
Instantiation with a static factory method .................................................... 47
Instantiation using an instance factory method ........................................... 47
7.4. Dependencies ................................................................................................... 49
Dependency Injection ....................................................................................... 49
Constructor-based dependency injection .................................................... 49
Setter-based dependency injection ............................................................ 51
Dependency resolution process ................................................................. 52
Examples of dependency injection ............................................................. 53
Dependencies and configuration in detail ........................................................... 55
Straight values (primitives, Strings, and so on) ........................................... 55
References to other beans (collaborators) .................................................. 57
Inner beans .............................................................................................. 58
Collections ............................................................................................... 58
Null and empty string values ..................................................................... 60
XML shortcut with the p-namespace .......................................................... 61
XML shortcut with the c-namespace .......................................................... 62
Compound property names ....................................................................... 63
Using depends-on ............................................................................................ 63
Lazy-initialized beans ....................................................................................... 63
Autowiring collaborators .................................................................................... 64
Limitations and disadvantages of autowiring ............................................... 65
Excluding a bean from autowiring .............................................................. 66
Method injection ............................................................................................... 66
Lookup method injection ........................................................................... 67
Arbitrary method replacement ................................................................... 69

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7.5. Bean scopes ..................................................................................................... 70

The singleton scope ......................................................................................... 71
The prototype scope ......................................................................................... 72
Singleton beans with prototype-bean dependencies ............................................ 73
Request, session, global session, application, and WebSocket scopes ................. 73
Initial web configuration ............................................................................ 74
Request scope ......................................................................................... 74
Session scope .......................................................................................... 75
Global session scope ............................................................................... 75
Application scope ..................................................................................... 75
Scoped beans as dependencies ................................................................ 76
Custom scopes ................................................................................................ 78
Creating a custom scope .......................................................................... 78
Using a custom scope .............................................................................. 79
7.6. Customizing the nature of a bean ....................................................................... 80
Lifecycle callbacks ............................................................................................ 80
Initialization callbacks ............................................................................... 81
Destruction callbacks ................................................................................ 81
Default initialization and destroy methods .................................................. 82
Combining lifecycle mechanisms ............................................................... 83
Startup and shutdown callbacks ................................................................ 84
Shutting down the Spring IoC container gracefully in non-web applications
................................................................................................................. 86
ApplicationContextAware and BeanNameAware ................................................. 86
Other Aware interfaces ..................................................................................... 87
7.7. Bean definition inheritance ................................................................................. 88
7.8. Container Extension Points ................................................................................ 90
Customizing beans using a BeanPostProcessor ................................................. 90
Example: Hello World, BeanPostProcessor-style ........................................ 91
Example: The RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor ............................... 93
Customizing configuration metadata with a BeanFactoryPostProcessor ................ 93
Example: the Class name substitution PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer .......... 94
Example: the PropertyOverrideConfigurer .................................................. 95
Customizing instantiation logic with a FactoryBean ............................................. 96
7.9. Annotation-based container configuration ............................................................ 96
@Required ....................................................................................................... 98
@Autowired ..................................................................................................... 98
Fine-tuning annotation-based autowiring with @Primary .................................... 101
Fine-tuning annotation-based autowiring with qualifiers ..................................... 102
Using generics as autowiring qualifiers ............................................................ 107
CustomAutowireConfigurer .............................................................................. 108
@Resource .................................................................................................... 108
@PostConstruct and @PreDestroy .................................................................. 110
7.10. Classpath scanning and managed components ................................................ 110
@Component and further stereotype annotations ............................................. 110
Meta-annotations ............................................................................................ 111
Automatically detecting classes and registering bean definitions ........................ 112
Using filters to customize scanning .................................................................. 113
Defining bean metadata within components ..................................................... 114
Naming autodetected components ................................................................... 117

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Providing a scope for autodetected components ............................................... 117

Providing qualifier metadata with annotations ................................................... 118
7.11. Using JSR 330 Standard Annotations ............................................................. 119
Dependency Injection with @Inject and @Named ............................................. 119
@Named and @ManagedBean: standard equivalents to the @Component
annotation ...................................................................................................... 120
Limitations of JSR-330 standard annotations .................................................... 121
7.12. Java-based container configuration ................................................................. 122
Basic concepts: @Bean and @Configuration ................................................... 122
Instantiating the Spring container using AnnotationConfigApplicationContext ....... 123
Simple construction ................................................................................ 123
Building the container programmatically using register(Class<?>) ........... 124
Enabling component scanning with scan(String) .................................... 124
Support for web applications with AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext
............................................................................................................... 125
Using the @Bean annotation .......................................................................... 126
Declaring a bean .................................................................................... 126
Bean dependencies ................................................................................ 127
Receiving lifecycle callbacks ................................................................... 127
Specifying bean scope ............................................................................ 129
Customizing bean naming ....................................................................... 130
Bean aliasing ......................................................................................... 130
Bean description ..................................................................................... 130
Using the @Configuration annotation ............................................................... 130
Injecting inter-bean dependencies ............................................................ 130
Lookup method injection ......................................................................... 131
Further information about how Java-based configuration works internally.... 132
Composing Java-based configurations ............................................................. 133
Using the @Import annotation ................................................................. 133
Conditionally include @Configuration classes or @Bean methods .............. 137
Combining Java and XML configuration ................................................... 138
7.13. Environment abstraction ................................................................................. 140
Bean definition profiles ................................................................................... 140
@Profile ................................................................................................. 141
XML bean definition profiles .................................................................... 143
Activating a profile .................................................................................. 144
Default profile ......................................................................................... 144
PropertySource abstraction ............................................................................. 145
@PropertySource ........................................................................................... 146
Placeholder resolution in statements ................................................................ 147
7.14. Registering a LoadTimeWeaver ...................................................................... 147
7.15. Additional Capabilities of the ApplicationContext .............................................. 148
Internationalization using MessageSource ........................................................ 148
Standard and Custom Events .......................................................................... 151
Annotation-based Event Listeners ............................................................ 154
Asynchronous Listeners .......................................................................... 156
Ordering Listeners .................................................................................. 156
Generic Events ....................................................................................... 156
Convenient access to low-level resources ........................................................ 157
Convenient ApplicationContext instantiation for web applications ....................... 157

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Deploying a Spring ApplicationContext as a Java EE RAR file ........................... 158

7.16. The BeanFactory ........................................................................................... 158
BeanFactory or ApplicationContext? ................................................................ 159
Glue code and the evil singleton ..................................................................... 160
8. Resources .................................................................................................................. 161
8.1. Introduction ..................................................................................................... 161
8.2. The Resource interface .................................................................................... 161
8.3. Built-in Resource implementations .................................................................... 162
UrlResource ................................................................................................... 162
ClassPathResource ........................................................................................ 162
FileSystemResource ....................................................................................... 163
ServletContextResource .................................................................................. 163
InputStreamResource ..................................................................................... 163
ByteArrayResource ......................................................................................... 163
8.4. The ResourceLoader ....................................................................................... 163
8.5. The ResourceLoaderAware interface ................................................................ 164
8.6. Resources as dependencies ............................................................................. 165
8.7. Application contexts and Resource paths .......................................................... 165
Constructing application contexts ..................................................................... 165
Constructing ClassPathXmlApplicationContext instances - shortcuts .......... 166
Wildcards in application context constructor resource paths ............................... 166
Ant-style Patterns ................................................................................... 167
The Classpath*: portability classpath*: prefix ............................................ 167
Other notes relating to wildcards ............................................................. 168
FileSystemResource caveats .......................................................................... 168
9. Validation, Data Binding, and Type Conversion ............................................................ 170
9.1. Introduction ..................................................................................................... 170
9.2. Validation using Springs Validator interface ...................................................... 170
9.3. Resolving codes to error messages .................................................................. 172
9.4. Bean manipulation and the BeanWrapper ......................................................... 173
Setting and getting basic and nested properties ............................................... 173
Built-in PropertyEditor implementations ............................................................ 175
Registering additional custom PropertyEditors .......................................... 178
9.5. Spring Type Conversion ................................................................................... 180
Converter SPI ................................................................................................ 180
ConverterFactory ............................................................................................ 181
GenericConverter ........................................................................................... 181
ConditionalGenericConverter ................................................................... 182
ConversionService API ................................................................................... 182
Configuring a ConversionService ..................................................................... 183
Using a ConversionService programmatically ................................................... 184
9.6. Spring Field Formatting .................................................................................... 184
Formatter SPI ................................................................................................. 185
Annotation-driven Formatting ........................................................................... 186
Format Annotation API ............................................................................ 187
FormatterRegistry SPI ..................................................................................... 187
FormatterRegistrar SPI ................................................................................... 188
Configuring Formatting in Spring MVC ............................................................. 188
9.7. Configuring a global date & time format ............................................................ 188
9.8. Spring Validation ............................................................................................. 190

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Overview of the JSR-303 Bean Validation API ................................................. 190

Configuring a Bean Validation Provider ............................................................ 190
Injecting a Validator ................................................................................ 191
Configuring Custom Constraints .............................................................. 191
Spring-driven Method Validation .............................................................. 192
Additional Configuration Options .............................................................. 192
Configuring a DataBinder ................................................................................ 192
Spring MVC 3 Validation ................................................................................. 193
10. Spring Expression Language (SpEL) ......................................................................... 194
10.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 194
10.2. Feature Overview ........................................................................................... 194
10.3. Expression Evaluation using Springs Expression Interface ............................... 195
The EvaluationContext interface ...................................................................... 197
Type Conversion .................................................................................... 197
Parser configuration ........................................................................................ 198
SpEL compilation ............................................................................................ 198
Compiler configuration ............................................................................ 199
Compiler limitations ................................................................................ 200
10.4. Expression support for defining bean definitions ............................................... 200
XML based configuration ................................................................................ 200
Annotation-based configuration ........................................................................ 201
10.5. Language Reference ...................................................................................... 202
Literal expressions .......................................................................................... 202
Properties, Arrays, Lists, Maps, Indexers ......................................................... 202
Inline lists ....................................................................................................... 203
Inline Maps .................................................................................................... 203
Array construction ........................................................................................... 204
Methods ......................................................................................................... 204
Operators ....................................................................................................... 204
Relational operators ................................................................................ 204
Logical operators .................................................................................... 205
Mathematical operators ........................................................................... 205
Assignment .................................................................................................... 206
Types ............................................................................................................. 206
Constructors ................................................................................................... 206
Variables ........................................................................................................ 207
The #this and #root variables .................................................................. 207
Functions ....................................................................................................... 207
Bean references ............................................................................................. 208
Ternary Operator (If-Then-Else) ....................................................................... 208
The Elvis Operator ......................................................................................... 208
Safe Navigation operator ................................................................................ 209
Collection Selection ........................................................................................ 209
Collection Projection ....................................................................................... 210
Expression templating ..................................................................................... 210
10.6. Classes used in the examples ........................................................................ 211
11. Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring ................................................................. 215
11.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 215
AOP concepts ................................................................................................ 215
Spring AOP capabilities and goals ................................................................... 217

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AOP Proxies .................................................................................................. 218

11.2. @AspectJ support .......................................................................................... 218
Enabling @AspectJ Support ............................................................................ 218
Enabling @AspectJ Support with Java configuration ................................. 218
Enabling @AspectJ Support with XML configuration ................................. 219
Declaring an aspect ........................................................................................ 219
Declaring a pointcut ........................................................................................ 220
Supported Pointcut Designators .............................................................. 220
Combining pointcut expressions .............................................................. 222
Sharing common pointcut definitions ........................................................ 222
Examples ............................................................................................... 224
Writing good pointcuts ............................................................................ 226
Declaring advice ............................................................................................. 227
Before advice ......................................................................................... 227
After returning advice .............................................................................. 227
After throwing advice .............................................................................. 228
After (finally) advice ................................................................................ 229
Around advice ........................................................................................ 229
Advice parameters .................................................................................. 230
Advice ordering ...................................................................................... 233
Introductions ................................................................................................... 234
Aspect instantiation models ............................................................................. 234
Example ......................................................................................................... 235
11.3. Schema-based AOP support .......................................................................... 237
Declaring an aspect ........................................................................................ 237
Declaring a pointcut ........................................................................................ 238
Declaring advice ............................................................................................. 239
Before advice ......................................................................................... 239
After returning advice .............................................................................. 240
After throwing advice .............................................................................. 240
After (finally) advice ................................................................................ 241
Around advice ........................................................................................ 241
Advice parameters .................................................................................. 242
Advice ordering ...................................................................................... 243
Introductions ................................................................................................... 244
Aspect instantiation models ............................................................................. 244
Advisors ......................................................................................................... 244
Example ......................................................................................................... 245
11.4. Choosing which AOP declaration style to use .................................................. 247
Spring AOP or full AspectJ? ........................................................................... 247
@AspectJ or XML for Spring AOP? ................................................................. 248
11.5. Mixing aspect types ....................................................................................... 248
11.6. Proxying mechanisms .................................................................................... 249
Understanding AOP proxies ............................................................................ 249
11.7. Programmatic creation of @AspectJ Proxies ................................................... 252
11.8. Using AspectJ with Spring applications ........................................................... 252
Using AspectJ to dependency inject domain objects with Spring ........................ 252
Unit testing @Configurable objects .......................................................... 255
Working with multiple application contexts ................................................ 255
Other Spring aspects for AspectJ .................................................................... 255

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Configuring AspectJ aspects using Spring IoC ................................................. 256

Load-time weaving with AspectJ in the Spring Framework ................................. 257
A first example ....................................................................................... 257
Aspects .................................................................................................. 260
'META-INF/aop.xml' ................................................................................ 260
Required libraries (JARS) ........................................................................ 261
Spring configuration ................................................................................ 261
Environment-specific configuration ........................................................... 263
11.9. Further Resources ......................................................................................... 265
12. Spring AOP APIs ...................................................................................................... 266
12.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 266
12.2. Pointcut API in Spring .................................................................................... 266
Concepts ........................................................................................................ 266
Operations on pointcuts .................................................................................. 267
AspectJ expression pointcuts .......................................................................... 267
Convenience pointcut implementations ............................................................ 267
Static pointcuts ....................................................................................... 267
Dynamic pointcuts .................................................................................. 268
Pointcut superclasses ..................................................................................... 269
Custom pointcuts ............................................................................................ 269
12.3. Advice API in Spring ...................................................................................... 269
Advice lifecycles ............................................................................................. 269
Advice types in Spring .................................................................................... 269
Interception around advice ...................................................................... 269
Before advice ......................................................................................... 270
Throws advice ........................................................................................ 271
After Returning advice ............................................................................ 272
Introduction advice .................................................................................. 273
12.4. Advisor API in Spring ..................................................................................... 275
12.5. Using the ProxyFactoryBean to create AOP proxies ......................................... 275
Basics ............................................................................................................ 275
JavaBean properties ....................................................................................... 276
JDK- and CGLIB-based proxies ...................................................................... 277
Proxying interfaces ......................................................................................... 277
Proxying classes ............................................................................................ 279
Using 'global' advisors .................................................................................... 280
12.6. Concise proxy definitions ................................................................................ 280
12.7. Creating AOP proxies programmatically with the ProxyFactory .......................... 281
12.8. Manipulating advised objects .......................................................................... 282
12.9. Using the "auto-proxy" facility ......................................................................... 283
Autoproxy bean definitions .............................................................................. 283
BeanNameAutoProxyCreator ................................................................... 283
DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator .............................................................. 284
AbstractAdvisorAutoProxyCreator ............................................................ 285
Using metadata-driven auto-proxying ............................................................... 285
12.10. Using TargetSources .................................................................................... 287
Hot swappable target sources ......................................................................... 287
Pooling target sources .................................................................................... 287
Prototype target sources ................................................................................. 289
ThreadLocal target sources ............................................................................. 289

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12.11. Defining new Advice types ............................................................................ 289

12.12. Further resources ......................................................................................... 290
IV. Testing ............................................................................................................................. 291
13. Introduction to Spring Testing .................................................................................... 292
14. Unit Testing .............................................................................................................. 293
14.1. Mock Objects ................................................................................................. 293
Environment ................................................................................................... 293
JNDI .............................................................................................................. 293
Servlet API ..................................................................................................... 293
Portlet API ..................................................................................................... 293
14.2. Unit Testing support Classes .......................................................................... 294
General testing utilities ................................................................................... 294
Spring MVC ................................................................................................... 294
15. Integration Testing .................................................................................................... 295
15.1. Overview ....................................................................................................... 295
15.2. Goals of Integration Testing ............................................................................ 295
Context management and caching .................................................................. 295
Dependency Injection of test fixtures ............................................................... 296
Transaction management ................................................................................ 296
Support classes for integration testing ............................................................. 297
15.3. JDBC Testing Support ................................................................................... 297
15.4. Annotations ................................................................................................... 297
Spring Testing Annotations ............................................................................. 297
@BootstrapWith ..................................................................................... 298
@ContextConfiguration ........................................................................... 298
@WebAppConfiguration .......................................................................... 298
@ContextHierarchy ................................................................................. 299
@ActiveProfiles ...................................................................................... 299
@TestPropertySource ............................................................................. 300
@DirtiesContext ..................................................................................... 300
@TestExecutionListeners ........................................................................ 302
@Commit ............................................................................................... 302
@Rollback .............................................................................................. 302
@BeforeTransaction ............................................................................... 303
@AfterTransaction .................................................................................. 303
@Sql ..................................................................................................... 303
@SqlConfig ............................................................................................ 303
@SqlGroup ............................................................................................ 304
Standard Annotation Support .......................................................................... 304
Spring JUnit 4 Testing Annotations .................................................................. 305
@IfProfileValue ....................................................................................... 305
@ProfileValueSourceConfiguration .......................................................... 305
@Timed ................................................................................................. 305
@Repeat ................................................................................................ 306
Meta-Annotation Support for Testing ................................................................ 306
15.5. Spring TestContext Framework ....................................................................... 307
Key abstractions ............................................................................................. 308
TestContext ............................................................................................ 308
TestContextManager ............................................................................... 308
TestExecutionListener ............................................................................. 308

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Context Loaders ..................................................................................... 308

Bootstrapping the TestContext framework ........................................................ 309
TestExecutionListener configuration ................................................................. 310
Registering custom TestExecutionListeners .............................................. 310
Automatic discovery of default TestExecutionListeners .............................. 310
Ordering TestExecutionListeners ............................................................. 310
Merging TestExecutionListeners .............................................................. 311
Context management ...................................................................................... 312
Context configuration with XML resources ................................................ 313
Context configuration with Groovy scripts ................................................. 313
Context configuration with annotated classes ........................................... 314
Mixing XML, Groovy scripts, and annotated classes .................................. 315
Context configuration with context initializers ............................................ 316
Context configuration inheritance ............................................................. 317
Context configuration with environment profiles ........................................ 318
Context configuration with test property sources ....................................... 323
Loading a WebApplicationContext ........................................................... 325
Context caching ...................................................................................... 328
Context hierarchies ................................................................................. 329
Dependency injection of test fixtures ................................................................ 331
Testing request and session scoped beans ...................................................... 333
Transaction management ................................................................................ 335
Test-managed transactions ..................................................................... 335
Enabling and disabling transactions ......................................................... 336
Transaction rollback and commit behavior ................................................ 337
Programmatic transaction management ................................................... 337
Executing code outside of a transaction ................................................... 337
Configuring a transaction manager .......................................................... 338
Demonstration of all transaction-related annotations ................................. 338
Executing SQL scripts .................................................................................... 339
Executing SQL scripts programmatically .................................................. 340
Executing SQL scripts declaratively with @Sql ......................................... 340
TestContext Framework support classes .......................................................... 344
Spring JUnit 4 Runner ............................................................................ 344
Spring JUnit 4 Rules .............................................................................. 344
JUnit 4 support classes ........................................................................... 345
TestNG support classes .......................................................................... 345
15.6. Spring MVC Test Framework .......................................................................... 346
Server-Side Tests ........................................................................................... 347
Static Imports ......................................................................................... 348
Setup Options ........................................................................................ 348
Performing Requests .............................................................................. 349
Defining Expectations ............................................................................. 350
Filter Registrations .................................................................................. 351
Differences between Out-of-Container and End-to-End Integration Tests.... 351
Further Server-Side Test Examples ......................................................... 352
HtmlUnit Integration ........................................................................................ 352
Why HtmlUnit Integration? ...................................................................... 353
MockMvc and HtmlUnit ........................................................................... 355
MockMvc and WebDriver ........................................................................ 357

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MockMvc and Geb ................................................................................. 362

Client-Side REST Tests .................................................................................. 363
Static Imports ......................................................................................... 364
Further Examples of Client-side REST Tests ............................................ 364
15.7. PetClinic Example .......................................................................................... 365
16. Further Resources .................................................................................................... 367
V. Data Access ...................................................................................................................... 368
17. Transaction Management .......................................................................................... 369
17.1. Introduction to Spring Framework transaction management .............................. 369
17.2. Advantages of the Spring Frameworks transaction support model ..................... 369
Global transactions ......................................................................................... 369
Local transactions ........................................................................................... 370
Spring Frameworks consistent programming model ......................................... 370
17.3. Understanding the Spring Framework transaction abstraction ............................ 371
17.4. Synchronizing resources with transactions ....................................................... 374
High-level synchronization approach ................................................................ 374
Low-level synchronization approach ................................................................. 375
TransactionAwareDataSourceProxy ................................................................. 375
17.5. Declarative transaction management ............................................................... 375
Understanding the Spring Frameworks declarative transaction implementation... 377
Example of declarative transaction implementation ........................................... 377
Rolling back a declarative transaction .............................................................. 381
Configuring different transactional semantics for different beans ........................ 382
<tx:advice/> settings ....................................................................................... 384
Using @Transactional ..................................................................................... 385
@Transactional settings .......................................................................... 390
Multiple Transaction Managers with @Transactional ................................. 391
Custom shortcut annotations ................................................................... 392
Transaction propagation .................................................................................. 392
Required ................................................................................................ 392
RequiresNew .......................................................................................... 393
Nested ................................................................................................... 393
Advising transactional operations ..................................................................... 393
Using @Transactional with AspectJ ................................................................. 396
17.6. Programmatic transaction management ........................................................... 397
Using the TransactionTemplate ....................................................................... 397
Specifying transaction settings ................................................................ 399
Using the PlatformTransactionManager ............................................................ 399
17.7. Choosing between programmatic and declarative transaction management ........ 400
17.8. Transaction bound event ................................................................................ 400
17.9. Application server-specific integration .............................................................. 400
IBM WebSphere ............................................................................................. 401
Oracle WebLogic Server ................................................................................. 401
17.10. Solutions to common problems ..................................................................... 401
Use of the wrong transaction manager for a specific DataSource ....................... 401
17.11. Further Resources ....................................................................................... 401
18. DAO support ............................................................................................................ 403
18.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 403
18.2. Consistent exception hierarchy ....................................................................... 403
18.3. Annotations used for configuring DAO or Repository classes ............................ 404

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19. Data access with JDBC ............................................................................................ 406

19.1. Introduction to Spring Framework JDBC .......................................................... 406
Choosing an approach for JDBC database access ........................................... 406
Package hierarchy .......................................................................................... 407
19.2. Using the JDBC core classes to control basic JDBC processing and error
handling ................................................................................................................. 408
JdbcTemplate ................................................................................................. 408
Examples of JdbcTemplate class usage ................................................... 408
JdbcTemplate best practices ................................................................... 410
NamedParameterJdbcTemplate ....................................................................... 412
SQLExceptionTranslator .................................................................................. 414
Executing statements ...................................................................................... 415
Running queries ............................................................................................. 416
Updating the database .................................................................................... 417
Retrieving auto-generated keys ....................................................................... 417
19.3. Controlling database connections .................................................................... 417
DataSource .................................................................................................... 417
DataSourceUtils .............................................................................................. 419
SmartDataSource ........................................................................................... 419
AbstractDataSource ........................................................................................ 419
SingleConnectionDataSource .......................................................................... 419
DriverManagerDataSource .............................................................................. 419
TransactionAwareDataSourceProxy ................................................................. 420
DataSourceTransactionManager ...................................................................... 420
NativeJdbcExtractor ........................................................................................ 420
19.4. JDBC batch operations .................................................................................. 421
Basic batch operations with the JdbcTemplate ................................................. 421
Batch operations with a List of objects ............................................................. 422
Batch operations with multiple batches ............................................................ 423
19.5. Simplifying JDBC operations with the SimpleJdbc classes ................................ 423
Inserting data using SimpleJdbcInsert .............................................................. 424
Retrieving auto-generated keys using SimpleJdbcInsert .................................... 424
Specifying columns for a SimpleJdbcInsert ...................................................... 425
Using SqlParameterSource to provide parameter values ................................... 426
Calling a stored procedure with SimpleJdbcCall ............................................... 426
Explicitly declaring parameters to use for a SimpleJdbcCall ............................... 428
How to define SqlParameters .......................................................................... 429
Calling a stored function using SimpleJdbcCall ................................................. 429
Returning ResultSet/REF Cursor from a SimpleJdbcCall ................................... 430
19.6. Modeling JDBC operations as Java objects ..................................................... 431
SqlQuery ........................................................................................................ 431
MappingSqlQuery ........................................................................................... 432
SqlUpdate ...................................................................................................... 433
StoredProcedure ............................................................................................. 433
19.7. Common problems with parameter and data value handling .............................. 436
Providing SQL type information for parameters ................................................. 436
Handling BLOB and CLOB objects .................................................................. 437
Passing in lists of values for IN clause ............................................................ 438
Handling complex types for stored procedure calls ........................................... 438
19.8. Embedded database support .......................................................................... 440

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Why use an embedded database? .................................................................. 440

Creating an embedded database using Spring XML .......................................... 440
Creating an embedded database programmatically ........................................... 440
Selecting the embedded database type ........................................................... 441
Using HSQL ........................................................................................... 441
Using H2 ................................................................................................ 441
Using Derby ........................................................................................... 441
Testing data access logic with an embedded database ..................................... 441
Generating unique names for embedded databases ......................................... 442
Extending the embedded database support ...................................................... 442
19.9. Initializing a DataSource ................................................................................. 443
Initializing a database using Spring XML .......................................................... 443
Initialization of other components that depend on the database .................. 444
20. Object Relational Mapping (ORM) Data Access .......................................................... 446
20.1. Introduction to ORM with Spring ..................................................................... 446
20.2. General ORM integration considerations ......................................................... 447
Resource and transaction management ........................................................... 447
Exception translation ....................................................................................... 448
20.3. Hibernate ....................................................................................................... 448
SessionFactory setup in a Spring container ...................................................... 448
Implementing DAOs based on plain Hibernate API ........................................... 449
Declarative transaction demarcation ................................................................ 450
Programmatic transaction demarcation ............................................................ 451
Transaction management strategies ................................................................ 452
Comparing container-managed and locally defined resources ............................ 453
Spurious application server warnings with Hibernate ......................................... 454
20.4. JDO .............................................................................................................. 455
PersistenceManagerFactory setup ................................................................... 455
Implementing DAOs based on the plain JDO API ............................................. 456
Transaction management ................................................................................ 458
JdoDialect ...................................................................................................... 459
20.5. JPA ............................................................................................................... 459
Three options for JPA setup in a Spring environment ........................................ 459
LocalEntityManagerFactoryBean .............................................................. 459
Obtaining an EntityManagerFactory from JNDI ......................................... 460
LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean ............................................... 460
Dealing with multiple persistence units ..................................................... 462
Implementing DAOs based on JPA: EntityManagerFactory and EntityManager.... 463
Spring-driven JPA transactions ........................................................................ 465
JpaDialect and JpaVendorAdapter ................................................................... 465
Setting up JPA with JTA transaction management ............................................ 465
21. Marshalling XML using O/X Mappers ......................................................................... 467
21.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 467
Ease of configuration ...................................................................................... 467
Consistent Interfaces ...................................................................................... 467
Consistent Exception Hierarchy ....................................................................... 467
21.2. Marshaller and Unmarshaller .......................................................................... 467
Marshaller ...................................................................................................... 467
Unmarshaller .................................................................................................. 468
XmlMappingException ..................................................................................... 469

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21.3. Using Marshaller and Unmarshaller ................................................................. 469

21.4. XML Schema-based Configuration .................................................................. 471
21.5. JAXB ............................................................................................................. 471
Jaxb2Marshaller ............................................................................................. 471
XML Schema-based Configuration ........................................................... 472
21.6. Castor ........................................................................................................... 472
CastorMarshaller ............................................................................................ 472
Mapping ......................................................................................................... 473
XML Schema-based Configuration ........................................................... 473
21.7. XMLBeans ..................................................................................................... 474
XmlBeansMarshaller ....................................................................................... 474
XML Schema-based Configuration ........................................................... 474
21.8. JiBX .............................................................................................................. 474
JibxMarshaller ................................................................................................ 475
XML Schema-based Configuration ........................................................... 475
21.9. XStream ........................................................................................................ 475
XStreamMarshaller ......................................................................................... 475
VI. The Web .......................................................................................................................... 477
22. Web MVC framework ................................................................................................ 478
22.1. Introduction to Spring Web MVC framework .................................................... 478
Features of Spring Web MVC ......................................................................... 478
Pluggability of other MVC implementations ...................................................... 480
22.2. The DispatcherServlet .................................................................................... 480
Special Bean Types In the WebApplicationContext ........................................... 484
Default DispatcherServlet Configuration ........................................................... 485
DispatcherServlet Processing Sequence .......................................................... 485
22.3. Implementing Controllers ................................................................................ 487
Defining a controller with @Controller .............................................................. 487
Mapping Requests With @RequestMapping ..................................................... 488
Composed @RequestMapping Variants ................................................... 489
@Controller and AOP Proxying ............................................................... 490
New Support Classes for @RequestMapping methods in Spring MVC 3.1.. 490
URI Template Patterns ........................................................................... 491
URI Template Patterns with Regular Expressions ..................................... 492
Path Patterns ......................................................................................... 492
Path Pattern Comparison ........................................................................ 493
Path Patterns with Placeholders .............................................................. 493
Suffix Pattern Matching ........................................................................... 493
Suffix Pattern Matching and RFD ............................................................ 493
Matrix Variables ...................................................................................... 494
Consumable Media Types ....................................................................... 496
Producible Media Types .......................................................................... 496
Request Parameters and Header Values ................................................. 497
HTTP HEAD and HTTP OPTIONS .......................................................... 497
Defining @RequestMapping handler methods .................................................. 498
Supported method argument types .......................................................... 498
Supported method return types ............................................................... 500
Binding request parameters to method parameters with @RequestParam... 501
Mapping the request body with the @RequestBody annotation .................. 502
Mapping the response body with the @ResponseBody annotation ............. 503

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Creating REST Controllers with the @RestController annotation ................ 504

Using HttpEntity ...................................................................................... 504
Using @ModelAttribute on a method ....................................................... 504
Using @ModelAttribute on a method argument ......................................... 505
Using @SessionAttributes to store model attributes in the HTTP session
between requests ................................................................................... 507
Using @SessionAttribute to access pre-existing global session attributes.... 508
Using @RequestAttribute to access request attributes .............................. 508
Working with "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" data ............................ 508
Mapping cookie values with the @CookieValue annotation ........................ 509
Mapping request header attributes with the @RequestHeader annotation... 509
Method Parameters And Type Conversion ............................................... 510
Customizing WebDataBinder initialization ................................................. 510
Advising controllers with @ControllerAdvice and @RestControllerAdvice.... 511
Jackson Serialization View Support ......................................................... 512
Jackson JSONP Support ........................................................................ 513
Asynchronous Request Processing .................................................................. 514
Exception Handling for Async Requests ................................................... 515
Intercepting Async Requests ................................................................... 516
HTTP Streaming ..................................................................................... 516
HTTP Streaming With Server-Sent Events ............................................... 516
HTTP Streaming Directly To The OutputStream ....................................... 517
Configuring Asynchronous Request Processing ........................................ 517
Testing Controllers ......................................................................................... 518
22.4. Handler mappings .......................................................................................... 518
Intercepting requests with a HandlerInterceptor ................................................ 519
22.5. Resolving views ............................................................................................. 521
Resolving views with the ViewResolver interface .............................................. 521
Chaining ViewResolvers ................................................................................. 523
Redirecting to Views ....................................................................................... 523
RedirectView .......................................................................................... 524
The redirect: prefix ................................................................................. 525
The forward: prefix ................................................................................. 525
ContentNegotiatingViewResolver ..................................................................... 525
22.6. Using flash attributes ..................................................................................... 527
22.7. Building URIs ................................................................................................. 528
Building URIs to Controllers and methods ........................................................ 529
Working with "Forwarded" and "X-Forwarded-*" Headers .................................. 530
Building URIs to Controllers and methods from views ....................................... 530
22.8. Using locales ................................................................................................. 531
Obtaining Time Zone Information .................................................................... 531
AcceptHeaderLocaleResolver .......................................................................... 532
CookieLocaleResolver ..................................................................................... 532
SessionLocaleResolver ................................................................................... 532
LocaleChangeInterceptor ................................................................................ 532
22.9. Using themes ................................................................................................ 533
Overview of themes ........................................................................................ 533
Defining themes ............................................................................................. 533
Theme resolvers ............................................................................................. 534
22.10. Springs multipart (file upload) support ........................................................... 534

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Introduction .................................................................................................... 534

Using a MultipartResolver with Commons FileUpload ........................................ 534
Using a MultipartResolver with Servlet 3.0 ....................................................... 535
Handling a file upload in a form ...................................................................... 535
Handling a file upload request from programmatic clients .................................. 536
22.11. Handling exceptions ..................................................................................... 537
HandlerExceptionResolver .............................................................................. 537
@ExceptionHandler ........................................................................................ 537
Handling Standard Spring MVC Exceptions ...................................................... 538
Annotating Business Exceptions With @ResponseStatus .................................. 539
Customizing the Default Servlet Container Error Page ...................................... 539
22.12. Web Security ............................................................................................... 540
22.13. Convention over configuration support ........................................................... 540
The Controller ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping ........................................ 540
The Model ModelMap (ModelAndView) ............................................................ 541
The View - RequestToViewNameTranslator ..................................................... 543
22.14. HTTP caching support .................................................................................. 544
Cache-Control HTTP header ........................................................................... 544
HTTP caching support for static resources ....................................................... 545
Support for the Cache-Control, ETag and Last-Modified response headers in
Controllers ...................................................................................................... 545
Shallow ETag support ..................................................................................... 546
22.15. Code-based Servlet container initialization ..................................................... 547
22.16. Configuring Spring MVC ............................................................................... 549
Enabling the MVC Java Config or the MVC XML Namespace ............................ 549
Customizing the Provided Configuration ........................................................... 551
Conversion and Formatting ............................................................................. 551
Validation ....................................................................................................... 552
Interceptors .................................................................................................... 553
Content Negotiation ........................................................................................ 554
View Controllers ............................................................................................. 555
View Resolvers .............................................................................................. 555
Serving of Resources ..................................................................................... 556
Falling Back On the "Default" Servlet To Serve Resources ................................ 559
Path Matching ................................................................................................ 560
Message Converters ....................................................................................... 561
Advanced Customizations with MVC Java Config ............................................. 562
Advanced Customizations with the MVC Namespace ........................................ 563
23. View technologies ..................................................................................................... 564
23.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 564
23.2. Thymeleaf ..................................................................................................... 564
23.3. Groovy Markup Templates .............................................................................. 564
Configuration .................................................................................................. 564
Example ......................................................................................................... 565
23.4. Velocity & FreeMarker .................................................................................... 565
Dependencies ................................................................................................ 565
Context configuration ...................................................................................... 565
Creating templates ......................................................................................... 566
Advanced configuration ................................................................................... 566
velocity.properties ................................................................................... 566

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FreeMarker ............................................................................................. 567

Bind support and form handling ....................................................................... 567
The bind macros .................................................................................... 567
Simple binding ........................................................................................ 568
Form input generation macros ................................................................. 568
HTML escaping and XHTML compliance ................................................. 572
23.5. JSP & JSTL .................................................................................................. 572
View resolvers ................................................................................................ 573
'Plain-old' JSPs versus JSTL ........................................................................... 573
Additional tags facilitating development ............................................................ 573
Using Springs form tag library ........................................................................ 573
Configuration .......................................................................................... 574
The form tag .......................................................................................... 574
The input tag .......................................................................................... 575
The checkbox tag ................................................................................... 575
The checkboxes tag ............................................................................... 577
The radiobutton tag ................................................................................ 578
The radiobuttons tag ............................................................................... 578
The password tag ................................................................................... 578
The select tag ........................................................................................ 578
The option tag ........................................................................................ 579
The options tag ...................................................................................... 579
The textarea tag ..................................................................................... 580
The hidden tag ....................................................................................... 580
The errors tag ........................................................................................ 580
HTTP Method Conversion ....................................................................... 582
HTML5 Tags .......................................................................................... 583
23.6. Script templates ............................................................................................. 583
Dependencies ................................................................................................ 584
How to integrate script based templating .......................................................... 584
23.7. XML Marshalling View .................................................................................... 586
23.8. Tiles .............................................................................................................. 586
Dependencies ................................................................................................ 586
How to integrate Tiles ..................................................................................... 586
UrlBasedViewResolver ............................................................................ 587
ResourceBundleViewResolver ................................................................. 587
SimpleSpringPreparerFactory and SpringBeanPreparerFactory ................. 588
23.9. XSLT ............................................................................................................. 588
My First Words ............................................................................................... 589
Bean definitions ...................................................................................... 589
Standard MVC controller code ................................................................. 589
Document transformation ........................................................................ 590
23.10. Document views (PDF/Excel) ........................................................................ 590
Introduction .................................................................................................... 590
Configuration and setup .................................................................................. 591
Document view definitions ....................................................................... 591
Controller code ....................................................................................... 591
Subclassing for Excel views .................................................................... 591
Subclassing for PDF views ..................................................................... 593
23.11. JasperReports .............................................................................................. 593

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Dependencies ................................................................................................ 593

Configuration .................................................................................................. 593
Configuring the ViewResolver .................................................................. 594
Configuring the Views ............................................................................. 594
About Report Files .................................................................................. 594
Using JasperReportsMultiFormatView ...................................................... 594
Populating the ModelAndView ......................................................................... 595
Working with Sub-Reports ............................................................................... 596
Configuring Sub-Report Files .................................................................. 596
Configuring Sub-Report Data Sources ..................................................... 597
Configuring Exporter Parameters ..................................................................... 597
23.12. Feed Views ................................................................................................. 598
23.13. JSON Mapping View .................................................................................... 598
23.14. XML Mapping View ...................................................................................... 599
24. Integrating with other web frameworks ....................................................................... 600
24.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 600
24.2. Common configuration ................................................................................... 601
24.3. JavaServer Faces 1.2 .................................................................................... 602
SpringBeanFacesELResolver (JSF 1.2+) ......................................................... 602
FacesContextUtils ........................................................................................... 602
24.4. Apache Struts 2.x .......................................................................................... 602
24.5. Tapestry 5.x .................................................................................................. 603
24.6. Further Resources ......................................................................................... 603
25. Portlet MVC Framework ............................................................................................ 604
25.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 604
Controllers - The C in MVC ............................................................................ 605
Views - The V in MVC .................................................................................... 605
Web-scoped beans ......................................................................................... 605
25.2. The DispatcherPortlet ..................................................................................... 605
25.3. The ViewRendererServlet ............................................................................... 607
25.4. Controllers ..................................................................................................... 608
AbstractController and PortletContentGenerator ............................................... 609
Other simple controllers .................................................................................. 610
Command Controllers ..................................................................................... 610
PortletWrappingController ................................................................................ 611
25.5. Handler mappings .......................................................................................... 611
PortletModeHandlerMapping ............................................................................ 612
ParameterHandlerMapping .............................................................................. 612
PortletModeParameterHandlerMapping ............................................................ 613
Adding HandlerInterceptors ............................................................................. 613
HandlerInterceptorAdapter ............................................................................... 614
ParameterMappingInterceptor .......................................................................... 614
25.6. Views and resolving them .............................................................................. 614
25.7. Multipart (file upload) support ......................................................................... 614
Using the PortletMultipartResolver ................................................................... 615
Handling a file upload in a form ...................................................................... 615
25.8. Handling exceptions ....................................................................................... 619
25.9. Annotation-based controller configuration ........................................................ 619
Setting up the dispatcher for annotation support ............................................... 619
Defining a controller with @Controller .............................................................. 620

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Mapping requests with @RequestMapping ....................................................... 620

Supported handler method arguments ............................................................. 622
Binding request parameters to method parameters with @RequestParam .......... 624
Providing a link to data from the model with @ModelAttribute ............................ 624
Specifying attributes to store in a Session with @SessionAttributes .................... 625
Customizing WebDataBinder initialization ......................................................... 625
Customizing data binding with @InitBinder ............................................... 625
Configuring a custom WebBindingInitializer .............................................. 626
25.10. Portlet application deployment ...................................................................... 626
26. WebSocket Support .................................................................................................. 627
26.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 627
WebSocket Fallback Options ........................................................................... 627
A Messaging Architecture ............................................................................... 628
Sub-Protocol Support in WebSocket ................................................................ 628
Should I Use WebSocket? .............................................................................. 628
26.2. WebSocket API ............................................................................................. 629
Create and Configure a WebSocketHandler ..................................................... 629
Customizing the WebSocket Handshake .......................................................... 630
WebSocketHandler Decoration ........................................................................ 631
Deployment Considerations ............................................................................. 631
Configuring the WebSocket Engine ................................................................. 632
Configuring allowed origins ............................................................................. 634
26.3. SockJS Fallback Options ................................................................................ 635
Overview of SockJS ....................................................................................... 635
Enable SockJS ............................................................................................... 636
HTTP Streaming in IE 8, 9: Ajax/XHR vs IFrame .............................................. 637
Heartbeat Messages ....................................................................................... 638
Servlet 3 Async Requests ............................................................................... 638
CORS Headers for SockJS ............................................................................. 639
SockJS Client ................................................................................................. 639
26.4. STOMP Over WebSocket Messaging Architecture ........................................... 641
Overview of STOMP ....................................................................................... 641
Enable STOMP over WebSocket ..................................................................... 642
Flow of Messages .......................................................................................... 644
Annotation Message Handling ......................................................................... 646
Sending Messages ......................................................................................... 648
Simple Broker ................................................................................................ 648
Full-Featured Broker ....................................................................................... 648
Connections To Full-Featured Broker .............................................................. 650
Using Dot as Separator in @MessageMapping Destinations .............................. 650
Authentication ................................................................................................. 651
Token-based Authentication ............................................................................ 652
User Destinations ........................................................................................... 653
Listening To ApplicationContext Events and Intercepting Messages ................... 655
STOMP Client ................................................................................................ 656
WebSocket Scope .......................................................................................... 657
Configuration and Performance ....................................................................... 658
Runtime Monitoring ......................................................................................... 661
Testing Annotated Controller Methods ............................................................. 662
27. CORS Support ......................................................................................................... 663

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27.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 663

27.2. Controller method CORS configuration ............................................................ 663
27.3. Global CORS configuration ............................................................................. 664
JavaConfig ..................................................................................................... 664
XML namespace ............................................................................................ 665
27.4. Advanced Customization ................................................................................ 665
27.5. Filter based CORS support ............................................................................. 665
VII. Integration ........................................................................................................................ 667
28. Remoting and web services using Spring ................................................................... 668
28.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 668
28.2. Exposing services using RMI .......................................................................... 669
Exporting the service using the RmiServiceExporter ......................................... 669
Linking in the service at the client ................................................................... 670
28.3. Using Hessian or Burlap to remotely call services via HTTP .............................. 670
Wiring up the DispatcherServlet for Hessian and co. ......................................... 670
Exposing your beans by using the HessianServiceExporter ............................... 671
Linking in the service on the client .................................................................. 671
Using Burlap .................................................................................................. 672
Applying HTTP basic authentication to a service exposed through Hessian or
Burlap ............................................................................................................ 672
28.4. Exposing services using HTTP invokers .......................................................... 672
Exposing the service object ............................................................................ 673
Linking in the service at the client ................................................................... 674
28.5. Web services ................................................................................................. 674
Exposing servlet-based web services using JAX-WS ........................................ 674
Exporting standalone web services using JAX-WS ........................................... 675
Exporting web services using the JAX-WS RIs Spring support .......................... 676
Accessing web services using JAX-WS ........................................................... 676
28.6. JMS .............................................................................................................. 677
Server-side configuration ................................................................................. 678
Client-side configuration .................................................................................. 678
28.7. AMQP ........................................................................................................... 679
28.8. Auto-detection is not implemented for remote interfaces ................................... 679
28.9. Considerations when choosing a technology .................................................... 679
28.10. Accessing RESTful services on the Client ..................................................... 680
RestTemplate ................................................................................................. 680
Working with the URI .............................................................................. 683
Dealing with request and response headers ............................................. 684
Jackson JSON Views support ................................................................. 684
HTTP Message Conversion ............................................................................ 684
StringHttpMessageConverter ................................................................... 685
FormHttpMessageConverter .................................................................... 685
ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter ............................................................. 685
MarshallingHttpMessageConverter ........................................................... 685
MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter ................................................. 685
MappingJackson2XmlHttpMessageConverter ........................................... 686
SourceHttpMessageConverter ................................................................. 686
BufferedImageHttpMessageConverter ...................................................... 686
Async RestTemplate ....................................................................................... 686
29. Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) integration ..................................................................... 688

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29.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 688

29.2. Accessing EJBs ............................................................................................. 688
Concepts ........................................................................................................ 688
Accessing local SLSBs ................................................................................... 688
Accessing remote SLSBs ................................................................................ 690
Accessing EJB 2.x SLSBs versus EJB 3 SLSBs ............................................... 690
29.3. Using Springs EJB implementation support classes ......................................... 691
EJB 3 injection interceptor .............................................................................. 691
30. JMS (Java Message Service) .................................................................................... 692
30.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 692
30.2. Using Spring JMS .......................................................................................... 692
JmsTemplate .................................................................................................. 692
Connections ................................................................................................... 693
Caching Messaging Resources ............................................................... 693
SingleConnectionFactory ......................................................................... 694
CachingConnectionFactory ...................................................................... 694
Destination Management ................................................................................. 694
Message Listener Containers .......................................................................... 695
SimpleMessageListenerContainer ............................................................ 695
DefaultMessageListenerContainer ............................................................ 696
Transaction management ................................................................................ 696
30.3. Sending a Message ....................................................................................... 697
Using Message Converters ............................................................................. 698
SessionCallback and ProducerCallback ........................................................... 699
30.4. Receiving a message ..................................................................................... 699
Synchronous Reception .................................................................................. 699
Asynchronous Reception - Message-Driven POJOs .......................................... 699
the SessionAwareMessageListener interface .................................................... 700
the MessageListenerAdapter ........................................................................... 700
Processing messages within transactions ........................................................ 702
30.5. Support for JCA Message Endpoints ............................................................... 703
30.6. Annotation-driven listener endpoints ................................................................ 704
Enable listener endpoint annotations ............................................................... 705
Programmatic endpoints registration ................................................................ 705
Annotated endpoint method signature .............................................................. 706
Response management .................................................................................. 707
30.7. JMS namespace support ................................................................................ 708
31. JMX ......................................................................................................................... 713
31.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 713
31.2. Exporting your beans to JMX .......................................................................... 713
Creating an MBeanServer ............................................................................... 715
Reusing an existing MBeanServer ................................................................... 715
Lazy-initialized MBeans ................................................................................... 716
Automatic registration of MBeans .................................................................... 716
Controlling the registration behavior ................................................................. 716
31.3. Controlling the management interface of your beans ........................................ 717
the MBeanInfoAssembler Interface .................................................................. 718
Using Source-Level Metadata (Java annotations) ............................................. 718
Source-Level Metadata Types ......................................................................... 720
the AutodetectCapableMBeanInfoAssembler interface ...................................... 721

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Defining management interfaces using Java interfaces ..................................... 722

Using MethodNameBasedMBeanInfoAssembler ............................................... 723
31.4. Controlling the ObjectNames for your beans .................................................... 724
Reading ObjectNames from Properties ............................................................ 724
Using the MetadataNamingStrategy ................................................................. 725
Configuring annotation based MBean export .................................................... 725
31.5. JSR-160 Connectors ...................................................................................... 726
Server-side Connectors ................................................................................... 726
Client-side Connectors .................................................................................... 727
JMX over Burlap/Hessian/SOAP ...................................................................... 727
31.6. Accessing MBeans via Proxies ....................................................................... 727
31.7. Notifications ................................................................................................... 728
Registering Listeners for Notifications .............................................................. 728
Publishing Notifications ................................................................................... 731
31.8. Further Resources ......................................................................................... 732
32. JCA CCI .................................................................................................................. 734
32.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 734
32.2. Configuring CCI ............................................................................................. 734
Connector configuration .................................................................................. 734
ConnectionFactory configuration in Spring ....................................................... 735
Configuring CCI connections ........................................................................... 735
Using a single CCI connection ........................................................................ 736
32.3. Using Springs CCI access support ................................................................. 737
Record conversion .......................................................................................... 737
the CciTemplate ............................................................................................. 737
DAO support .................................................................................................. 739
Automatic output record generation ................................................................. 740
Summary ....................................................................................................... 740
Using a CCI Connection and Interaction directly ............................................... 741
Example for CciTemplate usage ...................................................................... 741
32.4. Modeling CCI access as operation objects ...................................................... 743
MappingRecordOperation ................................................................................ 743
MappingCommAreaOperation .......................................................................... 744
Automatic output record generation ................................................................. 745
Summary ....................................................................................................... 745
Example for MappingRecordOperation usage ................................................... 745
Example for MappingCommAreaOperation usage ............................................. 747
32.5. Transactions .................................................................................................. 749
33. Email ....................................................................................................................... 750
33.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 750
33.2. Usage ........................................................................................................... 750
Basic MailSender and SimpleMailMessage usage ............................................ 751
Using the JavaMailSender and the MimeMessagePreparator ............................. 751
33.3. Using the JavaMail MimeMessageHelper ........................................................ 752
Sending attachments and inline resources ....................................................... 753
Attachments ........................................................................................... 753
Inline resources ...................................................................................... 753
Creating email content using a templating library .............................................. 754
A Velocity-based example ....................................................................... 754
34. Task Execution and Scheduling ................................................................................. 757

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34.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 757

34.2. The Spring TaskExecutor abstraction .............................................................. 757
TaskExecutor types ........................................................................................ 757
Using a TaskExecutor ..................................................................................... 758
34.3. The Spring TaskScheduler abstraction ............................................................ 759
the Trigger interface ....................................................................................... 760
Trigger implementations .................................................................................. 760
TaskScheduler implementations ...................................................................... 761
34.4. Annotation Support for Scheduling and Asynchronous Execution ....................... 761
Enable scheduling annotations ........................................................................ 761
The @Scheduled annotation ........................................................................... 762
The @Async annotation .................................................................................. 763
Executor qualification with @Async ................................................................. 764
Exception management with @Async .............................................................. 764
34.5. The task namespace ...................................................................................... 765
The 'scheduler' element .................................................................................. 765
The 'executor' element .................................................................................... 765
The 'scheduled-tasks' element ......................................................................... 766
34.6. Using the Quartz Scheduler ............................................................................ 767
Using the JobDetailFactoryBean ...................................................................... 767
Using the MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean .............................................. 768
Wiring up jobs using triggers and the SchedulerFactoryBean ............................. 768
35. Dynamic language support ........................................................................................ 770
35.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 770
35.2. A first example .............................................................................................. 770
35.3. Defining beans that are backed by dynamic languages ..................................... 772
Common concepts .......................................................................................... 772
The <lang:language/> element ................................................................ 773
Refreshable beans .................................................................................. 773
Inline dynamic language source files ....................................................... 775
Understanding Constructor Injection in the context of dynamic-language-
backed beans ......................................................................................... 776
JRuby beans .................................................................................................. 777
Groovy beans ................................................................................................. 778
Customizing Groovy objects via a callback ............................................... 779
BeanShell beans ............................................................................................ 781
35.4. Scenarios ...................................................................................................... 782
Scripted Spring MVC Controllers ..................................................................... 782
Scripted Validators ......................................................................................... 783
35.5. Bits and bobs ................................................................................................ 783
AOP - advising scripted beans ........................................................................ 783
Scoping .......................................................................................................... 784
35.6. Further Resources ......................................................................................... 784
36. Cache Abstraction .................................................................................................... 785
36.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 785
36.2. Understanding the cache abstraction ............................................................... 785
36.3. Declarative annotation-based caching ............................................................. 786
@Cacheable annotation .................................................................................. 786
Default Key Generation ........................................................................... 787
Custom Key Generation Declaration ........................................................ 787

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Default Cache Resolution ........................................................................ 788

Custom cache resolution ......................................................................... 788
Synchronized caching ............................................................................. 789
Conditional caching ................................................................................ 789
Available caching SpEL evaluation context ............................................... 790
@CachePut annotation ................................................................................... 791
@CacheEvict annotation ................................................................................. 791
@Caching annotation ..................................................................................... 792
@CacheConfig annotation .............................................................................. 792
Enable caching annotations ............................................................................ 792
Using custom annotations ............................................................................... 795
36.4. JCache (JSR-107) annotations ....................................................................... 796
Features summary .......................................................................................... 796
Enabling JSR-107 support .............................................................................. 797
36.5. Declarative XML-based caching ...................................................................... 798
36.6. Configuring the cache storage ........................................................................ 798
JDK ConcurrentMap-based Cache ................................................................... 798
Ehcache-based Cache .................................................................................... 799
Caffeine Cache .............................................................................................. 799
Guava Cache ................................................................................................. 800
GemFire-based Cache .................................................................................... 800
JSR-107 Cache .............................................................................................. 800
Dealing with caches without a backing store .................................................... 801
36.7. Plugging-in different back-end caches ............................................................. 801
36.8. How can I set the TTL/TTI/Eviction policy/XXX feature? .................................... 801
VIII. Appendices ..................................................................................................................... 802
37. Migrating to Spring Framework 4.x ............................................................................ 803
38. Spring Annotation Programming Model ...................................................................... 804
39. Classic Spring Usage ............................................................................................... 805
39.1. Classic ORM usage ....................................................................................... 805
Hibernate ....................................................................................................... 805
The HibernateTemplate ........................................................................... 805
Implementing Spring-based DAOs without callbacks ................................. 806
39.2. JMS Usage ................................................................................................... 807
JmsTemplate .................................................................................................. 808
Asynchronous Message Reception .................................................................. 808
Connections ................................................................................................... 808
Transaction Management ................................................................................ 808
40. Classic Spring AOP Usage ....................................................................................... 809
40.1. Pointcut API in Spring .................................................................................... 809
Concepts ........................................................................................................ 809
Operations on pointcuts .................................................................................. 810
AspectJ expression pointcuts .......................................................................... 810
Convenience pointcut implementations ............................................................ 810
Static pointcuts ....................................................................................... 810
Dynamic pointcuts .................................................................................. 811
Pointcut superclasses ..................................................................................... 812
Custom pointcuts ............................................................................................ 812
40.2. Advice API in Spring ...................................................................................... 812
Advice lifecycles ............................................................................................. 812

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Advice types in Spring .................................................................................... 813

Interception around advice ...................................................................... 813
Before advice ......................................................................................... 813
Throws advice ........................................................................................ 814
After Returning advice ............................................................................ 815
Introduction advice .................................................................................. 816
40.3. Advisor API in Spring ..................................................................................... 818
40.4. Using the ProxyFactoryBean to create AOP proxies ......................................... 819
Basics ............................................................................................................ 819
JavaBean properties ....................................................................................... 819
JDK- and CGLIB-based proxies ...................................................................... 820
Proxying interfaces ......................................................................................... 821
Proxying classes ............................................................................................ 823
Using 'global' advisors .................................................................................... 824
40.5. Concise proxy definitions ................................................................................ 824
40.6. Creating AOP proxies programmatically with the ProxyFactory .......................... 825
40.7. Manipulating advised objects .......................................................................... 825
40.8. Using the "autoproxy" facility .......................................................................... 827
Autoproxy bean definitions .............................................................................. 827
BeanNameAutoProxyCreator ................................................................... 827
DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator .............................................................. 828
AbstractAdvisorAutoProxyCreator ............................................................ 829
Using metadata-driven auto-proxying ............................................................... 829
40.9. Using TargetSources ...................................................................................... 831
Hot swappable target sources ......................................................................... 831
Pooling target sources .................................................................................... 832
Prototype target sources ................................................................................. 833
ThreadLocal target sources ............................................................................. 833
40.10. Defining new Advice types ............................................................................ 834
40.11. Further resources ......................................................................................... 834
41. XML Schema-based configuration ............................................................................. 835
41.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 835
41.2. XML Schema-based configuration ................................................................... 835
Referencing the schemas ............................................................................... 835
the util schema ............................................................................................... 836
<util:constant/> ....................................................................................... 837
<util:property-path/> ................................................................................ 838
<util:properties/> ..................................................................................... 840
<util:list/> ................................................................................................ 840
<util:map/> ............................................................................................. 841
<util:set/> ............................................................................................... 841
the jee schema .............................................................................................. 842
<jee:jndi-lookup/> (simple) ....................................................................... 842
<jee:jndi-lookup/> (with single JNDI environment setting) .......................... 843
<jee:jndi-lookup/> (with multiple JNDI environment settings) ...................... 843
<jee:jndi-lookup/> (complex) .................................................................... 843
<jee:local-slsb/> (simple) ......................................................................... 844
<jee:local-slsb/> (complex) ...................................................................... 844
<jee:remote-slsb/> .................................................................................. 844
the lang schema ............................................................................................. 845

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the
jms schema .............................................................................................. 845
the
tx (transaction) schema ............................................................................. 846
the
aop schema ............................................................................................. 846
the
context schema ........................................................................................ 847
<property-placeholder/> ........................................................................... 847
<annotation-config/> ............................................................................... 847
<component-scan/> ................................................................................ 847
<load-time-weaver/> ............................................................................... 848
<spring-configured/> ............................................................................... 848
<mbean-export/> .................................................................................... 848
the tool schema .............................................................................................. 848
the jdbc schema ............................................................................................. 848
the cache schema .......................................................................................... 848
the beans schema .......................................................................................... 849
42. Extensible XML authoring ......................................................................................... 850
42.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 850
42.2. Authoring the schema .................................................................................... 850
42.3. Coding a NamespaceHandler ......................................................................... 851
42.4. BeanDefinitionParser ...................................................................................... 852
42.5. Registering the handler and the schema ......................................................... 853
'META-INF/spring.handlers' ............................................................................. 853
'META-INF/spring.schemas' ............................................................................. 854
42.6. Using a custom extension in your Spring XML configuration .............................. 854
42.7. Meatier examples ........................................................................................... 854
Nesting custom tags within custom tags .......................................................... 854
Custom attributes on 'normal' elements ............................................................ 858
42.8. Further Resources ......................................................................................... 860
43. spring JSP Tag Library ............................................................................................. 861
43.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 861
43.2. The argument tag .......................................................................................... 861
43.3. The bind tag .................................................................................................. 861
43.4. The escapeBody tag ...................................................................................... 862
43.5. The eval tag .................................................................................................. 862
43.6. The hasBindErrors tag ................................................................................... 863
43.7. The htmlEscape tag ....................................................................................... 863
43.8. The message tag ........................................................................................... 863
43.9. The nestedPath tag ....................................................................................... 864
43.10. The param tag ............................................................................................. 865
43.11. The theme tag ............................................................................................. 865
43.12. The transform tag ........................................................................................ 866
43.13. The url tag ................................................................................................... 866
44. spring-form JSP Tag Library ...................................................................................... 868
44.1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 868
44.2. The button tag ............................................................................................... 868
44.3. The checkbox tag .......................................................................................... 869
44.4. The checkboxes tag ....................................................................................... 870
44.5. The errors tag ............................................................................................... 871
44.6. The form tag ................................................................................................. 872
44.7. The hidden tag .............................................................................................. 873
44.8. The input tag ................................................................................................. 874

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44.9. The label tag ................................................................................................. 875

44.10. The option tag ............................................................................................. 876
44.11. The options tag ............................................................................................ 877
44.12. The password tag ........................................................................................ 878
44.13. The radiobutton tag ...................................................................................... 879
44.14. The radiobuttons tag .................................................................................... 881
44.15. The select tag .............................................................................................. 882
44.16. The textarea tag .......................................................................................... 883

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 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 any web framework 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. Questions on the Framework
itself should be asked on StackOverflow (see https://spring.io/questions).
 Spring Framework Reference Documentation

1. Getting Started with Spring

This reference guide provides detailed information about the Spring Framework. It provides
comprehensive documentation for all features, as well as some background about the underlying
concepts (such as "Dependency Injection") that Spring has embraced.

If you are just getting started with Spring, you may want to begin using the Spring Framework by
creating a Spring Boot based application. Spring Boot provides a quick (and opinionated) way to create
a production-ready Spring based application. It is based on the Spring Framework, favors convention
over configuration, and is designed to get you up and running as quickly as possible.

You can use start.spring.io to generate a basic project or follow one of the "Getting Started" guides like
the Getting Started Building a RESTful Web Service one. As well as being easier to digest, these guides
are very task focused, and most of them are based on Spring Boot. They also cover other projects from
the Spring portfolio that you might want to consider when solving a particular problem.

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2. Introduction to the Spring Framework

The 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 benefit from the Spring platform:

Make a Java method execute in a database transaction without having to deal with transaction APIs.

Make a local Java method an HTTP endpoint without having to deal with the Servlet API.

Make a local Java method a message handler without having to deal with the JMS API.

Make a local Java method a management operation without having to deal with the JMX API.

2.1 Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control

A Java application a loose term that runs the gamut from constrained, embedded applications to n-tier,
server-side enterprise applications typically consists 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. Although you can use design patterns such as Factory, Abstract Factory, Builder, Decorator,
and Service Locator to compose the various classes and object instances that make up an application,
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.

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 self-explanatory and came up with Dependency Injection.

2.2 Framework 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, Messaging, and Test, as shown in the following diagram.

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Figure 2.1. Overview of the Spring Framework

The following sections list the available modules for each feature along with their artifact names and the
topics they cover. Artifact names correlate to artifact IDs used in Dependency Management tools.

Core Container
The Core Container consists of the spring-core, spring-beans, spring-context, spring-
context-support, and spring-expression (Spring Expression Language) modules.

The spring-core and spring-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 (spring-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, resource loading, 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. spring-context-support provides support for integrating
common third-party libraries into a Spring application context for caching (EhCache, Guava, JCache),
mailing (JavaMail), scheduling (CommonJ, Quartz) and template engines (FreeMarker, JasperReports,
Velocity).

The spring-expression 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 content of arrays, collections and indexers,

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logical and arithmetic operators, named variables, and retrieval of objects by name from Springs IoC
container. It also supports list projection and selection as well as common list aggregations.

AOP and Instrumentation

The spring-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 spring-aspects module provides integration with AspectJ.

The spring-instrument module provides class instrumentation support and classloader

implementations to be used in certain application servers. The spring-instrument-tomcat module
contains Springs instrumentation agent for Tomcat.

Messaging
Spring Framework 4 includes a spring-messaging module with key abstractions from the Spring
Integration project such as Message, MessageChannel, MessageHandler, and others to serve as a
foundation for messaging-based applications. The module also includes a set of annotations for mapping
messages to methods, similar to the Spring MVC annotation based programming model.

Data Access/Integration
The Data Access/Integration layer consists of the JDBC, ORM, OXM, JMS, and Transaction modules.

The spring-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 spring-tx module supports programmatic and declarative transaction management for classes
that implement special interfaces and for all your POJOs (Plain Old Java Objects).

The spring-orm module provides integration layers for popular object-relational mapping APIs,
including JPA, JDO, and Hibernate. Using the spring-orm module 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 spring-oxm module provides an abstraction layer that supports Object/XML mapping
implementations such as JAXB, Castor, XMLBeans, JiBX and XStream.

The spring-jms module (Java Messaging Service) contains features for producing and consuming
messages. Since Spring Framework 4.1, it provides integration with the spring-messaging module.

Web
The Web layer consists of the spring-web, spring-webmvc, spring-websocket, and spring-
webmvc-portlet modules.

The spring-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 an HTTP client and the web-related parts of Springs remoting
support.

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The spring-webmvc module (also known as the Web-Servlet module) contains Springs model-
view-controller (MVC) and REST Web Services implementation for web applications. Springs MVC
framework provides a clean separation between domain model code and web forms and integrates with
all of the other features of the Spring Framework.

The spring-webmvc-portlet module (also known as the Web-Portlet module) provides the MVC
implementation to be used in a Portlet environment and mirrors the functionality of the Servlet-based
spring-webmvc module.

Test

The spring-test module supports the unit testing and integration 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.

2.3 Usage scenarios

The building blocks described previously make Spring a logical choice in many scenarios, from
embedded applications that run on resource-constrained devices to full-fledged enterprise applications
that use Springs transaction management functionality and web framework integration.

Figure 2.2. Typical full-fledged Spring web application

Springs 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 Springs 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. Springs ORM support is integrated with JPA, Hibernate and
JDO; 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-

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layer with the domain model, removing the need for ActionForms or other classes that transform HTTP
parameters to values for your domain model.

Figure 2.3. 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-or-nothing solution. Existing
front-ends built with Struts, Tapestry, JSF 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.

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Figure 2.4. Remoting usage scenario

When you need to access existing code through web services, you can use Springs Hessian-,
Burlap-, Rmi- or JaxRpcProxyFactory classes. Enabling remote access to existing applications
is not difficult.

Figure 2.5. 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.

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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 dont want to write a web application you dont
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.
spring-core, spring-webmvc, spring-jms, etc.). The actual jar file name that you use is normally
the module name concatenated with the version number (e.g. spring-core-4.3.10.RELEASE.jar).

Each release of the Spring Framework will publish artifacts to the following places:

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.

In a public Maven repository hosted specifically for Spring. In addition to the final GA releases, this
repository also hosts development snapshots and milestones. 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. This repository also contains a bundle distribution zip file that
contains all Spring jars bundled together for easy download.

So the first thing you need to decide is how to manage your dependencies: we generally recommend the
use of an automated system like Maven, Gradle or Ivy, but you can also do it manually by downloading
all the jars yourself.

Below you will find the list of Spring artifacts. For a more complete description of each module, see
Section 2.2, Framework Modules.
Table 2.1. Spring Framework Artifacts

GroupId ArtifactId Description

org.springframework spring-aop Proxy-based AOP support

org.springframework spring-aspects AspectJ based aspects

org.springframework spring-beans Beans support, including

Groovy

org.springframework spring-context Application context runtime,

including scheduling and
remoting abstractions

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GroupId ArtifactId Description

org.springframework spring-context-support Support classes for integrating

common third-party libraries
into a Spring application context

org.springframework spring-core Core utilities, used by many

other Spring modules

org.springframework spring-expression Spring Expression Language

(SpEL)

org.springframework spring-instrument Instrumentation agent for JVM

bootstrapping

org.springframework spring-instrument-tomcat Instrumentation agent for

Tomcat

org.springframework spring-jdbc JDBC support package,

including DataSource setup and
JDBC access support

org.springframework spring-jms JMS support package, including

helper classes to send/receive
JMS messages

org.springframework spring-messaging Support for messaging

architectures and protocols

org.springframework spring-orm Object/Relational Mapping,

including JPA and Hibernate
support

org.springframework spring-oxm Object/XML Mapping

org.springframework spring-test Support for unit testing and

integration testing Spring
components

org.springframework spring-tx Transaction infrastructure,

including DAO support and JCA
integration

org.springframework spring-web Foundational web support,

including web client and web-
based remoting

org.springframework spring-webmvc HTTP-based Model-View-

Controller and REST endpoints
for Servlet stacks

org.springframework spring-webmvc-portlet MVC implementation to be used

in a Portlet environment

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GroupId ArtifactId Description

org.springframework spring-websocket WebSocket and SockJS

infrastructure, including STOMP
messaging support

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 shouldnt 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 Gradle and finally using 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 Gradle to manage dependencies when it is building, and our samples mostly use Gradle or Maven.

Maven Dependency Management

If you are using Maven for dependency management you dont 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>4.3.10.RELEASE</version>
<scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

Thats it. Note the scope can be declared as runtime if you dont need to compile against Spring APIs,
which is typically the case for basic dependency injection use cases.

The example above works with the Maven Central repository. To use the Spring 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>io.spring.repo.maven.release</id>
<url>http://repo.spring.io/release/</url>
<snapshots><enabled>false</enabled></snapshots>
</repository>
</repositories>

For milestones:

<repositories>
<repository>
<id>io.spring.repo.maven.milestone</id>
<url>http://repo.spring.io/milestone/</url>
<snapshots><enabled>false</enabled></snapshots>
</repository>
</repositories>

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And for snapshots:

<repositories>
<repository>
<id>io.spring.repo.maven.snapshot</id>
<url>http://repo.spring.io/snapshot/</url>
<snapshots><enabled>true</enabled></snapshots>
</repository>
</repositories>

Maven "Bill Of Materials" Dependency

It is possible to accidentally mix different versions of Spring JARs when using Maven. For example,
you may find that a third-party library, or another Spring project, pulls in a transitive dependency to an
older release. If you forget to explicitly declare a direct dependency yourself, all sorts of unexpected
issues can arise.

To overcome such problems Maven supports the concept of a "bill of materials" (BOM) dependency.
You can import the spring-framework-bom in your dependencyManagement section to ensure
that all spring dependencies (both direct and transitive) are at the same version.

<dependencyManagement>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-framework-bom</artifactId>
<version>4.3.10.RELEASE</version>
<type>pom</type>
<scope>import</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>

An added benefit of using the BOM is that you no longer need to specify the <version> attribute when
depending on Spring Framework artifacts:

<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependencies>

Gradle Dependency Management

To use the Spring repository with the Gradle build system, include the appropriate URL in the
repositories section:

repositories {
mavenCentral()
// and optionally...
maven { url "http://repo.spring.io/release" }
}

You can change the repositories URL from /release to /milestone or /snapshot as
appropriate. Once a repository has been configured, you can declare dependencies in the usual Gradle
way:

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dependencies {
compile("org.springframework:spring-context:4.3.10.RELEASE")
testCompile("org.springframework:spring-test:4.3.10.RELEASE")
}

Ivy Dependency Management

If you prefer to use Ivy to manage dependencies then there are similar configuration options.

To configure Ivy to point to the Spring repository add the following resolver to your ivysettings.xml:

<resolvers>
<ibiblio name="io.spring.repo.maven.release"
m2compatible="true"
root="http://repo.spring.io/release/"/>
</resolvers>

You can change the root URL from /release/ to /milestone/ or /snapshot/ as appropriate.

Once configured, you can add dependencies in the usual way. For example (in ivy.xml):

<dependency org="org.springframework"
name="spring-core" rev="4.3.10.RELEASE" conf="compile->runtime"/>

Distribution Zip Files

Although using a build system that supports dependency management is the recommended way to
obtain the Spring Framework, it is still possible to download a distribution zip file.

Distribution zips are published to the Spring Maven Repository (this is just for our convenience, you
dont need Maven or any other build system in order to download them).

To download a distribution zip open a web browser to http://repo.spring.io/release/org/springframework/

spring and select the appropriate subfolder for the version that you want. Distribution files end -
dist.zip, for example spring-framework-{spring-version}-RELEASE-dist.zip. Distributions are also
published for milestones and snapshots.

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.
Its 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 commons-logging,
then it is from Spring and specifically from the central module called spring-core.

The nice thing about commons-logging is that you dont need anything else to make your application
work. It has a runtime discovery algorithm that looks for other logging frameworks in well known places

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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 thats important.

Using Log4j 1.2 or 2.x

Note

Log4j 1.2 is EOL in the meantime. Also, Log4j 2.3 is the last Java 6 compatible release, with
newer Log4j 2.x releases requiring Java 7+.

Many people use Log4j as a logging framework for configuration and management purposes. It is
efficient and well-established, and in fact it is what we use at runtime when we build 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 1.2 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>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
<version>4.3.10.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>log4j</groupId>
<artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
<version>1.2.17</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

And heres 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

To use Log4j 2.x with JCL, all you need to do is put Log4j on the classpath and provide it with a
configuration file (log4j2.xml, log4j2.properties, or other supported configuration formats). For
Maven users, the minimal dependencies needed are:

<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.logging.log4j</groupId>
<artifactId>log4j-core</artifactId>
<version>2.6.2</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.logging.log4j</groupId>
<artifactId>log4j-jcl</artifactId>
<version>2.6.2</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

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If you also wish to enable SLF4J to delegate to Log4j, e.g. for other libraries which use SLF4J by default,
the following dependency is also needed:

<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.logging.log4j</groupId>
<artifactId>log4j-slf4j-impl</artifactId>
<version>2.6.2</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

Here is an example log4j2.xml for logging to the console:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<Configuration status="WARN">
<Appenders>
<Console name="Console" target="SYSTEM_OUT">
<PatternLayout pattern="%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} [%t] %-5level %logger{36} - %msg%n"/>
</Console>
</Appenders>
<Loggers>
<Logger name="org.springframework.beans.factory" level="DEBUG"/>
<Root level="error">
<AppenderRef ref="Console"/>
</Root>
</Loggers>
</Configuration>

Avoiding Commons Logging

Unfortunately, the runtime discovery algorithm in the standard commons-logging API, while
convenient for the end-user, can be problematic. If youd like to avoid JCLs standard lookup, there are
basically two ways to switch it off:

1. Exclude the dependency from the spring-core module (as it is the only module that explicitly
depends on commons-logging)

2. Depend on a special commons-logging dependency that replaces the library with an empty jar
(more details can be found in the SLF4J FAQ)

To exclude commons-logging, add the following to your dependencyManagement section:

<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
<version>4.3.10.RELEASE</version>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

Now this application is currently 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.

Using SLF4J with Log4j or Logback

The Simple Logging Facade for Java (SLF4J) is a popular API used by other libraries commonly used
with Spring. It is typically used with Logback which is a native implementation of the SLF4J API.

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SLF4J provides bindings to many common logging frameworks, including Log4j, 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 several dependencies (and exclude the existing commons-logging): the
JCL bridge, the SLF4j binding to Log4j, and the Log4j provider itself. In Maven you would do that like this

<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
<version>4.3.10.RELEASE</version>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
<artifactId>jcl-over-slf4j</artifactId>
<version>1.7.21</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
<artifactId>slf4j-log4j12</artifactId>
<version>1.7.21</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>log4j</groupId>
<artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
<version>1.2.17</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

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 just two libraries, namely jcl-over-slf4j
and logback):

<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
<artifactId>jcl-over-slf4j</artifactId>
<version>1.7.21</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
<artifactId>logback-classic</artifactId>
<version>1.1.7</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

Using JUL (java.util.logging)

Commons Logging will delegate to java.util.logging by default, provided that no Log4j is detected
on the classpath. So there is no special dependency to set up: just use Spring with no external
dependency for log output to java.util.logging, either in a standalone application (with a custom

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or default JUL setup at the JDK level) or with an application servers log system (and its system-wide
JUL setup).

Commons Logging on WebSphere

Spring applications may run on a container that itself provides an implementation of JCL, e.g. IBMs
WebSphere Application Server (WAS). This does not cause issues per se but leads to two different
scenarios that need to be understood:

In a "parent first" ClassLoader delegation model (the default on WAS), applications will always pick up
the server-provided version of Commons Logging, delegating to the WAS logging subsystem (which is
actually based on JUL). An application-provided variant of JCL, whether standard Commons Logging
or the JCL-over-SLF4J bridge, will effectively be ignored, along with any locally included log provider.

With a "parent last" delegation model (the default in a regular Servlet container but an explicit
configuration option on WAS), an application-provided Commons Logging variant will be picked up,
enabling you to set up a locally included log provider, e.g. Log4j or Logback, within your application.
In case of no local log provider, regular Commons Logging will delegate to JUL by default, effectively
logging to WebSpheres logging subsystem like in the "parent first" scenario.

All in all, we recommend deploying Spring applications in the "parent last" model since it naturally allows
for local providers as well as the servers log subsystem.

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 Part II. Whats New in
Spring Framework 4.x
This chapter provides an overview of the new features and improvements that have been introduced
with Spring Framework 4.3. If you are interested in more details, please see the Issue Tracker tickets
that were resolved as part of the 4.3 development process.
 Spring Framework Reference Documentation

3. New Features and Enhancements in Spring

Framework 4.0
The Spring Framework was first released in 2004; since then there have been significant major revisions:
Spring 2.0 provided XML namespaces and AspectJ support; Spring 2.5 embraced annotation-driven
configuration; Spring 3.0 introduced a strong Java 5+ foundation across the framework codebase, and
features such as the Java-based @Configuration model.

Version 4.0 is the latest major release of the Spring Framework and the first to fully support Java 8
features. You can still use Spring with older versions of Java, however, the minimum requirement has
now been raised to Java SE 6. We have also taken the opportunity of a major release to remove many
deprecated classes and methods.

A migration guide for upgrading to Spring 4.0 is available on the Spring Framework GitHub Wiki.

3.1 Improved Getting Started Experience

The new spring.io website provides a whole series of "Getting Started" guides to help you learn Spring.
You can read more about the guides in the Chapter 1, Getting Started with Spring section in this
document. The new website also provides a comprehensive overview of the many additional projects
that are released under the Spring umbrella.

If you are a Maven user you may also be interested in the helpful bill of materials POM file that is now
published with each Spring Framework release.

3.2 Removed Deprecated Packages and Methods

All deprecated packages, and many deprecated classes and methods have been removed with version
4.0. If you are upgrading from a previous release of Spring, you should ensure that you have fixed any
deprecated calls that you were making to outdated APIs.

For a complete set of changes, check out the API Differences Report.

Note that optional third-party dependencies have been raised to a 2010/2011 minimum (i.e. Spring 4
generally only supports versions released in late 2010 or later now): notably, Hibernate 3.6+, EhCache
2.1+, Quartz 1.8+, Groovy 1.8+, and Joda-Time 2.0+. As an exception to the rule, Spring 4 requires the
recent Hibernate Validator 4.3+, and support for Jackson has been focused on 2.0+ now (with Jackson
1.8/1.9 support retained for the time being where Spring 3.2 had it; now just in deprecated form).

3.3 Java 8 (as well as 6 and 7)

Spring Framework 4.0 provides support for several Java 8 features. You can make use of lambda
expressions and method references with Springs callback interfaces. There is first-class support for
java.time (JSR-310), and several existing annotations have been retrofitted as @Repeatable. You
can also use Java 8s parameter name discovery (based on the -parameters compiler flag) as an
alternative to compiling your code with debug information enabled.

Spring remains compatible with older versions of Java and the JDK: concretely, Java SE 6 (specifically,
a minimum level equivalent to JDK 6 update 18, as released in January 2010) and above are still fully

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supported. However, for newly started development projects based on Spring 4, we recommend the
use of Java 7 or 8.

3.4 Java EE 6 and 7

Java EE version 6 or above is now considered the baseline for Spring Framework 4, with the JPA 2.0
and Servlet 3.0 specifications being of particular relevance. In order to remain compatible with Google
App Engine and older application servers, it is possible to deploy a Spring 4 application into a Servlet
2.5 environment. However, Servlet 3.0+ is strongly recommended and a prerequisite in Springs test
and mock packages for test setups in development environments.

Note

If you are a WebSphere 7 user, be sure to install the JPA 2.0 feature pack. On WebLogic 10.3.4
or higher, install the JPA 2.0 patch that comes with it. This turns both of those server generations
into Spring 4 compatible deployment environments.

On a more forward-looking note, Spring Framework 4.0 supports the Java EE 7 level of applicable
specifications now: in particular, JMS 2.0, JTA 1.2, JPA 2.1, Bean Validation 1.1, and JSR-236
Concurrency Utilities. As usual, this support focuses on individual use of those specifications, e.g. on
Tomcat or in standalone environments. However, it works equally well when a Spring application is
deployed to a Java EE 7 server.

Note that Hibernate 4.3 is a JPA 2.1 provider and therefore only supported as of Spring Framework 4.0.
The same applies to Hibernate Validator 5.0 as a Bean Validation 1.1 provider. Neither of the two are
officially supported with Spring Framework 3.2.

3.5 Groovy Bean Definition DSL

Beginning with Spring Framework 4.0, it is possible to define external bean configuration using a Groovy
DSL. This is similar in concept to using XML bean definitions but allows for a more concise syntax. Using
Groovy also allows you to easily embed bean definitions directly in your bootstrap code. For example:

def reader = new GroovyBeanDefinitionReader(myApplicationContext)

reader.beans {
dataSource(BasicDataSource) {
driverClassName = "org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver"
url = "jdbc:hsqldb:mem:grailsDB"
username = "sa"
password = ""
settings = [mynew:"setting"]
}
sessionFactory(SessionFactory) {
dataSource = dataSource
}
myService(MyService) {
nestedBean = { AnotherBean bean ->
dataSource = dataSource
}
}
}

For more information consult the GroovyBeanDefinitionReader javadocs.

3.6 Core Container Improvements

There have been several general improvements to the core container:

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Spring now treats generic types as a form of qualifier when injecting Beans. For example, if you are
using a Spring Data Repository you can now easily inject a specific implementation: @Autowired
Repository<Customer> customerRepository.

If you use Springs meta-annotation support, you can now develop custom annotations that expose
specific attributes from the source annotation.

Beans can now be ordered when they are autowired into lists and arrays. Both the @Order annotation
and Ordered interface are supported.

The @Lazy annotation can now be used on injection points, as well as on @Bean definitions.

The @Description annotation has been introduced for developers using Java-based configuration.

A generalized model for conditionally filtering beans has been added via the @Conditional
annotation. This is similar to @Profile support but allows for user-defined strategies to be developed
programmatically.

CGLIB-based proxy classes no longer require a default constructor. Support is provided via the
objenesis library which is repackaged inline and distributed as part of the Spring Framework. With
this strategy, no constructor at all is being invoked for proxy instances anymore.

There is managed time zone support across the framework now, e.g. on LocaleContext.

3.7 General Web Improvements

Deployment to Servlet 2.5 servers remains an option, but Spring Framework 4.0 is now focused primarily
on Servlet 3.0+ environments. If you are using the Spring MVC Test Framework you will need to ensure
that a Servlet 3.0 compatible JAR is in your test classpath.

In addition to the WebSocket support mentioned later, the following general improvements have been
made to Springs Web modules:

You can use the new @RestController annotation with Spring MVC applications, removing the
need to add @ResponseBody to each of your @RequestMapping methods.

The AsyncRestTemplate class has been added, allowing non-blocking asynchronous support
when developing REST clients.

Spring now offers comprehensive timezone support when developing Spring MVC applications.

3.8 WebSocket, SockJS, and STOMP Messaging

A new spring-websocket module provides comprehensive support for WebSocket-based, two-way
communication between client and server in web applications. It is compatible with JSR-356, the Java
WebSocket API, and in addition provides SockJS-based fallback options (i.e. WebSocket emulation)
for use in browsers that dont yet support the WebSocket protocol (e.g. Internet Explorer < 10).

A new spring-messaging module adds support for STOMP as the WebSocket sub-protocol to use in
applications along with an annotation programming model for routing and processing STOMP messages
from WebSocket clients. As a result an @Controller can now contain both @RequestMapping and
@MessageMapping methods for handling HTTP requests and messages from WebSocket-connected
clients. The new spring-messaging module also contains key abstractions formerly from the Spring

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Integration project such as Message, MessageChannel, MessageHandler, and others to serve as

a foundation for messaging-based applications.

For further details, including a more thorough introduction, see the Chapter 26, WebSocket Support
section.

3.9 Testing Improvements

In addition to pruning of deprecated code within the spring-test module, Spring Framework 4.0
introduces several new features for use in unit and integration testing.

Almost all annotations in the spring-test module (e.g., @ContextConfiguration,

@WebAppConfiguration, @ContextHierarchy, @ActiveProfiles, etc.) can now be used
as meta-annotations to create custom composed annotations and reduce configuration duplication
across a test suite.

Active bean definition profiles can now be resolved programmatically, simply by implementing
a custom ActiveProfilesResolver and registering it via the resolver attribute of
@ActiveProfiles.

A new SocketUtils class has been introduced in the spring-core module which enables you to
scan for free TCP and UDP server ports on localhost. This functionality is not specific to testing but
can prove very useful when writing integration tests that require the use of sockets, for example tests
that start an in-memory SMTP server, FTP server, Servlet container, etc.

As of Spring 4.0, the set of mocks in the org.springframework.mock.web package is

now based on the Servlet 3.0 API. Furthermore, several of the Servlet API mocks (e.g.,
MockHttpServletRequest, MockServletContext, etc.) have been updated with minor
enhancements and improved configurability.

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4. New Features and Enhancements in Spring

Framework 4.1
Version 4.1 included a number of improvements, as described in the following sections:

Section 4.1, JMS Improvements

Section 4.2, Caching Improvements

Section 4.3, Web Improvements

Section 4.4, WebSocket Messaging Improvements

Section 4.5, Testing Improvements

4.1 JMS Improvements

Spring 4.1 introduces a much simpler infrastructure to register JMS listener endpoints by annotating
bean methods with @JmsListener. The XML namespace has been enhanced to support this new
style (jms:annotation-driven), and it is also possible to fully configure the infrastructure using
Java config (@EnableJms, JmsListenerContainerFactory). It is also possible to register listener
endpoints programmatically using JmsListenerConfigurer.

Spring 4.1 also aligns its JMS support to allow you to benefit from the spring-messaging abstraction
introduced in 4.0, that is:

Message listener endpoints can have a more flexible signature and benefit from standard messaging
annotations such as @Payload, @Header, @Headers, and @SendTo. It is also possible to use a
standard Message in lieu of javax.jms.Message as method argument.

A new JmsMessageOperations interface is available and permits JmsTemplate like operations

using the Message abstraction.

Finally, Spring 4.1 provides additional miscellaneous improvements:

Synchronous request-reply operations support in JmsTemplate

Listener priority can be specified per <jms:listener/> element

Recovery options for the message listener container are configurable using a BackOff
implementation

JMS 2.0 shared consumers are supported

4.2 Caching Improvements

Spring 4.1 supports JCache (JSR-107) annotations using Springs existing cache configuration and
infrastructure abstraction; no changes are required to use the standard annotations.

Spring 4.1 also improves its own caching abstraction significantly:

Caches can be resolved at runtime using a CacheResolver. As a result the value argument
defining the cache name(s) to use is no longer mandatory.

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More operation-level customizations: cache resolver, cache manager, key generator

A new @CacheConfig class-level annotation allows common settings to be shared at the class level
without enabling any cache operation.

Better exception handling of cached methods using CacheErrorHandler

Spring 4.1 also has a breaking change in the Cache interface as a new putIfAbsent method has
been added.

4.3 Web Improvements

The existing support for resource handling based on the ResourceHttpRequestHandler
has been expanded with new abstractions ResourceResolver, ResourceTransformer, and
ResourceUrlProvider. A number of built-in implementations provide support for versioned
resource URLs (for effective HTTP caching), locating gzipped resources, generating an HTML 5
AppCache manifests, and more. See the section called Serving of Resources.

JDK 1.8s java.util.Optional is now supported for @RequestParam, @RequestHeader, and

@MatrixVariable controller method arguments.

ListenableFuture is supported as a return value alternative to DeferredResult

where an underlying service (or perhaps a call to AsyncRestTemplate) already returns
ListenableFuture.

@ModelAttribute methods are now invoked in an order that respects inter-dependencies. See
SPR-6299.

Jacksons @JsonView is supported directly on @ResponseBody and ResponseEntity controller

methods for serializing different amounts of detail for the same POJO (e.g. summary vs. detail page).
This is also supported with View-based rendering by adding the serialization view type as a model
attribute under a special key. See the section called Jackson Serialization View Support for details.

JSONP is now supported with Jackson. See the section called Jackson JSONP Support.

A new lifecycle option is available for intercepting @ResponseBody and ResponseEntity methods
just after the controller method returns and before the response is written. To take advantage declare
an @ControllerAdvice bean that implements ResponseBodyAdvice. The built-in support for
@JsonView and JSONP take advantage of this. See the section called Intercepting requests with
a HandlerInterceptor.

There are three new HttpMessageConverter options:

Gson lighter footprint than Jackson; has already been in use in Spring Android.

Google Protocol Buffers efficient and effective as an inter-service communication data protocol
within an enterprise but can also be exposed as JSON and XML for browsers.

Jackson based XML serialization is now supported through the jackson-dataformat-xml extension.
When using @EnableWebMvc or <mvc:annotation-driven/>, this is used by default instead
of JAXB2 if jackson-dataformat-xml is in the classpath.

Views such as JSPs can now build links to controllers by referring to controller mappings by name. A
default name is assigned to every @RequestMapping. For example FooController with method

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handleFoo is named "FC#handleFoo". The naming strategy is pluggable. It is also possible to name
an @RequestMapping explicitly through its name attribute. A new mvcUrl function in the Spring JSP
tag library makes this easy to use in JSP pages. See the section called Building URIs to Controllers
and methods from views.

ResponseEntity provides a builder-style API to guide controller methods towards the preparation
of server-side responses, e.g. ResponseEntity.ok().

RequestEntity is a new type that provides a builder-style API to guide client-side REST code
towards the preparation of HTTP requests.

MVC Java config and XML namespace:

View resolvers can now be configured including support for content negotiation, see the section
called View Resolvers.

View controllers now have built-in support for redirects and for setting the response status. An
application can use this to configure redirect URLs, render 404 responses with a view, send "no
content" responses, etc. Some use cases are listed here.

Path matching customizations are frequently used and now built-in. See the section called Path
Matching.

Groovy markup template support (based on Groovy 2.3). See the GroovyMarkupConfigurer and
respecitve ViewResolver and `View' implementations.

4.4 WebSocket Messaging Improvements

SockJS (Java) client-side support. See SockJsClient and classes in same package.

New application context events SessionSubscribeEvent and SessionUnsubscribeEvent

published when STOMP clients subscribe and unsubscribe.

New "websocket" scope. See the section called WebSocket Scope.

@SendToUser can target only a single session and does not require an authenticated user.

@MessageMapping methods can use dot "." instead of slash "/" as path separator. See SPR-11660.

STOMP/WebSocket monitoring info collected and logged. See the section called Runtime
Monitoring.

Significantly optimized and improved logging that should remain very readable and compact even at
DEBUG level.

Optimized message creation including support for temporary message mutability and avoiding
automatic message id and timestamp creation. See Javadoc of MessageHeaderAccessor.

Close STOMP/WebSocket connections that have no activity within 60 seconds after the WebSocket
session is established. See SPR-11884.

4.5 Testing Improvements

Groovy scripts can now be used to configure the ApplicationContext loaded for integration tests
in the TestContext framework.

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See the section called Context configuration with Groovy scripts for details.

Test-managed transactions can now be programmatically started and ended within transactional test
methods via the new TestTransaction API.

See the section called Programmatic transaction management for details.

SQL script execution can now be configured declaratively via the new @Sql and @SqlConfig
annotations on a per-class or per-method basis.

See the section called Executing SQL scripts for details.

Test property sources which automatically override system and application property sources can be
configured via the new @TestPropertySource annotation.

See the section called Context configuration with test property sources for details.

Default TestExecutionListeners can now be automatically discovered.

See the section called Automatic discovery of default TestExecutionListeners for details.

Custom TestExecutionListeners can now be automatically merged with the default listeners.

See the section called Merging TestExecutionListeners for details.

The documentation for transactional testing support in the TestContext framework has been improved
with more thorough explanations and additional examples.

See the section called Transaction management for details.

Various improvements to MockServletContext, MockHttpServletRequest, and other Servlet

API mocks.

AssertThrows has been refactored to support Throwable instead of Exception.

In Spring MVC Test, JSON responses can be asserted with JSON Assert as an extra option to using
JSONPath much like it has been possible to do for XML with XMLUnit.

MockMvcBuilder recipes can now be created with the help of MockMvcConfigurer. This was
added to make it easy to apply Spring Security setup but can be used to encapsulate common setup
for any 3rd party framework or within a project.

MockRestServiceServer now supports the AsyncRestTemplate for client-side testing.

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5. New Features and Enhancements in Spring

Framework 4.2
Version 4.2 included a number of improvements, as described in the following sections:

Section 5.1, Core Container Improvements

Section 5.2, Data Access Improvements

Section 5.3, JMS Improvements

Section 5.4, Web Improvements

Section 5.5, WebSocket Messaging Improvements

Section 5.6, Testing Improvements

5.1 Core Container Improvements

Annotations such as @Bean get detected and processed on Java 8 default methods as well, allowing
for composing a configuration class from interfaces with default @Bean methods.

Configuration classes may declare @Import with regular component classes now, allowing for a mix
of imported configuration classes and component classes.

Configuration classes may declare an @Order value, getting processed in a corresponding order (e.g.
for overriding beans by name) even when detected through classpath scanning.

@Resource injection points support an @Lazy declaration, analogous to @Autowired, receiving a

lazy-initializing proxy for the requested target bean.

The application event infrastructure now offers an annotation-based model as well as the ability to
publish any arbitrary event.

Any public method in a managed bean can be annotated with @EventListener to consume
events.

@TransactionalEventListener provides transaction-bound event support.

Spring Framework 4.2 introduces first-class support for declaring and looking up aliases for annotation
attributes. The new @AliasFor annotation can be used to declare a pair of aliased attributes within
a single annotation or to declare an alias from one attribute in a custom composed annotation to an
attribute in a meta-annotation.

The following annotations have been retrofitted with @AliasFor support

in order to provide meaningful aliases for their value attributes:
@Cacheable, @CacheEvict, @CachePut, @ComponentScan, @ComponentScan.Filter,
@ImportResource, @Scope, @ManagedResource, @Header, @Payload, @SendToUser,
@ActiveProfiles, @ContextConfiguration, @Sql, @TestExecutionListeners,
@TestPropertySource, @Transactional, @ControllerAdvice, @CookieValue,
@CrossOrigin, @MatrixVariable, @RequestHeader, @RequestMapping,

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@RequestParam, @RequestPart, @ResponseStatus, @SessionAttributes,

@ActionMapping, @RenderMapping, @EventListener, @TransactionalEventListener.

For example, @ContextConfiguration from the spring-test module is now declared as

follows:

public @interface ContextConfiguration {

@AliasFor("locations")
String[] value() default {};

@AliasFor("value")
String[] locations() default {};

// ...
}

Similarly, composed annotations that override attributes from meta-annotations can now use
@AliasFor for fine-grained control over exactly which attributes are overridden within an
annotation hierarchy. In fact, it is now possible to declare an alias for the value attribute of a meta-
annotation.

For example, one can now develop a composed annotation with a custom attribute override as
follows.

@ContextConfiguration
public @interface MyTestConfig {

@AliasFor(annotation = ContextConfiguration.class, attribute = "value")

String[] xmlFiles();

// ...
}

See Spring Annotation Programming Model.

Numerous improvements to Springs search algorithms used for finding meta-annotations. For
example, locally declared composed annotations are now favored over inherited annotations.

Composed annotations that override attributes from meta-annotations can now be discovered on
interfaces and on abstract, bridge, & interface methods as well as on classes, standard methods,
constructors, and fields.

Maps representing annotation attributes (and AnnotationAttributes instances) can be

synthesized (i.e., converted) into an annotation.

The features of field-based data binding (DirectFieldAccessor) have been aligned with the
current property-based data binding (BeanWrapper). In particular, field-based binding now supports
navigation for Collections, Arrays, and Maps.

DefaultConversionService now provides out-of-the-box converters for Stream, Charset,

Currency, and TimeZone. Such converters can be added individually to any arbitrary
ConversionService as well.

DefaultFormattingConversionService comes with out-of-the-box support for the value types

in JSR-354 Money & Currency (if the 'javax.money' API is present on the classpath): namely,
MonetaryAmount and CurrencyUnit. This includes support for applying @NumberFormat.

@NumberFormat can now be used as a meta-annotation.

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JavaMailSenderImpl has a new testConnection() method for checking connectivity to the

server.

ScheduledTaskRegistrar exposes scheduled tasks.

Apache commons-pool2 is now supported for a pooling AOP CommonsPool2TargetSource.

Introduced StandardScriptFactory as a JSR-223 based mechanism for scripted beans,

exposed through the lang:std element in XML. Supports e.g. JavaScript and JRuby. (Note:
JRubyScriptFactory and lang:jruby are deprecated now, in favor of using JSR-223.)

5.2 Data Access Improvements

javax.transaction.Transactional is now supported via AspectJ.

SimpleJdbcCallOperations now supports named binding.

Full support for Hibernate ORM 5.0: as a JPA provider (automatically adapted) as well as through its
native API (covered by the new org.springframework.orm.hibernate5 package).

Embedded databases can now be automatically assigned unique names, and <jdbc:embedded-
database> supports a new database-name attribute. See "Testing Improvements" below for further
details.

5.3 JMS Improvements

The autoStartup attribute can be controlled via JmsListenerContainerFactory.

The type of the reply Destination can now be configured per listener container.

The value of the @SendTo annotation can now use a SpEL expression.

The response destination can be computed at runtime using JmsResponse

@JmsListener is now a repeatable annotation to declare several JMS containers on the same
method (use the newly introduced @JmsListeners if youre not using Java8 yet).

5.4 Web Improvements

HTTP Streaming and Server-Sent Events support, see the section called HTTP Streaming.

Built-in support for CORS including global (MVC Java config and XML namespace) and local (e.g.
@CrossOrigin) configuration. See Chapter 27, CORS Support for details.

HTTP caching updates:

new CacheControl builder; plugged into ResponseEntity, WebContentGenerator,

ResourceHttpRequestHandler.

improved ETag/Last-Modified support in WebRequest.

Custom mapping annotations, using @RequestMapping as a meta-annotation.

Public methods in AbstractHandlerMethodMapping to register and unregister request mappings

at runtime.

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Protected createDispatcherServlet method in

AbstractDispatcherServletInitializer to further customize the DispatcherServlet
instance to use.

HandlerMethod as a method argument on @ExceptionHandler methods, especially handy in

@ControllerAdvice components.

java.util.concurrent.CompletableFuture as an @Controller method return value type.

Byte-range request support in HttpHeaders and for serving static resources.

@ResponseStatus detected on nested exceptions.

UriTemplateHandler extension point in the RestTemplate.

DefaultUriTemplateHandler exposes baseUrl property and path segment encoding options.

the extension point can also be used to plug in any URI template library.

OkHTTP integration with the RestTemplate.

Custom baseUrl alternative for methods in MvcUriComponentsBuilder.

Serialization/deserialization exception messages are now logged at WARN level.

Default JSON prefix has been changed from "{} && " to the safer ")]}', " one.

New RequestBodyAdvice extension point and built-in implementation to support Jacksons

@JsonView on @RequestBody method arguments.

When using GSON or Jackson 2.6+, the handler method return type is used to improve serialization
of parameterized types like List<Foo>.

Introduced ScriptTemplateView as a JSR-223 based mechanism for scripted web views, with a
focus on JavaScript view templating on Nashorn (JDK 8).

5.5 WebSocket Messaging Improvements

Expose presence information about connected users and subscriptions:

new SimpUserRegistry exposed as a bean named "userRegistry".

sharing of presence information across cluster of servers (see broker relay config options).

Resolve user destinations across cluster of servers (see broker relay config options).

StompSubProtocolErrorHandler extension point to customize and control STOMP ERROR

frames to clients.

Global @MessageExceptionHandler methods via @ControllerAdvice components.

Heart-beats and a SpEL expression 'selector' header for subscriptions with

SimpleBrokerMessageHandler.

STOMP client for use over TCP and WebSocket; see the section called STOMP Client.

@SendTo and @SendToUser can contain destination variable placeholders.

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Jacksons @JsonView supported for return values on @MessageMapping and

@SubscribeMapping methods.

ListenableFuture and CompletableFuture as return value types from @MessageMapping

and @SubscribeMapping methods.

MarshallingMessageConverter for XML payloads.

5.6 Testing Improvements

JUnit-based integration tests can now be executed with JUnit rules instead of the
SpringJUnit4ClassRunner. This allows Spring-based integration tests to be run with alternative
runners like JUnits Parameterized or third-party runners such as the MockitoJUnitRunner.

See the section called Spring JUnit 4 Rules for details.

The Spring MVC Test framework now provides first-class support for HtmlUnit, including integration
with Seleniums WebDriver, allowing for page-based web application testing without the need to
deploy to a Servlet container.

See the section called HtmlUnit Integration for details.

AopTestUtils is a new testing utility that allows developers to obtain a reference to the underlying
target object hidden behind one or more Spring proxies.

See the section called General testing utilities for details.

ReflectionTestUtils now supports setting and getting static fields, including constants.

The original ordering of bean definition profiles declared via @ActiveProfiles is now retained in
order to support use cases such as Spring Boots ConfigFileApplicationListener which loads
configuration files based on the names of active profiles.

@DirtiesContext supports new BEFORE_METHOD, BEFORE_CLASS, and

BEFORE_EACH_TEST_METHOD modes for closing the ApplicationContext before a test for
example, if some rogue (i.e., yet to be determined) test within a large test suite has corrupted the
original configuration for the ApplicationContext.

@Commit is a new annotation that may be used as a direct replacement for @Rollback(false).

@Rollback may now be used to configure class-level default rollback semantics.

Consequently, @TransactionConfiguration is now deprecated and will be removed in a

subsequent release.

@Sql now supports execution of inlined SQL statements via a new statements attribute.

The ContextCache that is used for caching ApplicationContexts between tests is now a public
API with a default implementation that can be replaced for custom caching needs.

DefaultTestContext, DefaultBootstrapContext, and

DefaultCacheAwareContextLoaderDelegate are now public classes in the support
subpackage, allowing for custom extensions.

TestContextBootstrappers are now responsible for building the TestContext.

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In the Spring MVC Test framework, MvcResult details can now be logged at DEBUG level or
written to a custom OutputStream or Writer. See the new log(), print(OutputStream), and
print(Writer) methods in MockMvcResultHandlers for details.

The JDBC XML namespace supports a new database-name attribute in <jdbc:embedded-

database>, allowing developers to set unique names for embedded databases - for example, via
a SpEL expression or a property placeholder that is influenced by the current active bean definition
profiles.

Embedded databases can now be automatically assigned a unique name, allowing common test
database configuration to be reused in different ApplicationContexts within a test suite.

See the section called Generating unique names for embedded databases for details.

MockHttpServletRequest and MockHttpServletResponse now provide better support for

date header formatting via the getDateHeader and setDateHeader methods.

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6. New Features and Enhancements in Spring

Framework 4.3
Version 4.3 included a number of improvements, as described in the following sections:

Section 6.1, Core Container Improvements

Section 6.2, Data Access Improvements

Section 6.3, Caching Improvements

Section 6.4, JMS Improvements

Section 6.5, Web Improvements

Section 6.6, WebSocket Messaging Improvements

Section 6.7, Testing Improvements

Section 6.8, Support for new library and server generations

6.1 Core Container Improvements

Core container exceptions provide richer metadata to evaluate programmatically.

Java 8 default methods get detected as bean property getters/setters.

Lazy candidate beans are not being created in case of injecting a primary bean.

It is no longer necessary to specify the @Autowired annotation if the target bean only defines one
constructor.

@Configuration classes support constructor injection.

Any SpEL expression used to specify the condition of an @EventListener can now refer to
beans (e.g. @beanName.method()).

Composed annotations can now override array attributes in meta-annotations with a single element of
the component type of the array. For example, the String[] path attribute of @RequestMapping
can be overridden with String path in a composed annotation.

@PersistenceContext/@PersistenceUnit selects a primary EntityManagerFactory bean

if declared as such.

@Scheduled and @Schedules may now be used as meta-annotations to create custom composed
annotations with attribute overrides.

@Scheduled is properly supported on beans of any scope.

6.2 Data Access Improvements

jdbc:initialize-database and jdbc:embedded-database support a configurable separator
to be applied to each script.

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6.3 Caching Improvements

Spring 4.3 allows concurrent calls on a given key to be synchronized so that the value is only computed
once. This is an opt-in feature that should be enabled via the new sync attribute on @Cacheable. This
features introduces a breaking change in the Cache interface as a get(Object key, Callable<T>
valueLoader) method has been added.

Spring 4.3 also improves the caching abstraction as follows:

SpEL expressions in caches-related annotations can now refer to beans (i.e.

@beanName.method()).

ConcurrentMapCacheManager and ConcurrentMapCache now support the serialization of

cache entries via a new storeByValue attribute.

@Cacheable, @CacheEvict, @CachePut, and @Caching may now be used as meta-annotations

to create custom composed annotations with attribute overrides.

6.4 JMS Improvements

@SendTo can now be specified at the class level to share a common reply destination.

@JmsListener and @JmsListeners may now be used as meta-annotations to create custom

composed annotations with attribute overrides.

6.5 Web Improvements

Built-in support for HTTP HEAD and HTTP OPTIONS.

New @GetMapping, @PostMapping, @PutMapping, @DeleteMapping, and @PatchMapping

composed annotations for @RequestMapping.

See Composed @RequestMapping Variants for details.

New @RequestScope, @SessionScope, and @ApplicationScope composed annotations for

web scopes.

See Request scope, Session scope, and Application scope for details.

New @RestControllerAdvice annotation with combined @ControllerAdvice with

@ResponseBody semantics.

@ResponseStatus is now supported at the class level and inherited by all methods.

New @SessionAttribute annotation for access to session attributes (see example).

New @RequestAttribute annotation for access to request attributes (see example).

@ModelAttribute allows preventing data binding via binding=false attribute (see reference).

@PathVariable may be declared as optional (for use on @ModelAttribute methods).

Consistent exposure of Errors and custom Throwables to MVC exception handlers.

Consistent charset handling in HTTP message converters, including a UTF-8 default for multipart text
content.

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Static resource handling uses the configured ContentNegotiationManager for media type
determination.

RestTemplate and AsyncRestTemplate support strict URI variable encoding via

DefaultUriTemplateHandler.

AsyncRestTemplate supports request interception.

6.6 WebSocket Messaging Improvements

@SendTo and @SendToUser can now be specified at class-level to share a common destination.

6.7 Testing Improvements

The JUnit support in the Spring TestContext Framework now requires JUnit 4.12 or higher.

New SpringRunner alias for the SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.

Test related annotations may now be declared on interfaces for example, for use with test interfaces
that make use of Java 8 based interface default methods.

An empty declaration of @ContextConfiguration can now be completely omitted if default XML

files, Groovy scripts, or @Configuration classes are detected.

@Transactional test methods are no longer required to be public (e.g., in TestNG and JUnit 5).

@BeforeTransaction and @AfterTransaction methods are no longer required to be public

and may now be declared on Java 8 based interface default methods.

The ApplicationContext cache in the Spring TestContext Framework is now bounded

with a default maximum size of 32 and a least recently used eviction policy. The maximum
size can be configured by setting a JVM system property or Spring property called
spring.test.context.cache.maxSize.

New ContextCustomizer API for customizing a test ApplicationContext after bean definitions
have been loaded into the context but before the context has been refreshed. Customizers can be
registered globally by third parties, foregoing the need to implement a custom ContextLoader.

@Sql and @SqlGroup may now be used as meta-annotations to create custom composed
annotations with attribute overrides.

ReflectionTestUtils now automatically unwraps proxies when setting or getting a field.

Server-side Spring MVC Test supports expectations on response headers with multiple values.

Server-side Spring MVC Test parses form data request content and populates request parameters.

Server-side Spring MVC Test supports mock-like assertions for invoked handler methods.

Client-side REST test support allows indicating how many times a request is expected and whether
the order of declaration for expectations should be ignored (see the section called Client-Side REST
Tests).

Client-side REST Test supports expectations for form data in the request body.

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6.8 Support for new library and server generations

Hibernate ORM 5.2 (still supporting 4.2/4.3 and 5.0/5.1 as well, with 3.6 deprecated now)

Hibernate Validator 5.3 (minimum remains at 4.3)

Jackson 2.8 (minimum raised to Jackson 2.6+ as of Spring 4.3)

OkHttp 3.x (still supporting OkHttp 2.x side by side)

Tomcat 8.5 as well as 9.0 milestones

Netty 4.1

Undertow 1.4

WildFly 10.1

Furthermore, Spring Framework 4.3 embeds the updated ASM 5.1, CGLIB 3.2.4, and Objenesis 2.4
in spring-core.jar.

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 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 Frameworks Inversion of Control (IoC) container. A thorough
treatment of the Spring Frameworks IoC container is closely followed by comprehensive coverage of
Springs 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 Springs integration with AspectJ (currently the richest - in terms of features - and certainly
most mature AOP implementation in the Java enterprise space) is also provided.

Chapter 7, The IoC container

Chapter 8, Resources

Chapter 9, Validation, Data Binding, and Type Conversion

Chapter 10, Spring Expression Language (SpEL)

Chapter 11, Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring

Chapter 12, Spring AOP APIs

 Spring Framework Reference Documentation

7. The IoC container

7.1 Introduction to the Spring IoC container and beans
1
This chapter covers the Spring Framework implementation of the Inversion of Control (IoC) 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 Frameworks 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 Springs 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 Springs IoC container. For more information on using the BeanFactory instead of the
ApplicationContext, refer to Section 7.16, 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.

7.2 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-the-

box 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

1
See Background

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of boilerplate web descriptor XML in the web.xml file of the application will typically suffice (see the
section called Convenient ApplicationContext instantiation for web applications). If you are using the
Spring Tool Suite Eclipse-powered development environment 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.

Figure 7.1. The Spring IoC container

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. These days many developers choose Java-based configuration for their Spring
applications.

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

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. Java configuration typically uses @Bean annotated
methods within a @Configuration class.

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

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

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

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

<!-- collaborators and configuration for this bean go here -->
</bean>

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

<!-- collaborators and configuration for this bean go here -->
</bean>

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

</beans>

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

Instantiating a 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 Springs IoC container, you may want to know more about Springs
Resource abstraction, as described in Chapter 8, 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 8.7,
Application contexts and Resource paths.

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

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<!-- services -->

<bean id="petStore" class="org.springframework.samples.jpetstore.services.PetStoreServiceImpl">

<property name="accountDao" ref="accountDao"/>
<property name="itemDao" ref="itemDao"/>
<!-- additional collaborators and configuration for this bean go here -->
</bean>

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

</beans>

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

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

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

<bean id="itemDao" class="org.springframework.samples.jpetstore.dao.jpa.JpaItemDao">

<!-- additional collaborators and configuration for this bean go here -->
</bean>

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

</beans>

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

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

Note

It is possible, but not recommended, to reference files in parent directories using a relative
"../" path. Doing so creates a dependency on a file that is outside the current application. In
particular, this reference is not recommended for "classpath:" URLs (for example, "classpath:../
services.xml"), where the runtime resolution process chooses the "nearest" classpath root and
then looks into its parent directory. Classpath configuration changes may lead to the choice of a
different, incorrect directory.

You can always use fully qualified resource locations instead of relative paths: for example, "file:C:/
config/services.xml" or "classpath:/config/services.xml". However, be aware that you are coupling
your applications configuration to specific absolute locations. It is generally preferable to keep an
indirection for such absolute locations, for example, through "${}" placeholders that are resolved
against JVM system properties at runtime.

The import directive is a feature provided by the beans namespace itself. Further configuration features
beyond plain bean definitions are available in a selection of XML namespaces provided by Spring, e.g.
the "context" and the "util" namespace.

The Groovy Bean Definition DSL

As a further example for externalized configuration metadata, bean definitions can also be expressed in
Springs Groovy Bean Definition DSL, as known from the Grails framework. Typically, such configuration
will live in a ".groovy" file with a structure as follows:

beans {
dataSource(BasicDataSource) {
driverClassName = "org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver"
url = "jdbc:hsqldb:mem:grailsDB"
username = "sa"
password = ""
settings = [mynew:"setting"]
}
sessionFactory(SessionFactory) {
dataSource = dataSource
}
myService(MyService) {
nestedBean = { AnotherBean bean ->
dataSource = dataSource
}
}
}

This configuration style is largely equivalent to XML bean definitions and even supports Springs
XML configuration namespaces. It also allows for importing XML bean definition files through an
"importBeans" directive.

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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("services.xml", "daos.xml");

// retrieve configured instance

PetStoreService service = context.getBean("petStore", PetStoreService.class);

// use configured instance

List<String> userList = service.getUsernameList();

With Groovy configuration, bootstrapping looks very similar, just a different context implementation class
which is Groovy-aware (but also understands XML bean definitions):

ApplicationContext context = new GenericGroovyApplicationContext("services.groovy", "daos.groovy");

The most flexible variant is GenericApplicationContext in combination with reader delegates, e.g.
with XmlBeanDefinitionReader for XML files:

GenericApplicationContext context = new GenericApplicationContext();

new XmlBeanDefinitionReader(context).loadBeanDefinitions("services.xml", "daos.xml");
context.refresh();

Or with GroovyBeanDefinitionReader for Groovy files:

GenericApplicationContext context = new GenericApplicationContext();

new GroovyBeanDefinitionReader(context).loadBeanDefinitions("services.groovy", "daos.groovy");
context.refresh();

Such reader delegates can be mixed and matched on the same ApplicationContext, reading bean
definitions from diverse configuration sources, if desired.

You can then 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, Springs integration with web frameworks provides
dependency injection for various web framework components such as controllers and JSF-managed
beans, allowing you to declare a dependency on a specific bean through metadata (e.g. an autowiring
annotation).

7.3 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).

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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 7.1. The bean definition

Property Explained in

class the section called Instantiating beans

name the section called Naming beans

scope Section 7.5, Bean scopes

constructor arguments the section called Dependency Injection

properties the section called Dependency Injection

autowiring mode the section called Autowiring collaborators

lazy-initialization mode the section called 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 ApplicationContexts
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.

Note

Bean metadata and manually supplied singleton instances need to be registered as early as
possible, in order for the container to properly reason about them during autowiring and other
introspection steps. While overriding of existing metadata and existing singleton instances is
supported to some degree, the registration of new beans at runtime (concurrently with live
access to factory) is not officially supported and may lead to concurrent access exceptions and/
or inconsistent state in the bean container.

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

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alphanumeric ('myBean', 'fooService', etc.), but may contain special characters as well. If you want to
introduce other aliases to the bean, you can also specify them in the name attribute, separated by a
comma (,), semicolon (;), or white space. As a historical note, in versions prior to Spring 3.1, the id
attribute was defined as an xsd:ID type, which constrained possible characters. As of 3.1, it is defined
as an xsd:string type. Note that bean id uniqueness is still enforced by the container, though no
longer by XML parsers.

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

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.

Note

With component scanning in the classpath, Spring generates bean names for unnamed
components, following the rules above: essentially, taking the simple class name and
turning its initial character to lower-case. However, in the (unusual) special case when
there is more than one character and both the first and second characters are upper
case, the original casing gets preserved. These are the same rules as defined by
java.beans.Introspector.decapitalize (which Spring is using here).

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 having its
own set of object definitions. In XML-based 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

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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.

Java-configuration

If you are using Java-configuration, the @Bean annotation can be used to provide aliases see the
section called Using the @Bean annotation for details.

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 7.7, 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.

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 nested class.

For example, if you have a class called Foo in the com.example package, and this Foo class
has a static nested 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 nested class name from the outer
class name.

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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 (no-argument)
constructor and appropriate setters and getters modeled after the properties in the container. You can
also have more exotic non-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 factory-method. 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

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bean in the current (or parent/ancestor) container that contains the instance method that is to be invoked
to create the object. Set the name of the factory method itself with the factory-method attribute.

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

<!-- the bean to be created via the factory bean -->

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

public class DefaultServiceLocator {

private static ClientService clientService = new ClientServiceImpl();

private DefaultServiceLocator() {}

public ClientService createClientServiceInstance() {

return clientService;
}
}

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

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

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

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

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

public class DefaultServiceLocator {

private static ClientService clientService = new ClientServiceImpl();

private static AccountService accountService = new AccountServiceImpl();

private DefaultServiceLocator() {}

public ClientService createClientServiceInstance() {

return clientService;
}

public AccountService createAccountServiceInstance() {

return accountService;
}

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

Note

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

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7.4 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.

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 arguments 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:

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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 {

// Number of years to calculate the Ultimate Answer

private int years;

// The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything

private String ultimateAnswer;

public ExampleBean(int years, String ultimateAnswer) {

this.years = years;
this.ultimateAnswer = ultimateAnswer;
}

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>

Use the index attribute to specify explicitly the index of constructor arguments. For example:

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

<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.

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You can also use the constructor parameter name for value disambiguation:

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

<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 cant compile your
code with debug flag (or dont 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;

public class ExampleBean {

// 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.

public class SimpleMovieLister {

// the SimpleMovieLister has a dependency on the MovieFinder

private MovieFinder movieFinder;

// a setter method so that the Spring container can inject a MovieFinder

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

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

The ApplicationContext supports constructor-based and setter-based DI for the beans it manages.
It also supports setter-based DI after some dependencies have already been injected through the
constructor approach. You configure the dependencies in the form of a BeanDefinition, which
you use in conjunction with PropertyEditor instances to convert properties from one format to
another. However, most Spring users do not work with these classes directly (i.e., programmatically) but
rather with XML bean definitions, annotated components (i.e., classes annotated with @Component,
@Controller, etc.), or @Bean methods in Java-based @Configuration classes. These sources are
then converted internally into instances of BeanDefinition and used to load an entire Spring IoC
container instance.

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Constructor-based or setter-based DI?

Since you can mix constructor-based and setter-based DI, it is a good rule of thumb to use
constructors for mandatory dependencies and setter methods or configuration methods for
optional dependencies. Note that use of the @Required annotation on a setter method can be
used to make the property a required dependency.

The Spring team generally advocates constructor injection as it enables one to implement
application components as immutable objects and to ensure that required dependencies are not
null. Furthermore constructor-injected components are always returned to client (calling) code
in a fully initialized state. As a side note, a large number of constructor arguments is a bad code
smell, implying that the class likely has too many responsibilities and should be refactored to better
address proper separation of concerns.

Setter injection should primarily only be used for optional dependencies that can be assigned
reasonable default values within the class. Otherwise, not-null checks must be performed
everywhere the code uses the dependency. One benefit of setter injection is that setter methods
make objects of that class amenable to reconfiguration or re-injection later. Management through
JMX MBeans is therefore a compelling use case for setter injection.

Use the DI style that makes the most sense for a particular class. Sometimes, when dealing with
third-party classes for which you do not have the source, the choice is made for you. For example,
if a third-party class does not expose any setter methods, then constructor injection may be the
only available form of DI.

Dependency resolution process

The container performs bean dependency resolution as follows:

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.

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.

Each property or constructor argument is an actual definition of the value to set, or a reference to
another bean in the container.

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. 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 7.5, Bean scopes. Otherwise, the bean is created only when it is requested.
Creation of a bean potentially causes a graph of beans to be created, as the beans dependencies and
its dependencies' dependencies (and so on) are created and assigned. Note that resolution mismatches
among those dependencies may show up late, i.e. on first creation of the affected bean.

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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 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).

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 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 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:

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

<!-- setter injection using the nested ref element -->
<property name="beanOne">
<ref bean="anotherExampleBean"/>
</property>

<!-- setter injection using the neater ref attribute -->

<property name="beanTwo" ref="yetAnotherBean"/>
<property name="integerProperty" value="1"/>
</bean>

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

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

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public class ExampleBean {

private AnotherBean beanOne;

private YetAnotherBean beanTwo;
private int i;

public void setBeanOne(AnotherBean beanOne) {

this.beanOne = beanOne;
}

public void setBeanTwo(YetAnotherBean beanTwo) {

this.beanTwo = beanTwo;
}

public void setIntegerProperty(int i) {

this.i = i;
}

In the preceding example, setters are declared to match against the properties specified in the XML file.
The following example uses constructor-based DI:

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

<!-- constructor injection using the nested ref element -->
<constructor-arg>
<ref bean="anotherExampleBean"/>
</constructor-arg>

<!-- constructor injection using the neater ref attribute -->

<constructor-arg ref="yetAnotherBean"/>

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

</bean>

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

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

public class ExampleBean {

private AnotherBean beanOne;

private YetAnotherBean beanTwo;
private int i;

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

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>

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

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

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public class ExampleBean {

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

// a static factory method; the arguments to this method can be

// considered the dependencies of the bean that is returned,
// regardless of how those arguments are actually used.
public static ExampleBean createInstance (
AnotherBean anotherBean, YetAnotherBean yetAnotherBean, int i) {

ExampleBean eb = new ExampleBean (...);

// some other operations...
return eb;
}

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.

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. Springs 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. Springs conversion service is used to convert these 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">

<!-- results in a setDriverClassName(String) call -->
<property name="driverClassName" value="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"/>
<property name="url" value="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mydb"/>
<property name="username" value="root"/>
<property name="password" value="masterkaoli"/>
</bean>

The following example uses the p-namespace for even more succinct XML configuration.

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

<bean id="myDataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource"

destroy-method="close"
p:driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
p:url="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mydb"
p:username="root"
p:password="masterkaoli"/>

</beans>

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 Spring 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">

<!-- typed as a java.util.Properties -->

<property name="properties">
<value>
jdbc.driver.className=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
jdbc.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mydb
</value>
</property>
</bean>

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

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client bean is a prototype bean, this typo and the resulting exception may only be discovered long
after the container is deployed.

Note

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

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

<!-- in the parent context -->

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

<!-- in the child (descendant) context -->

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

Note

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

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Inner beans

A <bean/> element inside the <property/> or <constructor-arg/> elements defines a so-called

inner bean.

<bean id="outer" class="...">

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

An inner bean definition does not require a defined id or name; if specified, the container does not use
such a value as an identifier. The container also ignores the scope flag on creation: 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 or to access them independently.

As a corner case, it is possible to receive destruction callbacks from a custom scope, e.g. for a request-
scoped inner bean contained within a singleton bean: The creation of the inner bean instance will be tied
to its containing bean, but destruction callbacks allow it to participate in the request scopes lifecycle.
This is not a common scenario; inner beans typically simply share their containing beans scope.

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">

<!-- results in a setAdminEmails(java.util.Properties) call -->
<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>
<!-- results in a setSomeList(java.util.List) call -->
<property name="someList">
<list>
<value>a list element followed by a reference</value>
<ref bean="myDataSource" />
</list>
</property>
<!-- results in a setSomeMap(java.util.Map) call -->
<property name="someMap">
<map>
<entry key="an entry" value="just some string"/>
<entry key ="a ref" value-ref="myDataSource"/>
</map>
</property>
<!-- results in a setSomeSet(java.util.Set) call -->
<property name="someSet">
<set>
<value>just some string</value>
<ref bean="myDataSource" />
</set>
</property>
</bean>

The value of a map key or value, or a set value, can also again be any of the following elements:

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

Collection merging

The Spring container also 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 collections values are the result of merging the elements of the parent and child collections, with
the childs 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">
<property name="adminEmails">
<props>
<prop key="administrator">administrator@example.com</prop>
<prop key="support">support@example.com</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="child" parent="parent">
<property name="adminEmails">
<!-- the merge is specified on the child collection definition -->
<props merge="true">
<prop key="sales">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 childs adminEmails collection with the parents adminEmails collection.

administrator=administrator@example.com
sales=sales@example.com
support=support@example.co.uk

The child Properties collections value set inherits all property elements from the parent <props/>,
and the childs 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 parents values precede all of the child
lists 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,

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child definition; specifying the merge attribute on a parent collection definition is redundant and will not
result in the desired merging.

Strongly-typed collection

With the introduction of generic types in Java 5, you can use strongly typed collections. 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 Springs 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>
<bean id="foo" class="x.y.Foo">
<property name="accounts">
<map>
<entry key="one" value="9.99"/>
<entry key="two" value="2.75"/>
<entry key="six" value="3.99"/>
</map>
</property>
</bean>
</beans>

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 Springs
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)

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XML shortcut with the p-namespace

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

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

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

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

<bean name="classic" class="com.example.ExampleBean">

<property name="email" value="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 p-namespace does not have a schema
definition, so you can set the name of the attribute to the property name.

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

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

<bean name="john-classic" class="com.example.Person">

<property name="name" value="John Doe"/>
<property name="spouse" ref="jane"/>
</bean>

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

<bean name="jane" class="com.example.Person">

<property name="name" value="Jane Doe"/>
</bean>
</beans>

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

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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.

Lets review the examples from the section called Constructor-based dependency injection with the
c: namespace:

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

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

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

<!-- traditional declaration -->

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

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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.

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.

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:

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<bean id="lazy" class="com.foo.ExpensiveToCreateBean" lazy-init="true"/>

<bean name="not.lazy" class="com.foo.AnotherBean"/>

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

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

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

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

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.
10
When using XML-based configuration metadata , you specify autowire mode for a bean definition
with the autowire attribute of the <bean/> element. The autowiring functionality has four modes. You
specify autowiring per bean and thus can choose which ones to autowire.

Table 7.2. 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

10
See the section called Dependency Injection

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Mode Explanation
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.

constructor Analogous to byType, but applies to constructor

arguments. If there 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.

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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.

Implement the more fine-grained control available with annotation-based configuration, as described
in Section 7.9, Annotation-based container configuration.

Excluding a bean from autowiring

On a per-bean basis, you can exclude a bean from autowiring. In Springs 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).

Note

The autowire-candidate attribute is designed to only affect type-based autowiring. It does

not affect explicit references by name, which will get resolved even if the specified bean is not
marked as an autowire candidate. As a consequence, autowiring by name will nevertheless inject
a bean if the name matches.

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 default-autowire-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.

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:

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// 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.

You can read more about the motivation for Method Injection in this blog entry.

Lookup method injection

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

Note

For this dynamic subclassing to work, the class that the Spring bean container will subclass
cannot be final, and the method to be overridden cannot be final either.

Unit-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.

Concrete methods are also necessary for component scanning which requires concrete classes
to pick up.

A further key limitation is that lookup methods wont work with factory methods and in particular
not with @Bean methods in configuration classes, since the container is not in charge of creating
the instance in that case and therefore cannot create a runtime-generated subclass on the fly.

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

package fiona.apple;

// no more Spring imports!

public abstract class CommandManager {

public Object process(Object commandState) {

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

// okay... but where is the implementation of this method?

protected abstract Command createCommand();
}

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

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

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

<!-- a stateful bean deployed as a prototype (non-singleton) -->

<bean id="myCommand" class="fiona.apple.AsyncCommand" scope="prototype">
<!-- inject dependencies here as required -->
</bean>

<!-- commandProcessor uses statefulCommandHelper -->

<bean id="commandManager" class="fiona.apple.CommandManager">
<lookup-method name="createCommand" bean="myCommand"/>
</bean>

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

Alternatively, within the annotation-based component model, you may declare a lookup method through
the @Lookup annotation:

public abstract class CommandManager {

public Object process(Object commandState) {

Command command = createCommand();
command.setState(commandState);
return command.execute();
}

@Lookup("myCommand")
protected abstract Command createCommand();
}

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Or, more idiomatically, you may rely on the target bean getting resolved against the declared return
type of the lookup method:

public abstract class CommandManager {

public Object process(Object commandState) {

MyCommand command = createCommand();
command.setState(commandState);
return command.execute();
}

@Lookup
protected abstract MyCommand createCommand();
}

Note that you will typically declare such annotated lookup methods with a concrete stub implementation,
in order for them to be compatible with Springs component scanning rules where abstract classes get
ignored by default. This limitation does not apply in case of explicitly registered or explicitly imported
bean classes.

Tip

Another way of accessing differently scoped target beans is an ObjectFactory/ Provider

injection point. Check out the section called Scoped beans as dependencies.

The interested reader may also find the ServiceLocatorFactoryBean (in the
org.springframework.beans.factory.config package) to be of use.

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.

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/**
* 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">

<!-- arbitrary method replacement -->
<replaced-method name="computeValue" replacer="replacementComputeValue">
<arg-type>String</arg-type>
</replaced-method>
</bean>

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

You can use one or more contained <arg-type/> elements within the <replaced-method/>
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.

7.5 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 seven scopes, five 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.

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Table 7.3. Bean scopes

Scope Description

singleton (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.

globalSession 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.

application Scopes a single bean definition to the lifecycle of

a ServletContext. Only valid in the context of
a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.

websocket Scopes a single bean definition to the lifecycle

of a WebSocket. Only valid in the context of a
web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.

Note

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.

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.

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

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

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

The 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.

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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 containers 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 the section called Lifecycle callbacks.)

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 prototype-scoped bean into your
singleton bean, because that injection occurs only once, when the Spring container is instantiating the
singleton bean and resolving and injecting its dependencies. If you need a new instance of a prototype
bean at runtime more than once, see the section called Method injection

Request, session, global session, application, and WebSocket scopes

The request, session, globalSession, application, and websocket 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

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such as the ClassPathXmlApplicationContext, an IllegalStateException will be thrown

complaining about an unknown bean scope.

Initial web configuration

To support the scoping of beans at the request, session, globalSession, application, and
websocket 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 2.5 web container, with requests processed outside of
Springs DispatcherServlet (for example, when using JSF or Struts), you need
to register the org.springframework.web.context.request.RequestContextListener
ServletRequestListener. For Servlet 3.0+, this can be done programmatically via the
WebApplicationInitializer interface. Alternatively, or for older containers, add the following
declaration to your web applications web.xml file:

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

Alternatively, if there are issues with your listener setup, consider using Springs
RequestContextFilter. The filter mapping depends on the surrounding web application
configuration, so you have to 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 XML configuration for a bean definition:

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

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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.

When using annotation-driven components or Java Config, the @RequestScope annotation can be
used to assign a component to the request scope.

@RequestScope
@Component
public class LoginAction {
// ...
}

Session scope

Consider the following XML configuration for a bean definition:

<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.

When using annotation-driven components or Java Config, the @SessionScope annotation can be
used to assign a component to the session scope.

@SessionScope
@Component
public class UserPreferences {
// ...
}

Global session scope

Consider the following bean definition:

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

The globalSession 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 globalSession 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
globalSession scope, the standard HTTP Session scope is used, and no error is raised.

Application scope

Consider the following XML configuration for a bean definition:

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<bean id="appPreferences" class="com.foo.AppPreferences" scope="application"/>

The Spring container creates a new instance of the AppPreferences bean by using the
appPreferences bean definition once for the entire web application. That is, the appPreferences
bean is scoped at the ServletContext level, stored as a regular ServletContext attribute. This
is somewhat similar to a Spring singleton bean but differs in two important ways: It is a singleton per
ServletContext, not per Spring 'ApplicationContext' (for which there may be several in any given
web application), and it is actually exposed and therefore visible as a ServletContext attribute.

When using annotation-driven components or Java Config, the @ApplicationScope annotation can
be used to assign a component to the application scope.

@ApplicationScope
@Component
public class AppPreferences {
// ...
}

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 of a longer-lived scope, you may choose to 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 (such as an HTTP request)
and delegate method calls onto the real object.

Note

You may also use <aop:scoped-proxy/> between beans that are scoped as singleton, with
the reference then going through an intermediate proxy that is serializable and therefore able to
re-obtain the target singleton bean on deserialization.

When declaring <aop:scoped-proxy/> against a bean of scope prototype, every method

call on the shared proxy will lead to the creation of a new target instance which the call is then
being forwarded to.

Also, scoped proxies are not the only way to access beans from shorter scopes in a lifecycle-safe
fashion. You may also simply declare your injection point (i.e. the constructor/setter argument
or autowired field) as ObjectFactory<MyTargetBean>, allowing for a getObject() call to
retrieve the current instance on demand every time it is needed - without holding on to the instance
or storing it separately.

The JSR-330 variant of this is called Provider, used with a Provider<MyTargetBean>

declaration and a corresponding get() call for every retrieval attempt. See here for more details
on JSR-330 overall.

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.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<!-- an HTTP Session-scoped bean exposed as a proxy -->

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

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

To create such a proxy, you insert a child <aop:scoped-proxy/> element into a scoped bean
definition (see the section called Choosing the type of proxy to create and Chapter 41, 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? Lets examine the following
singleton bean definition and contrast it with what you need to define for the aforementioned scopes
(note that the following userPreferences bean definition as it stands is incomplete).

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

<bean id="userManager" class="com.foo.UserManager">

<property name="userPreferences" ref="userPreferences"/>
</bean>

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

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

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

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

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

<bean id="userManager" class="com.foo.UserManager">

<property name="userPreferences" ref="userPreferences"/>
</bean>

Choosing the type of proxy to create

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

Note

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

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

<!-- DefaultUserPreferences implements the UserPreferences interface -->

<bean id="userPreferences" class="com.foo.DefaultUserPreferences" scope="session">
<aop:scoped-proxy proxy-target-class="false"/>
</bean>

<bean id="userManager" class="com.foo.UserManager">

<property name="userPreferences" ref="userPreferences"/>
</bean>

For more detailed information about choosing class-based or interface-based proxying, see
Section 11.6, Proxying mechanisms.

Custom scopes
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 javadocs, 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).

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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 javadocs 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:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

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

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

<property name="name" value="Rick"/>
<aop:scoped-proxy/>
</bean>

<bean id="foo" class="x.y.Foo">

<property name="bar" ref="bar"/>
</bean>

</beans>

Note

When you place <aop:scoped-proxy/> in a FactoryBean implementation, it is the factory

bean itself that is scoped, not the object returned from getObject().

7.6 Customizing the nature of a bean

Lifecycle callbacks

To interact with the containers 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 the section
called @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy.

If you dont 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 7.8, Container Extension Points.

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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 containers 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. With Java config,
you use the initMethod attribute of @Bean, see the section called Receiving lifecycle callbacks. For
example, the following:

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

public class ExampleBean {

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 XML-based configuration metadata, you
use the destroy-method attribute on the <bean/>. With Java config, you use the destroyMethod

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attribute of @Bean, see the section called Receiving lifecycle callbacks. For example, the following
definition:

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

public class ExampleBean {

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.

Tip

The destroy-method attribute of a <bean> element can be assigned a special (inferred)

value which instructs Spring to automatically detect a public close or shutdown method
on the specific bean class (any class that implements java.lang.AutoCloseable or
java.io.Closeable would therefore match). This special (inferred) value can also be set
on the default-destroy-method attribute of a <beans> element to apply this behavior to an
entire set of beans (see the section called Default initialization and destroy methods). Note that
this is the default behavior with Java config.

Default initialization and destroy methods

When you write initialization and destroy method callbacks that do not use the Spring-specific
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.

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public class DefaultBlogService implements BlogService {

private BlogDao blogDao;

public void setBlogDao(BlogDao blogDao) {

this.blogDao = blogDao;
}

// this is (unsurprisingly) the initialization callback method

public void init() {
if (this.blogDao == null) {
throw new IllegalStateException("The [blogDao] property must be set.");
}
}

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

<bean id="blogService" class="com.foo.DefaultBlogService">

<property name="blogDao" ref="blogDao" />
</bean>

</beans>

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 default-destroy-
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

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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 receives start and stop signals, e.g. for a stop/restart scenario at runtime, 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.

Tip

Note that the regular org.springframework.context.Lifecycle interface is just a plain

contract for explicit start/stop notifications and does NOT imply auto-startup at context refresh
time. Consider implementing org.springframework.context.SmartLifecycle instead
for fine-grained control over auto-startup of a specific bean (including startup phases). Also, please
note that stop notifications are not guaranteed to come before destruction: On regular shutdown,

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all Lifecycle beans will first receive a stop notification before the general destruction callbacks
are being propagated; however, on hot refresh during a contexts lifetime or on aborted refresh
attempts, only destroy methods will be called.

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, its 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 callbacks run() method after that implementations 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">

<!-- timeout value in milliseconds -->
<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 objects

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isAutoStartup() method. If "true", then that object will be started at that point rather than waiting for
an explicit invocation of the contexts 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. Springs 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 Springs 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
ConfigurableApplicationContext interface:

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

public final class Boot {

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

ConfigurableApplicationContext 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...

}
}

ApplicationContextAware and BeanNameAware

When an ApplicationContext creates an object instance that implements the
org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextAware interface, the instance 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

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ApplicationContext provide access to file resources, publishing application events, and accessing
a MessageSource. These additional features are described in Section 7.15, 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 the section called
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 the section called @Autowired.

When an ApplicationContext creates a class that implements the

org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanNameAware interface, the class is provided with a
reference to the name defined in its associated object definition.

public interface BeanNameAware {

void setBeanName(String name) throws BeansException;

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

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 7.4. Aware interfaces

Name Injected Dependency Explained in

ApplicationContextAware Declaring the section called

ApplicationContext ApplicationContextAware and
BeanNameAware

Event publisher of the enclosing Section 7.15, Additional

ApplicationEventPublisherAware
ApplicationContext Capabilities of the
ApplicationContext

BeanClassLoaderAware Class loader used to load the the section called Instantiating
bean classes. beans

BeanFactoryAware Declaring BeanFactory the section called

ApplicationContextAware and
BeanNameAware

BeanNameAware Name of the declaring bean the section called

ApplicationContextAware and
BeanNameAware

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Name Injected Dependency Explained in

BootstrapContextAware Resource adapter Chapter 32, JCA CCI

BootstrapContext the
container runs in. Typically
available only in JCA aware
ApplicationContexts

LoadTimeWeaverAware Defined weaver for processing the section called Load-time

class definition at load time weaving with AspectJ in the
Spring Framework

MessageSourceAware Configured strategy for Section 7.15, Additional

resolving messages (with Capabilities of the
support for parametrization and ApplicationContext
internationalization)

Spring JMX notification

NotificationPublisherAware Section 31.7, Notifications
publisher

PortletConfigAware Current PortletConfig Chapter 25, Portlet MVC

the container runs in. Valid Framework
only in a web-aware Spring
ApplicationContext

PortletContextAware Current PortletContext Chapter 25, Portlet MVC

the container runs in. Valid Framework
only in a web-aware Spring
ApplicationContext

ResourceLoaderAware Configured loader for low-level Chapter 8, Resources

access to resources

ServletConfigAware Current ServletConfig Chapter 22, Web MVC

the container runs in. Valid framework
only in a web-aware Spring
ApplicationContext

ServletContextAware Current ServletContext Chapter 22, Web MVC

the container runs in. Valid framework
only in a web-aware Spring
ApplicationContext

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.

7.7 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.

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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"/>
<property name="age" value="1"/>
</bean>

<bean id="inheritsWithDifferentClass"
class="org.springframework.beans.DerivedTestBean"
parent="inheritedTestBean" init-method="initialize">
<property name="name" value="override"/>
<!-- the age property value of 1 will be inherited from parent -->
</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 parents property values.

A child bean definition inherits scope, constructor argument values, property values, and method
overrides from the parent, with the option to add new values. Any scope, 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, 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"/>
<property name="age" value="1"/>
</bean>

<bean id="inheritsWithClass" class="org.springframework.beans.DerivedTestBean"

parent="inheritedTestBeanWithoutClass" init-method="initialize">
<property name="name" value="override"/>
<!-- age will inherit the value of 1 from the parent bean definition-->
</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 containers 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

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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.

7.8 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.

Customizing beans using a BeanPostProcessor

The BeanPostProcessor interface defines callback methods that you can implement to provide your
own (or override the containers 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 javadocs of 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 the section called 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 InitializingBeans afterPropertiesSet()
and any declared init method) are called as well as after any bean initialization callbacks. The post-
processor can take any action with the bean instance, including ignoring the callback completely. A
bean post-processor typically checks for callback interfaces or may wrap a bean with a proxy. Some
Spring AOP infrastructure classes are implemented as bean post-processors in order to provide proxy-
wrapping logic.

An ApplicationContext automatically detects any beans that are defined in the configuration
metadata which implement the BeanPostProcessor interface. The ApplicationContext registers

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these beans as post-processors so that they can be called later upon bean creation. Bean post-
processors can be deployed in the container just like any other beans.

Note that when declaring a BeanPostProcessor using an @Bean factory method on a configuration
class, the return type of the factory method should be the implementation class itself or at least
the org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanPostProcessor interface, clearly
indicating the post-processor nature of that bean. Otherwise, the ApplicationContext wont be able
to autodetect it by type before fully creating it. Since a BeanPostProcessor needs to be instantiated
early in order to apply to the initialization of other beans in the context, this early type detection is critical.

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 auto-
proxying)".

Note that if you have beans wired into your BeanPostProcessor using autowiring or
@Resource (which may fall back to autowiring), Spring might access unexpected beans when
searching for type-matching dependency candidates, and therefore make them ineligible for
auto-proxying or other kinds of bean post-processing. For example, if you have a dependency
annotated with @Resource where the field/setter name does not directly correspond to the
declared name of a bean and no name attribute is used, then Spring will access other beans for
matching them by type.

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

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.

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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) throws BeansException {
return bean; // we could potentially return any object reference here...
}

public Object postProcessAfterInitialization(Object bean,

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

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

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

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

</beans>

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 dynamic
language support is detailed in the chapter entitled Chapter 35, Dynamic language support.)

The following simple Java application executes the preceding code and configuration:

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

public final class Boot {

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

ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("scripting/beans.xml");
Messenger messenger = (Messenger) ctx.getBean("messenger");
System.out.println(messenger);
}

The output of the preceding application resembles the following:

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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 Springs
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.

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:
BeanFactoryPostProcessor operates on the bean configuration metadata; that is, the Spring IoC
container allows a BeanFactoryPostProcessor to read the configuration metadata and potentially
change it before the container instantiates any beans other than BeanFactoryPostProcessors.

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

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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 post-processor will not get instantiated at all. Thus,
marking it for lazy initialization will be ignored, and the Bean(Factory)PostProcessor will be
instantiated eagerly even if you set the default-lazy-init attribute to true on the declaration
of your <beans /> element.

Example: the Class name substitution PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer

You use the PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer to externalize property values from a bean

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

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

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

<bean id="dataSource" destroy-method="close"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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 PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer javadocs for more information.

Tip

You can use the PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer to substitute class names, which is

sometimes useful when you have to pick a particular implementation class at runtime. For
example:

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

<bean id="serviceStrategy" class="${custom.strategy.class}"/>

If the class cannot be resolved at runtime to a valid class, resolution of the bean fails when
it is about to be created, which is during the preInstantiateSingletons() phase of an
ApplicationContext for a non-lazy-init bean.

Example: the PropertyOverrideConfigurer

The PropertyOverrideConfigurer, another bean factory post-processor, resembles the

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

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

Properties file configuration lines take this format:

beanName.property=value

For example:

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

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

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

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foo.fred.bob.sammy=123

i. 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"/>

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 containers 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 beans 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.

7.9 Annotation-based container configuration

Are annotations better than XML for configuring Spring?

The introduction of annotation-based 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 them 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

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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. Its 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 Spring Tool Suite.

An alternative to XML setups is provided by 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 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 Springs dependency injection.
Essentially, the @Autowired annotation provides the same capabilities as described in the section
called Autowiring collaborators but with more fine-grained control and wider applicability. Spring 2.5
also added support for JSR-250 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):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<context:annotation-config/>

</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/>

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in a WebApplicationContext for a DispatcherServlet, it only checks for @Autowired

beans in your controllers, and not your services. See Section 22.2, The DispatcherServlet for
more information.

@Required

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

public class SimpleMovieLister {

private MovieFinder movieFinder;

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

// ...

This annotation simply indicates that the affected bean property must be populated at configuration time,
through an explicit property value in a bean definition or through autowiring. The container throws an
exception if the affected bean property has not been populated; this allows for eager and explicit failure,
avoiding 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.

@Autowired

Note

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

You can apply the @Autowired annotation to constructors:

public class MovieRecommender {

private final CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao;

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

// ...

Note

As of Spring Framework 4.3, the @Autowired constructor is no longer necessary if the target
bean only defines one constructor. If several constructors are available, at least one must be
annotated to teach the container which one it has to use.

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

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public class SimpleMovieLister {

private MovieFinder movieFinder;

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

// ...

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 fields as well and even mix it with constructors:

public class MovieRecommender {

private final CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao;

@Autowired
private MovieCatalog movieCatalog;

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

// ...

It is also possible to provide all beans of a particular type from the ApplicationContext by adding
the annotation to a field or method that expects an array of that type:

public class MovieRecommender {

@Autowired
private MovieCatalog[] movieCatalogs;

// ...

The same applies for typed collections:

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public class MovieRecommender {

private Set<MovieCatalog> movieCatalogs;

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

// ...

Tip

Your beans can implement the org.springframework.core.Ordered interface or either use

the @Order or standard @Priority annotation if you want items in the array or list to be sorted
into a specific order.

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

public class MovieRecommender {

private Map<String, MovieCatalog> movieCatalogs;

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

// ...

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

public class SimpleMovieLister {

private MovieFinder movieFinder;

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

// ...

Note

Only one annotated constructor per-class can be marked as required, but multiple non-required
constructors can be annotated. In that case, each is considered among the candidates and Spring
uses the greediest constructor whose dependencies can be satisfied, that is the constructor that
has the largest number of arguments.

@Autowireds required attribute is recommended over the `@Required

annotation. The required attribute indicates that the property is not required for autowiring

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purposes, the property is ignored if it cannot be autowired. @Required, on the other hand, is
stronger in that it enforces the property that was set by any means supported by the container. If
no value is injected, a corresponding exception is raised.

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

public class MovieRecommender {

@Autowired
private ApplicationContext context;

public MovieRecommender() {
}

// ...

Note

@Autowired, @Inject, @Resource, and @Value annotations are handled by 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.

Fine-tuning annotation-based autowiring with @Primary

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 Springs @Primary annotation.
@Primary indicates that a particular bean should be given preference when multiple beans are
candidates to be autowired to a single-valued dependency. If exactly one 'primary' bean exists among
the candidates, it will be the autowired value.

Lets assume we have the following configuration that defines firstMovieCatalog as the primary
MovieCatalog.

@Configuration
public class MovieConfiguration {

@Bean
@Primary
public MovieCatalog firstMovieCatalog() { ... }

@Bean
public MovieCatalog secondMovieCatalog() { ... }

// ...

With such configuration, the following MovieRecommender will be autowired with the
firstMovieCatalog.

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public class MovieRecommender {

@Autowired
private MovieCatalog movieCatalog;

// ...

The corresponding bean definitions appear as follows.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<context:annotation-config/>

<bean class="example.SimpleMovieCatalog" primary="true">

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

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

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

</beans>

Fine-tuning annotation-based autowiring with qualifiers

@Primary is an effective way to use autowiring by type with several instances when one primary
candidate can be determined. When more control over the selection process is required, Springs
@Qualifier annotation can be used. You can associate qualifier values with specific arguments,
narrowing the set of type matches so that a specific bean is chosen for each argument. In the simplest
case, this can be a plain descriptive value:

public class MovieRecommender {

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

// ...

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

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public class MovieRecommender {

private MovieCatalog movieCatalog;

private CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao;

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

// ...

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

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<context:annotation-config/>

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

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

</bean>

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

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

</bean>

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

</beans>

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

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

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Tip

If you intend to express annotation-driven injection by name, do not primarily use @Autowired,
even if is technically capable of referring to a bean name through @Qualifier values. Instead,
use the JSR-250 @Resource annotation, which is semantically defined to identify a specific
target component by its unique name, with the declared type being irrelevant for the matching
process. @Autowired has rather different semantics: After selecting candidate beans by type,
the specified String qualifier value will be considered within those type-selected candidates only,
e.g. matching an "account" qualifier against beans marked with the same qualifier label.

For beans that are themselves defined as a collection/map or array type, @Resource is a fine
solution, referring to the specific collection or array bean by unique name. That said, as of 4.3,
collection/map and array types can be matched through Springs @Autowired type matching
algorithm as well, as long as the element type information is preserved in @Bean return type
signatures or collection inheritance hierarchies. In this case, qualifier values can be used to select
among same-typed collections, as outlined in the previous paragraph.

As of 4.3, @Autowired also considers self references for injection, i.e. references back to the
bean that is currently injected. Note that self injection is a fallback; regular dependencies on other
components always have precedence. In that sense, self references do not participate in regular
candidate selection and are therefore in particular never primary; on the contrary, they always end
up as lowest precedence. In practice, use self references as a last resort only, e.g. for calling other
methods on the same instance through the beans transactional proxy: Consider factoring out the
affected methods to a separate delegate bean in such a scenario. Alternatively, use @Resource
which may obtain a proxy back to the current bean by its 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:

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public class MovieRecommender {

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

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

// ...

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

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<context:annotation-config/>

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

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

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

</beans>

In Section 7.10, Classpath scanning and managed components, you will see an annotation-based
alternative to providing the qualifier metadata in XML. Specifically, see the section called Providing
qualifier metadata with annotations.

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

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

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

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public class MovieRecommender {

@Autowired
@Offline
private MovieCatalog offlineCatalog;

// ...

Now the bean definition only needs a qualifier type:

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

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

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

String genre();

Format format();

In this case Format is an enum:

public enum Format {

VHS, DVD, BLURAY
}

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

public class MovieRecommender {

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

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

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

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

// ...

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

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<context:annotation-config/>

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

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

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

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

</beans>

Using generics as autowiring qualifiers

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

@Configuration
public class MyConfiguration {

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

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

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

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

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

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

// Inject all Store beans as long as they have an <Integer> generic

// Store<String> beans will not appear in this list
@Autowired
private List<Store<Integer>> s;

CustomAutowireConfigurer

The CustomAutowireConfigurer is a BeanFactoryPostProcessor that enables you to register

your own custom qualifier annotation types even if they are not annotated with Springs @Qualifier
annotation.

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

The AutowireCandidateResolver determines autowire candidates by:

the autowire-candidate value of each bean definition

any default-autowire-candidates pattern(s) available on the <beans/> element

the presence of @Qualifier annotations and any custom annotations registered with the
CustomAutowireConfigurer

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

@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 Spring-managed objects as well.

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

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public class SimpleMovieLister {

private MovieFinder movieFinder;

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

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

public class SimpleMovieLister {

private MovieFinder movieFinder;

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

Note

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

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

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

public class MovieRecommender {

@Resource
private CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao;

@Resource
private ApplicationContext context;

public MovieRecommender() {
}

// ...

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@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.

7.10 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 7.9, 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.

@Component and further stereotype annotations

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

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Spring provides further stereotype annotations: @Component, @Service, and @Controller.

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

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

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

// ....
}

Meta-annotations can also be combined to create composed annotations. For example,

the @RestController annotation from Spring MVC is composed of @Controller and
@ResponseBody.

In addition, composed annotations may optionally redeclare attributes from meta-annotations to allow
user customization. This can be particularly useful when you want to only expose a subset of the meta-
annotations attributes. For example, Springs @SessionScope annotation hardcodes the scope name
to session but still allows customization of the proxyMode.

@Target({ElementType.TYPE, ElementType.METHOD})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Documented
@Scope(WebApplicationContext.SCOPE_SESSION)
public @interface SessionScope {

/**
* Alias for {@link Scope#proxyMode}.
* <p>Defaults to {@link ScopedProxyMode#TARGET_CLASS}.
*/
@AliasFor(annotation = Scope.class)
ScopedProxyMode proxyMode() default ScopedProxyMode.TARGET_CLASS;

@SessionScope can then be used without declaring the proxyMode as follows:

@Service
@SessionScope
public class SessionScopedService {
// ...
}

Or with an overridden value for the proxyMode as follows:

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@Service
@SessionScope(proxyMode = ScopedProxyMode.INTERFACES)
public class SessionScopedUserService implements UserService {
// ...
}

For further details, consult the Spring Annotation Programming Model.

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
public class SimpleMovieLister {

private MovieFinder movieFinder;

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

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

To autodetect these classes and register the corresponding beans, you need to add @ComponentScan
to your @Configuration class, where the basePackages attribute is a common parent package for
the two classes. (Alternatively, you can specify a comma/semicolon/space-separated list that includes
the parent package of each class.)

@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "org.example")
public class AppConfig {
...
}

Note

for concision, the above may have used the value attribute of the annotation, i.e.
@ComponentScan("org.example")

The following is an alternative using XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

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

</beans>

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Tip

The use of <context:component-scan> implicitly enables the functionality of

<context:annotation-config>. There is usually no need to include the
<context:annotation-config> element when using <context:component-scan>.

Note

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

Furthermore, the AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor and

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

Note

You can disable the registration of AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor and

CommonAnnotationBeanPostProcessor by including the annotation-config attribute with a
value of false.

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 includeFilters or excludeFilters parameters of the @ComponentScan annotation (or 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 7.5. Filter Types

Filter Type Example Expression Description

annotation (default) An annotation to be present

org.example.SomeAnnotation
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.

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Filter Type Example Expression Description

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 .TypeFi
interface.

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

@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "org.example",
includeFilters = @Filter(type = FilterType.REGEX, pattern = ".*Stub.*Repository"),
excludeFilters = @Filter(Repository.class))
public class AppConfig {
...
}

and the equivalent using XML

<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 setting useDefaultFilters=false on the annotation
or providing use-default-filters="false" as an attribute of the <component-scan/>
element. This will in effect disable automatic detection of classes annotated with @Component,
@Repository, @Service, @Controller, or @Configuration.

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
}

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

Tip

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

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

@Component
public class FactoryMethodComponent {

private static int i;

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

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

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

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

@Bean
@RequestScope
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.

As of Spring Framework 4.3, you may also declare a factory method parameter of type
InjectionPoint (or its more specific subclass DependencyDescriptor) in order to access the
requesting injection point that triggers the creation of the current bean. Note that this will only apply to
the actual creation of bean instances, not to the injection of existing instances. As a consequence, this
feature makes most sense for beans of prototype scope. For other scopes, the factory method will only
ever see the injection point which triggered the creation of a new bean instance in the given scope: for

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example, the dependency that triggered the creation of a lazy singleton bean. Use the provided injection
point metadata with semantic care in such scenarios.

@Component
public class FactoryMethodComponent {

@Bean @Scope("prototype")
public TestBean prototypeInstance(InjectionPoint injectionPoint) {
return new TestBean("prototypeInstance for " + injectionPoint.getMember());
}
}

The @Bean methods in a regular 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 @Bean methods in @Configuration classes creates bean metadata
references to collaborating objects; such methods are not invoked with normal Java semantics but
rather go through the container in order to provide the usual lifecycle management and proxying of
Spring beans even when referring to other beans via programmatic calls to @Bean methods. In contrast,
invoking a method or field in an @Bean method within a plain @Component class has standard Java
semantics, with no special CGLIB processing or other constraints applying.

Note

You may declare @Bean methods as static, allowing for them to be called without creating their
containing configuration class as an instance. This makes particular sense when defining post-
processor beans, e.g. of type BeanFactoryPostProcessor or BeanPostProcessor, since
such beans will get initialized early in the container lifecycle and should avoid triggering other
parts of the configuration at that point.

Note that calls to static @Bean methods will never get intercepted by the container, not even within
@Configuration classes (see above). This is due to technical limitations: CGLIB subclassing
can only override non-static methods. As a consequence, a direct call to another @Bean method
will have standard Java semantics, resulting in an independent instance being returned straight
from the factory method itself.

The Java language visibility of @Bean methods does not have an immediate impact on the
resulting bean definition in Springs container. You may freely declare your factory methods as
you see fit in non-@Configuration classes and also for static methods anywhere. However,
regular @Bean methods in @Configuration classes need to be overridable, i.e. they must not
be declared as private or final.

@Bean methods will also be discovered on base classes of a given component or configuration
class, as well as on Java 8 default methods declared in interfaces implemented by the component
or configuration class. This allows for a lot of flexibility in composing complex configuration
arrangements, with even multiple inheritance being possible through Java 8 default methods as
of Spring 4.2.

Finally, note that a single class may hold multiple @Bean methods for the same bean, as an
arrangement of multiple factory methods to use depending on available dependencies at runtime.
This is the same algorithm as for choosing the "greediest" constructor or factory method in
other configuration scenarios: The variant with the largest number of satisfiable dependencies
will be picked at construction time, analogous to how the container selects between multiple
@Autowired constructors.

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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")
public class SimpleMovieLister {
// ...
}

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

Note

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

@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "org.example", nameGenerator = MyNameGenerator.class)
public class AppConfig {
...
}

<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.

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 a different scope which can be specified
via the @Scope annotation. Simply provide the name of the scope within the annotation:

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

For details on web-specific scopes, see the section called Request, session, global session, application,
and WebSocket scopes.

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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:

@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "org.example", scopeResolver = MyScopeResolver.class)
public class AppConfig {
...
}

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

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

@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "org.example", scopedProxy = ScopedProxyMode.INTERFACES)
public class AppConfig {
...
}

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

Providing qualifier metadata with annotations

The @Qualifier annotation is discussed in the section called 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 {
// ...
}

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

Note

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

7.11 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>

Dependency Injection with @Inject and @Named

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

import javax.inject.Inject;

public class SimpleMovieLister {

private MovieFinder movieFinder;

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

public void listMovies() {

this.movieFinder.findMovies(...);
...
}
}

As with @Autowired, it is possible to use @Inject at the field level, method level and constructor-
argument level. Furthermore, you may declare your injection point as a Provider, allowing for on-
demand access to beans of shorter scopes or lazy access to other beans through a Provider.get()
call. As a variant of the example above:

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import javax.inject.Inject;
import javax.inject.Provider;

public class SimpleMovieLister {

private Provider<MovieFinder> movieFinder;

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

public void listMovies() {

this.movieFinder.get().findMovies(...);
...
}
}

If you would like to use a qualified name for the dependency that should be injected, you should use
the @Named annotation as follows:

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

public class SimpleMovieLister {

private MovieFinder movieFinder;

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

// ...
}

@Named and @ManagedBean: standard equivalents to the @Component

annotation

Instead of @Component, @javax.inject.Named or javax.annotation.ManagedBean may be

used as follows:

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

@Named("movieListener") // @ManagedBean("movieListener") could be used as well

public class SimpleMovieLister {

private MovieFinder movieFinder;

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

// ...
}

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

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

@Named
public class SimpleMovieLister {

private MovieFinder movieFinder;

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

// ...
}

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

@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "org.example")
public class AppConfig {
...
}

Note

In contrast to @Component, the JSR-330 @Named and the JSR-250 ManagedBean annotations
are not composable. Please use Springs stereotype model for building custom component
annotations.

Limitations of JSR-330 standard annotations

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

Table 7.6. Spring component model elements vs. JSR-330 variants

Spring javax.inject.* javax.inject restrictions /

comments

@Autowired @Inject @Inject has no 'required'

attribute; can be used with Java
8s Optional instead.

@Component @Named / @ManagedBean JSR-330 does not provide a

composable model, just a way
to identify named components.

@Scope("singleton") @Singleton The JSR-330 default scope

is like Springs prototype.
However, in order to keep
it consistent with Springs
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

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Spring javax.inject.* javax.inject restrictions /

comments
should use Springs @Scope
annotation. javax.inject
also provides a @Scope
annotation. Nevertheless, this
one is only intended to be
used for creating your own
annotations.

@Qualifier @Qualifier / @Named javax.inject.Qualifier

is just a meta-annotation
for building custom
qualifiers. Concrete String
qualifiers (like Springs
@Qualifier with a value)
can be associated through
javax.inject.Named.

@Value - no equivalent

@Required - no equivalent

@Lazy - no equivalent

ObjectFactory Provider javax.inject.Provider is

a direct alternative to Springs
ObjectFactory, just with
a shorter get() method
name. It can also be used
in combination with Springs
@Autowired or with non-
annotated constructors and
setter methods.

7.12 Java-based container configuration

Basic concepts: @Bean and @Configuration
The central artifacts in Springs new Java-configuration support are @Configuration-annotated
classes and @Bean-annotated methods.

The @Bean annotation is used to indicate that a method instantiates, configures and initializes a
new object to be managed by the Spring IoC container. For those familiar with Springs <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:

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@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

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

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

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

Full @Configuration vs 'lite' @Beans mode?

When @Bean methods are declared within classes that are not annotated with @Configuration
they are 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.

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

Instantiating the Spring container using

AnnotationConfigApplicationContext

The sections below document Springs 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

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instantiating an AnnotationConfigApplicationContext. This allows for completely XML-free

usage of the Spring container:

public static void main(String[] args) {

ApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(AppConfig.class);
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:

public static void main(String[] args) {

ApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(MyServiceImpl.class,
Dependency1.class, Dependency2.class);
MyService myService = ctx.getBean(MyService.class);
myService.doStuff();
}

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.

public static void main(String[] args) {

AnnotationConfigApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext();
ctx.register(AppConfig.class, OtherConfig.class);
ctx.register(AdditionalConfig.class);
ctx.refresh();
MyService myService = ctx.getBean(MyService.class);
myService.doStuff();
}

Enabling component scanning with scan(String)

To enable component scanning, just annotate your @Configuration class as follows:

@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "com.acme")
public class AppConfig {
...
}

Tip

Experienced Spring users will be familiar with the XML declaration equivalent from Springs
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.

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AnnotationConfigApplicationContext exposes the scan(String) method to allow for the

same component-scanning functionality:

public static void main(String[] args) {

AnnotationConfigApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext();
ctx.scan("com.acme");
ctx.refresh();
MyService myService = ctx.getBean(MyService.class);
}

Note

Remember that @Configuration classes are meta-annotated with @Component, so they

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

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:

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

<!-- Configuration locations must consist of one or more comma- or space-delimited

fully-qualified @Configuration classes. Fully-qualified packages may also be
specified for component-scanning -->
<context-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>com.acme.AppConfig</param-value>
</context-param>

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

<!-- Declare a Spring MVC DispatcherServlet as usual -->

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

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

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: init-method, 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 methods 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:

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@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

@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

Bean dependencies

A @Bean annotated method can have an arbitrary number of parameters describing the dependencies
required to build that bean. For instance if our TransferService requires an AccountRepository
we can materialize that dependency via a method parameter:

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

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

The resolution mechanism is pretty much identical to constructor-based dependency injection, see the
relevant section for more details.

Receiving lifecycle callbacks

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

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

The standard set of *Aware interfaces such as BeanFactoryAware, BeanNameAware,

MessageSourceAware, ApplicationContextAware, and so on are also fully supported.

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

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public class Foo {

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

public class Bar {

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

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

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

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

Note

By default, beans defined using Java config that have a public close or shutdown method
are automatically enlisted with a destruction callback. If you have a public close or shutdown
method and you do not wish for it to be called when the container shuts down, simply add
@Bean(destroyMethod="") to your bean definition to disable the default (inferred) mode.

You may want to do that by default for a resource that you acquire via JNDI as its lifecycle is
managed outside the application. In particular, make sure to always do it for a DataSource as
it is known to be problematic on Java EE application servers.

@Bean(destroyMethod="")
public DataSource dataSource() throws NamingException {
return (DataSource) jndiTemplate.lookup("MyDS");
}

Also, with @Bean methods, you will typically choose to use programmatic JNDI lookups:
either using Springs JndiTemplate/JndiLocatorDelegate helpers or straight JNDI
InitialContext usage, but not the JndiObjectFactoryBean variant which would force you
to declare the return type as the FactoryBean type instead of the actual target type, making it
harder to use for cross-reference calls in other @Bean methods that intend to refer to the provided
resource here.

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

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

// ...

Tip

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

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
@SessionScope
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;
}

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Customizing bean naming

By default, configuration classes use a @Bean methods name as the name of the resulting bean. This
functionality can be overridden, however, with the name attribute.

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

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

Bean aliasing

As discussed in the section called 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
public class AppConfig {

@Bean(name = { "dataSource", "subsystemA-dataSource", "subsystemB-dataSource" })

public DataSource dataSource() {
// instantiate, configure and return DataSource bean...
}

Bean description

Sometimes it is helpful to provide a more detailed textual description of a bean. This can be particularly
useful when beans are exposed (perhaps via JMX) for monitoring purposes.

To add a description to a @Bean the @Description annotation can be used:

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

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

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 the
section called 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:

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@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

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

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

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

Note

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

Lookup method injection

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

// okay... but where is the implementation of this method?

protected abstract Command createCommand();
}

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();
}
}
}

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Further information about how Java-based configuration works internally

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

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

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

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

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

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

Tip

There are a few restrictions due to the fact that CGLIB dynamically adds features at startup-time,
in particular that configuration classes must not be final. However, as of 4.3, any constructors
are allowed on configuration classes, including the use of @Autowired or a single non-default
constructor declaration for default injection.

If you prefer to avoid any CGLIB-imposed limitations, consider declaring your @Bean methods
on non-@Configuration classes, e.g. on plain @Component classes instead. Cross-method
calls between @Bean methods wont get intercepted then, so youll have to exclusively rely on
dependency injection at the constructor or method level there.

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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 {

@Bean
public A a() {
return new A();
}

@Configuration
@Import(ConfigA.class)
public class ConfigB {

@Bean
public 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:

public static void main(String[] args) {

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.

Tip

As of Spring Framework 4.2, @Import also supports references to regular component classes,
analogous to the AnnotationConfigApplicationContext.register method. This is
particularly useful if youd like to avoid component scanning, using a few configuration classes as
entry points for explicitly defining all your components.

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.

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Fortunately, solving this problem is simple. As we already discussed, @Bean method can have an
arbitrary number of parameters describing the bean dependencies. Lets consider a more real-world
scenario with several @Configuration classes, each depending on beans declared in the others:

@Configuration
public class ServiceConfig {

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

@Configuration
public class RepositoryConfig {

@Bean
public AccountRepository accountRepository(DataSource dataSource) {
return new JdbcAccountRepository(dataSource);
}

@Configuration
@Import({ServiceConfig.class, RepositoryConfig.class})
public class SystemTestConfig {

@Bean
public DataSource dataSource() {
// return new DataSource
}

public static void main(String[] args) {

ApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(SystemTestConfig.class);
// everything wires up across configuration classes...
TransferService transferService = ctx.getBean(TransferService.class);
transferService.transfer(100.00, "A123", "C456");
}

There is another way to achieve the same result. Remember that @Configuration classes are
ultimately just another bean in the container: This means that they can take advantage of @Autowired
and @Value injection etc just like any other bean!

Warning

Make sure that the dependencies you inject that way are of the simplest kind only.
@Configuration classes are processed quite early during the initialization of the context and
forcing a dependency to be injected this way may lead to unexpected early initialization. Whenever
possible, resort to parameter-based injection as in the example above.

Also, be particularly careful with BeanPostProcessor and BeanFactoryPostProcessor

definitions via @Bean. Those should usually be declared as static @Bean methods, not
triggering the instantiation of their containing configuration class. Otherwise, @Autowired and
@Value wont work on the configuration class itself since it is being created as a bean instance
too early.

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@Configuration
public class ServiceConfig {

@Autowired
private AccountRepository accountRepository;

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

@Configuration
public class RepositoryConfig {

private final DataSource dataSource;

@Autowired
public RepositoryConfig(DataSource dataSource) {
this.dataSource = dataSource;
}

@Bean
public AccountRepository accountRepository() {
return new JdbcAccountRepository(dataSource);
}

@Configuration
@Import({ServiceConfig.class, RepositoryConfig.class})
public class SystemTestConfig {

@Bean
public DataSource dataSource() {
// return new DataSource
}

public static void main(String[] args) {

ApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(SystemTestConfig.class);
// everything wires up across configuration classes...
TransferService transferService = ctx.getBean(TransferService.class);
transferService.transfer(100.00, "A123", "C456");
}

Tip

Constructor injection in @Configuration classes is only supported as of Spring Framework

4.3. Note also that there is no need to specify @Autowired if the target bean defines only one
constructor; in the example above, @Autowired is not necessary on the RepositoryConfig
constructor.

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? Its not explicit in the code, and this may be just fine.
Remember that the Spring 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.

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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
public class ServiceConfig {

@Autowired
private RepositoryConfig repositoryConfig;

@Bean
public TransferService transferService() {
// 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; thats the tradeoff. This tight coupling
can be somewhat mitigated by using interface-based or abstract class-based @Configuration
classes. Consider the following:

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@Configuration
public class ServiceConfig {

@Autowired
private RepositoryConfig repositoryConfig;

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

@Configuration
public interface RepositoryConfig {

@Bean
AccountRepository accountRepository();

@Configuration
public class DefaultRepositoryConfig implements RepositoryConfig {

@Bean
public AccountRepository accountRepository() {
return new JdbcAccountRepository(...);
}

@Configuration
@Import({ServiceConfig.class, DefaultRepositoryConfig.class}) // import the concrete config!
public class SystemTestConfig {

@Bean
public DataSource dataSource() {
// return DataSource
}

public static void main(String[] args) {

ApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(SystemTestConfig.class);
TransferService transferService = ctx.getBean(TransferService.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.

Conditionally include @Configuration classes or @Bean methods

It is often useful to conditionally enable or disable a complete @Configuration class, or even

individual @Bean methods, based on some arbitrary system state. One common example of this is to
use the @Profile annotation to activate beans only when a specific profile has been enabled in the
Spring Environment (see the section called Bean definition profiles for details).

The @Profile annotation is actually implemented using a much more flexible

annotation called @Conditional. The @Conditional annotation indicates specific
org.springframework.context.annotation.Condition implementations that should be
consulted before a @Bean is registered.

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Implementations of the Condition interface simply provide a matches() method that returns true
or false. For example, here is the actual Condition implementation used for @Profile:

@Override
public boolean matches(ConditionContext context, AnnotatedTypeMetadata metadata) {
if (context.getEnvironment() != null) {
// Read the @Profile annotation attributes
MultiValueMap<String, Object> attrs =
metadata.getAllAnnotationAttributes(Profile.class.getName());
if (attrs != null) {
for (Object value : attrs.get("value")) {
if (context.getEnvironment().acceptsProfiles(((String[]) value))) {
return true;
}
}
return false;
}
}
return true;
}

See the @Conditional javadocs for more detail.

Combining Java and XML configuration

Springs @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 youll find the options for using @Configuration classes in this kind of "XML-centric" situation.

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
public class AppConfig {

@Autowired
private DataSource dataSource;

@Bean
public AccountRepository accountRepository() {
return new JdbcAccountRepository(dataSource);
}

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

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system-test-config.xml:

<beans>
<!-- enable processing of annotations such as @Autowired and @Configuration -->
<context:annotation-config/>
<context:property-placeholder location="classpath:/com/acme/jdbc.properties"/>

<bean class="com.acme.AppConfig"/>

<bean class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
<property name="url" value="${jdbc.url}"/>
<property name="username" value="${jdbc.username}"/>
<property name="password" value="${jdbc.password}"/>
</bean>
</beans>

jdbc.properties:

jdbc.url=jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost/xdb
jdbc.username=sa
jdbc.password=

public static void main(String[] args) {

ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("classpath:/com/acme/system-test-
config.xml");
TransferService transferService = ctx.getBean(TransferService.class);
// ...
}

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.

Because @Configuration is meta-annotated with @Component, @Configuration-annotated

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 dont need to explicitly declare <context:annotation-config/>, because
<context:component-scan/> enables the same functionality.

system-test-config.xml:

<beans>
<!-- picks up and registers AppConfig as a bean definition -->
<context:component-scan base-package="com.acme"/>
<context:property-placeholder location="classpath:/com/acme/jdbc.properties"/>

<bean class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
<property name="url" value="${jdbc.url}"/>
<property name="username" value="${jdbc.username}"/>
<property name="password" value="${jdbc.password}"/>
</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

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@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")
public class AppConfig {

@Value("${jdbc.url}")
private String url;

@Value("${jdbc.username}")
private String username;

@Value("${jdbc.password}")
private String password;

@Bean
public DataSource dataSource() {
return new DriverManagerDataSource(url, username, password);
}

properties-config.xml
<beans>
<context:property-placeholder location="classpath:/com/acme/jdbc.properties"/>
</beans>

jdbc.properties
jdbc.url=jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost/xdb
jdbc.username=sa
jdbc.password=

public static void main(String[] args) {

ApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(AppConfig.class);
TransferService transferService = ctx.getBean(TransferService.class);
// ...
}

7.13 Environment abstraction

The Environment is an abstraction integrated in the container that models two key aspects of the
application environment: profiles and properties.

A profile is a named, logical group of bean definitions to be registered with the container only if the given
profile is active. Beans may be assigned to a profile whether defined in XML or via annotations. The role
of the Environment object with relation to profiles is in determining which profiles (if any) are currently
active, and which profiles (if any) should be active by default.

Properties play an important role in almost all applications, and may originate from a variety of
sources: properties files, JVM system properties, system environment variables, JNDI, servlet context
parameters, ad-hoc Properties objects, Maps, and so on. The role of the Environment object with
relation to properties is to provide the user with a convenient service interface for configuring property
sources and resolving properties from them.

Bean definition profiles

Bean definition profiles is a mechanism in the core container that allows for registration of different beans
in different environments. The word environment can mean different things to different users and this
feature can help with many use cases, including:

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working against an in-memory datasource in development vs looking up that same datasource from
JNDI when in QA or production

registering monitoring infrastructure only when deploying an application into a performance

environment

registering customized implementations of beans for customer A vs. customer B deployments

Lets consider the first use case in a practical application that requires a DataSource. In a test
environment, the configuration may look like this:

@Bean
public DataSource dataSource() {
return new EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder()
.setType(EmbeddedDatabaseType.HSQL)
.addScript("my-schema.sql")
.addScript("my-test-data.sql")
.build();
}

Lets now consider how this application will be deployed into a QA or production environment, assuming
that the datasource for the application will be registered with the production application servers JNDI
directory. Our dataSource bean now looks like this:

@Bean(destroyMethod="")
public DataSource dataSource() throws Exception {
Context ctx = new InitialContext();
return (DataSource) ctx.lookup("java:comp/env/jdbc/datasource");
}

The problem is how to switch between using these two variations based on the current environment.
Over time, Spring users have devised a number of ways to get this done, usually relying on a combination
of system environment variables and XML <import/> statements containing ${placeholder}
tokens that resolve to the correct configuration file path depending on the value of an environment
variable. Bean definition profiles is a core container feature that provides a solution to this problem.

If we generalize the example use case above of environment-specific bean definitions, we end up with
the need to register certain bean definitions in certain contexts, while not in others. You could say that
you want to register a certain profile of bean definitions in situation A, and a different profile in situation
B. Lets first see how we can update our configuration to reflect this need.

@Profile

The @Profile annotation allows you to indicate that a component is eligible for registration when
one or more specified profiles are active. Using our example above, we can rewrite the dataSource
configuration as follows:

@Configuration
@Profile("development")
public class StandaloneDataConfig {

@Bean
public DataSource dataSource() {
return new EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder()
.setType(EmbeddedDatabaseType.HSQL)
.addScript("classpath:com/bank/config/sql/schema.sql")
.addScript("classpath:com/bank/config/sql/test-data.sql")
.build();
}
}

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@Configuration
@Profile("production")
public class JndiDataConfig {

@Bean(destroyMethod="")
public DataSource dataSource() throws Exception {
Context ctx = new InitialContext();
return (DataSource) ctx.lookup("java:comp/env/jdbc/datasource");
}
}

Note

As mentioned before, with @Bean methods, you will typically choose to use programmatic JNDI
lookups: either using Springs JndiTemplate/JndiLocatorDelegate helpers or the straight
JNDI InitialContext usage shown above, but not the JndiObjectFactoryBean variant
which would force you to declare the return type as the FactoryBean type.

@Profile can be used as a meta-annotation for the purpose of creating a custom composed
annotation. The following example defines a custom @Production annotation that can be used as a
drop-in replacement for @Profile("production"):

@Target(ElementType.TYPE)
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Profile("production")
public @interface Production {
}

Tip

If a @Configuration class is marked with @Profile, all of the @Bean methods and @Import
annotations associated with that class will be bypassed unless one or more of the specified profiles
are active. If a @Component or @Configuration class is marked with @Profile({"p1",
"p2"}), that class will not be registered/processed unless profiles 'p1' and/or 'p2' have been
activated. If a given profile is prefixed with the NOT operator (!), the annotated element will
be registered if the profile is not active. For example, given @Profile({"p1", "!p2"}),
registration will occur if profile 'p1' is active or if profile 'p2' is not active.

@Profile can also be declared at the method level to include only one particular bean of a configuration
class, e.g. for alternative variants of a particular bean:

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@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

@Bean("dataSource")
@Profile("development")
public DataSource standaloneDataSource() {
return new EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder()
.setType(EmbeddedDatabaseType.HSQL)
.addScript("classpath:com/bank/config/sql/schema.sql")
.addScript("classpath:com/bank/config/sql/test-data.sql")
.build();
}

@Bean("dataSource")
@Profile("production")
public DataSource jndiDataSource() throws Exception {
Context ctx = new InitialContext();
return (DataSource) ctx.lookup("java:comp/env/jdbc/datasource");
}
}

Note

With @Profile on @Bean methods, a special scenario may apply: In the case of overloaded
@Bean methods of the same Java method name (analogous to constructor overloading), an
@Profile condition needs to be consistently declared on all overloaded methods. If the
conditions are inconsistent, only the condition on the first declaration among the overloaded
methods will matter. @Profile can therefore not be used to select an overloaded method with a
particular argument signature over another; resolution between all factory methods for the same
bean follows Springs constructor resolution algorithm at creation time.

If you would like to define alternative beans with different profile conditions, use distinct Java
method names pointing to the same bean name via the @Bean name attribute, as indicated in the
example above. If the argument signatures are all the same (e.g. all of the variants have no-arg
factory methods), this is the only way to represent such an arrangement in a valid Java class in
the first place (since there can only be one method of a particular name and argument signature).

XML bean definition profiles

The XML counterpart is the profile attribute of the <beans> element. Our sample configuration above
can be rewritten in two XML files as follows:

<beans profile="development"
xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:jdbc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jdbc"
xsi:schemaLocation="...">

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

<jee:jndi-lookup id="dataSource" jndi-name="java:comp/env/jdbc/datasource"/>

</beans>

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It is also possible to avoid that split and nest <beans/> elements within the same file:

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

<!-- other bean definitions -->

<beans profile="development">
<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>

The spring-bean.xsd has been constrained to allow such elements only as the last ones in the file.
This should help provide flexibility without incurring clutter in the XML files.

Activating a profile

Now that we have updated our configuration, we still need to instruct Spring which profile is active. If
we started our sample application right now, we would see a NoSuchBeanDefinitionException
thrown, because the container could not find the Spring bean named dataSource.

Activating a profile can be done in several ways, but the most straightforward is to do it programmatically
against the Environment API which is available via an ApplicationContext:

AnnotationConfigApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext();

ctx.getEnvironment().setActiveProfiles("development");
ctx.register(SomeConfig.class, StandaloneDataConfig.class, JndiDataConfig.class);
ctx.refresh();

In addition, profiles may also be activated declaratively through the spring.profiles.active

property which may be specified through system environment variables, JVM system properties, servlet
context parameters in web.xml, or even as an entry in JNDI (see the section called PropertySource
abstraction). In integration tests, active profiles can be declared via the @ActiveProfiles annotation
in the spring-test module (see the section called Context configuration with environment profiles).

Note that profiles are not an "either-or" proposition; it is possible to activate multiple profiles at once.
Programmatically, simply provide multiple profile names to the setActiveProfiles() method, which
accepts String varargs:

ctx.getEnvironment().setActiveProfiles("profile1", "profile2");

Declaratively, spring.profiles.active may accept a comma-separated list of profile names:

-Dspring.profiles.active="profile1,profile2"

Default profile

The default profile represents the profile that is enabled by default. Consider the following:

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@Configuration
@Profile("default")
public class DefaultDataConfig {

@Bean
public DataSource dataSource() {
return new EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder()
.setType(EmbeddedDatabaseType.HSQL)
.addScript("classpath:com/bank/config/sql/schema.sql")
.build();
}
}

If no profile is active, the dataSource above will be created; this can be seen as a way to provide a
default definition for one or more beans. If any profile is enabled, the default profile will not apply.

The name of the default profile can be changed using setDefaultProfiles() on the Environment
or declaratively using the spring.profiles.default property.

PropertySource abstraction

Springs Environment abstraction provides search operations over a configurable hierarchy of

property sources. To explain fully, consider the following:

ApplicationContext ctx = new GenericApplicationContext();

Environment env = ctx.getEnvironment();
boolean containsFoo = env.containsProperty("foo");
System.out.println("Does my environment contain the 'foo' property? " + containsFoo);

In the snippet above, we see a high-level way of asking Spring whether the foo property is defined for the
current environment. To answer this question, the Environment object performs a search over a set of
PropertySource objects. A PropertySource is a simple abstraction over any source of key-value
pairs, and Springs StandardEnvironment is configured with two PropertySource objects one
representing the set of JVM system properties (a la System.getProperties()) and one representing
the set of system environment variables (a la System.getenv()).

Note

These default property sources are present for StandardEnvironment, for use in
standalone applications. StandardServletEnvironment is populated with additional
default property sources including servlet config and servlet context parameters.
StandardPortletEnvironment similarly has access to portlet config and portlet context
parameters as property sources. Both can optionally enable a JndiPropertySource. See the
javadocs for details.

Concretely, when using the StandardEnvironment, the call to env.containsProperty("foo")

will return true if a foo system property or foo environment variable is present at runtime.

Tip

The search performed is hierarchical. By default, system properties have precedence over
environment variables, so if the foo property happens to be set in both places during a call to
env.getProperty("foo"), the system property value will 'win' and be returned preferentially
over the environment variable. Note that property values will not get merged but rather completely
overridden by a preceding entry.

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For a common StandardServletEnvironment, the full hierarchy looks as follows, with the
highest-precedence entries at the top:

ServletConfig parameters (if applicable, e.g. in case of a DispatcherServlet context)

ServletContext parameters (web.xml context-param entries)

JNDI environment variables ("java:comp/env/" entries)

JVM system properties ("-D" command-line arguments)

JVM system environment (operating system environment variables)

Most importantly, the entire mechanism is configurable. Perhaps you have a custom source of properties
that youd like to integrate into this search. No problem simply implement and instantiate your own
PropertySource and add it to the set of PropertySources for the current Environment:

ConfigurableApplicationContext ctx = new GenericApplicationContext();

MutablePropertySources sources = ctx.getEnvironment().getPropertySources();
sources.addFirst(new MyPropertySource());

In the code above, MyPropertySource has been added with highest precedence in the search. If
it contains a foo property, it will be detected and returned ahead of any foo property in any other
PropertySource. The MutablePropertySources API exposes a number of methods that allow for
precise manipulation of the set of property sources.

@PropertySource

The @PropertySource annotation provides a convenient and declarative mechanism for adding a
PropertySource to Springs Environment.

Given a file "app.properties" containing the key/value pair testbean.name=myTestBean, the

following @Configuration class uses @PropertySource in such a way that a call to
testBean.getName() will return "myTestBean".

@Configuration
@PropertySource("classpath:/com/myco/app.properties")
public class AppConfig {
@Autowired
Environment env;

@Bean
public TestBean testBean() {
TestBean testBean = new TestBean();
testBean.setName(env.getProperty("testbean.name"));
return testBean;
}
}

Any ${} placeholders present in a @PropertySource resource location will be resolved against the
set of property sources already registered against the environment. For example:

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@Configuration
@PropertySource("classpath:/com/${my.placeholder:default/path}/app.properties")
public class AppConfig {
@Autowired
Environment env;

@Bean
public TestBean testBean() {
TestBean testBean = new TestBean();
testBean.setName(env.getProperty("testbean.name"));
return testBean;
}
}

Assuming that "my.placeholder" is present in one of the property sources already registered, e.g. system
properties or environment variables, the placeholder will be resolved to the corresponding value. If not,
then "default/path" will be used as a default. If no default is specified and a property cannot be resolved,
an IllegalArgumentException will be thrown.

Placeholder resolution in statements

Historically, the value of placeholders in elements could be resolved only against JVM system properties
or environment variables. No longer is this the case. Because the Environment abstraction is integrated
throughout the container, its easy to route resolution of placeholders through it. This means that you
may configure the resolution process in any way you like: change the precedence of searching through
system properties and environment variables, or remove them entirely; add your own property sources
to the mix as appropriate.

Concretely, the following statement works regardless of where the customer property is defined, as
long as it is available in the Environment:

<beans>
<import resource="com/bank/service/${customer}-config.xml"/>
</beans>

7.14 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
public class AppConfig {

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 Springs JPA support

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where load-time weaving may be necessary for JPA class transformation. Consult the
LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean javadocs for more detail. For more on AspectJ
load-time weaving, see the section called Load-time weaving with AspectJ in the Spring Framework.

7.15 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 Java EE 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 namely 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.

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,

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the ApplicationContext attempts to find a parent containing a bean with the same name. If it does,
it uses that bean as the MessageSource. If the ApplicationContext cannot find any source for
messages, an empty DelegatingMessageSource is instantiated in order to be able to accept calls
to the methods defined above.

Spring provides two MessageSource implementations, ResourceBundleMessageSource and

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

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

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

# in format.properties
message=Alligators rock!

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

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

public static void main(String[] args) {

MessageSource resources = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("beans.xml");
String message = resources.getMessage("message", null, "Default", null);
System.out.println(message);
}

The resulting output from the above program will be

Alligators rock!

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

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

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<beans>

<!-- this MessageSource is being used in a web application -->

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

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

</beans>

public class Example {

private MessageSource messages;

public void setMessages(MessageSource messages) {

this.messages = messages;
}

public void execute() {

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

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

The userDao argument is required.

With regard to internationalization (i18n), Springs various MessageSource implementations follow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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 javadocs for
details.

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.

Tip

As of Spring 4.2, the event infrastructure has been significantly improved and offer an annotation-
based model as well as the ability to publish any arbitrary event, that is an object that does not
necessarily extend from ApplicationEvent. When such an object is published we wrap it in
an event for you.

Spring provides the following standard events:

Table 7.7. Built-in Events

Event Explanation

ContextRefreshedEvent 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 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 Published when the ApplicationContext

is started, using the start() method on
the ConfigurableApplicationContext
interface. "Started" here means that all

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Event Explanation
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 Published when the ApplicationContext

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

ContextClosedEvent Published when the ApplicationContext

is closed, using the close() method on the
ConfigurableApplicationContext
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 Springs DispatcherServlet.

You can also create and publish your own custom events. This example demonstrates a simple class
that extends Springs 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:

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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; youre 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 Springs ApplicationEventMulticaster interface.

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

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<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

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

Annotation-based Event Listeners

As of Spring 4.2, an event listener can be registered on any public method of a managed bean via the
EventListener annotation. The BlackListNotifier can be rewritten as follows:

public class BlackListNotifier {

private String notificationAddress;

public void setNotificationAddress(String notificationAddress) {

this.notificationAddress = notificationAddress;
}

@EventListener
public void processBlackListEvent(BlackListEvent event) {
// notify appropriate parties via notificationAddress...
}

As you can see above, the method signature once again declares the event type it listens to, but this
time with a flexible name and without implementing a specific listener interface. The event type can also
be narrowed through generics as long as the actual event type resolves your generic parameter in its
implementation hierarchy.

If your method should listen to several events or if you want to define it with no parameter at all, the
event type(s) can also be specified on the annotation itself:

@EventListener({ContextStartedEvent.class, ContextRefreshedEvent.class})
public void handleContextStart() {
...
}

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It is also possible to add additional runtime filtering via the condition attribute of the annotation that
defines a SpEL expression that should match to actually invoke the method for a particular event.

For instance, our notifier can be rewritten to be only invoked if the test attribute of the event is equal
to foo:

@EventListener(condition = "#blEvent.test == 'foo'")

public void processBlackListEvent(BlackListEvent blEvent) {
// notify appropriate parties via notificationAddress...
}

Each SpEL expression evaluates again a dedicated context. The next table lists the items made
available to the context so one can use them for conditional event processing:

Table 7.8. Event SpEL available metadata

Name Location Description Example

Event root object The actual #root.event

ApplicationEvent

Arguments array root object The arguments (as #root.args[0]

array) used for invoking
the target

Argument name evaluation context Name of any of the #blEvent or #a0 (one
method arguments. can also use #p0 or
If for some reason #p<#arg> notation as
the names are not an alias).
available (e.g. no
debug information),
the argument names
are also available
under the #a<#arg>
where #arg stands for
the argument index
(starting from 0).

Note that #root.event allows you to access to the underlying event, even if your method signature
actually refers to an arbitrary object that was published.

If you need to publish an event as the result of processing another, just change the method signature
to return the event that should be published, something like:

@EventListener
public ListUpdateEvent handleBlackListEvent(BlackListEvent event) {
// notify appropriate parties via notificationAddress and
// then publish a ListUpdateEvent...
}

Note

This feature is not supported for asynchronous listeners.

This new method will publish a new ListUpdateEvent for every BlackListEvent handled by the
method above. If you need to publish several events, just return a Collection of events instead.

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Asynchronous Listeners

If you want a particular listener to process events asynchronously, simply reuse the regular @Async
support:

@EventListener
@Async
public void processBlackListEvent(BlackListEvent event) {
// BlackListEvent is processed in a separate thread
}

Be aware of the following limitations when using asynchronous events:

1. If the event listener throws an Exception it will not be propagated to the caller, check
AsyncUncaughtExceptionHandler for more details.

2. Such event listener cannot send replies. If you need to send another event as the result of the
processing, inject ApplicationEventPublisher to send the event manually.

Ordering Listeners

If you need the listener to be invoked before another one, just add the @Order annotation to the method
declaration:

@EventListener
@Order(42)
public void processBlackListEvent(BlackListEvent event) {
// notify appropriate parties via notificationAddress...
}

Generic Events

You may also use generics to further define the structure of your event. Consider an
EntityCreatedEvent<T> where T is the type of the actual entity that got created. You can create
the following listener definition to only receive EntityCreatedEvent for a Person:

@EventListener
public void onPersonCreated(EntityCreatedEvent<Person> event) {
...
}

Due to type erasure, this will only work if the event that is fired resolves the generic parameter(s) on
which the event listener filters on (that is something like class PersonCreatedEvent extends
EntityCreatedEvent<Person> { }).

In certain circumstances, this may become quite tedious if all events follow the same structure
(as it should be the case for the event above). In such a case, you can implement
ResolvableTypeProvider to guide the framework beyond what the runtime environment provides:

public class EntityCreatedEvent<T>

extends ApplicationEvent implements ResolvableTypeProvider {

public EntityCreatedEvent(T entity) {

super(entity);
}

@Override
public ResolvableType getResolvableType() {
return ResolvableType.forClassWithGenerics(getClass(),
ResolvableType.forInstance(getSource()));
}
}

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Tip

This works not only for ApplicationEvent but any arbitrary object that youd send as an event.

Convenient access to low-level resources

For optimal usage and understanding of application contexts, users should generally familiarize
themselves with Springs Resource abstraction, as described in the chapter Chapter 8, 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.

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.

You can register an ApplicationContext using the ContextLoaderListener as follows:

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

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

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".

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Deploying a Spring ApplicationContext as a Java EE RAR file

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 Java EE RAR deployment unit. This is the equivalent
of bootstrapping a standalone ApplicationContext, just hosted in Java EE environment, being able
to access the Java EE servers facilities. RAR deployment is 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 Java EE 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 platforms JMX server - all through Springs
standard transaction management and JNDI and JMX support facilities. Application components
can also interact with the application servers JCA WorkManager through Springs 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 Java EE RAR file: package all application
classes into a RAR file, which is a standard JAR file with a different file extension. Add all required
library JARs into the root of the RAR archive. Add a "META-INF/ra.xml" deployment descriptor (as
shown in SpringContextResourceAdapters javadoc) and the corresponding Spring XML bean
definition file(s) (typically "META-INF/applicationContext.xml"), and drop the resulting RAR file into your
application servers 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.

7.16 The BeanFactory

The BeanFactory provides the underlying basis for Springs 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 third-party 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.

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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 embedded applications
running on resource-constrained devices where memory consumption might be critical and a few
extra kilobytes might make a difference. However, for most typical enterprise applications and
systems, the ApplicationContext is what you will want to use. Spring makes heavy use of
the BeanPostProcessor extension point (to effect proxying and so on). If you use only a plain
BeanFactory, a fair amount of support such as transactions and AOP will not take effect, at least not
without some extra steps on your part. This situation could be confusing because nothing is actually
wrong with the configuration.

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

Table 7.9. Feature Matrix

Feature BeanFactory ApplicationContext

Bean instantiation/wiring Yes Yes

Automatic No Yes
BeanPostProcessor
registration

Automatic No Yes
BeanFactoryPostProcessor
registration

Convenient MessageSource No Yes

access (for i18n)

ApplicationEvent No Yes
publication

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

DefaultListableBeanFactory factory = new DefaultListableBeanFactory();

// populate the factory with bean definitions

// 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:

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DefaultListableBeanFactory factory = new DefaultListableBeanFactory();

XmlBeanDefinitionReader reader = new XmlBeanDefinitionReader(factory);
reader.loadBeanDefinitions(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.

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 Spring team blog entry.

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8. Resources
8.1 Introduction
Javas 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.

8.2 The Resource interface

Springs 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).

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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, its actually very useful to use as
a general utility class by itself in your own code, for access to resources, even when your code doesnt
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.

8.3 Built-in Resource implementations

There are a number of Resource implementations that come supplied straight out of the box in Spring:

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 doesnt
recognize the prefix, it will assume the this is just a standard URL string, and will create a UrlResource.

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.

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FileSystemResource

This is a Resource implementation for java.io.File handles. It obviously supports resolution as a

File, and as a URL.

ServletContextResource

This is a Resource implementation for ServletContext resources, interpreting relative paths within
the relevant web applications 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 its expanded and on the filesystem like this, or accessed directly from the JAR or somewhere else
like a DB (its conceivable) is actually dependent on the Servlet container.

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.

ByteArrayResource

This is a Resource implementation for a given byte array. It creates a ByteArrayInputStream for
the given byte array.

Its useful for loading content from any given byte array, without having to resort to a single-use
InputStreamResource.

8.4 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
doesnt 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");

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What would be returned would be a ClassPathResource; if the same method was executed against
a FileSystemXmlApplicationContext instance, youd get back a FileSystemResource. For a
WebApplicationContext, youd 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 8.1. Resource strings

Prefix Example Explanation

classpath: classpath:com/myapp/ Loaded from the classpath.

config.xml

file: file:///data/config.xml Loaded as a URL, from the

1
filesystem.

http: http://myserver/ Loaded as a URL.

logo.png

(none) /data/config.xml Depends on the underlying

ApplicationContext.
1
But see also the section called FileSystemResource caveats.

8.5 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, its better to use the specialized ResourceLoader interface if thats all thats
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.

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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 the section called 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 the section called @Autowired.

8.6 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"/>

8.7 Application contexts and Resource paths

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 doesnt 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:

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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

ApplicationContext ctx =
new FileSystemXmlApplicationContext("classpath:conf/appContext.xml");

i. 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 ClassPathXmlApplicationContext javadocs for details on the various

constructors.

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 Springs 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.

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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. Its 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 non-wildcard 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*: portability classpath*: prefix

When constructing an XML-based application context, a location string may use the special
classpath*: prefix:

ApplicationContext ctx =
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.

Note

The wildcard classpath relies on the getResources() method of the underlying classloader.
As most application servers nowadays supply their own classloader implementation, the

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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 JDKs
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.

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:

ApplicationContext ctx =
new FileSystemXmlApplicationContext("conf/context.xml");

ApplicationContext ctx =
new FileSystemXmlApplicationContext("/conf/context.xml");

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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

ApplicationContext ctx =
new FileSystemXmlApplicationContext("file:///conf/context.xml");

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9. Validation, Data Binding, and Type Conversion

9.1 Introduction

JSR-303/JSR-349 Bean Validation

Spring Framework 4.0 supports Bean Validation 1.0 (JSR-303) and Bean Validation 1.1 (JSR-349)
in terms of setup support, also adapting it to Springs Validator interface.

An application can choose to enable Bean Validation once globally, as described in Section 9.8,
Spring Validation, and use it exclusively for all validation needs.

An application can also register additional Spring Validator instances per DataBinder
instance, as described in the section called Configuring a DataBinder. This may be useful for
plugging in validation logic without the use of annotations.

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
and 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.

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.

Springs 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.

9.2 Validation using Springs 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.

Lets consider a small data object:

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public class Person {

private String name;

private int age;

// the usual getters and setters...

}

Were 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 ValidationUtils
javadocs 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
dependency-inject or instantiate an AddressValidator within your CustomerValidator, and use
it like so:

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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 in the javadocs.

9.3 Resolving codes to error messages

Weve talked about databinding and validation. Outputting messages corresponding to validation errors
is the last thing we need to discuss. In the example weve shown above, we rejected the name and
the age field. If were going to output the error messages by using a MessageSource, we will do
so using the error code weve 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 youve 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 in the
javadocs of MessageCodesResolver and DefaultMessageCodesResolver, respectively.

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9.4 Bean manipulation and the BeanWrapper

The org.springframework.beans package adheres to the JavaBeans standard provided by
Oracle. 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 Oracles website ( javabeans).

One quite important class in the beans package is the BeanWrapper interface and its corresponding
implementation ( BeanWrapperImpl). As quoted from the javadocs, 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 isnt 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.

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. Theyre all
described in more detail in the javadocs Spring comes with. Whats important to know is that there are
a couple of conventions for indicating properties of an object. A couple of examples:

Table 9.1. 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

account[COMPANYNAME] Indicates the value of the map entry indexed by

the key COMPANYNAME of the Map property
account

Below youll find some examples of working with the BeanWrapper to get and set properties.

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(This next section is not vitally important to you if youre not planning to work with the BeanWrapper
directly. If youre 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 String name;

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 String name;

private float salary;

public String getName() {

return this.name;
}

public void setName(String 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:

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BeanWrapper company = new 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 = new 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");

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 were 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 javadocs of the java.beans package provided by Oracle.

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 youre declaring in XML file, Spring
will (if the setter of the corresponding property has a Class-parameter) use the ClassEditor to try
to resolve the parameter to a Class object.

parsing HTTP request parameters in Springs 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 9.2. Built-in PropertyEditors

Class Explanation

ByteArrayPropertyEditor Editor for byte arrays. Strings will simply

be converted to their corresponding byte
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.

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Class Explanation

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
[country][variant], which is the same thing
the toString() method of Locale provides).
Registered by default by BeanWrapperImpl.

PatternEditor Capable of resolving Strings to

java.util.regex.Pattern objects and vice
versa.

PropertiesEditor Capable of converting Strings (formatted

using the format as defined in the javadocs
of the java.util.Properties class) to
Properties objects. Registered by default by
BeanWrapperImpl.

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Class Explanation

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());
}
}
}

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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, Javas 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 post-processors 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 {

private String name;

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>

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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:

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<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 Springs 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.

9.5 Spring 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.

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. Such a converter can also be
applied transparently if a collection or array of S needs to be converted to an array or collection
of T, provided that a delegating array/collection converter has been registered as well (which
DefaultConversionService does by default).

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For each call to convert(S), the source argument is guaranteed to be NOT null. Your Converter
may throw any unchecked exception if conversion fails; specifically, an IllegalArgumentException
should be thrown to report an invalid source value. Take care to ensure that 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 for a typical Converter implementation:

package org.springframework.core.convert.support;

final class StringToInteger implements Converter<String, Integer> {

public Integer convert(String source) {

return Integer.valueOf(source);
}

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:

package org.springframework.core.convert.converter;

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());
}
}
}

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

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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.

package org.springframework.core.convert.converter;

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 Collections 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 a static
valueOf method, is defined on the target class. ConditionalGenericConverter is the union of the
GenericConverter and ConditionalConverter interfaces that allows you to define such custom
matching criteria:

public interface ConditionalConverter {

boolean matches(TypeDescriptor sourceType, TypeDescriptor targetType);

public interface ConditionalGenericConverter

extends GenericConverter, ConditionalConverter {

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).

ConversionService API
The ConversionService defines a unified API for executing type conversion logic at runtime. Converters
are often executed behind this facade interface:

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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 general-purpose implementation suitable for use in most
environments. ConversionServiceFactory provides a convenient factory for creating common
ConversionService configurations.

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.

<bean id="conversionService"
class="org.springframework.context.support.ConversionServiceFactoryBean">
<property name="converters">
<set>
<bean class="example.MyCustomConverter"/>
</set>
</property>
</bean>

It is also common to use a ConversionService within a Spring MVC application. See the section called
Conversion and Formatting in the Spring MVC chapter.

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In certain situations you may wish to apply formatting during conversion. See the section called
FormatterRegistry SPI for details on using FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean.

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(...)
}
}

For most use cases, the convert method specifying the targetType can be used but it will not work with
more complex types such as a collection of a parameterized element. If you want to convert a List of
Integer to a List of String programmatically, for instance, you need to provide a formal definition
of the source and target types.

Fortunately, TypeDescriptor provides various options to make that straightforward:

DefaultConversionService cs = new DefaultConversionService();

List<Integer> input = ....

cs.convert(input,
TypeDescriptor.forObject(input), // List<Integer> type descriptor
TypeDescriptor.collection(List.class, TypeDescriptor.valueOf(String.class)));

Note that DefaultConversionService registers converters automatically which are appropriate for
most environments. This includes collection converters, scalar converters, and also basic Object to
String converters. The same converters can be registered with any ConverterRegistry using the
static addDefaultConverters method on the DefaultConversionService class.

Converters for value types will be reused for arrays and collections, so there is no need to create a
specific converter to convert from a Collection of S to a Collection of T, assuming that standard
collection handling is appropriate.

9.6 Spring 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

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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 youre 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.

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:

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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 jira.spring.io to contribute.

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:

package org.springframework.format;

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:

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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;

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

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implements ConversionService, it can be directly configured for use with Springs DataBinder and
the Spring Expression Language (SpEL).

Review the FormatterRegistry SPI below:

package org.springframework.format;

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.

FormatterRegistrar SPI

The FormatterRegistrar is an SPI for registering formatters and converters through the
FormatterRegistry:

package org.springframework.format;

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.

Configuring Formatting in Spring MVC

See the section called Conversion and Formatting in the Spring MVC chapter.

9.7 Configuring a global date & time format

By default, date and time fields that are not annotated with @DateTimeFormat are converted from
strings using the 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

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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
public class AppConfig {

@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:

<?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="conversionService" class="org.springframework.format.support.FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean">
<property name="registerDefaultFormatters" value="false" />
<property name="formatters">
<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>

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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 'conversion-
service' attribute of the mvc:annotation-driven element. See the section called Conversion
and Formatting for details.

9.8 Spring 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, Springs DataBinder can now validate
objects as well as bind to them. Third, Spring MVC now has support for declaratively validating
@Controller inputs.

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 String name;
private int age;
}

JSR-303 allows you to define declarative validation constraints against such properties:

public class PersonForm {

@NotNull
@Size(max=64)
private String name;

@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/JSR-349, see the Bean Validation website. For information on the
specific capabilities of the default reference implementation, see the Hibernate Validator documentation.
To learn how to setup a Bean Validation provider as a Spring bean, keep reading.

Configuring a Bean Validation Provider

Spring provides full support for the Bean Validation API. This includes convenient support for
bootstrapping a JSR-303/JSR-349 Bean Validation provider as a Spring bean. This allows for

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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 Validator as a Spring bean:

<bean id="validator"
class="org.springframework.validation.beanvalidation.LocalValidatorFactoryBean"/>

The basic configuration above will trigger Bean Validation to initialize using its default bootstrap
mechanism. A JSR-303/JSR-349 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 Springs
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 Bean Validation
API directly:

import javax.validation.Validator;

@Service
public class MyService {

@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
public class MyService {

@Autowired
private Validator validator;

Configuring Custom Constraints

Each Bean 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 constraints
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.

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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})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@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.

Spring-driven Method Validation

The method validation feature supported by Bean Validation 1.1, and as a custom extension
also by Hibernate Validator 4.3, can be integrated into a Spring context through a
MethodValidationPostProcessor bean definition:

<bean class="org.springframework.validation.beanvalidation.MethodValidationPostProcessor"/>

In order to be eligible for Spring-driven method validation, all target classes need to be annotated
with Springs @Validated annotation, optionally declaring the validation groups to use. Check out the
MethodValidationPostProcessor javadocs for setup details with Hibernate Validator and Bean
Validation 1.1 providers.

Additional Configuration Options

The default LocalValidatorFactoryBean configuration should prove sufficient for most cases.
There are a number of configuration options for various Bean Validation constructs, from message
interpolation to traversal resolution. See the LocalValidatorFactoryBean javadocs for more
information on these options.

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
binders BindingResult.

When working with the DataBinder programmatically, this can be used to invoke validation logic after
binding to a target object:

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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 Bean Validation with a Spring Validator configured locally on a
DataBinder instance. See ???.

Spring MVC 3 Validation

See the section called Validation in the Spring MVC chapter.

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10. Spring Expression Language (SpEL)

10.1 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 Spring 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 Inventors 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.

10.2 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

Relational operators

Assignment

Calling constructors

Bean references

Array construction

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Inline lists

Inline maps

Ternary operator

Variables

User defined functions

Collection projection

Collection selection

Templated expressions

10.3 Expression Evaluation using Springs 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.

ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser();

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.

ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser();

// invokes 'getBytes()'
Expression exp = parser.parseExpression("'Hello World'.bytes");
byte[] bytes = (byte[]) exp.getValue();

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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.

ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser();

// invokes 'getBytes().length'
Expression exp = parser.parseExpression("'Hello World'.bytes.length");
int length = (Integer) exp.getValue();

The Strings constructor can be called instead of using a string literal.

ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser();

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");

ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser();

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");

ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser();

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.

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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

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.Method, java.lang.reflect.Field, and
java.lang.reflect.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:

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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);

Parser configuration

It is possible to configure the SpEL expression parser using a parser configuration object
(org.springframework.expression.spel.SpelParserConfiguration). The configuration
object controls the behavior of some of the expression components. For example, if indexing into an
array or collection and the element at the specified index is null it is possible to automatically create the
element. This is useful when using expressions made up of a chain of property references. If indexing
into an array or list and specifying an index that is beyond the end of the current size of the array or list
it is possible to automatically grow the array or list to accommodate that index.

class Demo {
public List<String> list;
}

// Turn on:
// - auto null reference initialization
// - auto collection growing
SpelParserConfiguration config = new SpelParserConfiguration(true,true);

ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser(config);

Expression expression = parser.parseExpression("list[3]");

Demo demo = new Demo();

Object o = expression.getValue(demo);

// demo.list will now be a real collection of 4 entries

// Each entry is a new empty String

It is also possible to configure the behaviour of the SpEL expression compiler.

SpEL compilation

Spring Framework 4.1 includes a basic expression compiler. Expressions are usually interpreted which
provides a lot of dynamic flexibility during evaluation but does not provide the optimum performance. For
occasional expression usage this is fine, but when used by other components like Spring Integration,
performance can be very important and there is no real need for the dynamism.

The new SpEL compiler is intended to address this need. The compiler will generate a real Java
class on the fly during evaluation that embodies the expression behavior and use that to achieve
much faster expression evaluation. Due to the lack of typing around expressions the compiler uses
information gathered during the interpreted evaluations of an expression when performing compilation.
For example, it does not know the type of a property reference purely from the expression but during the

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first interpreted evaluation it will find out what it is. Of course, basing the compilation on this information
could cause trouble later if the types of the various expression elements change over time. For this
reason compilation is best suited to expressions whose type information is not going to change on
repeated evaluations.

For a basic expression like this:

someArray[0].someProperty.someOtherProperty < 0.1

which involves array access, some property derefencing and numeric operations, the performance gain
can be very noticeable. In an example micro benchmark run of 50000 iterations, it was taking 75ms to
evaluate using only the interpreter and just 3ms using the compiled version of the expression.

Compiler configuration

The compiler is not turned on by default, but there are two ways to turn it on. It can be turned on using the
parser configuration process discussed earlier or via a system property when SpEL usage is embedded
inside another component. This section discusses both of these options.

It is important to understand that there are a few modes the compiler can operate in, captured in an enum
(org.springframework.expression.spel.SpelCompilerMode). The modes are as follows:

OFF - The compiler is switched off; this is the default.

IMMEDIATE - In immediate mode the expressions are compiled as soon as possible. This is typically
after the first interpreted evaluation. If the compiled expression fails (typically due to a type changing,
as described above) then the caller of the expression evaluation will receive an exception.

MIXED - In mixed mode the expressions silently switch between interpreted and compiled mode over
time. After some number of interpreted runs they will switch to compiled form and if something goes
wrong with the compiled form (like a type changing, as described above) then the expression will
automatically switch back to interpreted form again. Sometime later it may generate another compiled
form and switch to it. Basically the exception that the user gets in IMMEDIATE mode is instead handled
internally.

IMMEDIATE mode exists because MIXED mode could cause issues for expressions that have side
effects. If a compiled expression blows up after partially succeeding it may have already done something
that has affected the state of the system. If this has happened the caller may not want it to silently re-
run in interpreted mode since part of the expression may be running twice.

After selecting a mode, use the SpelParserConfiguration to configure the parser:

SpelParserConfiguration config = new SpelParserConfiguration(SpelCompilerMode.IMMEDIATE,

this.getClass().getClassLoader());

SpelExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser(config);

Expression expr = parser.parseExpression("payload");

MyMessage message = new MyMessage();

Object payload = expr.getValue(message);

When specifying the compiler mode it is also possible to specify a classloader (passing null is allowed).
Compiled expressions will be defined in a child classloader created under any that is supplied. It is
important to ensure if a classloader is specified it can see all the types involved in the expression
evaluation process. If none is specified then a default classloader will be used (typically the context
classloader for the thread that is running during expression evaluation).

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The second way to configure the compiler is for use when SpEL is embedded inside some other
component and it may not be possible to configure via a configuration object. In these cases it is possible
to use a system property. The property spring.expression.compiler.mode can be set to one of
the SpelCompilerMode enum values (off, immediate, or mixed).

Compiler limitations

With Spring Framework 4.1 the basic compilation framework is in place. However, the framework
does not yet support compiling every kind of expression. The initial focus has been on the common
expressions that are likely to be used in performance critical contexts. These kinds of expression cannot
be compiled at the moment:

expressions involving assignment

expressions relying on the conversion service

expressions using custom resolvers or accessors

expressions using selection or projection

More and more types of expression will be compilable in the future.

10.4 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> }.

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 }"/>

<!-- other properties -->

</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'] }"/>

<!-- other properties -->

</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 }"/>

<!-- other properties -->

</bean>

<bean id="shapeGuess" class="org.spring.samples.ShapeGuess">

<property name="initialShapeSeed" value="#{ numberGuess.randomNumber }"/>

<!-- other properties -->

</bean>

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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

private String defaultLocale;

@Value("#{ systemProperties['user.region'] }")

public void setDefaultLocale(String defaultLocale) {
this.defaultLocale = defaultLocale;
}

public String getDefaultLocale() {

return this.defaultLocale;
}

Autowired methods and constructors can also use the @Value annotation.

public class SimpleMovieLister {

private MovieFinder movieFinder;

private String defaultLocale;

@Autowired
public void configure(MovieFinder movieFinder,
@Value("#{ systemProperties['user.region'] }") String defaultLocale) {
this.movieFinder = movieFinder;
this.defaultLocale = defaultLocale;
}

// ...
}

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public class MovieRecommender {

private String defaultLocale;

private CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao;

@Autowired
public MovieRecommender(CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao,
@Value("#{systemProperties['user.country']}") String defaultLocale) {
this.customerPreferenceDao = customerPreferenceDao;
this.defaultLocale = defaultLocale;
}

// ...
}

10.5 Language Reference

Literal expressions

The types of literal expressions supported are strings, numeric values (int, real, 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 rather as part of a more complex expression, for example using a literal on one side of a logical
comparison operator.

ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser();

// 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().

Properties, Arrays, Lists, Maps, Indexers

Navigating with property references is easy: just use a period to indicate a nested property value. The
instances of the Inventor class, pupin, and tesla, were populated with data listed in the section Classes
used in the examples. To navigate "down" and get Teslas year of birth and Pupins 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.

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ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser();

// 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");

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.

Inline Maps
Maps can also be expressed directly in an expression using {key:value} notation.

// evaluates to a Java map containing the two entries

Map inventorInfo = (Map) parser.parseExpression("{name:'Nikola',dob:'10-July-1856'}").getValue(context);

Map mapOfMaps = (Map) parser.parseExpression("{name:{first:'Nikola',last:'Tesla'},dob:

{day:10,month:'July',year:1856}}").getValue(context);

{:} by itself means an empty map. For performance reasons, if the map is itself composed of fixed
literals or other nested constant structures (lists or maps) then a constant map is created to represent
the expression, rather than building a new map on each evaluation. Quoting of the map keys is optional,
the examples above are not using quoted keys.

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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.

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);

Operators

Relational 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.

// evaluates to true
boolean trueValue = parser.parseExpression("2 == 2").getValue(Boolean.class);

// evaluates to false
boolean falseValue = parser.parseExpression("2 < -5.0").getValue(Boolean.class);

// evaluates to true
boolean trueValue = parser.parseExpression("'black' < 'block'").getValue(Boolean.class);

Note

Greater/less-than comparisons against null follow a simple rule: null is treated as nothing here
(i.e. NOT as zero). As a consequence, any other value is always greater than null (X > null
is always true) and no other value is ever less than nothing (X < null is always false).

If you prefer numeric comparisons instead, please avoid number-based null comparisons in
favor of comparisons against zero (e.g. X > 0 or X < 0).

In addition to standard relational operators SpEL supports the instanceof and regular expression
based matches operator.

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// evaluates to false
boolean falseValue = parser.parseExpression(
"'xyz' instanceof T(Integer)").getValue(Boolean.class);

// evaluates to true
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);

Note

Be careful with primitive types as they are immediately boxed up to the wrapper type, so 1
instanceof T(int) evaluates to false while 1 instanceof T(Integer) evaluates to
true, as expected.

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);

// evaluates to true
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);

// evaluates to true
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 both numbers and strings. Subtraction, 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.

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// 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

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);

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);

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).

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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);

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

ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser();
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);

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();
}
}

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This method is then registered with the evaluation context and can be used within an expression string.

ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser();

StandardEvaluationContext context = new StandardEvaluationContext();

context.registerFunction("reverseString",
StringUtils.class.getDeclaredMethod("reverseString", new Class[] { String.class }));

String helloWorldReversed = parser.parseExpression(

"#reverseString('hello')").getValue(context, String.class);

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.

ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser();

StandardEvaluationContext context = new StandardEvaluationContext();
context.setBeanResolver(new MyBeanResolver());

// This will end up calling resolve(context,"foo") on MyBeanResolver during evaluation

Object bean = parser.parseExpression("@foo").getValue(context);

To access a factory bean itself, the bean name should instead be prefixed with a (&) symbol.

ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser();

StandardEvaluationContext context = new StandardEvaluationContext();
context.setBeanResolver(new MyBeanResolver());

// This will end up calling resolve(context,"&foo") on MyBeanResolver during evaluation

Object bean = parser.parseExpression("&foo").getValue(context);

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.

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";

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Instead you can use the Elvis operator, named for the resemblance to Elvis' hair style.

ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser();

String name = parser.parseExpression("name?:'Unknown'").getValue(String.class);

System.out.println(name); // 'Unknown'

Here is a more complex example.

ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser();

Inventor tesla = new Inventor("Nikola Tesla", "Serbian");

StandardEvaluationContext context = new StandardEvaluationContext(tesla);

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

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.

ExpressionParser parser = new SpelExpressionParser();

Inventor tesla = new Inventor("Nikola Tesla", "Serbian");

tesla.setPlaceOfBirth(new PlaceOfBirth("Smiljan"));

StandardEvaluationContext context = new StandardEvaluationContext(tesla);

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.

Collection Selection

Selection is a powerful expression language feature that allows you to transform some source collection
into another by selecting from its entries.

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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 $[].

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.

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.

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public class TemplateParserContext implements ParserContext {

public String getExpressionPrefix() {

return "#{";
}

public String getExpressionSuffix() {

return "}";
}

public boolean isTemplate() {

return true;
}
}

10.6 Classes used in the examples

Inventor.java

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package org.spring.samples.spel.inventor;

import java.util.Date;
import java.util.GregorianCalendar;

public class Inventor {

private String name;

private String nationality;
private String[] inventions;
private Date birthdate;
private 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.nationality = nationality;
this.birthdate = birthdate;
}

public Inventor() {
}

public String getName() {

return name;
}

public void setName(String name) {

this.name = name;
}

public String getNationality() {

return nationality;
}

public void setNationality(String nationality) {

this.nationality = 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;
}
}

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PlaceOfBirth.java

package org.spring.samples.spel.inventor;

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

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package org.spring.samples.spel.inventor;

import java.util.*;

public class Society {

private String name;

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;
}

public String getName() {

return name;
}

public void setName(String name) {

this.name = name;
}

public boolean isMember(String name) {

for (Inventor inventor : members) {
if (inventor.getName().equals(name)) {
return true;
}
}
return false;
}

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11. Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring

11.1 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 dont want to, AOP complements Spring
IoC to provide a very capable middleware solution.

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.

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.

Note

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.

AOP concepts

Let us begin by defining some central AOP 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.

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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 inter-type 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.

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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).

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 AOPs 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 Frameworks 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 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 non-invasiveness; 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 configuration-style approach.

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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 11.4, Choosing which AOP declaration style to use for a more complete discussion
of the whys and wherefores of each style.

AOP Proxies

Spring AOP defaults to using standard JDK 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 the section called Understanding
AOP proxies for a thorough examination of exactly what this implementation detail actually means.

11.2 @AspectJ support

@AspectJ refers to a style of declaring aspects as regular Java classes annotated with annotations.
The @AspectJ style was introduced by the AspectJ project as part of the AspectJ 5 release. Spring
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.

Note

Using the AspectJ compiler and weaver enables use of the full AspectJ language, and is discussed
in Section 11.8, Using AspectJ with Spring applications.

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 AspectJs 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:

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@Configuration
@EnableAspectJAutoProxy
public class AppConfig {

Enabling @AspectJ Support with XML configuration

To enable @AspectJ support with XML based configuration use the aop:aspectj-autoproxy
element:

<aop:aspectj-autoproxy/>

This assumes that you are using schema support as described in Chapter 41, XML Schema-based
configuration. See the section called the aop schema for how to import the tags in the aop namespace.

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">

<!-- configure properties of aspect here as normal -->
</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 Springs 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.

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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 AspectJs pointcut language, see the AspectJ Programming
Guide (and for 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:

Other pointcut types

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.

execution - for matching method execution join points, this is the primary pointcut 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 execution of methods when using Spring AOP) where the
target object (application object being proxied) is an instance of the given type

args - limits matching to join points (the execution of methods when using Spring AOP) where the
arguments are instances of the given types

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@target - limits matching to join points (the execution of methods when using Spring 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 Springs AOP framework, calls within the target object are by
definition not intercepted. For JDK proxies, only public interface method calls on the proxy can
be intercepted. With CGLIB, public and protected method calls on the proxy will be intercepted,
and even package-visible methods if necessary. However, common interactions through proxies
should always be designed through public signatures.

Note that pointcut definitions are generally matched against any intercepted method. If a pointcut
is strictly meant to be public-only, even in a CGLIB proxy scenario with potential non-public
interactions through proxies, it needs to be defined accordingly.

If your interception needs include method calls or even constructors within the target class,
consider the use of Spring-driven native AspectJ weaving instead of Springs 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 and therefore
not available for aspects declared in the @Aspect model.

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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 Springs 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:

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package com.xyz.someapp;

import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Aspect;
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.someapp.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:

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<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 11.3, Schema-based
AOP support. The transaction elements are discussed in Chapter 17, 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. If specifying a declaring type pattern then include a trailing . to join it to the
name pattern component. 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:

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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)

Note

'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)

Note

'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)

Note

'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)

Note

'@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:

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@within(org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Transactional)

Note

'@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)

Note

'@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)

Note

'@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:

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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.

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.Aspect;
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.Aspect;
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Before;

@Aspect
public class BeforeExample {

@Before("execution(* com.xyz.myapp.dao.*.*(..))")
public void doAccessCheck() {
// ...
}

After returning advice

After returning advice runs when a matched method execution returns normally. It is declared using the
@AfterReturning annotation:

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import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Aspect;
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.AfterReturning;

@Aspect
public class AfterReturningExample {

@AfterReturning("com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.dataAccessOperation()")
public void doAccessCheck() {
// ...
}

Note

Note: it is of course possible to have multiple advice declarations, and other members as well,
all inside the same aspect. Were 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.Aspect;
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 after-returning advice.

After throwing 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.Aspect;
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.AfterThrowing;

@Aspect
public class AfterThrowingExample {

@AfterThrowing("com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.dataAccessOperation()")
public void doRecoveryActions() {
// ...
}

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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.Aspect;
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

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.Aspect;
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. dont 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.

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Note

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 (Dont worry if this doesnt
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.Aspect;
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 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. Well see how to make argument and other contextual values available to the advice
body in a moment. First lets 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.

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Passing parameters to advice

Weve 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:

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@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:

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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, its worth pointing out that
this wont 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:

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) {
AuditCode code = auditable.value();
// ... 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) {
AuditCode code = auditable.value();
// ... 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

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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
}

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.

Note

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.

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.

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).

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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.

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");

Aspect instantiation models

Note

(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 AspectJs perthis and pertarget instantiation models ( percflow, percflowbelow,
and pertypewithin are not currently supported).

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A "perthis" aspect is declared by specifying a perthis clause in the @Aspect annotation. Lets look
at an example, and then well 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.

Example

Now that you have seen how all the constituent parts work, lets 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 dont need to go back to
the user for conflict resolution), wed 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. Heres how the basic aspect implementation looks:

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@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 were
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:

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface Idempotent {
// marker annotation
}

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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)")
public Object doConcurrentOperation(ProceedingJoinPoint pjp) throws Throwable {
...
}

11.3 Schema-based AOP support

If you prefer an XML-based format, then Spring 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 11.2, @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 spring-aop schema
as described in Chapter 41, XML Schema-based configuration. See the section called 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 Springs 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.

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.

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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 11.2, @AspectJ support. If you are using the schema based declaration style,
you can refer to named pointcuts defined in types (@Aspects) within the pointcut expression. Another
way of defining the above pointcut would be:

<aop:config>

<aop:pointcut id="businessService"
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 id="myAspect" ref="aBean">

<aop:pointcut id="businessService"
expression="execution(* com.xyz.myapp.service.*.*(..))"/>

...

</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>

<aop:aspect id="myAspect" ref="aBean">

<aop:pointcut id="businessService"
expression="execution(* com.xyz.myapp.service.*.*(..)) &amp;&amp; this(service)"/>

<aop:before pointcut-ref="businessService" method="monitor"/>

...

</aop:aspect>

</aop:config>

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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>

<aop:aspect id="myAspect" ref="aBean">

<aop:pointcut id="businessService"
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.

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.*.*(..))"
method="doAccessCheck"/>

...

</aop:aspect>

As we noted in the discussion of the @AspectJ style, using named pointcuts can significantly improve
the readability of your code.

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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

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
pointcut-ref="dataAccessOperation"
method="doAccessCheck"/>

...

</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
pointcut-ref="dataAccessOperation"
returning="retVal"
method="doAccessCheck"/>

...

</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

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
pointcut-ref="dataAccessOperation"
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:

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<aop:aspect id="afterThrowingExample" ref="aBean">

<aop:after-throwing
pointcut-ref="dataAccessOperation"
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

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
pointcut-ref="dataAccessOperation"
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; dont
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):

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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.aspectj.lang.ProceedingJoinPoint;
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());
}
}
}

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Finally, here is the XML configuration that is required to effect the execution of the above advice for
a particular join point:

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

<!-- this is the object that will be proxied by Spring's AOP infrastructure -->
<bean id="fooService" class="x.y.service.DefaultFooService"/>

<!-- this is the actual advice itself -->

<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 org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;
import x.y.service.FooService;

public final class Boot {

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

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.

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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");

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.

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 the section called Advice types in Spring. Advisors can take advantage of
AspectJ pointcut expressions though.

Spring 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.
Heres how it looks:

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<aop:config>

<aop:pointcut id="businessService"
expression="execution(* com.xyz.myapp.service.*.*(..))"/>

<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.

Example

Lets see how the concurrent locking failure retry example from the section called 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 dont need to go back to
the user for conflict resolution), wed 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, well need to use around advice so that we can call proceed
multiple times. Heres how the basic aspect implementation looks (its just a regular Java class using
the schema support):

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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;
}

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 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.

Note

This class is identical to the one used in the @AspectJ example, but with the annotations removed.

The corresponding Spring configuration is:

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<aop:config>

<aop:aspect id="concurrentOperationRetry" ref="concurrentOperationExecutor">

<aop:pointcut id="idempotentOperation"
expression="execution(* com.xyz.myapp.service.*.*(..))"/>

<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"/>
<property name="order" value="100"/>
</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:

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
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)"/>

11.4 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.

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

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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.

@AspectJ or XML for Spring AOP?

If you have chosen to use Spring AOP, then you have a choice of @AspectJ or XML style. There are
various tradeoffs to consider.

The XML style will be most familiar to existing Spring users and it 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.

11.5 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

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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.

11.6 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.

As of Spring 4.0, the constructor of your proxied object will NOT be called twice anymore since the
CGLIB proxy instance will be created via Objenesis. Only if your JVM does not allow for constructor
bypassing, you might see double invocations and corresponding debug log entries from Springs AOP
support.

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">
<!-- other beans defined here... -->
</aop:config>

To force CGLIB proxying when using the @AspectJ autoproxy support, set the 'proxy-target-
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:aspectj-autoproxy/> 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.

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.

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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 {

public static void main(String[] args) {

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.

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public class Main {

public static void main(String[] args) {

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 {

public static void main(String[] args) {

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();
}
}

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Finally, it must be noted that AspectJ does not have this self-invocation issue because it is not a proxy-
based AOP framework.

11.7 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 Springs 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();

11.8 Using AspectJ with Spring applications

Everything weve covered so far in this chapter is pure Spring AOP. In this section, were 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; youll need to add this to your classpath in order to use the aspects in it. the
section called Using AspectJ to dependency inject domain objects with Spring and the section called
Other Spring aspects for AspectJ discuss the content of this library and how you can use it. the section
called Configuring AspectJ aspects using Spring IoC discusses how to dependency inject AspectJ
aspects that are woven using the AspectJ compiler. Finally, the section called Load-time weaving with
AspectJ in the Spring Framework provides an introduction to load-time weaving for Spring applications
using AspectJ.

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 spring-aspects.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:

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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 fully-qualified 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")
public class 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 7.9, 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()).

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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 the section called 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
public class AppConfig {

If you prefer XML based configuration, the Spring context namespace defines a convenient
context:spring-configured element:

<context:spring-configured/>

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.

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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 web-application loads
the types in spring-aspects.jar using its own classloader (for example, by placing spring-
aspects.jar in 'WEB-INF/lib'). If spring-aspects.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.

Other Spring aspects for AspectJ

In addition to the @Configurable aspect, spring-aspects.jar contains an AspectJ aspect

that can be used to drive Springs transaction management for types and methods annotated with
the @Transactional annotation. This is primarily intended for users who want to use the Spring
Frameworks 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 Javas 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 of any visibility may be annotated,

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including private methods. Annotating non-public methods directly is the only way to get transaction
demarcation for the execution of such methods.

Tip

Since Spring Framework 4.2, spring-aspects provides a similar aspect that offers the exact
same features for the standard javax.transaction.Transactional annotation. Check
JtaAnnotationTransactionAspect for more details.

For AspectJ programmers that want to use the Spring configuration and transaction management
support but dont want to (or cannot) use annotations, spring-aspects.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);

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 spring-aspects.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

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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:aspectj-autoproxy/> 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.

Load-time weaving with AspectJ in the Spring Framework

Load-time weaving (LTW) refers to the process of weaving AspectJ aspects into an applications 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 finer-grained
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 'single-JVM-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 servers 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.

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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 org.aspectj.lang.ProceedingJoinPoint;
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Aspect;
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Around;
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Pointcut;
import org.springframework.util.StopWatch;
import 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());
return pjp.proceed();
} 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 META-INF/aop.xml is standard AspectJ.

<!DOCTYPE aspectj PUBLIC "-//AspectJ//DTD//EN" "http://www.eclipse.org/aspectj/dtd/aspectj.dtd">

<aspectj>

<weaver>
<!-- only weave classes in our application-specific packages -->
<include within="foo.*"/>
</weaver>

<aspects>
<!-- weave in just this aspect -->
<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).

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<!-- a service object; we will be profiling its methods -->

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

<!-- this switches on the load-time weaving -->

<context:load-time-weaver/>
</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;

import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;

public final class Main {

public static void main(String[] args) {

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 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 spring-instrument.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 :) )

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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;

import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;

public final class Main {

public static void main(String[] args) {

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. It means 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

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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 Frameworks support for AspectJ
LTW:

spring-aop.jar (version 2.5 or later, plus all mandatory dependencies)

aspectjweaver.jar (version 1.6.8 or later)

If you are using the Spring-provided agent to enable instrumentation, you will also need:

spring-instrument.jar

Spring configuration

The key component in Springs 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.

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 Frameworks LTW support, you need to configure a LoadTimeWeaver, which
typically is done using the @EnableLoadTimeWeaving annotation.

@Configuration
@EnableLoadTimeWeaving
public class AppConfig {

Alternatively, if you prefer XML based configuration, use the <context:load-time-weaver/>

element. Note that the element is defined in the context namespace.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<context:load-time-weaver/>

</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 11.1. DefaultContextLoadTimeWeaver LoadTimeWeavers

Runtime Environment LoadTimeWeaver implementation

Running in Oracles WebLogic WebLogicLoadTimeWeaver

Running in Oracles GlassFish GlassFishLoadTimeWeaver

Running in Apache Tomcat TomcatLoadTimeWeaver

Running in Red Hats JBoss AS or WildFly JBossLoadTimeWeaver

Running in IBMs WebSphere WebSphereLoadTimeWeaver

JVM started with Spring InstrumentationLoadTimeWeaver

InstrumentationSavingAgent (java -
javaagent:path/to/spring-instrument.jar)

Fallback, expecting the underlying ClassLoader ReflectiveLoadTimeWeaver

to follow common conventions (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
@EnableLoadTimeWeaving
public class AppConfig implements LoadTimeWeavingConfigurer {

@Override
public LoadTimeWeaver getLoadTimeWeaver() {
return new ReflectiveLoadTimeWeaver();
}
}

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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:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<context: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 Springs 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 javadocs of 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 being autodetect if the attribute is not present.

Table 11.2. AspectJ weaving attribute values

Annotation Value XML Value Explanation

ENABLED on AspectJ weaving is on, and

aspects will be woven at load-
time as appropriate.

DISABLED off LTW is off no aspect will be

woven at load-time.

AUTODETECT autodetect If the Spring LTW infrastructure

can find at least one META-
INF/aop.xml file, then
AspectJ 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
Springs LTW support in environments such as application servers and web containers.

Tomcat

Historically, Apache Tomcat's default class loader did not support class transformation which
is why Spring provides an enhanced implementation that addresses this need. Named
TomcatInstrumentableClassLoader, the loader works on Tomcat 6.0 and above.

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Tip

Do not define TomcatInstrumentableClassLoader anymore on Tomcat 8.0 and higher.

Instead, let Spring automatically use Tomcats new native InstrumentableClassLoader
facility through the TomcatLoadTimeWeaver strategy.

If you still need to use TomcatInstrumentableClassLoader, it can be registered individually for

each web application as follows:

Copy org.springframework.instrument.tomcat.jar into $CATALINA_HOME/lib, where

$CATALINA_HOME represents the root of the Tomcat installation)

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+) 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 server-side at

$CATALINA_HOME/conf/[enginename]/[hostname]/[webapp]-context.xml or embedded inside the
web-app archive at META-INF/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.

Alternatively, consider the use of the Spring-provided generic VM agent, to be specified in Tomcats
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, Resin, GlassFish, JBoss

Recent versions of WebLogic Server (version 10 and above), IBM WebSphere Application Server
(version 7 and above), Resin (3.1 and above) and JBoss (6.x or above) provide a ClassLoader
that is capable of local instrumentation. Springs 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:

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<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.

11.9 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, Second Edition by Ramnivas Laddad (Manning, 2009) comes highly
recommended; the focus of the book is on AspectJ, but a lot of general AOP themes are explored (in
some depth).

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12. Spring AOP APIs

12.1 Introduction
The previous chapter described the Springs 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 4.0 is backwards
compatible with Spring 1.2 and everything described in this chapter is fully supported in Spring 4.0.

12.2 Pointcut API in Spring

Lets look at how Spring handles the crucial pointcut concept.

Concepts
Springs pointcut model enables pointcut reuse independent of advice types. Its 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

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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.

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.

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.

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 methods
arguments. Static pointcuts are sufficient - and best - for most usages. Its 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.

Lets 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.)

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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 bean="beanNameOfAopAllianceInterceptor"/>
</property>
<property name="patterns">
<list>
<value>.*set.*</value>
<value>.*absquatulate</value>
</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.

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Pointcut superclasses
Spring provides useful pointcut superclasses to help you to implement your own pointcuts.

Because static pointcuts are most useful, youll probably subclass StaticMethodMatcherPointcut, as
shown below. This requires implementing just one abstract method (although its 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.

Custom pointcuts
Because pointcuts in Spring AOP are Java classes, rather than language features (as in AspectJ)
its 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."

12.3 Advice API in Spring

Lets now look at how Spring AOP handles advice.

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.

Its possible to use a mix of shared and per-instance advice in the same AOP proxy.

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.

Interception around advice

The most fundamental advice type in Spring is interception around advice.

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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 invocations 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 MethodInvocations 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 dont want to do this without good reason!

Note

MethodInterceptors offer interoperability with other AOP Alliance-compliant 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. (Springs API design would allow for field before
advice, although the usual objects apply to field interception and its 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

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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.

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public static class CombinedThrowsAdvice implements ThrowsAdvice {

public void afterThrowing(RemoteException ex) throws Throwable {

// Do something with remote exception
}

public void afterThrowing(Method m, Object[] args, Object target, ServletException ex) {

// Do something with all arguments
}
}

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 methods signature!

Tip

Throws advice can be used with any pointcut.

After Returning advice

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;
}

public int getCount() {

return count;
}
}

This advice doesnt change the execution path. If it throws an exception, this will be thrown up the
interceptor chain instead of the return value.

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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 {

ClassFilter getClassFilter();

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.

Lets look at a simple example from the Spring test suite. Lets 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, well need an IntroductionInterceptor that does the heavy lifting. In this case, we
extend the org.springframework.aop.support.DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor

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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. Its
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 extends DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor and implements Lockable

itself. The superclass automatically picks up that Lockable can be supported for introduction, so we
dont 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;
}

public Object invoke(MethodInvocation invocation) throws Throwable {

if (locked() && invocation.getMethod().getName().indexOf("set") == 0) {
throw new LockedException();
}
return super.invoke(invocation);
}

Often it isnt 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, theres
no configuration relevant for a LockMixin, so we simply create it using new.

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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: Its
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 objects 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.

12.4 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.

12.5 Using the ProxyFactoryBean to create AOP proxies

If youre using the Spring IoC container (an ApplicationContext or BeanFactory) for your business objects
- and you should be! - you will want to use one of Springs AOP FactoryBeans. (Remember that a factory
bean introduces a layer of indirection, enabling it to create objects of a different type.)

Note

The Spring 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 dont need such control.

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 ProxyFactoryBeans
implementation of the `getObject() method. This method will create an AOP proxy wrapping
a target object.

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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.

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 the section called JDK- and CGLIB-based
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 the section
called 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 dont 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 isnt supplied, a CGLIB proxy for the target
class will be used (but see also the section called 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
cant 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 the section called 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

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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.

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 JDK- or 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) doesnt
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 isnt 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.

Proxying interfaces

Lets 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.

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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"/>
<property name="age" value="51"/>
</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"
class="org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean">
<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 doesnt hold bean references. The reason for this is that if
the ProxyFactoryBeans 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 its necessary to be able to obtain an instance of the prototype from the factory;
holding a reference isnt 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 bean="person"/></property>
</bean>

The PersonUser class in this example would expose a property of type Person. As far as its 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).

Its 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:

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<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 id="person" class="org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean">

<property name="proxyInterfaces" value="com.mycompany.Person"/>
<!-- Use inner bean, not local reference to target -->
<property name="target">
<bean class="com.mycompany.PersonImpl">
<property name="name" value="Tony"/>
<property name="age" value="51"/>
</bean>
</property>
<property name="interceptorNames">
<list>
<value>myAdvisor</value>
<value>debugInterceptor</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>

This has the advantage that theres 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. Theres 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.

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 didnt 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 its best to program to interfaces, rather than classes, the ability
to advise classes that dont implement interfaces can be useful when working with legacy code. (In
general, Spring isnt 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 cant be advised, as they cant 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.

Theres 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.

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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"/>
<property name="interceptorNames">
<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"/
>

12.6 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">

<property name="target">
<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:

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<bean id="mySpecialService" parent="txProxyTemplate">

<property name="target">
<bean class="org.springframework.samples.MySpecialServiceImpl">
</bean>
</property>
<property name="transactionAttributes">
<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 pre-instantiate 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.

12.7 Creating AOP proxies programmatically with the

ProxyFactory
Its 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.

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12.8 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, its possible to add or remove advisors or interceptors even once a proxy has been created.
The only restriction is that its 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);

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Note

Its questionable whether its 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.

12.9 Using the "auto-proxy" facility

So far weve 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 dont
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; auto-proxy creation
driven by source-level metadata attributes.

Autoproxy bean definitions

The org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy package provides the following
standard auto-proxy creators.

BeanNameAutoProxyCreator

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"/>
<property name="interceptorNames">
<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.

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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.

DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator

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 advisors 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">

<!-- Properties omitted -->
</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.

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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.

AbstractAdvisorAutoProxyCreator

This is the superclass of DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator. You can create your own auto-proxy creators
by subclassing this class, in the unlikely event that advisor definitions offer insufficient customization to
the behavior of the framework DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator.

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, theres 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 class="org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy.DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator"/>

<bean class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor">
<property name="transactionInterceptor" ref="transactionInterceptor"/>
</bean>

<bean id="transactionInterceptor"
class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor">
<property name="transactionManager" ref="transactionManager"/>
<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

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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 Springs Transactional annotation, leading to implicit proxies for beans containing that annotation:

<bean class="org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy.DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator"/>

<bean class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor">
<property name="transactionInterceptor" ref="transactionInterceptor"/>
</bean>

<bean id="transactionInterceptor"
class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor">
<property name="transactionManager" ref="transactionManager"/>
<property name="transactionAttributeSource">
<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
applications 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
wont need to work directly with AOP, and the programming model is similar to that of .NET
ServicedComponents.

This mechanism is extensible. Its 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.

Its 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 a
generic DefaultIntroductionAdvisor:

<bean id="lockMixin" class="test.mixin.LockMixin" scope="prototype"/>

<bean id="lockableAdvisor" class="org.springframework.aop.support.DefaultIntroductionAdvisor"

scope="prototype">
<constructor-arg ref="lockMixin"/>
</bean>

Note that both lockMixin and lockableAdvisor are defined as prototypes.

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12.10 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 dont 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).

Lets 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.

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 sources 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 doesnt add any advice - and its not necessary to add advice to use a
TargetSource - of course any TargetSource can be used in conjunction with arbitrary advice.

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.

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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 non-invasive way.

Spring provides out-of-the-box support for Commons Pool 2.2, which provides
a fairly efficient pooling implementation. Youll need the commons-pool Jar on
your applications classpath to use this feature. Its also possible to subclass
org.springframework.aop.target.AbstractPoolingTargetSource to support any other
pooling API.

Note

Commons Pool 1.5+ is also supported but deprecated as of Spring Framework 4.2.

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.CommonsPool2TargetSource">

<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 javadocs of 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 isnt necessary to specify interceptors to use pooling. If you want only pooling,
and no other advice, dont set the interceptorNames property at all.

Its 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. Youll 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 advisors 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());

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Note

Pooling stateless service objects is not usually necessary. We dont 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. Its possible to set the TargetSources used by any
auto-proxy creator.

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 isnt
high in a modern JVM, the cost of wiring up the new object (satisfying its IoC dependencies) may be
more expensive. Thus you shouldnt use this approach without very good reason.

To do this, you could modify the poolTargetSource definition shown above as follows. (Ive also
changed the name, for clarity.)

<bean id="prototypeTargetSource" class="org.springframework.aop.target.PrototypeTargetSource">

<property name="targetBeanName" ref="businessObjectTarget"/>
</bean>

Theres 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.

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">

<property name="targetBeanName" value="businessObjectTarget"/>
</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. Springs ThreadLocal support does this for you and should always be considered in
favor of using ThreadLocals without other proper handling code.

12.11 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.

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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
marker interface.

Please refer to the org.springframework.aop.framework.adapter javadocs for further

information.

12.12 Further resources

Please refer to the Spring sample applications for further examples of Spring AOP:

The JPetStores 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.

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The adoption of the test-driven-development (TDD) approach to software development is certainly
advocated by the Spring team, and so coverage of Springs 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.
 Spring Framework Reference Documentation

13. 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 Frameworks support for integration
testing. (A thorough treatment of testing in the enterprise is beyond the scope of this reference manual.)

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14. 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.

14.1 Mock Objects

Environment

The org.springframework.mock.env package contains mock implementations of the

Environment and PropertySource abstractions (see the section called Bean definition profiles and
the section called PropertySource abstraction). MockEnvironment and MockPropertySource are
useful for developing out-of-container 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 stand-alone 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, which are useful for testing web contexts, controllers, and filters. These mock objects are
targeted at usage with Springs Web MVC framework and are generally more convenient to use than
dynamic mock objects such as EasyMock or alternative Servlet API mock objects such as MockObjects.
Since Spring Framework 4.0, the set of mocks in the org.springframework.mock.web package is
based on the Servlet 3.0 API.

For thorough integration testing of your Spring MVC and REST Controllers in conjunction with your
WebApplicationContext configuration for Spring MVC, see the Spring MVC Test Framework.

Portlet API

The org.springframework.mock.web.portlet package contains a set of Portlet API mock

objects, targeted at usage with Springs Portlet MVC framework.

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14.2 Unit Testing support Classes

General testing utilities

The org.springframework.test.util package contains several general purpose utilities for use
in unit and integration testing.

ReflectionTestUtils is a collection of reflection-based utility methods. Developers use these

methods in testing scenarios where they need to change the value of a constant, set a non-public
field, invoke a non-public setter method, or invoke a non-public configuration or lifecycle callback
method when testing application code involving use cases such as the following.

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.

Springs support for annotations such as @Autowired, @Inject, and @Resource, which provides
dependency injection for private or protected fields, setter methods, and configuration methods.

Use of annotations such as @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy for lifecycle callback methods.

AopTestUtils is a collection of AOP-related utility methods. These methods can be used to obtain
a reference to the underlying target object hidden behind one or more Spring proxies. For example,
if you have configured a bean as a dynamic mock using a library like EasyMock or Mockito and the
mock is wrapped in a Spring proxy, you may need direct access to the underlying mock in order to
configure expectations on it and perform verifications. For Springs core AOP utilities, see AopUtils
and AopProxyUtils.

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 unit test your Spring MVC Controllers as POJOs, use ModelAndViewAssert combined
with MockHttpServletRequest, MockHttpSession, and so on from Springs Servlet API
mocks. For thorough integration testing of your Spring MVC and REST Controllers in
conjunction with your WebApplicationContext configuration for Spring MVC, use the Spring
MVC Test Framework instead.

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15. Integration Testing

15.1 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 spring-test
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 Selenium 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.

15.2 Goals of Integration Testing

Springs 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 or Groovy 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 configuration files for production deployments.

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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.

Transaction management

One common issue in tests that access a real database is their effect on the state of the persistence
store. Even when youre 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 tests 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 @Commit annotation.

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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 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.

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.

15.3 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. Specifically,
JdbcTestUtils provides the following static utility methods.

countRowsInTable(..): counts the number of rows in the given table

countRowsInTableWhere(..): counts the number of rows in the given table, using the provided
WHERE clause

deleteFromTables(..): deletes all rows from the specified tables

deleteFromTableWhere(..): deletes rows from the given table, using the provided WHERE clause

dropTables(..): drops the specified tables

Note that AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests and

AbstractTransactionalTestNGSpringContextTests provide convenience methods which
delegate to the aforementioned methods in JdbcTestUtils.

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 19.8,
Embedded database support and the section called Testing data access logic with an embedded
database.

15.4 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 corresponding
javadocs for further information, including default attribute values, attribute aliases, and so on.

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@BootstrapWith

@BootstrapWith is a class-level annotation that is used to configure how the Spring

TestContext Framework is bootstrapped. Specifically, @BootstrapWith is used to specify a custom
TestContextBootstrapper. Consult the Bootstrapping the TestContext framework section for
further details.

@ContextConfiguration

@ContextConfiguration defines class-level metadata that is used to determine how to load and
configure an ApplicationContext for integration tests. Specifically, @ContextConfiguration
declares the application context resource locations or the annotated classes that will be used to
load the context.

Resource locations are typically XML configuration files or Groovy scripts located in the classpath;
whereas, annotated classes are typically @Configuration classes. However, resource locations can
also refer to files and scripts 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 @ContextConfiguration javadocs for further
details.

@WebAppConfiguration

@WebAppConfiguration is a class-level annotation that is used to declare that the

ApplicationContext loaded for an integration test should be a WebApplicationContext.

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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 tests WebApplicationContext.

@ContextConfiguration
@WebAppConfiguration
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.

@ContextConfiguration
@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 @WebAppConfiguration
javadocs for further details.

@ContextHierarchy

@ContextHierarchy is 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...
}

@WebAppConfiguration
@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 @ContextHierarchy javadocs for further examples.

@ActiveProfiles

@ActiveProfiles is a class-level annotation that is used to declare which bean definition profiles
should be active when loading an ApplicationContext for an integration test.

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@ContextConfiguration
@ActiveProfiles("dev")
public class DeveloperTests {
// class body...
}

@ContextConfiguration
@ActiveProfiles({"dev", "integration"})
public class DeveloperIntegrationTests {
// class body...
}

Note

@ActiveProfiles provides support for inheriting active bean definition profiles declared
by superclasses by default. It is also possible to resolve active bean definition profiles
programmatically by implementing a custom ActiveProfilesResolver and registering it via
the resolver attribute of @ActiveProfiles.

See the section called Context configuration with environment profiles and the @ActiveProfiles
javadocs for examples and further details.

@TestPropertySource

@TestPropertySource is a class-level annotation that is used to configure the locations of properties

files and inlined properties to be added to the set of PropertySources in the Environment for an
ApplicationContext loaded for an integration test.

Test property sources have higher precedence than those loaded from the operating systems
environment or Java system properties as well as property sources added by the application
declaratively via @PropertySource or programmatically. Thus, test property sources can be used to
selectively override properties defined in system and application property sources. Furthermore, inlined
properties have higher precedence than properties loaded from resource locations.

The following example demonstrates how to declare a properties file from the classpath.

@ContextConfiguration
@TestPropertySource("/test.properties")
public class MyIntegrationTests {
// class body...
}

The following example demonstrates how to declare inlined properties.

@ContextConfiguration
@TestPropertySource(properties = { "timezone = GMT", "port: 4242" })
public class MyIntegrationTests {
// class body...
}

@DirtiesContext

@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. When an application context is marked dirty, it
is removed from the testing frameworks 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.

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@DirtiesContext can be used as both a class-level and method-level annotation within the same
class or class hierarchy. In such scenarios, the ApplicationContext is marked as dirty before or
after any such annotated method as well as before or after the current test class, depending on the
configured methodMode and classMode.

The following examples explain when the context would be dirtied for various configuration scenarios:

Before the current test class, when declared on a class with class mode set to BEFORE_CLASS.

@DirtiesContext(classMode = BEFORE_CLASS)
public class FreshContextTests {
// some tests that require a new Spring container
}

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
}

Before each test method in the current test class, when declared on a class with class mode set to
BEFORE_EACH_TEST_METHOD.

@DirtiesContext(classMode = BEFORE_EACH_TEST_METHOD)
public class FreshContextTests {
// some tests that require a new Spring container
}

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 = AFTER_EACH_TEST_METHOD)
public class ContextDirtyingTests {
// some tests that result in the Spring container being dirtied
}

Before the current test, when declared on a method with the method mode set to BEFORE_METHOD.

@DirtiesContext(methodMode = BEFORE_METHOD)
@Test
public void testProcessWhichRequiresFreshAppCtx() {
// some logic that requires a new Spring container
}

After the current test, when declared on a method with the method mode set to AFTER_METHOD (i.e.,
the default method mode).

@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

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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 = 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
DirtiesContext.HierarchyMode javadocs.

@TestExecutionListeners

@TestExecutionListeners defines class-level metadata for configuring the

TestExecutionListener implementations that should be registered with the
TestContextManager. Typically, @TestExecutionListeners is used in conjunction with
@ContextConfiguration.

@ContextConfiguration
@TestExecutionListeners({CustomTestExecutionListener.class, AnotherTestExecutionListener.class})
public class CustomTestExecutionListenerTests {
// class body...
}

@TestExecutionListeners supports inherited listeners by default. See the javadocs for an example
and further details.

@Commit

@Commit indicates that the transaction for a transactional test method should be committed after the
test method has completed. @Commit can be used as a direct replacement for @Rollback(false)
in order to more explicitly convey the intent of the code. Analogous to @Rollback, @Commit may also
be declared as a class-level or method-level annotation.

@Commit
@Test
public void testProcessWithoutRollback() {
// ...
}

@Rollback

@Rollback indicates whether the transaction for a transactional test method should be rolled back
after the test method has completed. If true, the transaction is rolled back; otherwise, the transaction
is committed (see also @Commit). Rollback semantics for integration tests in the Spring TestContext
Framework default to true even if @Rollback is not explicitly declared.

When declared as a class-level annotation, @Rollback defines the default rollback semantics for all
test methods within the test class hierarchy. When declared as a method-level annotation, @Rollback

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defines rollback semantics for the specific test method, potentially overriding class-level @Rollback
or @Commit semantics.

@Rollback(false)
@Test
public void testProcessWithoutRollback() {
// ...
}

@BeforeTransaction

@BeforeTransaction indicates that the annotated void method should be executed before
a transaction is started for test methods configured to run within a transaction via Springs
@Transactional annotation. As of Spring Framework 4.3, @BeforeTransaction methods are not
required to be public and may be declared on Java 8 based interface default methods.

@BeforeTransaction
void beforeTransaction() {
// logic to be executed before a transaction is started
}

@AfterTransaction

@AfterTransaction indicates that the annotated void method should be executed after
a transaction is ended for test methods configured to run within a transaction via Springs
@Transactional annotation. As of Spring Framework 4.3, @AfterTransaction methods are not
required to be public and may be declared on Java 8 based interface default methods.

@AfterTransaction
void afterTransaction() {
// logic to be executed after a transaction has ended
}

@Sql

@Sql is used to annotate a test class or test method to configure SQL scripts to be executed against
a given database during integration tests.

@Test
@Sql({"/test-schema.sql", "/test-user-data.sql"})
public void userTest {
// execute code that relies on the test schema and test data
}

See the section called Executing SQL scripts declaratively with @Sql for further details.

@SqlConfig

@SqlConfig defines metadata that is used to determine how to parse and execute SQL scripts
configured via the @Sql annotation.

@Test
@Sql(
scripts = "/test-user-data.sql",
config = @SqlConfig(commentPrefix = "`", separator = "@@")
)
public void userTest {
// execute code that relies on the test data
}

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@SqlGroup

@SqlGroup is a container annotation that aggregates several @Sql annotations. @SqlGroup can be
used natively, declaring several nested @Sql annotations, or it can be used in conjunction with Java
8s support for repeatable annotations, where @Sql can simply be declared several times on the same
class or method, implicitly generating this container annotation.

@Test
@SqlGroup({
@Sql(scripts = "/test-schema.sql", config = @SqlConfig(commentPrefix = "`")),
@Sql("/test-user-data.sql")
)}
public void userTest {
// execute code that uses the test schema and test data
}

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

@ManagedBean (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
4s @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.

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Spring JUnit 4 Testing Annotations

The following annotations are only supported when used in conjunction with the SpringRunner, Springs
JUnit rules, or Springs JUnit 4 support classes.

@IfProfileValue

@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. Otherwise, the test will be disabled and effectively ignored.

@IfProfileValue can be applied at the class level, the method level, or both. Class-level usage of
@IfProfileValue takes precedence over method-level usage for any methods within that class or
its subclasses. Specifically, a test is enabled if it is enabled both at the class level and at the method
level; the absence of @IfProfileValue means the test is implicitly enabled. This is analogous to the
semantics of JUnit 4s @Ignore annotation, except that the presence of @Ignore always disables a
test.

@IfProfileValue(name="java.vendor", value="Oracle Corporation")

@Test
public void testProcessWhichRunsOnlyOnOracleJvm() {
// some logic that should run only on Java VMs from Oracle Corporation
}

Alternatively, you can configure @IfProfileValue with a list of values (with OR semantics) to
achieve TestNG-like support for test groups in a JUnit 4 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

@ProfileValueSourceConfiguration is a 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

@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
}

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Springs @Timed annotation has different semantics than JUnit 4s @Test(timeout=) support.
Specifically, due to the manner in which JUnit 4 handles test execution timeouts (that is, by executing
the test method in a separate Thread), @Test(timeout=) preemptively fails the test if the test takes
too long. Springs @Timed, on the other hand, does not preemptively fail the test but rather waits for
the test to complete before failing.

@Repeat

@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() {
// ...
}

Meta-Annotation Support for Testing

It is possible to use most test-related annotations as meta-annotations in order to create custom
composed annotations and reduce configuration duplication across a test suite.

Each of the following may be used as meta-annotations in conjunction with the TestContext framework.

@BootstrapWith

@ContextConfiguration

@ContextHierarchy

@ActiveProfiles

@TestPropertySource

@DirtiesContext

@WebAppConfiguration

@TestExecutionListeners

@Transactional

@BeforeTransaction

@AfterTransaction

@Commit

@Rollback

@Sql

@SqlConfig

@SqlGroup

@Repeat

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@Timed

@IfProfileValue

@ProfileValueSourceConfiguration

For example, if we discover that we are repeating the following configuration across our JUnit 4 based
test suite

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration({"/app-config.xml", "/test-data-access-config.xml"})
@ActiveProfiles("dev")
@Transactional
public class OrderRepositoryTests { }

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration({"/app-config.xml", "/test-data-access-config.xml"})
@ActiveProfiles("dev")
@Transactional
public class UserRepositoryTests { }

We can reduce the above duplication by introducing a custom composed annotation that centralizes
the common test configuration like this:

@Target(ElementType.TYPE)
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@ContextConfiguration({"/app-config.xml", "/test-data-access-config.xml"})
@ActiveProfiles("dev")
@Transactional
public @interface TransactionalDevTest { }

Then we can use our custom @TransactionalDevTest annotation to simplify the configuration of
individual test classes as follows:

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@TransactionalDevTest
public class OrderRepositoryTests { }

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@TransactionalDevTest
public class UserRepositoryTests { }

For further details, consult the Spring Annotation Programming Model.

15.5 Spring TestContext Framework

The Spring TestContext Framework (located in the org.springframework.test.context
package) provides generic, annotation-driven 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
4 and TestNG in the form of abstract support classes. For JUnit 4, Spring also provides a custom
JUnit Runner and custom JUnit Rules that allow 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

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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 TestContextManager class and the TestContext,
TestExecutionListener, and SmartContextLoader interfaces. A TestContextManager is
created per test class (e.g., for the execution of all test methods within a single test class in JUnit 4). 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 TestExecutionListener implementations, which instrument the actual test execution
by providing dependency injection, managing transactions, and so on. A SmartContextLoader is
responsible for loading an ApplicationContext for a given test class. Consult the javadocs and the
Spring test suite for further information and examples of various implementations.

TestContext

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 SmartContextLoader to load an
ApplicationContext if requested.

TestContextManager

TestContextManager is the main entry point into the Spring TestContext Framework, which manages
a single TestContext and signals events to each registered TestExecutionListener at well-
defined test execution points:

prior to any before class or before all methods of a particular testing framework

test instance post-processing

prior to any before or before each methods of a particular testing framework

after any after or after each methods of a particular testing framework

after any after class or after all methods of a particular testing framework

TestExecutionListener

TestExecutionListener defines the API for reacting to test execution events published
by the TestContextManager with which the listener is registered. See the section called
TestExecutionListener configuration.

Context Loaders

ContextLoader is a strategy interface that was introduced in Spring 2.5 for loading an
ApplicationContext for an integration test managed by the Spring TestContext Framework.
Implement SmartContextLoader instead of this interface in order to provide support for
annotated classes, active bean definition profiles, test property sources, context hierarchies, and
WebApplicationContext support.

SmartContextLoader is an extension of the ContextLoader interface introduced in Spring 3.1.

The SmartContextLoader SPI supersedes the ContextLoader SPI that was introduced in Spring

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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 and test property sources in the context that it loads.

Spring provides the following implementations:

DelegatingSmartContextLoader: one of two default loaders which delegates

internally to an AnnotationConfigContextLoader, a GenericXmlContextLoader, or a
GenericGroovyXmlContextLoader depending either on the configuration declared for the test
class or on the presence of default locations or default configuration classes. Groovy support is only
enabled if Groovy is on the classpath.

WebDelegatingSmartContextLoader: one of two default loaders which delegates internally

to an AnnotationConfigWebContextLoader, a GenericXmlWebContextLoader, or a
GenericGroovyXmlWebContextLoader 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. Groovy
support is only enabled if Groovy is on the classpath.

AnnotationConfigContextLoader: loads a standard ApplicationContext from annotated

classes.

AnnotationConfigWebContextLoader: loads a WebApplicationContext from annotated

classes.

GenericGroovyXmlContextLoader: loads a standard ApplicationContext from resource

locations that are either Groovy scripts or XML configuration files.

GenericGroovyXmlWebContextLoader: loads a WebApplicationContext from resource

locations that are either Groovy scripts or XML configuration files.

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.

Bootstrapping the TestContext framework

The default configuration for the internals of the Spring TestContext Framework is sufficient for all
common use cases. However, there are times when a development team or third party framework would
like to change the default ContextLoader, implement a custom TestContext or ContextCache,
augment the default sets of ContextCustomizerFactory and TestExecutionListener
implementations, etc. For such low level control over how the TestContext framework operates, Spring
provides a bootstrapping strategy.

TestContextBootstrapper defines the SPI for bootstrapping the TestContext framework.

A TestContextBootstrapper is used by the TestContextManager to load the
TestExecutionListener implementations for the current test and to build the TestContext
that it manages. A custom bootstrapping strategy can be configured for a test class (or test
class hierarchy) via @BootstrapWith, either directly or as a meta-annotation. If a bootstrapper is

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not explicitly configured via @BootstrapWith, either the DefaultTestContextBootstrapper

or the WebTestContextBootstrapper will be used, depending on the presence of
@WebAppConfiguration.

Since the TestContextBootstrapper SPI is likely to change in the future in order to accommodate
new requirements, implementers are strongly encouraged not to implement this interface directly but
rather to extend AbstractTestContextBootstrapper or one of its concrete subclasses instead.

TestExecutionListener configuration
Spring provides the following TestExecutionListener implementations that are registered by
default, exactly in this order.

ServletTestExecutionListener: configures Servlet API mocks for a

WebApplicationContext

DirtiesContextBeforeModesTestExecutionListener: handles the @DirtiesContext

annotation for before modes

DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener: provides dependency injection for the test

instance

DirtiesContextTestExecutionListener: handles the @DirtiesContext annotation for after

modes

TransactionalTestExecutionListener: provides transactional test execution with default

rollback semantics

SqlScriptsTestExecutionListener: executes SQL scripts configured via the @Sql annotation

Registering custom TestExecutionListeners

Custom TestExecutionListeners can be registered for a test class and its subclasses
via the @TestExecutionListeners annotation. See annotation support and the javadocs for
@TestExecutionListeners for details and examples.

Automatic discovery of default TestExecutionListeners

Registering custom TestExecutionListeners via @TestExecutionListeners is suitable for

custom listeners that are used in limited testing scenarios; however, it can become cumbersome if
a custom listener needs to be used across a test suite. Since Spring Framework 4.1, this issue is
addressed via support for automatic discovery of default TestExecutionListener implementations
via the SpringFactoriesLoader mechanism.

Specifically, the spring-test module declares all core default TestExecutionListeners under
the org.springframework.test.context.TestExecutionListener key in its META-INF/
spring.factories properties file. Third-party frameworks and developers can contribute their own
TestExecutionListeners to the list of default listeners in the same manner via their own META-
INF/spring.factories properties file.

Ordering TestExecutionListeners

When the TestContext framework discovers default TestExecutionListeners via the

aforementioned SpringFactoriesLoader mechanism, the instantiated listeners are sorted
using Springs AnnotationAwareOrderComparator which honors Springs Ordered interface

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and @Order annotation for ordering. AbstractTestExecutionListener and all default

TestExecutionListeners provided by Spring implement Ordered with appropriate values.
Third-party frameworks and developers should therefore make sure that their default
TestExecutionListeners are registered in the proper order by implementing Ordered or
declaring @Order. Consult the javadocs for the getOrder() methods of the core default
TestExecutionListeners for details on what values are assigned to each core listener.

Merging TestExecutionListeners

If a custom TestExecutionListener is registered via @TestExecutionListeners, the default

listeners will not be registered. In most common testing scenarios, this effectively forces the developer
to manually declare all default listeners in addition to any custom listeners. The following listing
demonstrates this style of configuration.

@ContextConfiguration
@TestExecutionListeners({
MyCustomTestExecutionListener.class,
ServletTestExecutionListener.class,
DirtiesContextBeforeModesTestExecutionListener.class,
DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener.class,
DirtiesContextTestExecutionListener.class,
TransactionalTestExecutionListener.class,
SqlScriptsTestExecutionListener.class
})
public class MyTest {
// class body...
}

The challenge with this approach is that it requires that the developer know exactly which listeners
are registered by default. Moreover, the set of default listeners can change from release to
release for example, SqlScriptsTestExecutionListener was introduced in Spring Framework
4.1, and DirtiesContextBeforeModesTestExecutionListener was introduced in Spring
Framework 4.2. Furthermore, third-party frameworks like Spring Security register their own default
TestExecutionListeners via the aforementioned automatic discovery mechanism.

To avoid having to be aware of and re-declare all default listeners, the mergeMode
attribute of @TestExecutionListeners can be set to MergeMode.MERGE_WITH_DEFAULTS.
MERGE_WITH_DEFAULTS indicates that locally declared listeners should be merged with the default
listeners. The merging algorithm ensures that duplicates are removed from the list and that the resulting
set of merged listeners is sorted according to the semantics of AnnotationAwareOrderComparator
as described in the section called Ordering TestExecutionListeners. If a listener implements Ordered
or is annotated with @Order it can influence the position in which it is merged with the defaults;
otherwise, locally declared listeners will simply be appended to the list of default listeners when merged.

For example, if the MyCustomTestExecutionListener class in the previous example configures its
order value (for example, 500) to be less than the order of the ServletTestExecutionListener
(which happens to be 1000), the MyCustomTestExecutionListener can then be automatically
merged with the list of defaults in front of the ServletTestExecutionListener, and the previous
example could be replaced with the following.

@ContextConfiguration
@TestExecutionListeners(
listeners = MyCustomTestExecutionListener.class,
mergeMode = MERGE_WITH_DEFAULTS
)
public class MyTest {
// class body...
}

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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(SpringRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration
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:

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@WebAppConfiguration
@ContextConfiguration
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,
Groovy scripts, annotated classes (typically @Configuration classes), or context initializers using
Springs @ContextConfiguration annotation. Alternatively, you can implement and configure your
own custom SmartContextLoader for advanced use cases.

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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.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
// 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"})
public class MyTest {
// 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.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration({"/app-config.xml", "/test-config.xml"})
public class MyTest {
// 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 and GenericXmlWebContextLoader detect 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;

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from
// "classpath:com/example/MyTest-context.xml"
@ContextConfiguration
public class MyTest {
// class body...
}

Context configuration with Groovy scripts

To load an ApplicationContext for your tests using Groovy scripts that utilize the Groovy Bean
Definition DSL, annotate your test class with @ContextConfiguration and configure the locations
or value attribute with an array that contains the resource locations of Groovy scripts. Resource lookup
semantics for Groovy scripts are the same as those described for XML configuration files.

Enabling Groovy script support

Support for using Groovy scripts to load an ApplicationContext in the Spring TestContext
Framework is enabled automatically if Groovy is on the classpath.

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@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from "/AppConfig.groovy" and
// "/TestConfig.groovy" in the root of the classpath
@ContextConfiguration({"/AppConfig.groovy", "/TestConfig.Groovy"})
public class MyTest {
// class body...
}

If you omit both the locations and value attributes from the @ContextConfiguration
annotation, the TestContext framework will attempt to detect a default Groovy script. Specifically,
GenericGroovyXmlContextLoader and GenericGroovyXmlWebContextLoader detect a
default location based on the name of the test class. If your class is named com.example.MyTest,
the Groovy context loader will load your application context from "classpath:com/example/
MyTestContext.groovy".

package com.example;

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from
// "classpath:com/example/MyTestContext.groovy"
@ContextConfiguration
public class MyTest {
// class body...
}

Declaring XML config and Groovy scripts simultaneously

Both XML configuration files and Groovy scripts can be declared simultaneously via the
locations or value attribute of @ContextConfiguration. If the path to a configured
resource location ends with .xml it will be loaded using an XmlBeanDefinitionReader;
otherwise it will be loaded using a GroovyBeanDefinitionReader.

The following listing demonstrates how to combine both in an integration test.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from
// "/app-config.xml" and "/TestConfig.groovy"
@ContextConfiguration({ "/app-config.xml", "/TestConfig.groovy" })
public class MyTest {
// class body...
}

Context configuration with annotated classes

To load an ApplicationContext for your tests using annotated classes (see Section 7.12,
Java-based container configuration), annotate your test class with @ContextConfiguration and
configure the classes attribute with an array that contains references to annotated classes.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from AppConfig and TestConfig
@ContextConfiguration(classes = {AppConfig.class, TestConfig.class})
public class MyTest {
// class body...
}

Annotated Classes

The term annotated class can refer to any of the following.

A class annotated with @Configuration

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A component (i.e., a class annotated with @Component, @Service, @Repository, etc.)

A JSR-330 compliant class that is annotated with javax.inject annotations

Any other class that contains @Bean-methods

Consult the javadocs of @Configuration and @Bean for further information regarding the
configuration and semantics of annotated classes, paying special attention to the discussion of
`@Bean` Lite Mode.

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 and AnnotationConfigWebContextLoader will detect all
static nested classes of the test class that meet the requirements for configuration class
implementations as specified in the @Configuration javadocs. In the following example, the
OrderServiceTest class declares a static nested 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 nested
configuration class if desired.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from the
// static nested Config class
@ContextConfiguration
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, Groovy scripts, and annotated classes

It may sometimes be desirable to mix XML configuration files, Groovy scripts, 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.

Furthermore, some third-party frameworks (like Spring Boot) provide first-class support for loading an
ApplicationContext from different types of resources simultaneously (e.g., XML configuration files,
Groovy scripts, and @Configuration classes). The Spring Framework historically has not supported

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this for standard deployments. Consequently, most of the SmartContextLoader implementations

that the Spring Framework delivers in the spring-test module support only one resource type per
test context; however, this does not mean that you cannot use both. One exception to the general
rule is that the GenericGroovyXmlContextLoader and GenericGroovyXmlWebContextLoader
support both XML configuration files and Groovy scripts simultaneously. Furthermore, third-
party frameworks may choose to support the declaration of both locations and classes via
@ContextConfiguration, and with the standard testing support in the TestContext framework, you
have the following options.

If you want to use resource locations (e.g., XML or Groovy) 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 or Groovy scripts you can include @Configuration classes via component
scanning or define them as normal Spring beans; whereas, in a @Configuration class you can
use @ImportResource to import XML configuration files or Groovy scripts. 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 or Groovy 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 Springs Ordered
interface or are annotated with Springs @Order annotation or the standard @Priority annotation.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from TestConfig
// and initialized by TestAppCtxInitializer
@ContextConfiguration(
classes = TestConfig.class,
initializers = TestAppCtxInitializer.class)
public class MyTest {
// class body...
}

It is also possible to omit the declaration of XML configuration files, Groovy scripts,
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.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
// ApplicationContext will be initialized by EntireAppInitializer
// which presumably registers beans in the context
@ContextConfiguration(initializers = EntireAppInitializer.class)
public class MyTest {
// class body...
}

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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 the inheritLocations or inheritInitializers attribute in @ContextConfiguration 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".

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
// 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.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from BaseConfig
@ContextConfiguration(classes = BaseConfig.class)
public class BaseTest {
// class body...
}

// ApplicationContext will be loaded from BaseConfig and ExtendedConfig

@ContextConfiguration(classes = ExtendedConfig.class)
public class ExtendedTest extends BaseTest {
// 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 Springs Ordered
interface or are annotated with Springs @Order annotation or the standard @Priority annotation.

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@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
// ApplicationContext will be initialized by BaseInitializer
@ContextConfiguration(initializers = BaseInitializer.class)
public class BaseTest {
// class body...
}

// ApplicationContext will be initialized by BaseInitializer

// and ExtendedInitializer
@ContextConfiguration(initializers = ExtendedInitializer.class)
public class ExtendedTest extends BaseTest {
// 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.

Lets take a look at some examples with XML configuration and @Configuration classes.

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<!-- app-config.xml -->

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
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 profile="default">
<jdbc:embedded-database id="dataSource">
<jdbc:script
location="classpath:com/bank/config/sql/schema.sql"/>
</jdbc:embedded-database>
</beans>

</beans>

package com.bank.service;

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from "classpath:/app-config.xml"
@ContextConfiguration("/app-config.xml")
@ActiveProfiles("dev")
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 youll
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 three times: in the
production profile, the dev profile, and the default profile.

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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 populated with test data, and the
accountRepository bean will be wired with a reference to the development DataSource. And thats
likely what we want in an integration test.

It is sometimes useful to assign beans to a default profile. Beans within the default profile are only
included when no other profile is specifically activated. This can be used to define fallback beans to be
used in the applications default state. For example, you may explicitly provide a data source for dev and
production profiles, but define an in-memory data source as a default when neither of these is active.

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
public DataSource dataSource() {
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(destroyMethod="")
public DataSource dataSource() throws Exception {
Context ctx = new InitialContext();
return (DataSource) ctx.lookup("java:comp/env/jdbc/datasource");
}
}

@Configuration
@Profile("default")
public class DefaultDataConfig {

@Bean
public DataSource dataSource() {
return new EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder()
.setType(EmbeddedDatabaseType.HSQL)
.addScript("classpath:com/bank/config/sql/schema.sql")
.build();
}
}

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@Configuration
public class TransferServiceConfig {

@Autowired DataSource dataSource;

@Bean
public TransferService transferService() {
return new DefaultTransferService(accountRepository(), feePolicy());
}

@Bean
public AccountRepository accountRepository() {
return new JdbcAccountRepository(dataSource);
}

@Bean
public FeePolicy feePolicy() {
return new ZeroFeePolicy();
}

package com.bank.service;

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(classes = {
TransferServiceConfig.class,
StandaloneDataConfig.class,
JndiDataConfig.class,
DefaultDataConfig.class})
@ActiveProfiles("dev")
public class TransferServiceTest {

@Autowired
private TransferService transferService;

@Test
public void testTransferService() {
// test the transferService
}
}

In this variation, we have split the XML configuration into four independent @Configuration classes:

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

DefaultDataConfig: defines a dataSource for a default embedded database in case no profile

is active

As with the XML-based configuration example, we still annotate TransferServiceTest with

@ActiveProfiles("dev"), but this time we specify all four configuration classes via the
@ContextConfiguration annotation. The body of the test class itself remains completely
unchanged.

It is often the case that a single set of profiles is used across multiple test classes within a given
project. Thus, to avoid duplicate declarations of the @ActiveProfiles annotation it is possible
to declare @ActiveProfiles once on a base class, and subclasses will automatically inherit the
@ActiveProfiles configuration from the base class. In the following example, the declaration

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of @ActiveProfiles (as well as other annotations) has been moved to an abstract superclass,
AbstractIntegrationTest.

package com.bank.service;

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(classes = {
TransferServiceConfig.class,
StandaloneDataConfig.class,
JndiDataConfig.class,
DefaultDataConfig.class})
@ActiveProfiles("dev")
public abstract class AbstractIntegrationTest {
}

package com.bank.service;

// "dev" profile inherited from superclass

public class TransferServiceTest extends AbstractIntegrationTest {

@Autowired
private TransferService transferService;

@Test
public void testTransferService() {
// test the transferService
}
}

@ActiveProfiles also supports an inheritProfiles attribute that can be used to disable the
inheritance of active profiles.

package com.bank.service;

// "dev" profile overridden with "production"

@ActiveProfiles(profiles = "production", inheritProfiles = false)
public class ProductionTransferServiceTest extends AbstractIntegrationTest {
// test body
}

Furthermore, it is sometimes necessary to resolve active profiles for tests programmatically instead of
declaratively for example, based on:

the current operating system

whether tests are being executed on a continuous integration build server

the presence of certain environment variables

the presence of custom class-level annotations

etc.

To resolve active bean definition profiles programmatically, simply implement a custom

ActiveProfilesResolver and register it via the resolver attribute of @ActiveProfiles.
The following example demonstrates how to implement and register a custom
OperatingSystemActiveProfilesResolver. For further information, refer to the corresponding
javadocs.

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package com.bank.service;

// "dev" profile overridden programmatically via a custom resolver

@ActiveProfiles(
resolver = OperatingSystemActiveProfilesResolver.class,
inheritProfiles = false)
public class TransferServiceTest extends AbstractIntegrationTest {
// test body
}

package com.bank.service.test;

public class OperatingSystemActiveProfilesResolver implements ActiveProfilesResolver {

@Override
String[] resolve(Class<?> testClass) {
String profile = ...;
// determine the value of profile based on the operating system
return new String[] {profile};
}
}

Context configuration with test property sources

Spring 3.1 introduced first-class support in the framework for the notion of an environment with a
hierarchy of property sources, and since Spring 4.1 integration tests can be configured with test-specific
property sources. In contrast to the @PropertySource annotation used on @Configuration classes,
the @TestPropertySource annotation can be declared on a test class to declare resource locations
for test properties files or inlined properties. These test property sources will be added to the set of
PropertySources in the Environment for the ApplicationContext loaded for the annotated
integration test.

Note

@TestPropertySource may be used with any implementation of the SmartContextLoader

SPI, but @TestPropertySource is not supported with implementations of the older
ContextLoader SPI.

Implementations of SmartContextLoader gain access to merged test property source

values via the getPropertySourceLocations() and getPropertySourceProperties()
methods in MergedContextConfiguration.

Declaring test property sources

Test properties files can be configured via the locations or value attribute of
@TestPropertySource as shown in the following example.

Both traditional and XML-based properties file formats are supported for example, "classpath:/
com/example/test.properties" or "file:///path/to/file.xml".

Each path will be interpreted as a Spring Resource. A plain path for example,
"test.properties" 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 will be treated as an absolute classpath resource,
for example: "/org/example/test.xml". A path which references a URL (e.g., a path prefixed
with classpath:, file:, http:, etc.) will be loaded using the specified resource protocol. Resource
location wildcards (e.g. */.properties) are not permitted: each location must evaluate to exactly one
.properties or .xml resource.

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@ContextConfiguration
@TestPropertySource("/test.properties")
public class MyIntegrationTests {
// class body...
}

Inlined properties in the form of key-value pairs can be configured via the properties attribute of
@TestPropertySource as shown in the following example. All key-value pairs will be added to the
enclosing Environment as a single test PropertySource with the highest precedence.

The supported syntax for key-value pairs is the same as the syntax defined for entries in a Java
properties file:

"key=value"

"key:value"

"key value"

@ContextConfiguration
@TestPropertySource(properties = {"timezone = GMT", "port: 4242"})
public class MyIntegrationTests {
// class body...
}

Default properties file detection

If @TestPropertySource is declared as an empty annotation (i.e., without explicit values for the
locations or properties attributes), an attempt will be made to detect a default properties
file relative to the class that declared the annotation. For example, if the annotated test class is
com.example.MyTest, the corresponding default properties file is "classpath:com/example/
MyTest.properties". If the default cannot be detected, an IllegalStateException will be
thrown.

Precedence

Test property sources have higher precedence than those loaded from the operating systems
environment or Java system properties as well as property sources added by the application
declaratively via @PropertySource or programmatically. Thus, test property sources can be used to
selectively override properties defined in system and application property sources. Furthermore, inlined
properties have higher precedence than properties loaded from resource locations.

In the following example, the timezone and port properties as well as any properties defined in "/
test.properties" will override any properties of the same name that are defined in system and
application property sources. Furthermore, if the "/test.properties" file defines entries for the
timezone and port properties those will be overridden by the inlined properties declared via the
properties attribute.

@ContextConfiguration
@TestPropertySource(
locations = "/test.properties",
properties = {"timezone = GMT", "port: 4242"}
)
public class MyIntegrationTests {
// class body...
}

Inheriting and overriding test property sources

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@TestPropertySource supports boolean inheritLocations and inheritProperties

attributes that denote whether resource locations for properties files and inlined properties declared by
superclasses should be inherited. The default value for both flags is true. This means that a test class
inherits the locations and inlined properties declared by any superclasses. Specifically, the locations
and inlined properties for a test class are appended to the locations and inlined properties declared by
superclasses. Thus, subclasses have the option of extending the locations and inlined properties. Note
that properties that appear later will shadow (i.e.., override) properties of the same name that appear
earlier. In addition, the aforementioned precedence rules apply for inherited test property sources as
well.

If the inheritLocations or inheritProperties attribute in @TestPropertySource is set to

false, the locations or inlined properties, respectively, for the test class shadow and effectively replace
the configuration defined by superclasses.

In the following example, the ApplicationContext for BaseTest will be loaded using only the
"base.properties" file as a test property source. In contrast, the ApplicationContext for
ExtendedTest will be loaded using the "base.properties" and "extended.properties" files
as test property source locations.

@TestPropertySource("base.properties")
@ContextConfiguration
public class BaseTest {
// ...
}

@TestPropertySource("extended.properties")
@ContextConfiguration
public class ExtendedTest extends BaseTest {
// ...
}

In the following example, the ApplicationContext for BaseTest will be loaded using only the inlined
key1 property. In contrast, the ApplicationContext for ExtendedTest will be loaded using the
inlined key1 and key2 properties.

@TestPropertySource(properties = "key1 = value1")

@ContextConfiguration
public class BaseTest {
// ...
}

@TestPropertySource(properties = "key2 = value2")

@ContextConfiguration
public class ExtendedTest extends BaseTest {
// ...
}

Loading a WebApplicationContext

Spring 3.2 introduced 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 tests
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

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your project). If youre familiar with the directory structure of a web application in a Maven project,
youll 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 Springs classpath: prefix.

Please note that Springs testing support for WebApplicationContexts is on par with its
support for standard ApplicationContexts. When testing with a WebApplicationContext
you are free to declare XML configuration files, Groovy scripts, or @Configuration classes via
@ContextConfiguration. You are of course also free to use any other test annotations such as
@ActiveProfiles, @TestExecutionListeners, @Sql, @Rollback, etc.

The following examples demonstrate some of the various configuration options for loading a
WebApplicationContext.

Conventions.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)

// defaults to "file:src/main/webapp"
@WebAppConfiguration

// detects "WacTests-context.xml" in same package

// or static nested @Configuration class
@ContextConfiguration

public class WacTests {

//...
}

The above example demonstrates the TestContext frameworks 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).

Default resource semantics.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)

// file system resource

@WebAppConfiguration("webapp")

// classpath resource
@ContextConfiguration("/spring/test-servlet-config.xml")

public class WacTests {

//...
}

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.

Explicit resource semantics.

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@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)

// classpath resource
@WebAppConfiguration("classpath:test-web-resources")

// file system resource

@ContextConfiguration("file:src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/servlet-config.xml")

public class WacTests {

//...
}

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.

To provide comprehensive web testing support, Spring 3.2 introduced a

ServletTestExecutionListener that is enabled by default. When testing against a
WebApplicationContext this TestExecutionListener sets up default thread-local state
via Spring Webs 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.

Injecting mocks.

@WebAppConfiguration
@ContextConfiguration
public class WacTests {

@Autowired
WebApplicationContext wac; // cached

@Autowired
MockServletContext servletContext; // cached

@Autowired
MockHttpSession session;

@Autowired
MockHttpServletRequest request;

@Autowired
MockHttpServletResponse response;

@Autowired
ServletWebRequest webRequest;

//...
}

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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)

contextCustomizers (from ContextCustomizerFactory)

contextLoader (from @ContextConfiguration)

parent (from @ContextHierarchy)

activeProfiles (from @ActiveProfiles)

propertySourceLocations (from @TestPropertySource)

propertySourceProperties (from @TestPropertySource)

resourceBasePath (from @WebAppConfiguration)

For example, if TestClassA specifies {"app-config.xml", "test-config.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, different
context initializers, different test property sources, or a different parent context, 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

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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.

Since Spring Framework 4.3, the size of the context cache is bounded with a default maximum size
of 32. Whenever the maximum size is reached, a least recently used (LRU) eviction policy is used to
evict and close stale contexts. The maximum size can be configured from the command line or a build
script by setting a JVM system property named spring.test.context.cache.maxSize. As an
alternative, the same property can be set programmatically via the SpringProperties API.

Since having a large number of application contexts loaded within a given test suite can cause the suite
to take an unnecessarily long time to execute, it is often beneficial to know exactly how many contexts
have been loaded and cached. To view the statistics for the underlying context cache, simply set the
log level for the org.springframework.test.context.cache logging category to DEBUG.

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 DirtiesContextBeforeModesTestExecutionListener and the
DirtiesContextTestExecutionListener which are 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
Springs ContextLoaderListener and a child WebApplicationContext loaded via Springs
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 web-
specific 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.

Since 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 4 based examples demonstrate common configuration scenarios for integration
tests that require the use of context hierarchies.

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

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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).

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@WebAppConfiguration
@ContextHierarchy({
@ContextConfiguration(classes = TestAppConfig.class),
@ContextConfiguration(classes = WebConfig.class)
})
public class ControllerIntegrationTests {

@Autowired
private WebApplicationContext wac;

// ...
}

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.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@WebAppConfiguration
@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 {}

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 the name attribute in @ContextConfiguration are both "child". The result is
that three application contexts will be loaded: one for "/app-config.xml", one for "/user-
config.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"}.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@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 {}

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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 the inheritLocations flag in
@ContextConfiguration to false. Consequently, the application context for ExtendedTests will
be loaded only from "/test-user-config.xml" and will have its parent set to the context loaded
from "/app-config.xml".

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@ContextHierarchy({
@ContextConfiguration(name = "parent", locations = "/app-config.xml"),
@ContextConfiguration(name = "child", locations = "/user-config.xml")
})
public class BaseTests {}

@ContextHierarchy(
@ContextConfiguration(
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 Spring Testing Annotations and the
@DirtiesContext javadocs.

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 Springs
@Autowired annotation or the @Inject annotation from JSR 330.

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.

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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 4. 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 4 based implementation of the test class that uses @Autowired
for field injection.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
// 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.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
// 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:

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<?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">

<!-- this bean will be injected into the HibernateTitleRepositoryTests class -->
<bean id="titleRepository" class="com.foo.repository.hibernate.HibernateTitleRepository">
<property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory"/>
</bean>

<bean id="sessionFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate5.LocalSessionFactoryBean">

<!-- configuration elided for brevity -->
</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).

Testing request and session scoped beans

Request and session scoped beans have been supported by Spring since the early years, and since
Spring 3.2 its 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

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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.

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 request-scoped 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.

Request-scoped bean test.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration
@WebAppConfiguration
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.

Session-scoped bean configuration.

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<beans>

<bean id="userService"
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.

Session-scoped bean test.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration
@WebAppConfiguration
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
}
}

Transaction management
In the TestContext framework, transactions are managed by the
TransactionalTestExecutionListener which is configured by default, even if you do not
explicitly declare @TestExecutionListeners on your test class. To enable support for transactions,
however, you must configure a PlatformTransactionManager bean in the ApplicationContext
that is loaded via @ContextConfiguration semantics (further details are provided below). In
addition, you must declare Springs @Transactional annotation either at the class or method level
for your tests.

Test-managed transactions

Test-managed transactions are transactions that are managed declaratively via the
TransactionalTestExecutionListener or programmatically via TestTransaction (see
below). Such transactions should not be confused with Spring-managed transactions (i.e., those
managed directly by Spring within the ApplicationContext loaded for tests) or application-
managed transactions (i.e., those managed programmatically within application code that is invoked via
tests). Spring-managed and application-managed transactions will typically participate in test-managed

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transactions; however, caution should be taken if Spring-managed or application-managed transactions

are configured with any propagation type other than REQUIRED or SUPPORTS (see the discussion on
transaction propagation for details).

Enabling and disabling transactions

Annotating a test method with @Transactional causes the test to be run within a transaction that
will, by default, be automatically rolled back after completion of the test. If a test class is annotated
with @Transactional, each test method within that class hierarchy will be run within a transaction.
Test methods that are not annotated with @Transactional (at the class or method level) will not be
run within a transaction. Furthermore, tests that are annotated with @Transactional but have the
propagation type set to NOT_SUPPORTED will not be run within a transaction.

Note that AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests and

AbstractTransactionalTestNGSpringContextTests are preconfigured for transactional
support at the class level.

The following example demonstrates a common scenario for writing an integration test for a
Hibernate-based UserRepository. As explained in the section called Transaction rollback and
commit behavior, there is no need to clean up the database after the createUser() method
is executed since any changes made to the database will be automatically rolled back by the
TransactionalTestExecutionListener. See Section 15.7, PetClinic Example for an additional
example.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(classes = TestConfig.class)
@Transactional
public class HibernateUserRepositoryTests {

@Autowired
HibernateUserRepository repository;

@Autowired
SessionFactory sessionFactory;

JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

@Autowired
public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

@Test
public void createUser() {
// track initial state in test database:
final int count = countRowsInTable("user");

User user = new User(...);

repository.save(user);

// Manual flush is required to avoid false positive in test

sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().flush();
assertNumUsers(count + 1);
}

protected int countRowsInTable(String tableName) {

return JdbcTestUtils.countRowsInTable(this.jdbcTemplate, tableName);
}

protected void assertNumUsers(int expected) {

assertEquals("Number of rows in the [user] table.", expected, countRowsInTable("user"));
}
}

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Transaction rollback and commit behavior

By default, test transactions will be automatically rolled back after completion of the test; however,
transactional commit and rollback behavior can be configured declaratively via the @Commit and
@Rollback annotations. See the corresponding entries in the annotation support section for further
details.

Programmatic transaction management

Since Spring Framework 4.1, it is possible to interact with test-managed transactions

programmatically via the static methods in TestTransaction. For example, TestTransaction
may be used within test methods, before methods, and after methods to start or end
the current test-managed transaction or to configure the current test-managed transaction for
rollback or commit. Support for TestTransaction is automatically available whenever the
TransactionalTestExecutionListener is enabled.

The following example demonstrates some of the features of TestTransaction. Consult the javadocs
for TestTransaction for further details.

@ContextConfiguration(classes = TestConfig.class)
public class ProgrammaticTransactionManagementTests extends
AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests {

@Test
public void transactionalTest() {
// assert initial state in test database:
assertNumUsers(2);

deleteFromTables("user");

// changes to the database will be committed!

TestTransaction.flagForCommit();
TestTransaction.end();
assertFalse(TestTransaction.isActive());
assertNumUsers(0);

TestTransaction.start();
// perform other actions against the database that will
// be automatically rolled back after the test completes...
}

protected void assertNumUsers(int expected) {

assertEquals("Number of rows in the [user] table.", expected, countRowsInTable("user"));
}
}

Executing code outside of a transaction

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 to commit
the transaction). TransactionalTestExecutionListener supports the @BeforeTransaction
and @AfterTransaction annotations exactly for such scenarios. Simply annotate any void method
in a test class or any void default method in a test interface with one of these annotations, and
the TransactionalTestExecutionListener ensures that your before transaction method or after
transaction method is executed at the appropriate time.

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Tip

Any before methods (such as methods annotated with JUnit 4s @Before) and any after methods
(such as methods annotated with JUnit 4s @After) are executed within a transaction. In addition,
methods annotated with @BeforeTransaction or @AfterTransaction are naturally not
executed for test methods that are not configured to run within a transaction.

Configuring a transaction manager

TransactionalTestExecutionListener expects a PlatformTransactionManager

bean to be defined in the Spring ApplicationContext for the test.
In case there are multiple instances of PlatformTransactionManager
within the tests ApplicationContext, a qualifier may be declared via
@Transactional("myTxMgr") or @Transactional(transactionManager = "myTxMgr"), or
TransactionManagementConfigurer can be implemented by an @Configuration class. Consult
the javadocs for TestContextTransactionUtils.retrieveTransactionManager() for details
on the algorithm used to look up a transaction manager in the tests ApplicationContext.

Demonstration of all transaction-related annotations

The following JUnit 4 based example displays a fictitious integration testing scenario highlighting all
transaction-related annotations. The example is not intended to demonstrate best practices but rather
to demonstrate how these annotations can be used. Consult the annotation support section for further
information and configuration examples. Transaction management for @Sql contains an additional
example using @Sql for declarative SQL script execution with default transaction rollback semantics.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration
@Transactional(transactionManager = "txMgr")
@Commit
public class FictitiousTransactionalTest {

@BeforeTransaction
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 @Commit setting
@Rollback
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
void verifyFinalDatabaseState() {
// logic to verify the final state after transaction has rolled back
}

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Avoid false positives when testing ORM code

When you test application code that manipulates the state of a Hibernate session or JPA
persistence context, make sure to flush the underlying unit of work within test methods that
execute that code. Failing to flush the underlying unit of work 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 any
ORM frameworks that maintain an in-memory unit of work.

// ...

@Autowired
SessionFactory sessionFactory;

@Transactional
@Test // no expected exception!
public void falsePositive() {
updateEntityInHibernateSession();
// False positive: an exception will be thrown once the Hibernate
// Session is finally flushed (i.e., in production code)
}

@Transactional
@Test(expected = ...)
public void updateWithSessionFlush() {
updateEntityInHibernateSession();
// Manual flush is required to avoid false positive in test
sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().flush();
}

// ...

Or for JPA:

// ...

@PersistenceContext
EntityManager entityManager;

@Transactional
@Test // no expected exception!
public void falsePositive() {
updateEntityInJpaPersistenceContext();
// False positive: an exception will be thrown once the JPA
// EntityManager is finally flushed (i.e., in production code)
}

@Transactional
@Test(expected = ...)
public void updateWithEntityManagerFlush() {
updateEntityInJpaPersistenceContext();
// Manual flush is required to avoid false positive in test
entityManager.flush();
}

// ...

Executing SQL scripts

When writing integration tests against a relational database, it is often beneficial to execute SQL scripts
to modify the database schema or insert test data into tables. The spring-jdbc module provides
support for initializing an embedded or existing database by executing SQL scripts when the Spring

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ApplicationContext is loaded. See Section 19.8, Embedded database support and the section
called Testing data access logic with an embedded database for details.

Although it is very useful to initialize a database for testing once when the ApplicationContext is
loaded, sometimes it is essential to be able to modify the database during integration tests. The following
sections explain how to execute SQL scripts programmatically and declaratively during integration tests.

Executing SQL scripts programmatically

Spring provides the following options for executing SQL scripts programmatically within integration test
methods.

org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.init.ScriptUtils

org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.init.ResourceDatabasePopulator

org.springframework.test.context.junit4.AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests

org.springframework.test.context.testng.AbstractTransactionalTestNGSpringContextTests

ScriptUtils provides a collection of static utility methods for working with SQL scripts and is mainly
intended for internal use within the framework. However, if you require full control over how SQL scripts
are parsed and executed, ScriptUtils may suit your needs better than some of the other alternatives
described below. Consult the javadocs for individual methods in ScriptUtils for further details.

ResourceDatabasePopulator provides a simple object-based API for programmatically populating,

initializing, or cleaning up a database using SQL scripts defined in external resources.
ResourceDatabasePopulator provides options for configuring the character encoding, statement
separator, comment delimiters, and error handling flags used when parsing and executing the scripts,
and each of the configuration options has a reasonable default value. Consult the javadocs for
details on default values. To execute the scripts configured in a ResourceDatabasePopulator,
you can invoke either the populate(Connection) method to execute the populator against a
java.sql.Connection or the execute(DataSource) method to execute the populator against a
javax.sql.DataSource. The following example specifies SQL scripts for a test schema and test
data, sets the statement separator to "@@", and then executes the scripts against a DataSource.

@Test
public void databaseTest {
ResourceDatabasePopulator populator = new ResourceDatabasePopulator();
populator.addScripts(
new ClassPathResource("test-schema.sql"),
new ClassPathResource("test-data.sql"));
populator.setSeparator("@@");
populator.execute(this.dataSource);
// execute code that uses the test schema and data
}

Note that ResourceDatabasePopulator internally delegates to ScriptUtils for

parsing and executing SQL scripts. Similarly, the executeSqlScript(..) methods in
AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests and
AbstractTransactionalTestNGSpringContextTests internally use a
ResourceDatabasePopulator for executing SQL scripts. Consult the javadocs for the various
executeSqlScript(..) methods for further details.

Executing SQL scripts declaratively with @Sql

In addition to the aforementioned mechanisms for executing SQL scripts programmatically, SQL scripts
can also be configured declaratively in the Spring TestContext Framework. Specifically, the @Sql

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annotation can be declared on a test class or test method to configure the resource paths to SQL scripts
that should be executed against a given database either before or after an integration test method. Note
that method-level declarations override class-level declarations and that support for @Sql is provided
by the SqlScriptsTestExecutionListener which is enabled by default.

Path resource semantics

Each path will be interpreted as a Spring Resource. A plain path for example, "schema.sql" 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 will be treated as an absolute classpath resource, for example: "/org/
example/schema.sql". A path which references a URL (e.g., a path prefixed with classpath:,
file:, http:, etc.) will be loaded using the specified resource protocol.

The following example demonstrates how to use @Sql at the class level and at the method level within
a JUnit 4 based integration test class.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration
@Sql("/test-schema.sql")
public class DatabaseTests {

@Test
public void emptySchemaTest {
// execute code that uses the test schema without any test data
}

@Test
@Sql({"/test-schema.sql", "/test-user-data.sql"})
public void userTest {
// execute code that uses the test schema and test data
}
}

Default script detection

If no SQL scripts are specified, an attempt will be made to detect a default script depending on where
@Sql is declared. If a default cannot be detected, an IllegalStateException will be thrown.

class-level declaration: if the annotated test class is com.example.MyTest, the corresponding

default script is "classpath:com/example/MyTest.sql".

method-level declaration: if the annotated test method is named testMethod() and is defined in
the class com.example.MyTest, the corresponding default script is "classpath:com/example/
MyTest.testMethod.sql".

Declaring multiple @Sql sets

If multiple sets of SQL scripts need to be configured for a given test class or test method but with
different syntax configuration, different error handling rules, or different execution phases per set, it
is possible to declare multiple instances of @Sql. With Java 8, @Sql can be used as a repeatable
annotation. Otherwise, the @SqlGroup annotation can be used as an explicit container for declaring
multiple instances of @Sql.

The following example demonstrates the use of @Sql as a repeatable annotation using Java 8. In this
scenario the test-schema.sql script uses a different syntax for single-line comments.

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@Test
@Sql(scripts = "/test-schema.sql", config = @SqlConfig(commentPrefix = "`"))
@Sql("/test-user-data.sql")
public void userTest {
// execute code that uses the test schema and test data
}

The following example is identical to the above except that the @Sql declarations are grouped together
within @SqlGroup for compatibility with Java 6 and Java 7.

@Test
@SqlGroup({
@Sql(scripts = "/test-schema.sql", config = @SqlConfig(commentPrefix = "`")),
@Sql("/test-user-data.sql")
)}
public void userTest {
// execute code that uses the test schema and test data
}

Script execution phases

By default, SQL scripts will be executed before the corresponding test method. However, if a particular
set of scripts needs to be executed after the test method for example, to clean up database
state the executionPhase attribute in @Sql can be used as seen in the following example. Note
that ISOLATED and AFTER_TEST_METHOD are statically imported from Sql.TransactionMode and
Sql.ExecutionPhase respectively.

@Test
@Sql(
scripts = "create-test-data.sql",
config = @SqlConfig(transactionMode = ISOLATED)
)
@Sql(
scripts = "delete-test-data.sql",
config = @SqlConfig(transactionMode = ISOLATED),
executionPhase = AFTER_TEST_METHOD
)
public void userTest {
// execute code that needs the test data to be committed
// to the database outside of the test's transaction
}

Script configuration with @SqlConfig

Configuration for script parsing and error handling can be configured via the @SqlConfig annotation.
When declared as a class-level annotation on an integration test class, @SqlConfig serves as global
configuration for all SQL scripts within the test class hierarchy. When declared directly via the config
attribute of the @Sql annotation, @SqlConfig serves as local configuration for the SQL scripts declared
within the enclosing @Sql annotation. Every attribute in @SqlConfig has an implicit default value which
is documented in the javadocs of the corresponding attribute. Due to the rules defined for annotation
attributes in the Java Language Specification, it is unfortunately not possible to assign a value of
null to an annotation attribute. Thus, in order to support overrides of inherited global configuration,
@SqlConfig attributes have an explicit default value of either "" for Strings or DEFAULT for Enums.
This approach allows local declarations of @SqlConfig to selectively override individual attributes
from global declarations of @SqlConfig by providing a value other than "" or DEFAULT. Global
@SqlConfig attributes are inherited whenever local @SqlConfig attributes do not supply an explicit
value other than "" or DEFAULT. Explicit local configuration therefore overrides global configuration.

The configuration options provided by @Sql and @SqlConfig are equivalent to those supported
by ScriptUtils and ResourceDatabasePopulator but are a superset of those provided by

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the <jdbc:initialize-database/> XML namespace element. Consult the javadocs of individual

attributes in @Sql and @SqlConfig for details.

Transaction management for @Sql

By default, the SqlScriptsTestExecutionListener will infer the desired transaction semantics

for scripts configured via @Sql. Specifically, SQL scripts will be executed without a transaction,
within an existing Spring-managed transaction for example, a transaction managed by the
TransactionalTestExecutionListener for a test annotated with @Transactional or
within an isolated transaction, depending on the configured value of the transactionMode
attribute in @SqlConfig and the presence of a PlatformTransactionManager in the tests
ApplicationContext. As a bare minimum however, a javax.sql.DataSource must be present
in the tests ApplicationContext.

If the algorithms used by SqlScriptsTestExecutionListener to detect a DataSource and

PlatformTransactionManager and infer the transaction semantics do not suit your needs,
you may specify explicit names via the dataSource and transactionManager attributes
of @SqlConfig. Furthermore, the transaction propagation behavior can be controlled via the
transactionMode attribute of @SqlConfig for example, if scripts should be executed in
an isolated transaction. Although a thorough discussion of all supported options for transaction
management with @Sql is beyond the scope of this reference manual, the javadocs for @SqlConfig
and SqlScriptsTestExecutionListener provide detailed information, and the following example
demonstrates a typical testing scenario using JUnit 4 and transactional tests with @Sql. Note that
there is no need to clean up the database after the usersTest() method is executed since any
changes made to the database (either within the test method or within the /test-data.sql script)
will be automatically rolled back by the TransactionalTestExecutionListener (see transaction
management for details).

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(classes = TestDatabaseConfig.class)
@Transactional
public class TransactionalSqlScriptsTests {

protected JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

@Autowired
public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

@Test
@Sql("/test-data.sql")
public void usersTest() {
// verify state in test database:
assertNumUsers(2);
// execute code that uses the test data...
}

protected int countRowsInTable(String tableName) {

return JdbcTestUtils.countRowsInTable(this.jdbcTemplate, tableName);
}

protected void assertNumUsers(int expected) {

assertEquals("Number of rows in the [user] table.", expected, countRowsInTable("user"));
}
}

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TestContext Framework support classes

Spring JUnit 4 Runner

The Spring TestContext Framework offers full integration with JUnit 4 through
a custom runner (supported on JUnit 4.12 or higher). By annotating
test classes with @RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class) or the shorter
@RunWith(SpringRunner.class) variant, developers can implement standard JUnit 4 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. If you would like to use the Spring TestContext Framework with an alternative
runner such as JUnit 4s Parameterized or third-party runners such as the MockitoJUnitRunner,
you may optionally use Springs support for JUnit rules instead.

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.

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@TestExecutionListeners({})
public class SimpleTest {

@Test
public void testMethod() {
// execute test logic...
}
}

Spring JUnit 4 Rules

The org.springframework.test.context.junit4.rules package provides the following JUnit

4 rules (supported on JUnit 4.12 or higher).

SpringClassRule

SpringMethodRule

SpringClassRule is a JUnit TestRule that supports class-level features of the Spring TestContext
Framework; whereas, SpringMethodRule is a JUnit MethodRule that supports instance-level and
method-level features of the Spring TestContext Framework.

In contrast to the SpringRunner, Springs rule-based JUnit support has the advantage that it is
independent of any org.junit.runner.Runner implementation and can therefore be combined
with existing alternative runners like JUnit 4s Parameterized or third-party runners such as the
MockitoJUnitRunner.

In order to support the full functionality of the TestContext framework, a SpringClassRule must be
combined with a SpringMethodRule. The following example demonstrates the proper way to declare
these rules in an integration test.

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// Optionally specify a non-Spring Runner via @RunWith(...)

@ContextConfiguration
public class IntegrationTest {

@ClassRule
public static final SpringClassRule SPRING_CLASS_RULE = new SpringClassRule();

@Rule
public final SpringMethodRule springMethodRule = new SpringMethodRule();

@Test
public void testMethod() {
// execute test logic...
}
}

JUnit 4 support classes

The org.springframework.test.context.junit4 package provides the following support

classes for JUnit 4 based test cases (supported on JUnit 4.12 or higher).

AbstractJUnit4SpringContextTests

AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests

AbstractJUnit4SpringContextTests is an abstract base test class that integrates the Spring

TestContext Framework with explicit ApplicationContext testing support in a JUnit 4 environment.
When you extend AbstractJUnit4SpringContextTests, you can access a protected
applicationContext instance variable that can be used to perform explicit bean lookups or to test
the state of the context as a whole.

AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests is an abstract transactional extension

of AbstractJUnit4SpringContextTests that adds some convenience functionality
for JDBC access. This class expects a javax.sql.DataSource bean and a
PlatformTransactionManager bean to be defined in the ApplicationContext. When you
extend AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests you can access a protected
jdbcTemplate instance variable that can be used 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. As mentioned in Section 15.3,
JDBC Testing Support, AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests also provides
convenience methods which delegate to methods in JdbcTestUtils using the aforementioned
jdbcTemplate. Furthermore, AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests provides
an executeSqlScript(..) method for executing SQL scripts against the configured DataSource.

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, you can configure your own custom test classes by using
@RunWith(SpringRunner.class) or Springs JUnit rules.

TestNG support classes

The org.springframework.test.context.testng package provides the following support

classes for TestNG based test cases.

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AbstractTestNGSpringContextTests

AbstractTransactionalTestNGSpringContextTests

AbstractTestNGSpringContextTests is an 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 a protected
applicationContext instance variable that can be used to perform explicit bean lookups or to test
the state of the context as a whole.

AbstractTransactionalTestNGSpringContextTests is an abstract transactional extension

of AbstractTestNGSpringContextTests that adds some convenience functionality
for JDBC access. This class expects a javax.sql.DataSource bean and a
PlatformTransactionManager bean to be defined in the ApplicationContext. When you
extend AbstractTransactionalTestNGSpringContextTests you can access a protected
jdbcTemplate instance variable that can be used 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. As mentioned in Section 15.3,
JDBC Testing Support, AbstractTransactionalTestNGSpringContextTests also provides
convenience methods which delegate to methods in JdbcTestUtils using the aforementioned
jdbcTemplate. Furthermore, AbstractTransactionalTestNGSpringContextTests provides
an executeSqlScript(..) method for executing SQL scripts against the configured DataSource.

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, 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.

15.6 Spring MVC Test Framework

The Spring MVC Test framework provides first class support for testing Spring MVC code using a fluent
API that can be used with JUnit, TestNG, or any other testing framework. Its built on the Servlet API
mock objects from the spring-test module and hence does not use a running Servlet container. It
uses the DispatcherServlet to provide full Spring MVC runtime behavior and provides support for
loading actual Spring configuration with the TestContext framework in addition to a standalone mode in
which controllers may be instantiated manually and tested one at a time.

Spring MVC Test also provides client-side support for testing code that uses the RestTemplate. Client-
side tests mock the server responses and also do not use a running server.

Tip

Spring Boot provides an option to write full, end-to-end integration tests that include a running
server. If this is your goal please have a look at the Spring Boot reference page. For more
information on the differences between out-of-container and end-to-end integration tests, see the
section called Differences between Out-of-Container and End-to-End Integration Tests.

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Server-Side Tests

Its easy to write a plain unit test for a Spring MVC controller using JUnit or TestNG: simply
instantiate the controller, inject it with mocked or stubbed dependencies, and call its methods passing
MockHttpServletRequest, MockHttpServletResponse, etc., as necessary. However, when
writing such a unit test, much remains untested: for example, request mappings, data binding, type
conversion, validation, and much more. Furthermore, other controller methods such as @InitBinder,
@ModelAttribute, and @ExceptionHandler may also be invoked as part of the request processing
lifecycle.

The goal of Spring MVC Test is to provide an effective way for testing controllers by performing requests
and generating responses through the actual DispatcherServlet.

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
a few notable exceptions as explained in the section called Differences between Out-of-Container and
End-to-End Integration Tests. Here is a JUnit 4 based example of using Spring MVC Test:

import static org.springframework.test.web.servlet.request.MockMvcRequestBuilders.*;

import static org.springframework.test.web.servlet.result.MockMvcResultMatchers.*;

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@WebAppConfiguration
@ContextConfiguration("test-servlet-context.xml")
public class ExampleTests {

@Autowired
private WebApplicationContext wac;

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 above test relies on the WebApplicationContext support of the TestContext framework for
loading Spring configuration from an XML configuration file located in the same package as the test
class, but Java-based and Groovy-based configuration are also supported. See these sample tests.

The MockMvc instance is used to perform a GET request to "/accounts/1" and verify that the resulting
response has status 200, the content type is "application/json", and the response body has a
JSON property called "name" with the value "Lee". The jsonPath syntax is supported through the
Jayway JsonPath project. There are lots of other options for verifying the result of the performed request
that will be discussed below.

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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

There are two main options for creating an instance of MockMvc. The first is to load Spring MVC
configuration through the TestContext framework, which loads the Spring configuration and injects a
WebApplicationContext into the test to use to build a MockMvc instance:

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@WebAppConfiguration
@ContextConfiguration("my-servlet-context.xml")
public class MyWebTests {

@Autowired
private WebApplicationContext wac;

private MockMvc mockMvc;

@Before
public void setup() {
this.mockMvc = MockMvcBuilders.webAppContextSetup(this.wac).build();
}

// ...

The second is to simply create a controller instance manually without loading Spring configuration.
Instead basic default configuration, roughly comparable to that of the MVC JavaConfig or the MVC
namespace, is automatically created and can be customized to a degree:

public class MyWebTests {

private MockMvc mockMvc;

@Before
public void setup() {
this.mockMvc = MockMvcBuilders.standaloneSetup(new AccountController()).build();
}

// ...

Which setup option should you use?

The "webAppContextSetup" loads your actual Spring MVC configuration resulting in a more complete
integration test. Since the TestContext framework caches the loaded Spring configuration, it helps keep
tests running fast, even as you introduce more tests in your test suite. 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:

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<bean id="accountService" class="org.mockito.Mockito" factory-method="mock">

<constructor-arg value="org.example.AccountService"/>
</bean>

You can then inject the mock service into the test in order set up and verify expectations:

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@WebAppConfiguration
@ContextConfiguration("test-servlet-context.xml")
public class AccountTests {

@Autowired
private WebApplicationContext wac;

private MockMvc mockMvc;

@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 doesnt involve loading
Spring configuration. Such tests are more focused on 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 specific behavior or to
debug an issue.

Just like with any "integration vs. unit testing" debate, there is no right or wrong answer. However,
using the "standaloneSetup" does imply the need for additional "webAppContextSetup" tests in
order to verify your Spring MVC configuration. Alternatively, you may choose to write all tests with
"webAppContextSetup" in order to always test against your actual Spring MVC configuration.

Performing Requests

Its easy to perform requests using any HTTP method:

mockMvc.perform(post("/hotels/{id}", 42).accept(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON));

You can also perform file upload requests that internally use MockMultipartHttpServletRequest
so that there is no actual parsing of a multipart request but rather you have to set it up:

mockMvc.perform(fileUpload("/doc").file("a1", "ABC".getBytes("UTF-8")));

You can specify query parameters in URI template style:

mockMvc.perform(get("/hotels?foo={foo}", "bar"));

Or you can add Servlet request parameters representing either query of form parameters:

mockMvc.perform(get("/hotels").param("foo", "bar"));

If application code relies on Servlet request parameters and doesnt check the query string explicitly (as
is most often the case) then it doesnt matter which option you use. Keep in mind however that query
params provided with the URI template will be decoded while request parameters provided through the
param() method are expected to already be decoded.

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In most cases its 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. Instead you can set up default request properties:

public class MyWebTests {

private MockMvc mockMvc;

@Before
public void setup() {
mockMvc = standaloneSetup(new AccountController())
.defaultRequest(get("/")
.contextPath("/app").servletPath("/main")
.accept(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON).build();
}

The above properties will affect every request performed through the MockMvc instance. If the same
property is also specified on a given request, it overrides the default value. That is why the HTTP method
and URI in the default request dont matter since they must be specified on every request.

Defining Expectations

Expectations can be defined by appending one or more .andExpect(..) calls after performing a
request:

mockMvc.perform(get("/accounts/1")).andExpect(status().isOk());

MockMvcResultMatchers.* provides a number of expectations, some of which are further nested

with more detailed expectations.

Expectations fall in two general categories. The first category of assertions verifies properties of the
response: for example, the response status, headers, and content. These are the most important results
to assert.

The second category of assertions goes beyond the response. These assertions allow one to inspect
Spring MVC specific aspects 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. They also allow one to inspect Servlet specific aspects such
as request and session attributes.

The following test asserts that binding or validation failed:

mockMvc.perform(post("/persons"))
.andExpect(status().isOk())
.andExpect(model().attributeHasErrors("person"));

Many times when writing tests, its useful to dump the results 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(status().isOk())
.andExpect(model().attributeHasErrors("person"));

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As long as request processing does not cause an unhandled exception, the print() method will print
all the available result data to System.out. Spring Framework 4.2 introduced a log() method and two
additional variants of the print() method, one that accepts an OutputStream and one that accepts a
Writer. For example, invoking print(System.err) will print the result data to System.err; while
invoking print(myWriter) will print the result data to a custom writer. If you would like to have the
result data logged instead of printed, simply invoke the log() method which will log the result data as
a single DEBUG message under the org.springframework.test.web.servlet.result logging
category.

In some cases, you may want to get direct access to the result and verify something that cannot be
verified otherwise. This can be achieved by appending .andReturn() after all other expectations:

MvcResult mvcResult = mockMvc.perform(post("/persons")).andExpect(status().isOk()).andReturn();

// ...

If all tests repeat the same expectations you can set up common expectations once when building the
MockMvc instance:

standaloneSetup(new SimpleController())
.alwaysExpect(status().isOk())
.alwaysExpect(content().contentType("application/json;charset=UTF-8"))
.build()

Note that common expectations are 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 using JsonPath expressions:

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 using XPath expressions:

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 instance, you can register one or more Servlet Filter instances:

mockMvc = standaloneSetup(new PersonController()).addFilters(new CharacterEncodingFilter()).build();

Registered filters will be invoked through via the MockFilterChain from spring-test, and the last
filter will delegate to the DispatcherServlet.

Differences between Out-of-Container and End-to-End Integration Tests

As mentioned earlier Spring MVC Test is built on the Servlet API mock objects from the spring-test
module and does not use a running Servlet container. Therefore there are some important differences
compared to full end-to-end integration tests with an actual client and server running.

The easiest way to think about this is starting with a blank MockHttpServletRequest. Whatever
you add to it is what the request will be. Things that may catch you by surprise are that there
is no context path by default, no jsessionid cookie, no forwarding, error, or async dispatches,

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and therefore no actual JSP rendering. Instead, "forwarded" and "redirected" URLs are saved in the
MockHttpServletResponse and can be asserted with expectations.

This means if you are using JSPs you can verify the JSP page to which the request was forwarded,
but there wont be any HTML rendered. In other words, the JSP will not be invoked. Note however that
all other rendering technologies which dont rely on forwarding such as Thymeleaf, Freemarker, and
Velocity will render HTML to the response body as expected. The same is true for rendering JSON,
XML, and other formats via @ResponseBody methods.

Alternatively you may consider the full end-to-end integration testing support from Spring Boot via
@WebIntegrationTest. See the Spring Boot reference.

There are pros and cons for each approach. The options provided in Spring MVC Test are different stops
on the scale from classic unit testing to full integration testing. To be certain, none of the options in Spring
MVC Test fall under the category of classic unit testing, but they are a little closer to it. For example,
you can isolate the web layer by injecting mocked services into controllers, in which case youre testing
the web layer only through the DispatcherServlet but with actual Spring configuration, just like you
might test the data access layer in isolation from the layers above. Or you can use the standalone setup
focusing on one controller at a time and manually providing the configuration required to make it work.

Another important distinction when using Spring MVC Test is that conceptually such tests are on the
inside of the server-side so you can check what handler was used, if an exception was handled with a
HandlerExceptionResolver, what the content of the model is, what binding errors there were, etc. That
means its easier to write expectations since the server is not a black box as it is when testing it through
an actual HTTP client. This is generally an advantage of classic unit testing, that its easier to write,
reason about, and debug but does not replace the need for full integration tests. At the same time its
important not to lose sight of the fact that the response is the most important thing to check. In short,
there is room here for multiple styles and strategies of testing even within the same project.

Further Server-Side Test Examples

The frameworks 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.

HtmlUnit Integration
Spring provides integration between MockMvc and HtmlUnit. This simplifies performing end-to-end
testing when using HTML based views. This integration enables developers to:

Easily test HTML pages using tools such as HtmlUnit, WebDriver, & Geb without the need to deploy
to a Servlet container

Test JavaScript within pages

Optionally test using mock services to speed up testing

Share logic between in-container end-to-end tests and out-of-container integration tests

Note

MockMvc works with templating technologies that do not rely on a Servlet Container (e.g.,
Thymeleaf, Freemarker, Velocity, etc.), but it does not work with JSPs since they rely on the
Servlet Container.

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Why HtmlUnit Integration?

The most obvious question that comes to mind is, "Why do I need this?". The answer is best found by
exploring a very basic sample application. Assume you have a Spring MVC web application that supports
CRUD operations on a Message object. The application also supports paging through all messages.
How would you go about testing it?

With Spring MVC Test, we can easily test if we are able to create a Message.

MockHttpServletRequestBuilder createMessage = post("/messages/")

.param("summary", "Spring Rocks")
.param("text", "In case you didn't know, Spring Rocks!");

mockMvc.perform(createMessage)
.andExpect(status().is3xxRedirection())
.andExpect(redirectedUrl("/messages/123"));

What if we want to test our form view that allows us to create the message? For example, assume our
form looks like the following snippet:

<form id="messageForm" action="/messages/" method="post">

<div class="pull-right"><a href="/messages/">Messages</a></div>

<label for="summary">Summary</label>
<input type="text" class="required" id="summary" name="summary" value="" />

<label for="text">Message</label>
<textarea id="text" name="text"></textarea>

<div class="form-actions">
<input type="submit" value="Create" />
</div>
</form>

How do we ensure that our form will produce the correct request to create a new message? A naive
attempt would look like this:

mockMvc.perform(get("/messages/form"))
.andExpect(xpath("//input[@name='summary']").exists())
.andExpect(xpath("//textarea[@name='text']").exists());

This test has some obvious drawbacks. If we update our controller to use the parameter message
instead of text, our form test would continue to pass even though the HTML form is out of synch with
the controller. To resolve this we can combine our two tests.

String summaryParamName = "summary";

String textParamName = "text";
mockMvc.perform(get("/messages/form"))
.andExpect(xpath("//input[@name='" + summaryParamName + "']").exists())
.andExpect(xpath("//textarea[@name='" + textParamName + "']").exists());

MockHttpServletRequestBuilder createMessage = post("/messages/")

.param(summaryParamName, "Spring Rocks")
.param(textParamName, "In case you didn't know, Spring Rocks!");

mockMvc.perform(createMessage)
.andExpect(status().is3xxRedirection())
.andExpect(redirectedUrl("/messages/123"));

This would reduce the risk of our test incorrectly passing, but there are still some problems.

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What if we have multiple forms on our page? Admittedly we could update our xpath expressions, but
they get more complicated the more factors we take into account (Are the fields the correct type?
Are the fields enabled? etc.).

Another issue is that we are doing double the work we would expect. We must first verify the view,
and then we submit the view with the same parameters we just verified. Ideally this could be done
all at once.

Finally, there are some things that we still cannot account for. For example, what if the form has
JavaScript validation that we wish to test as well?

The overall problem is that testing a web page does not involve a single interaction. Instead, it is a
combination of how the user interacts with a web page and how that web page interacts with other
resources. For example, the result of a form view is used as the input to a user for creating a message.
In addition, our form view may potentially utilize additional resources which impact the behavior of the
page, such as JavaScript validation.

Integration testing to the rescue?

To resolve the issues above we could perform end-to-end integration testing, but this has some obvious
drawbacks. Consider testing the view that allows us to page through the messages. We might need
the following tests.

Does our page display a notification to the user indicating that no results are available when the
messages are empty?

Does our page properly display a single message?

Does our page properly support paging?

To set up these tests, we would need to ensure our database contained the proper messages in it. This
leads to a number of additional challenges.

Ensuring the proper messages are in the database can be tedious; consider foreign key constraints.

Testing can become slow since each test would need to ensure that the database is in the correct
state.

Since our database needs to be in a specific state, we cannot run tests in parallel.

Performing assertions on things like auto-generated ids, timestamps, etc. can be difficult.

These challenges do not mean that we should abandon end-to-end integration testing altogether.
Instead, we can reduce the number of end-to-end integration tests by refactoring our detailed tests to
use mock services which will execute much faster, more reliably, and without side effects. We can then
implement a small number of true end-to-end integration tests that validate simple workflows to ensure
that everything works together properly.

Enter HtmlUnit Integration

So how can we achieve a balance between testing the interactions of our pages and still retain good
performance within our test suite? The answer is: "By integrating MockMvc with HtmlUnit."

HtmlUnit Integration Options

There are a number of ways to integrate MockMvc with HtmlUnit.

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MockMvc and HtmlUnit: Use this option if you want to use the raw HtmlUnit libraries.

MockMvc and WebDriver: Use this option to ease development and reuse code between integration
and end-to-end testing.

MockMvc and Geb: Use this option if you would like to use Groovy for testing, ease development,
and reuse code between integration and end-to-end testing.

MockMvc and HtmlUnit

This section describes how to integrate MockMvc and HtmlUnit. Use this option if you want to use the
raw HtmlUnit libraries.

MockMvc and HtmlUnit Setup

First, make sure that you have included a test dependency on

net.sourceforge.htmlunit:htmlunit. In order to use HtmlUnit with Apache HttpComponents
4.5+, you will need to use HtmlUnit 2.18 or higher.

We can easily create an HtmlUnit WebClient that integrates with MockMvc using the
MockMvcWebClientBuilder as follows.

@Autowired
WebApplicationContext context;

WebClient webClient;

@Before
public void setup() {
webClient = MockMvcWebClientBuilder
.webAppContextSetup(context)
.build();
}

Note

This is a simple example of using MockMvcWebClientBuilder. For advanced usage see the
section called Advanced MockMvcWebClientBuilder

This will ensure that any URL referencing localhost as the server will be directed to our MockMvc
instance without the need for a real HTTP connection. Any other URL will be requested using a network
connection as normal. This allows us to easily test the use of CDNs.

MockMvc and HtmlUnit Usage

Now we can use HtmlUnit as we normally would, but without the need to deploy our application to a
Servlet container. For example, we can request the view to create a message with the following.

HtmlPage createMsgFormPage = webClient.getPage("http://localhost/messages/form");

Note

The default context path is "". Alternatively, we can specify the context path as illustrated in the
section called Advanced MockMvcWebClientBuilder.

Once we have a reference to the HtmlPage, we can then fill out the form and submit it to create a
message.

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HtmlForm form = createMsgFormPage.getHtmlElementById("messageForm");

HtmlTextInput summaryInput = createMsgFormPage.getHtmlElementById("summary");
summaryInput.setValueAttribute("Spring Rocks");
HtmlTextArea textInput = createMsgFormPage.getHtmlElementById("text");
textInput.setText("In case you didn't know, Spring Rocks!");
HtmlSubmitInput submit = form.getOneHtmlElementByAttribute("input", "type", "submit");
HtmlPage newMessagePage = submit.click();

Finally, we can verify that a new message was created successfully. The following assertions use the
AssertJ library.

assertThat(newMessagePage.getUrl().toString()).endsWith("/messages/123");
String id = newMessagePage.getHtmlElementById("id").getTextContent();
assertThat(id).isEqualTo("123");
String summary = newMessagePage.getHtmlElementById("summary").getTextContent();
assertThat(summary).isEqualTo("Spring Rocks");
String text = newMessagePage.getHtmlElementById("text").getTextContent();
assertThat(text).isEqualTo("In case you didn't know, Spring Rocks!");

This improves on our MockMvc test in a number of ways. First we no longer have to explicitly verify
our form and then create a request that looks like the form. Instead, we request the form, fill it out, and
submit it, thereby significantly reducing the overhead.

Another important factor is that HtmlUnit uses the Mozilla Rhino engine to evaluate JavaScript. This
means that we can test the behavior of JavaScript within our pages as well!

Refer to the HtmlUnit documentation for additional information about using HtmlUnit.

Advanced MockMvcWebClientBuilder

In the examples so far, we have used MockMvcWebClientBuilder in the simplest way possible,
by building a WebClient based on the WebApplicationContext loaded for us by the Spring
TestContext Framework. This approach is repeated here.

@Autowired
WebApplicationContext context;

WebClient webClient;

@Before
public void setup() {
webClient = MockMvcWebClientBuilder
.webAppContextSetup(context)
.build();
}

We can also specify additional configuration options.

WebClient webClient;

@Before
public void setup() {
webClient = MockMvcWebClientBuilder
// demonstrates applying a MockMvcConfigurer (Spring Security)
.webAppContextSetup(context, springSecurity())
// for illustration only - defaults to ""
.contextPath("")
// By default MockMvc is used for localhost only;
// the following will use MockMvc for example.com and example.org as well
.useMockMvcForHosts("example.com","example.org")
.build();
}

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As an alternative, we can perform the exact same setup by configuring the MockMvc instance separately
and supplying it to the MockMvcWebClientBuilder as follows.

MockMvc mockMvc = MockMvcBuilders

.webAppContextSetup(context)
.apply(springSecurity())
.build();

webClient = MockMvcWebClientBuilder
.mockMvcSetup(mockMvc)
// for illustration only - defaults to ""
.contextPath("")
// By default MockMvc is used for localhost only;
// the following will use MockMvc for example.com and example.org as well
.useMockMvcForHosts("example.com","example.org")
.build();

This is more verbose, but by building the WebClient with a MockMvc instance we have the full power
of MockMvc at our fingertips.

Tip

For additional information on creating a MockMvc instance refer to the section called Setup
Options.

MockMvc and WebDriver

In the previous sections, we have seen how to use MockMvc in conjunction with the raw HtmlUnit APIs.
In this section, we will leverage additional abstractions within the Selenium WebDriver to make things
even easier.

Why WebDriver and MockMvc?

We can already use HtmlUnit and MockMvc, so why would we want to use WebDriver? The Selenium
WebDriver provides a very elegant API that allows us to easily organize our code. To better understand,
lets explore an example.

Note

Despite being a part of Selenium, WebDriver does not require a Selenium Server to run your tests.

Suppose we need to ensure that a message is created properly. The tests involve finding the HTML
form input elements, filling them out, and making various assertions.

This approach results in numerous, separate tests because we want to test error conditions as well. For
example, we want to ensure that we get an error if we fill out only part of the form. If we fill out the entire
form, the newly created message should be displayed afterwards.

If one of the fields were named "summary", then we might have something like the following repeated
in multiple places within our tests.

HtmlTextInput summaryInput = currentPage.getHtmlElementById("summary");

summaryInput.setValueAttribute(summary);

So what happens if we change the id to "smmry"? Doing so would force us to update all of our tests
to incorporate this change! Of course, this violates the DRY Principle; so we should ideally extract this
code into its own method as follows.

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public HtmlPage createMessage(HtmlPage currentPage, String summary, String text) {

setSummary(currentPage, summary);
// ...
}

public void setSummary(HtmlPage currentPage, String summary) {

HtmlTextInput summaryInput = currentPage.getHtmlElementById("summary");
summaryInput.setValueAttribute(summary);
}

This ensures that we do not have to update all of our tests if we change the UI.

We might even take this a step further and place this logic within an Object that represents the HtmlPage
we are currently on.

public class CreateMessagePage {

final HtmlPage currentPage;

final HtmlTextInput summaryInput;

final HtmlSubmitInput submit;

public CreateMessagePage(HtmlPage currentPage) {

this.currentPage = currentPage;
this.summaryInput = currentPage.getHtmlElementById("summary");
this.submit = currentPage.getHtmlElementById("submit");
}

public <T> T createMessage(String summary, String text) throws Exception {

setSummary(summary);

HtmlPage result = submit.click();

boolean error = CreateMessagePage.at(result);

return (T) (error ? new CreateMessagePage(result) : new ViewMessagePage(result));

}

public void setSummary(String summary) throws Exception {

summaryInput.setValueAttribute(summary);
}

public static boolean at(HtmlPage page) {

return "Create Message".equals(page.getTitleText());
}
}

Formerly, this pattern is known as the Page Object Pattern. While we can certainly do this with HtmlUnit,
WebDriver provides some tools that we will explore in the following sections to make this pattern much
easier to implement.

MockMvc and WebDriver Setup

To use Selenium WebDriver with the Spring MVC Test framework, make sure that your project includes
a test dependency on org.seleniumhq.selenium:selenium-htmlunit-driver.

We can easily create a Selenium WebDriver that integrates with MockMvc using the
MockMvcHtmlUnitDriverBuilder as follows.

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@Autowired
WebApplicationContext context;

WebDriver driver;

@Before
public void setup() {
driver = MockMvcHtmlUnitDriverBuilder
.webAppContextSetup(context)
.build();
}

Note

This is a simple example of using MockMvcHtmlUnitDriverBuilder. For more advanced

usage, refer to the section called Advanced MockMvcHtmlUnitDriverBuilder

This will ensure that any URL referencing localhost as the server will be directed to our MockMvc
instance without the need for a real HTTP connection. Any other URL will be requested using a network
connection as normal. This allows us to easily test the use of CDNs.

MockMvc and WebDriver Usage

Now we can use WebDriver as we normally would, but without the need to deploy our application to a
Servlet container. For example, we can request the view to create a message with the following.

CreateMessagePage page = CreateMessagePage.to(driver);

We can then fill out the form and submit it to create a message.

ViewMessagePage viewMessagePage =
page.createMessage(ViewMessagePage.class, expectedSummary, expectedText);

This improves on the design of our HtmlUnit test by leveraging the Page Object Pattern. As we
mentioned in the section called Why WebDriver and MockMvc?, we can use the Page Object Pattern
with HtmlUnit, but it is much easier with WebDriver. Lets take a look at our new CreateMessagePage
implementation.

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public class CreateMessagePage

extends AbstractPage {

private WebElement summary;
private WebElement text;

@FindBy(css = "input[type=submit]")
private WebElement submit;

public CreateMessagePage(WebDriver driver) {

super(driver);
}

public <T> T createMessage(Class<T> resultPage, String summary, String details) {

this.summary.sendKeys(summary);
this.text.sendKeys(details);
this.submit.click();
return PageFactory.initElements(driver, resultPage);
}

public static CreateMessagePage to(WebDriver driver) {

driver.get("http://localhost:9990/mail/messages/form");
return PageFactory.initElements(driver, CreateMessagePage.class);
}
}

The first thing you will notice is that CreateMessagePage extends the AbstractPage. We wont
go over the details of AbstractPage, but in summary it contains common functionality for all of
our pages. For example, if our application has a navigational bar, global error messages, etc., this
logic can be placed in a shared location.
The next thing you will notice is that we have a member variable for each of the parts of the HTML
page that we are interested in. These are of type WebElement. WebDriver's PageFactory allows
us to remove a lot of code from the HtmlUnit version of CreateMessagePage by automatically
resolving each WebElement. The PageFactory#initElements(WebDriver,Class<T>) method will
automatically resolve each WebElement by using the field name and looking it up by the id or
name of the element within the HTML page.
We can use the @FindBy annotation to override the default lookup behavior. Our example
demonstrates how to use the @FindBy annotation to look up our submit button using a css selector,
input[type=submit].

Finally, we can verify that a new message was created successfully. The following assertions use the
FEST assertion library.

assertThat(viewMessagePage.getMessage()).isEqualTo(expectedMessage);
assertThat(viewMessagePage.getSuccess()).isEqualTo("Successfully created a new message");

We can see that our ViewMessagePage allows us to interact with our custom domain model. For
example, it exposes a method that returns a Message object.

public Message getMessage() throws ParseException {

Message message = new Message();
message.setId(getId());
message.setCreated(getCreated());
message.setSummary(getSummary());
message.setText(getText());
return message;
}

We can then leverage the rich domain objects in our assertions.

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Lastly, dont forget to close the WebDriver instance when the test is complete.

@After
public void destroy() {
if (driver != null) {
driver.close();
}
}

For additional information on using WebDriver, refer to the Selenium WebDriver documentation.

Advanced MockMvcHtmlUnitDriverBuilder

In the examples so far, we have used MockMvcHtmlUnitDriverBuilder in the simplest way

possible, by building a WebDriver based on the WebApplicationContext loaded for us by the
Spring TestContext Framework. This approach is repeated here.

@Autowired
WebApplicationContext context;

WebDriver driver;

@Before
public void setup() {
driver = MockMvcHtmlUnitDriverBuilder
.webAppContextSetup(context)
.build();
}

We can also specify additional configuration options.

WebDriver driver;

@Before
public void setup() {
driver = MockMvcHtmlUnitDriverBuilder
// demonstrates applying a MockMvcConfigurer (Spring Security)
.webAppContextSetup(context, springSecurity())
// for illustration only - defaults to ""
.contextPath("")
// By default MockMvc is used for localhost only;
// the following will use MockMvc for example.com and example.org as well
.useMockMvcForHosts("example.com","example.org")
.build();
}

As an alternative, we can perform the exact same setup by configuring the MockMvc instance separately
and supplying it to the MockMvcHtmlUnitDriverBuilder as follows.

MockMvc mockMvc = MockMvcBuilders

.webAppContextSetup(context)
.apply(springSecurity())
.build();

driver = MockMvcHtmlUnitDriverBuilder
.mockMvcSetup(mockMvc)
// for illustration only - defaults to ""
.contextPath("")
// By default MockMvc is used for localhost only;
// the following will use MockMvc for example.com and example.org as well
.useMockMvcForHosts("example.com","example.org")
.build();

This is more verbose, but by building the WebDriver with a MockMvc instance we have the full power
of MockMvc at our fingertips.

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Tip

For additional information on creating a MockMvc instance refer to the section called Setup
Options.

MockMvc and Geb

In the previous section, we saw how to use MockMvc with WebDriver. In this section, we will use Geb
to make our tests even Groovy-er.

Why Geb and MockMvc?

Geb is backed by WebDriver, so it offers many of the same benefits that we get from WebDriver.
However, Geb makes things even easier by taking care of some of the boilerplate code for us.

MockMvc and Geb Setup

We can easily initialize a Geb Browser with a Selenium WebDriver that uses MockMvc as follows.

def setup() {
browser.driver = MockMvcHtmlUnitDriverBuilder
.webAppContextSetup(context)
.build()
}

Note

This is a simple example of using MockMvcHtmlUnitDriverBuilder. For more advanced

usage, refer to the section called Advanced MockMvcHtmlUnitDriverBuilder

This will ensure that any URL referencing localhost as the server will be directed to our MockMvc
instance without the need for a real HTTP connection. Any other URL will be requested using a network
connection as normal. This allows us to easily test the use of CDNs.

MockMvc and Geb Usage

Now we can use Geb as we normally would, but without the need to deploy our application to a Servlet
container. For example, we can request the view to create a message with the following:

to CreateMessagePage

We can then fill out the form and submit it to create a message.

when:
form.summary = expectedSummary
form.text = expectedMessage
submit.click(ViewMessagePage)

Any unrecognized method calls or property accesses/references that are not found will be forwarded to
the current page object. This removes a lot of the boilerplate code we needed when using WebDriver
directly.

As with direct WebDriver usage, this improves on the design of our HtmlUnit test by leveraging
the Page Object Pattern. As mentioned previously, we can use the Page Object Pattern with
HtmlUnit and WebDriver, but it is even easier with Geb. Lets take a look at our new Groovy-based
CreateMessagePage implementation.

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class CreateMessagePage extends Page {

static url = 'messages/form'
static at = { assert title == 'Messages : Create'; true }
static content = {
submit { $('input[type=submit]') }
form { $('form') }
errors(required:false) { $('label.error, .alert-error')?.text() }
}
}

The first thing you will notice is that our CreateMessagePage extends Page. We wont go over the
details of Page, but in summary it contains common functionality for all of our pages. The next thing
you will notice is that we define a URL in which this page can be found. This allows us to navigate to
the page as follows.

to CreateMessagePage

We also have an at closure that determines if we are at the specified page. It should return true if we
are on the correct page. This is why we can assert that we are on the correct page as follows.

then:
at CreateMessagePage
errors.contains('This field is required.')

Note

We use an assertion in the closure, so that we can determine where things went wrong if we were
at the wrong page.

Next we create a content closure that specifies all the areas of interest within the page. We can use
a jQuery-ish Navigator API to select the content we are interested in.

Finally, we can verify that a new message was created successfully.

then:
at ViewMessagePage
success == 'Successfully created a new message'
id
date
summary == expectedSummary
message == expectedMessage

For further details on how to get the most out of Geb, consult The Book of Geb users manual.

Client-Side REST Tests

Client-side tests can be used to test code that internally uses the RestTemplate. The idea is to declare
expected requests and to provide "stub" responses so that you can focus on testing the code in isolation,
i.e. without running a server. Here is an example:

RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();

MockRestServiceServer mockServer = MockRestServiceServer.bindTo(restTemplate).build();

mockServer.expect(requestTo("/greeting")).andRespond(withSuccess());

// Test code that uses the above RestTemplate ...

mockServer.verify();

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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 request to "/
greeting" and want to return a 200 response with "text/plain" content. We could define as additional
expected requests and stub responses as needed. When expected requests and stub responses
are defined, the RestTemplate can be used in client-side code as usual. At the end of testing
mockServer.verify() can be used to verify that all expectations have been satisfied.

By default requests are expected in the order in which expectations were declared. You can set the
ignoreExpectOrder option when building the server in which case all expectations are checked (in
order) to find a match for a given request. That means requests are allowed to come in any order. Here
is an example:

server = MockRestServiceServer.bindTo(restTemplate).ignoreExpectOrder(true).build();

Even with unordered requests by default each request is allowed to execute once only. The expect
method provides an overloaded variant that accepts an ExpectedCount argument that specifies a
count range, e.g. once, manyTimes, max, min, between, and so on. Here is an example:

RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();

MockRestServiceServer mockServer = MockRestServiceServer.bindTo(restTemplate).build();

mockServer.expect(times(2), requestTo("/foo")).andRespond(withSuccess());
mockServer.expect(times(3), requestTo("/bar")).andRespond(withSuccess());

// ...

mockServer.verify();

Note that when ignoreExpectOrder is not set (the default), and therefore requests are expected in
order of declaration, then that order only applies to the first of any expected request. For example if "/
foo" is expected 2 times followed by "/bar" 3 times, then there should be a request to "/foo" before there
is a request to "/bar" but aside from that subsequent "/foo" and "/bar" requests can come at any time.

As an alternative to all of the above the client-side test support also provides a
ClientHttpRequestFactory implementation that can be configured into a RestTemplate to bind
it to a MockMvc instance. That allows processing requests using actual server-side logic but without
running a server. Here is an example:

MockMvc mockMvc = MockMvcBuilders.webAppContextSetup(this.wac).build();

this.restTemplate = new RestTemplate(new MockMvcClientHttpRequestFactory(mockMvc));

// Test code that uses the above RestTemplate ...

mockServer.verify();

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 Tests own tests include example tests of client-side REST tests.

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15.7 PetClinic Example

The PetClinic application, available on GitHub, illustrates several features of the Spring TestContext
Framework in a JUnit 4 environment. Most test functionality is included in the AbstractClinicTests,
for which a partial listing is shown below:

import static org.junit.Assert.assertEquals;

// import ...

@ContextConfiguration
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 getVets() 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

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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 AbstractClinicTests-context.xml (i.e., the inherited locations) and
HibernateClinicTests-context.xml, with HibernateClinicTests-context.xml possibly
overriding beans defined in AbstractClinicTests-context.xml.

@ContextConfiguration
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 full-blown 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.

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16. Further Resources

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 annotations, test groups, data-
driven testing, distributed testing, etc.

AssertJ: "Fluent assertions for Java" including support for Java 8 lambdas, streams, etc.

Mock Objects: Article in Wikipedia.

MockObjects.com: Web site dedicated to mock objects, a technique for improving the design of code
within test-driven development.

Mockito: Java mock library based on the test spy pattern.

EasyMock: Java library "that provides Mock Objects for interfaces (and objects through the class
extension) by generating them on the fly using Javas proxy mechanism." Used by the Spring
Framework in its test suite.

JMock: Library that supports test-driven development of Java code with mock objects.

DbUnit: JUnit extension (also usable with Ant and Maven) targeted for database-driven projects that,
among other things, puts your database into a known state between test runs.

The Grinder: Java load testing framework.

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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.

Springs 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 17, Transaction Management

Chapter 18, DAO support

Chapter 19, Data access with JDBC

Chapter 20, Object Relational Mapping (ORM) Data Access

Chapter 21, Marshalling XML using O/X Mappers

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17. Transaction Management

17.1 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 Springs data access abstractions.

The following sections describe the Spring Frameworks 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 Frameworks transaction support model describes why you would use the
Spring Frameworks transaction abstraction instead of EJB Container-Managed 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 transactionsdescribes 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.

Transaction bound event describes how you could use application events within a transaction.

17.2 Advantages of the Spring Frameworks 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 Frameworks transaction
management support addresses the limitations of the global and local transaction models.

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

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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.

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.

Spring Frameworks 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 Frameworks 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 Frameworks declarative transactions offer more power and a more productive
programming model than EJB CMT.

Typically you need an application servers 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 Java EE Connector Architecture (JCA).

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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, container-managed transactions. With the Spring
Framework, only some of the bean definitions in your configuration file, rather than your code,
need to change.

17.3 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 Springs philosophy, the TransactionException that can be thrown by any
of the PlatformTransactionManager interfaces 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

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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 the section called 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>

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If you use JTA in a Java EE container then you use a container DataSource, obtained through JNDI,
in conjunction with Springs JtaTransactionManager. This is what the JTA and JNDI lookup version
would look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<!-- other <bean/> definitions here -->

</beans>

The JtaTransactionManager does not need to know about the DataSource, or any other specific
resources, because it uses the containers global transaction management infrastructure.

Note

The above definition of the dataSource bean uses the <jndi-lookup/> tag from the
jee namespace. For more information on schema-based configuration, see Chapter 41, XML
Schema-based configuration, and for more information on the <jee/> tags see the section
entitled the section called 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.

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<bean id="sessionFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate5.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.hibernate5.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.

17.4 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.

High-level synchronization approach

The preferred approach is to use Springs 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.

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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 Framework-managed
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 Springs
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 Frameworks 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 Springs 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 wont need to write any special code.

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.

17.5 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.

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The Spring Frameworks 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 Frameworks 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 Frameworks 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 containers 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.

Where is TransactionProxyFactoryBean?

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 configuration; think of the new <tx:tags/
> as simply defining TransactionProxyFactoryBean beans on your behalf.

The concept of rollback rules is important: they enable you to specify which exceptions (and throwables)
should cause automatic rollback. You 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. 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 system exception
(usually a runtime exception), EJB CMT does not roll back the transaction automatically on anapplication
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.

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Understanding the Spring Frameworks 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 Frameworks declarative transaction
infrastructure in the event of transaction-related issues.

The most important concepts to grasp with regard to the Spring Frameworks 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 11, Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring.

Conceptually, calling a method on a transactional proxy looks like this

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.

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// the service interface that we want to make transactional

package x.y.service;

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

package x.y.service;

public class DefaultFooService implements FooService {

public Foo getFoo(String fooName) {

throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
}

public Foo getFoo(String fooName, String barName) {

throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
}

public void insertFoo(Foo foo) {

throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
}

public void updateFoo(Foo foo) {

throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
}

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 read-only 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.

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<!-- from the file 'context.xml' -->

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

<!-- this is the service object that we want to make transactional -->
<bean id="fooService" class="x.y.service.DefaultFooService"/>

<!-- the transactional advice (what 'happens'; see the <aop:advisor/> bean below) -->
<tx:advice id="txAdvice" transaction-manager="txManager">
<!-- the transactional semantics... -->
<tx:attributes>
<!-- all methods starting with 'get' are read-only -->
<tx:method name="get*" read-only="true"/>
<!-- other methods use the default transaction settings (see below) -->
<tx:method name="*"/>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>

<!-- ensure that the above transactional advice runs for any execution
of an operation defined by the FooService interface -->
<aop:config>
<aop:pointcut id="fooServiceOperation" expression="execution(* x.y.service.FooService.*(..))"/>
<aop:advisor advice-ref="txAdvice" pointcut-ref="fooServiceOperation"/>
</aop:config>

<!-- don't forget the DataSource -->

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

<!-- similarly, don't forget the PlatformTransactionManager -->

<bean id="txManager" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceTransactionManager">
<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
</bean>

<!-- other <bean/> definitions here -->

</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 transaction-manager 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

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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 11, Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring for more details on pointcut expressions in
Spring.

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 11, Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring for more details.

Now that weve 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:

public final class Boot {

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

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.)

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<!-- the Spring container is starting up... -->

[AspectJInvocationContextExposingAdvisorAutoProxyCreator] - Creating implicit proxy for bean
'fooService' with 0 common interceptors and 1 specific interceptors

<!-- the DefaultFooService is actually proxied -->

[JdkDynamicAopProxy] - Creating JDK dynamic proxy for [x.y.service.DefaultFooService]

<!-- ... the insertFoo(..) method is now being invoked on the proxy -->
[TransactionInterceptor] - Getting transaction for x.y.service.FooService.insertFoo

<!-- the transactional advice kicks in here... -->

[DataSourceTransactionManager] - Creating new transaction with name [x.y.service.FooService.insertFoo]
[DataSourceTransactionManager] - Acquired Connection [org.apache.commons.dbcp.PoolableConnection@a53de4]
for JDBC transaction

<!-- the insertFoo(..) method from DefaultFooService throws an exception... -->

[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]

<!-- and the transaction is rolled back (by default, RuntimeException instances cause rollback) -->
[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)
<!-- AOP infrastructure stack trace elements removed for clarity -->
at $Proxy0.insertFoo(Unknown Source)
at Boot.main(Boot.java:11)

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 Frameworks transaction infrastructure that a
transactions 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 Frameworks 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 Frameworks 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:advice id="txAdvice" transaction-manager="txManager">

<tx:attributes>
<tx:method name="get*" read-only="true" rollback-for="NoProductInStockException"/>
<tx:method name="*"/>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>

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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 Frameworks 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:method name="*"/>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>

When the Spring Frameworks 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:advice id="txAdvice">
<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 Frameworks 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.

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:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<aop:config>

<aop:pointcut id="serviceOperation"
expression="execution(* x.y.service..*Service.*(..))"/>

<aop:advisor pointcut-ref="serviceOperation" advice-ref="txAdvice"/>

</aop:config>

<!-- these two beans will be transactional... -->

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

<!-- ... and these two beans won't -->

<bean id="anotherService" class="org.xyz.SomeService"/> <!-- (not in the right package) -->
<bean id="barManager" class="x.y.service.SimpleBarManager"/> <!-- (doesn't end in 'Service') -->

<tx:advice id="txAdvice">
<tx:attributes>
<tx:method name="get*" read-only="true"/>
<tx:method name="*"/>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>

<!-- other transaction infrastructure beans such as a PlatformTransactionManager omitted... -->

</beans>

The following example shows how to configure two distinct beans with totally different transactional
settings.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<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>

<!-- this bean will be transactional (see the 'defaultServiceOperation' pointcut) -->
<bean id="fooService" class="x.y.service.DefaultFooService"/>

<!-- this bean will also be transactional, but with totally different transactional settings -->
<bean id="anotherFooService" class="x.y.service.ddl.DefaultDdlManager"/>

<tx:advice id="defaultTxAdvice">
<tx:attributes>
<tx:method name="get*" read-only="true"/>
<tx:method name="*"/>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>

<tx:advice id="noTxAdvice">
<tx:attributes>
<tx:method name="*" propagation="NEVER"/>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>

<!-- other transaction infrastructure beans such as a PlatformTransactionManager omitted... -->

</beans>

<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.

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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 17.1. <tx:method/> settings

Attribute Required? Default Description

name Yes 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.

propagation No 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?

rollback-for No Exception(s)
that trigger rollback;
comma-delimited.
For example,
com.foo.MyBusinessException,Ser

no-rollback-for No Exception(s)
that do not trigger
rollback; comma-
delimited. For example,
com.foo.MyBusinessException,Ser

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.

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Note

The standard javax.transaction.Transactional annotation is also supported as a drop-in

replacement to Springs own annotation. Please refer to JTA 1.2 documentation for more details.

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
public class DefaultFooService implements FooService {

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:

<!-- from the file 'context.xml' -->

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

<!-- this is the service object that we want to make transactional -->
<bean id="fooService" class="x.y.service.DefaultFooService"/>

<!-- enable the configuration of transactional behavior based on annotations -->

<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="txManager"/><!-- a PlatformTransactionManager is still
required -->
<bean id="txManager" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceTransactionManager">
<!-- (this dependency is defined somewhere else) -->
<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
</bean>

<!-- other <bean/> definitions here -->

</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.

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Note

The @EnableTransactionManagement annotation provides equivalent support if you are

using Java based configuration. Simply add the annotation to a @Configuration class. See
the javadocs for full details.

Method visibility and @Transactional

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
@Transactional 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.

You can place the @Transactional annotation before an interface definition, a method on an interface,
a class definition, or a public method on a class. However, the mere presence of the @Transactional
annotation is not enough to activate the transactional behavior. The @Transactional annotation is
simply metadata that can be consumed by some runtime infrastructure that is @Transactional-aware
and that can use the metadata to configure the appropriate beans with transactional behavior. In the
preceding example, the <tx:annotation-driven/> 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 means that if you are using class-based proxies (
proxy-target-class="true") or the weaving-based 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. Also, the proxy must be fully initialized to
provide the expected behaviour so you should not rely on this feature in your initialization code,
i.e. @PostConstruct.

Consider the use of AspectJ mode (see mode attribute in table below) if you expect self-invocations 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.

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Table 17.2. Annotation driven transaction settings

XML Attribute Annotation Attribute Default Description

transaction- N/A (See transactionManager Name of transaction

manager TransactionManagementConfigurer manager to use. Only
javadocs) required if the name
of the transaction
manager is not
transactionManager,
as in the example
above.

mode mode proxy The default mode

"proxy" processes
annotated beans
to be proxied using
Springs 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 Springs
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 load-time
weaving (or compile-
time weaving) enabled.
(See the section called
Spring configuration
for details on how
to set up load-time
weaving.)

proxy-target- proxyTargetClass false Applies to proxy mode

class only. Controls what
type of transactional
proxies are created for
classes annotated with
the @Transactional

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XML Attribute Annotation Attribute Default Description

annotation. If the
proxy-target-
class attribute is set
to true, then class-
based proxies are
created. If proxy-
target-class
is false or if the
attribute is omitted,
then standard JDK
interface-based proxies
are created. (See
Section 11.6, Proxying
mechanisms for a
detailed examination
of the different proxy
types.)

order order Ordered.LOWEST_PRECEDENCE

Defines the order
of the transaction
advice that is applied to
beans annotated with
@Transactional.
(For more information
about the rules related
to ordering of AOP
advice, see the
section called Advice
ordering.) No specified
ordering means that
the AOP subsystem
determines the order of
the advice.

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 11.6, Proxying
mechanisms for a discussion of the different proxy types.)

Note

@EnableTransactionManagement and <tx:annotation-driven/> 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 22.2, The DispatcherServlet for more information.

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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 class DefaultFooService implements FooService {

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 17.3. @Transactional Settings

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. read-only

transaction

timeout int (in seconds granularity) Transaction timeout.

rollbackFor Array of Class objects, Optional array of exception

which must be derived from classes that must cause
Throwable. rollback.

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Property Type Description

rollbackForClassName Array of class names. Optional array of names of

Classes must be derived from exception classes that must
Throwable. cause rollback.

noRollbackFor Array of Class objects, Optional array of exception

which must be derived from classes that must not cause
Throwable. rollback.

noRollbackForClassName Array of String class names, Optional array of names of

which must be derived from exception classes that must not
Throwable. 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, WebLogics
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.

Multiple Transaction Managers with @Transactional

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.datasource.DataSourceTransactionManager">

...
<qualifier value="order"/>
</bean>

<bean id="transactionManager2" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.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.

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Custom shortcut annotations

If you find you are repeatedly using the same attributes with @Transactional on many different
methods, then Springs 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})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Transactional("order")
public @interface OrderTx {
}

@Target({ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.TYPE})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@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.

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

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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 transactions 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 transactions 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 Springs DataSourceTransactionManager.

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:

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Configured profiling aspect starts up.

Transactional advice executes.

Method on the advised object executes.

Transaction commits.

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 11, 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.aspectj.lang.ProceedingJoinPoint;
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

public int getOrder() {
return this.order;
}

public void setOrder(int 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;
}
}

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

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

<!-- this is the aspect -->

<bean id="profiler" class="x.y.SimpleProfiler">
<!-- execute before the transactional advice (hence the lower order number) -->
<property name="order" __value="1"__/>
</bean>

<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="txManager" __order="200"__/>

<aop:config>
<!-- this advice will execute around the transactional advice -->
<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>

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

<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 id="txManager" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceTransactionManager">

<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
</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.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

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

<!-- the profiling advice -->

<bean id="profiler" class="x.y.SimpleProfiler">
<!-- execute before the transactional advice (hence the lower order number) -->
__<property name="order" value="1__"/>
</bean>

<aop:config>
<aop:pointcut id="entryPointMethod" expression="execution(* x.y..*Service.*(..))"/>
<!-- will execute after the profiling advice (c.f. the order attribute) -->

<aop:advisor advice-ref="txAdvice" pointcut-ref="entryPointMethod" __order="2__"/>

<!-- order value is higher than the profiling aspect -->

<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:advice id="txAdvice" transaction-manager="txManager">

<tx:attributes>
<tx:method name="get*" read-only="true"/>
<tx:method name="*"/>
</tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>

<!-- other <bean/> definitions such as a DataSource and a PlatformTransactionManager here -->

</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 beans order property so that it is higher than the transactional advices order value.

You configure additional aspects in similar fashion.

Using @Transactional with AspectJ

It is also possible to use the Spring Frameworks @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 Frameworks 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 the

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section called Using @Transactional. Because were focusing here on applications running outside of
a Spring container, well show you how to do it programmatically.

Note

Prior to continuing, you may want to read the section called Using @Transactional and
Chapter 11, 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 Javas 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 the
section called Load-time weaving with AspectJ in the Spring Framework for a discussion of load-time
weaving with AspectJ.

17.6 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.

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.

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Note

As you will see in the examples that follow, using the TransactionTemplate absolutely couples
you to Springs 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();
}
}
});

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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.");
this.transactionTemplate = new TransactionTemplate(transactionManager);

// 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.

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);

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17.7 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.

17.8 Transaction bound event

As of Spring 4.2, the listener of an event can be bound to a phase of the transaction. The typical example
is to handle the event when the transaction has completed successfully: this allows events to be used
with more flexibility when the outcome of the current transaction actually matters to the listener.

Registering a regular event listener is done via the @EventListener annotation. If you need to bind it
to the transaction use @TransactionalEventListener. When you do so, the listener will be bound
to the commit phase of the transaction by default.

Lets take an example to illustrate this concept. Assume that a component publish an order created
event and we want to define a listener that should only handle that event once the transaction in which
it has been published as committed successfully:

@Component
public class MyComponent {

@TransactionalEventListener
public void handleOrderCreatedEvent(CreationEvent<Order> creationEvent) {
...
}
}

The TransactionalEventListener annotation exposes a phase attribute that allows to

customize to which phase of the transaction the listener should be bound to. The valid phases
are BEFORE_COMMIT, AFTER_COMMIT (default), AFTER_ROLLBACK and AFTER_COMPLETION that
aggregates the transaction completion (be it a commit or a rollback).

If no transaction is running, the listener is not invoked at all since we cant honor the required semantics.
It is however possible to override that behaviour by setting the fallbackExecution attribute of the
annotation to true.

17.9 Application server-specific integration

Springs transaction abstraction generally is application server agnostic. Additionally, Springs
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

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allows for enhanced transaction semantics, in particular supporting transaction suspension. See the
JtaTransactionManager javadocs for details.

Springs 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 and Geronimo without any special
configuration required. However, for fully supported transaction suspension and further advanced
integration, Spring ships special adapters for WebLogic Server and WebSphere. These adapters are
discussed in the following sections.

For standard scenarios, including WebLogic Server and WebSphere, 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 wont 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.

IBM WebSphere
On WebSphere 6.1.0.9 and above, the recommended Spring JTA transaction manager to use is
WebSphereUowTransactionManager. This special adapter leverages IBMs UOWManager API,
which is available in WebSphere Application Server 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.

Oracle 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 Springs 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.

17.10 Solutions to common problems

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.

17.11 Further Resources

For more information about the Spring Frameworks transaction support:

Distributed transactions in Spring, with and without XA is a JavaWorld presentation in which Springs
David Syer guides you through seven patterns for distributed transactions in Spring applications, three
of them with XA and four without.

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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.

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18. DAO support

18.1 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.

18.2 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
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 non-recoverable, only in the appropriate layers,
without having annoying boilerplate catch-and-throw blocks and exception declarations in ones 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.)

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18.3 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 {

private SessionFactory sessionFactory;

@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);
}

// ...

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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.

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19. Data access with JDBC

19.1 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 19.1. Spring JDBC - who does what?

Action Spring You

Define connection parameters. X

Open the connection. X

Specify the SQL statement. X

Declare parameters and X

provide parameter values

Prepare and execute the X

statement.

Set up the loop to iterate X

through the results (if any).

Do the work for each iteration. X

Process any exception. X

Handle transactions. X

Close the connection, X

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.

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.

JdbcTemplate is the classic Spring JDBC approach and the most popular. This "lowest level"
approach and all others use a JdbcTemplate under the covers.

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.

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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 doesnt 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.

Package hierarchy

The Spring Frameworks 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 19.2, Using the
JDBC core classes to control basic JDBC processing and error handling, Section 19.4, JDBC batch
operations, and Section 19.5, 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 embedded
databases using Java database engines such as HSQL, H2, and Derby. See Section 19.3, Controlling
database connections and Section 19.8, 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 19.6, Modeling
JDBC operations as Java objects. This approach is modeled by JDO, although objects returned by
queries are naturally 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 the section
called SQLExceptionTranslator.

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19.2 Using the JDBC core classes to control basic JDBC

processing and error handling
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", Integer.class);

A simple query using a bind variable:

int countOfActorsNamedJoe = this.jdbcTemplate.queryForObject(

"select count(*) from t_actor where first_name = ?", Integer.class, "Joe");

Querying for a String:

String lastName = this.jdbcTemplate.queryForObject(

"select last_name from t_actor where id = ?",
new Object[]{1212L}, String.class);

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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>() {
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;
}
});

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 nested 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> {

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;
}
}

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");

this.jdbcTemplate.update(
"update t_actor set last_name = ? where id = ?",
"Banjo", 5276L);

this.jdbcTemplate.update(
"delete from actor where id = ?",
Long.valueOf(actorId));

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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.

this.jdbcTemplate.update(
"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 {

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

// JDBC-backed implementations of the methods on the CorporateEventDao follow...

}

The corresponding configuration might look like this.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<bean id="corporateEventDao" class="com.example.JdbcCorporateEventDao">

<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
</bean>

<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>

<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 {

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

@Autowired
public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

// JDBC-backed implementations of the methods on the CorporateEventDao follow...

}

The corresponding XML configuration file would look like the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<!-- Scans within the base package of the application for @Component classes to configure as beans
-->
<context:component-scan base-package="org.springframework.docs.test" />

<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>

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

</beans>

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If you are using Springs 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.

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;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

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, namedParameters, Integer.class);

}

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.

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// some JDBC-backed DAO class...

private NamedParameterJdbcTemplate namedParameterJdbcTemplate;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.namedParameterJdbcTemplate = new NamedParameterJdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

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);

return this.namedParameterJdbcTemplate.queryForObject(sql, namedParameters, Integer.class);

}

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...

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// some JDBC-backed DAO class...

private NamedParameterJdbcTemplate namedParameterJdbcTemplate;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.namedParameterJdbcTemplate = new NamedParameterJdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

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);

return this.namedParameterJdbcTemplate.queryForObject(sql, namedParameters, Integer.class);

}

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.

SQLExceptionTranslator

SQLExceptionTranslator is an interface to be implemented by classes that can translate between

SQLExceptions and Springs 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.

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.

Any custom implementation of the SQLExceptionTranslator interface that is provided as the

customSqlExceptionTranslator property of the SQLErrorCodes class.

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The list of instances of the CustomSQLErrorCodesTranslation class, provided for the

customTranslations property of the SQLErrorCodes class, are searched for a match.

Error code matching is applied.

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:

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

// 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
this.jdbcTemplate.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 sql-error-
codes.xml.

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:

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import javax.sql.DataSource;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate;

public class ExecuteAStatement {

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

public void doExecute() {

this.jdbcTemplate.execute("create table mytable (id integer, name varchar(100))");
}
}

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.

import javax.sql.DataSource;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate;

public class RunAQuery {

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

public int getCount() {

return this.jdbcTemplate.queryForObject("select count(*) from mytable", Integer.class);
}

public String getName() {

return this.jdbcTemplate.queryForObject("select name from mytable", String.class);
}
}

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:

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

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}]

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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.

import javax.sql.DataSource;

import org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate;

public class ExecuteAnUpdate {

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

public void setName(int id, String name) {

this.jdbcTemplate.update("update mytable set name = ? where id = ?", name, id);
}
}

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

19.3 Controlling database connections

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.

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When using Springs 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 Springs 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">

<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>

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

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">

<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>

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

C3P0 configuration:

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<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="${jdbc.username}"/>
<property name="password" value="${jdbc.password}"/>
</bean>

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

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.

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.

AbstractDataSource

AbstractDataSource is an abstract base class for Springs 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.

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 close-suppressing 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.

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.

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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, its 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.)

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 EEs 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!

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

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CommonsDbcpNativeJdbcExtractor

JBossNativeJdbcExtractor

WebLogicNativeJdbcExtractor

WebSphereNativeJdbcExtractor

XAPoolNativeJdbcExtractor

Usually the SimpleNativeJdbcExtractor is sufficient for unwrapping a Connection object in most

environments. See the javadocs for more details.

19.4 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.

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 {

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

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.

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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:

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

private NamedParameterTemplate namedParameterJdbcTemplate;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.namedParameterJdbcTemplate = new NamedParameterJdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

public int[] batchUpdate(final List<Actor> actors) {

SqlParameterSource[] batch = SqlParameterSourceUtils.createBatch(actors.toArray());
int[] updateCounts = namedParameterJdbcTemplate.batchUpdate(
"update t_actor set first_name = :firstName, last_name = :lastName where id = :id",
batch);
return updateCounts;
}

// ... additional methods

}

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:

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

public int[] batchUpdate(final List<Actor> actors) {

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(
"update t_actor set first_name = ?, last_name = ? where id = ?",
batch);
return updateCounts;
}

// ... additional methods

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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.

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 class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
}

public int[][] batchUpdate(final Collection<Actor> actors) {

int[][] updateCounts = jdbcTemplate.batchUpdate(
"update t_actor set first_name = ?, last_name = ? where id = ?",
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());
}
});
return updateCounts;
}

// ... additional methods

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 arrays length indicates
the number of batches executed and the second level arrays length indicates the number of updates
in that batch. The number of updates in each batch should be 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.

19.5 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.

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Inserting data using SimpleJdbcInsert

Lets start by looking at the SimpleJdbcInsert class with the minimal amount of configuration options.
You should instantiate the SimpleJdbcInsert in the data access layers 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.

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

private SimpleJdbcInsert insertActor;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
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);
}

// ... additional methods

}

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.

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.

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public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

private SimpleJdbcInsert insertActor;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
this.insertActor = new SimpleJdbcInsert(dataSource)
.withTableName("t_actor")
.usingGeneratedKeyColumns("id");
}

public void add(Actor actor) {

Map<String, Object> parameters = new HashMap<String, Object>(2);
parameters.put("first_name", actor.getFirstName());
parameters.put("last_name", actor.getLastName());
Number newId = insertActor.executeAndReturnKey(parameters);
actor.setId(newId.longValue());
}

// ... additional methods

}

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 executeAndReturnKey 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 executeAndReturnKeyHolder method.

Specifying columns for a SimpleJdbcInsert

You can limit the columns for an insert by specifying a list of column names with the usingColumns
method:

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

private SimpleJdbcInsert insertActor;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
this.insertActor = new SimpleJdbcInsert(dataSource)
.withTableName("t_actor")
.usingColumns("first_name", "last_name")
.usingGeneratedKeyColumns("id");
}

public void add(Actor actor) {

Map<String, Object> parameters = new HashMap<String, Object>(2);
parameters.put("first_name", actor.getFirstName());
parameters.put("last_name", actor.getLastName());
Number newId = insertActor.executeAndReturnKey(parameters);
actor.setId(newId.longValue());
}

// ... additional methods

The execution of the insert is the same as if you had relied on the metadata to determine which columns
to use.

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Using SqlParameterSource to provide parameter values

Using a Map to provide parameter values works fine, but its 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:

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

private SimpleJdbcInsert insertActor;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
this.insertActor = new SimpleJdbcInsert(dataSource)
.withTableName("t_actor")
.usingGeneratedKeyColumns("id");
}

public void add(Actor actor) {

SqlParameterSource parameters = new BeanPropertySqlParameterSource(actor);
Number newId = insertActor.executeAndReturnKey(parameters);
actor.setId(newId.longValue());
}

// ... additional methods

Another option is the MapSqlParameterSource that resembles a Map but provides a more convenient
addValue method that can be chained.

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

private SimpleJdbcInsert insertActor;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
this.insertActor = new SimpleJdbcInsert(dataSource)
.withTableName("t_actor")
.usingGeneratedKeyColumns("id");
}

public void add(Actor actor) {

SqlParameterSource parameters = new MapSqlParameterSource()
.addValue("first_name", actor.getFirstName())
.addValue("last_name", actor.getLastName());
Number newId = insertActor.executeAndReturnKey(parameters);
actor.setId(newId.longValue());
}

// ... additional methods

As you can see, the configuration is the same; only the executing code has to change to use these
alternative input classes.

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

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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 dont have to create a subclass and you dont 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.

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

private SimpleJdbcCall procReadActor;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
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 actor = new Actor();
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;
}

// ... additional methods

The code you write for the execution of the call involves creating an SqlParameterSource containing
the IN parameter. Its 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.

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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 case-insensitive lookup or instruct Spring to
use a LinkedCaseInsensitiveMap. 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. Here is an example of this
configuration:

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

private SimpleJdbcCall procReadActor;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
jdbcTemplate.setResultsMapCaseInsensitive(true);
this.procReadActor = new SimpleJdbcCall(jdbcTemplate)
.withProcedureName("read_actor");
}

// ... additional methods

By taking this action, you avoid conflicts in the case used for the names of your returned out parameters.

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.

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public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

private SimpleJdbcCall procReadActor;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
jdbcTemplate.setResultsMapCaseInsensitive(true);
this.procReadActor = new SimpleJdbcCall(jdbcTemplate)
.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)
);
}

// ... additional methods

}

The execution and end results of the two examples are the same; this one specifies all details explicitly
rather than relying on metadata.

How to define SqlParameters

To define a parameter for the SimpleJdbc classes and also for the RDBMS operations classes, covered
in Section 19.6, 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:

new SqlParameter("in_id", Types.NUMERIC),

new SqlOutParameter("out_first_name", Types.VARCHAR),

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.

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

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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 actors 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.

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;

private SimpleJdbcCall funcGetActorName;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
jdbcTemplate.setResultsMapCaseInsensitive(true);
this.funcGetActorName = new SimpleJdbcCall(jdbcTemplate)
.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;
}

// ... additional methods

The execute method used returns a String containing the return value from the function call.

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:

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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 BeanPropertyRowMapper that is created by passing in the required
class to map to in the newInstance method.

public class JdbcActorDao implements ActorDao {

private SimpleJdbcCall procReadAllActors;

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
jdbcTemplate.setResultsMapCaseInsensitive(true);
this.procReadAllActors = new SimpleJdbcCall(jdbcTemplate)
.withProcedureName("read_all_actors")
.returningResultSet("actors",
BeanPropertyRowMapper.newInstance(Actor.class));
}

public List getActorsList() {

Map m = procReadAllActors.execute(new HashMap<String, Object>(0));
return (List) m.get("actors");
}

// ... additional methods

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.

19.6 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.

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.

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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 actor = new Actor();
actor.setId(rs.getLong("id"));
actor.setFirstName(rs.getString("first_name"));
actor.setLastName(rs.getString("last_name"));
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
public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {
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;
}

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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 its simply called execute. However, you dont have to subclass the
SqlUpdate class since it can easily be parameterized by setting SQL and declaring parameters.

import java.sql.Types;

import javax.sql.DataSource;

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);
}
}

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.

new SqlParameter("in_id", Types.NUMERIC),

new SqlOutParameter("out_first_name", Types.VARCHAR),

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 I nOut parameters, parameters that provide
an in value to the procedure and that also return a value.

For i n 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

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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 java.sql.Types;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

import javax.sql.DataSource;

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).

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import oracle.jdbc.OracleTypes;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlOutParameter;
import org.springframework.jdbc.object.StoredProcedure;

import javax.sql.DataSource;
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"));
}
}

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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 oracle.jdbc.OracleTypes;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlOutParameter;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlParameter;
import org.springframework.jdbc.object.StoredProcedure;

import javax.sql.DataSource;

import java.sql.Types;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.HashMap;
import 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);
}
}

19.7 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.

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.

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Handling BLOB and CLOB objects

You can store images, other binary data, and large chunks of text in the database. These large objects
are called BLOBs (Binary Large OBject) for binary data and CLOBs (Character Large OBject) 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 (Large OBject) 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.

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Note

If you invoke the setBlobAsBinaryStream, setClobAsAsciiStream, or

setClobAsCharacterStream method on the LobCreator returned from
DefaultLobHandler.getLobCreator(), you can optionally specify a negative value for the
contentLength argument. If the specified content length is negative, the DefaultLobHandler
will use the JDBC 4.0 variants of the set-stream methods without a length parameter; otherwise,
it will pass the specified length on to the driver.

Consult the documentation for the JDBC driver in use to verify support for streaming a LOB without
providing the content length.

Now its 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.

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. Oracles 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.

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

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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;
}
};

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19.8 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.

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.

Creating an embedded database 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" generate-name="true">

<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 test-data.sql resources in the root of the classpath. In addition, as a best
practice, the embedded database will be assigned a uniquely generated name. The embedded database
is made available to the Spring container as a bean of type javax.sql.DataSource which can then
be injected into data access objects as needed.

Creating an embedded database programmatically

The EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder class provides a fluent API for constructing an embedded database
programmatically. Use this when you need to create an embedded database in a standalone
environment or in a standalone integration test like in the following example.

EmbeddedDatabase db = new EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder()

.generateUniqueName(true)
.setType(H2)
.setScriptEncoding("UTF-8")
.ignoreFailedDrops(true)
.addScript("schema.sql")
.addScripts("user_data.sql", "country_data.sql")
.build();

// perform actions against the db (EmbeddedDatabase extends javax.sql.DataSource)

db.shutdown()

Consult the Javadoc for EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder for further details on all supported options.

The EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder can also be used to create an embedded database using Java
Config like in the following example.

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@Configuration
public class DataSourceConfig {

@Bean
public DataSource dataSource() {
return new EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder()
.generateUniqueName(true)
.setType(H2)
.setScriptEncoding("UTF-8")
.ignoreFailedDrops(true)
.addScript("schema.sql")
.addScripts("user_data.sql", "country_data.sql")
.build();
}
}

Selecting the embedded database type

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.

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.

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 you are using the builder API, call the
setType(EmbeddedDatabaseType) method with EmbeddedDatabaseType.DERBY.

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 integration test template that uses an embedded database. Using a template like this can be
useful for one-offs when the embedded database does not need to be reused across test classes.
However, if you wish to create an embedded database that is shared within a test suite, consider using
the Spring TestContext Framework and configuring the embedded database as a bean in the Spring
ApplicationContext as described in the section called Creating an embedded database using
Spring XML and the section called Creating an embedded database programmatically.

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public class DataAccessIntegrationTestTemplate {

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()
.generateUniqueName(true)
.addDefaultScripts()
.build();
}

@Test
public void testDataAccess() {
JdbcTemplate template = new JdbcTemplate(db);
template.query( /* ... */ );
}

@After
public void tearDown() {
db.shutdown();
}

Generating unique names for embedded databases

Development teams often encounter errors with embedded databases if their test suite inadvertently
attempts to recreate additional instances of the same database. This can happen quite easily if an XML
configuration file or @Configuration class is responsible for creating an embedded database and
the corresponding configuration is then reused across multiple testing scenarios within the same test
suite (i.e., within the same JVM process) - for example, integration tests against embedded databases
whose ApplicationContext configuration only differs with regard to which bean definition profiles
are active.

The root cause of such errors is the fact that Springs EmbeddedDatabaseFactory (used
internally by both the <jdbc:embedded-database> XML namespace element and the
EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder for Java Config) will set the name of the embedded database
to "testdb" if not otherwise specified. For the case of <jdbc:embedded-database>, the
embedded database is typically assigned a name equal to the beans id (i.e., often something like
"dataSource"). Thus, subsequent attempts to create an embedded database will not result in a
new database. Instead, the same JDBC connection URL will be reused, and attempts to create a
new embedded database will actually point to an existing embedded database created from the same
configuration.

To address this common issue Spring Framework 4.2 provides support for generating unique names
for embedded databases. To enable the use of generated names, use one of the following options.

EmbeddedDatabaseFactory.setGenerateUniqueDatabaseName()

EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder.generateUniqueName()

<jdbc:embedded-database generate-name="true" >

Extending the embedded database support

Spring JDBC embedded database support can be extended in two ways:

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Implement EmbeddedDatabaseConfigurer to support a new embedded database type.

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.spring.io.

19.9 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.

Initializing a database 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 executes the two scripts specified against the database: the first script creates a
schema, and the second populates tables with a test data set. 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 you are executing the scripts against a database
that already has test data in it. The likelihood of accidentally deleting data is reduced by following the
common pattern (as shown above) of creating the tables first and then inserting the data the first step
will fail if the tables already exist.

However, to gain more control over the creation and deletion of existing data, the XML namespace
provides a few additional options. The first is a 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), for example:

<jdbc:initialize-database data-source="dataSource"
enabled="#{systemProperties.INITIALIZE_DATABASE}">
<jdbc:script location="..."/>
</jdbc:initialize-database>

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, for example:

<jdbc:initialize-database data-source="dataSource" ignore-failures="DROPS">

<jdbc:script location="..."/>
</jdbc:initialize-database>

In this example we are saying we expect that sometimes the scripts will be executed against an empty
database, and there are some DROP statements in the scripts which would therefore fail. So failed SQL

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DROP statements will be ignored, but other failures will cause an exception. This is useful if your SQL
dialect doesnt 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 DROP statements, 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).

Each statement should be separated by ; or a new line if the ; character is not present at all in the
script. You can control that globally or script by script, for example:

<jdbc:initialize-database data-source="dataSource" separator="@@">

<jdbc:script location="classpath:com/foo/sql/db-schema.sql" separator=";"/>
<jdbc:script location="classpath:com/foo/sql/db-test-data-1.sql"/>
<jdbc:script location="classpath:com/foo/sql/db-test-data-2.sql"/>
</jdbc:initialize-database>

In this example, the two test-data scripts use @@ as statement separator and only the db-
schema.sql uses ;. This configuration specifies that the default separator is @@ and override that
default for the db-schema script.

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 DataSource instance and executes the scripts provided in its
initialization callback (analogous to an init-method in an XML bean definition, a @PostConstruct
method in a component, or the afterPropertiesSet() method in a component that implements
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 data from the database on
application startup.

To get around this issue you have 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 include:

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).

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The second option can also be easy. Some suggestions on how to implement this include:

Rely on the default behavior of the Spring BeanFactory, 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 in XML configuration 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. the parent context contains the
DataSource, and child context contains the business components). This structure is common in
Spring web applications but can be more generally applied.

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20. Object Relational Mapping (ORM) Data Access

20.1 Introduction to ORM with Spring
The Spring Framework supports integration with Hibernate, Java Persistence API (JPA) and Java Data
Objects (JDO) 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 Springs
resource and transaction management, and they comply with Springs 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 Springs DAO templates is no longer recommended;
however, coverage of this style can be found in the Section 39.1, 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. Springs 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, 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

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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.

Tip

For more comprehensive ORM support, including support for alternative database technologies
such as MongoDB, you might want to check out the Spring Data suite of projects. If you are a
JPA user, the Getting Started Accessing Data with JPA guide from https://spring.io provides a
great introduction.

20.2 General ORM integration considerations

This section highlights considerations that apply to all ORM technologies. The Section 20.3, Hibernate
section provides more details and also show these features and configurations in a concrete context.

The major goal of Springs 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 hard-coded 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 Springs 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.

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 17, Transaction Management chapter.

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Exception translation
When you use Hibernate, JPA, or JDO in a DAO, you must decide how to handle the persistence
technologys 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 technologys 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>

<!-- Exception translation bean post processor -->

<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 technologys API and annotations,
while still benefiting from Spring-managed transactions, dependency injection, and transparent
exception conversion (if desired) to Springs custom exception hierarchies.

20.3 Hibernate
We will start with a coverage of Hibernate 5 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 4.0, Spring requires Hibernate 3.6 or later. Note that the Hibernate team stopped
supporting Hibernate 3 years ago and even phased out support for Hibernate 4.x in late 2015. We
therefore recommend Hibernate 5.0 and higher from a 2016+ perspective.

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

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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.hibernate5.LocalSessionFactoryBean">

<property name="dataSource" ref="myDataSource"/>
<property name="mappingResources">
<list>
<value>product.hbm.xml</value>
</list>
</property>
<property name="hibernateProperties">
<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 Springs JndiObjectFactoryBean /

<jee:jndi-lookup> to retrieve and expose it. However, that is typically not common outside of an
EJB context.

Implementing DAOs based on plain Hibernate API

Hibernate has a feature called contextual sessions, wherein Hibernate itself manages one current
Session per transaction. This is roughly equivalent to Springs synchronization of one Hibernate
Session per transaction. A corresponding DAO implementation resembles the following example,
based on the plain Hibernate API:

public class ProductDaoImpl implements ProductDao {

private SessionFactory sessionFactory;

public void setSessionFactory(SessionFactory sessionFactory) {

this.sessionFactory = sessionFactory;
}

public Collection loadProductsByCategory(String category) {

return this.sessionFactory.getCurrentSession()
.createQuery("from test.Product product where product.category=?")
.setParameter(0, category)
.list();
}
}

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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 Hibernates 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 Springs 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 Hibernates 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, Springs LocalSessionFactoryBean supports Hibernates

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 Springs
JtaTransactionManager, EJB container managed transactions (CMTs), or JTA.

In summary: you can implement DAOs based on the plain Hibernate API, while still being able to
participate in Spring-managed transactions.

Declarative transaction demarcation

We recommend that you use Springs 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 17.5, Declarative transaction
management if you have not done so.

You may annotate the service layer with @Transactional annotations and instruct the Spring
container to find these annotations and provide transactional semantics for these annotated methods.

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public class ProductServiceImpl implements ProductService {

private ProductDao productDao;

public void setProductDao(ProductDao productDao) {

this.productDao = productDao;
}

@Transactional
public void increasePriceOfAllProductsInCategory(final String category) {
List productsToChange = this.productDao.loadProductsByCategory(category);
// ...
}

@Transactional(readOnly = true)
public List<Product> findAllProducts() {
return this.productDao.findAllProducts();
}

All you need to set up in the container is the PlatformTransactionManager implementation as a

bean as well as a "<tx:annotation-driven/>" entry, opting into @Transactional processing at runtime.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<!-- SessionFactory, DataSource, etc. omitted -->

<bean id="transactionManager"
class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate5.HibernateTransactionManager">
<property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory"/>
</bean>

<tx:annotation-driven/>

<bean id="myProductService" class="product.SimpleProductService">

<property name="productDao" ref="myProductDao"/>
</bean>

</beans>

Programmatic transaction demarcation

You can demarcate transactions in a higher level of the application, on top of such lower-level 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:

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<beans>

<bean id="myTxManager" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate5.HibernateTransactionManager">

<property name="sessionFactory" ref="mySessionFactory"/>
</bean>

<bean id="myProductService" class="product.ProductServiceImpl">

<property name="transactionManager" ref="myTxManager"/>
<property name="productDao" ref="myProductDao"/>
</bean>

</beans>

public class ProductServiceImpl implements ProductService {

private TransactionTemplate transactionTemplate;

private ProductDao productDao;

public void setTransactionManager(PlatformTransactionManager transactionManager) {

this.transactionTemplate = new TransactionTemplate(transactionManager);
}

public void setProductDao(ProductDao productDao) {

this.productDao = productDao;
}

public void increasePriceOfAllProductsInCategory(final String category) {

this.transactionTemplate.execute(new TransactionCallbackWithoutResult() {
public void doInTransactionWithoutResult(TransactionStatus status) {
List productsToChange = this.productDao.loadProductsByCategory(category);
// do the price increase...
}
});
}
}

Springs 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.

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 Springs 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

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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.

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.

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 Hibernates JCA connector
provides the added value of participating in the Java EE servers management infrastructure, but does
not add actual value beyond that.

Springs 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, Springs 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 Springs 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 Springs
HibernateTransactionManager or JtaTransactionManager. You get all of the benefits,
including proper transactional JVM-level caching and distributed transactions, without the inconvenience

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of container deployment. JNDI registration of a Hibernate SessionFactory through the JCA connector
only adds value when used in conjunction with EJBs.

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 Springs
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
Springs 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 Hibernates
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:

The JTA transaction commits.

Springs JtaTransactionManager is synchronized to the JTA transaction, so it is called back

through an afterCompletion callback by the JTA transaction manager.

Among other activities, this synchronization can trigger a callback by Spring to Hibernate, through
Hibernates 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.

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:

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the JTA transaction is ready to commit.

Springs JtaTransactionManager is synchronized to the JTA transaction, so the transaction is

called back through a beforeCompletion callback by the JTA transaction manager.

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.

The JTA transaction commits.

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.

20.4 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.

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 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>

<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.

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Springs standard JndiObjectFactoryBean or <jee:jndi-lookup> 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 the section called Comparing container-managed and locally defined resources for a
discussion; the arguments there apply to JDO as well.

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:

public class ProductDaoImpl implements ProductDao {

private PersistenceManagerFactory persistenceManagerFactory;

public void setPersistenceManagerFactory(PersistenceManagerFactory pmf) {

this.persistenceManagerFactory = pmf;
}

public Collection loadProductsByCategory(String category) {

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();
}
}
}

<beans>

<bean id="myProductDao" class="product.ProductDaoImpl">

<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>

<bean id="myProductDao" class="product.ProductDaoImpl">

<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

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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:

public class ProductDaoImpl implements ProductDao {

private PersistenceManagerFactory persistenceManagerFactory;

public void setPersistenceManagerFactory(PersistenceManagerFactory pmf) {

this.persistenceManagerFactory = pmf;
}

public Collection loadProductsByCategory(String category) {

PersistenceManager pm = this.persistenceManagerFactory.getPersistenceManager();
Query query = pm.newQuery(Product.class, "category = pCategory");
query.declareParameters("String pCategory");
return query.execute(category);
}
}

With such DAOs that rely on active transactions, it is recommended that you enforce active transactions
through turning off TransactionAwarePersistenceManagerFactoryProxys `allowCreate
flag:

<beans>

<bean id="myPmfProxy"
class="org.springframework.orm.jdo.TransactionAwarePersistenceManagerFactoryProxy">
<property name="targetPersistenceManagerFactory" ref="myPmf"/>
<property name="allowCreate" value="false"/>
</bean>

<bean id="myProductDao" class="product.ProductDaoImpl">

<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
JDOs 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 Springs
DataAccessException (if desired).

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Transaction management

Note

You are strongly encouraged to read Section 17.5, Declarative transaction management if you
have not done so, to get a more detailed coverage of Springs declarative transaction support.

To execute service operations within transactions, you can use Springs common declarative transaction
facilities. For example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<bean id="myTxManager" class="org.springframework.orm.jdo.JdoTransactionManager">

<property name="persistenceManagerFactory" ref="myPmf"/>
</bean>

<bean id="myProductService" class="product.ProductServiceImpl">

<property name="productDao" ref="myProductDao"/>
</bean>

<tx:advice id="txAdvice" transaction-manager="txManager">

<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>

<aop:config>
<aop:pointcut id="productServiceMethods"
expression="execution(* product.ProductService.*(..))"/>
<aop:advisor advice-ref="txAdvice" pointcut-ref="productServiceMethods"/>
</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 Springs JdoTransactionManager, but it is necessary to participate in JTA
transactions, whether driven by Springs 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.

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JdoDialect
As an advanced feature, both LocalPersistenceManagerFactoryBean and
JdoTransactionManager support a custom JdoDialect that can be passed into the jdoDialect
bean property. 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 javadocs for more details on its operations and how to use them within Springs
JDO support.

20.5 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.

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 stand-alone 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 JPAs 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.

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Obtaining an EntityManagerFactory from JNDI

Note

Use this option when deploying to a Java EE server. Check your servers documentation on how
to deploy a custom JPA provider into your server, allowing for a different provider than the servers
default.

Obtaining an EntityManagerFactory from JNDI (for example in a Java EE 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 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 (byte-code
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 servers 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 fine-
grained 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>

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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/> shortcut indicates that no scanning for annotated

entity classes is supposed to occur. An explicit 'true' value specified - <exclude-
unlisted-classes>true</exclude-unlisted-classes/> - also means no scan.
<exclude-unlisted-classes>false</exclude-unlisted-classes/> does trigger a
scan; however, it is recommended to 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 byte-code transformation.

This option may conflict with the built-in JPA capabilities of a Java EE server. In a full Java EE
environment, consider obtaining your EntityManagerFactory from JNDI. Alternatively, specify
a custom persistenceXmlLocation on your LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean
definition, for example, META-INF/my-persistence.xml, and only include a descriptor with that name
in your application jar files. Because the Java EE server only looks for default META-INF/
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.)

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.

The LoadTimeWeaver interface is a Spring-provided 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 an 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 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, 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.

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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, GlassFish, Tomcat, Resin, JBoss or VM agent) and automatic propagation of the
weaver to all weaver-aware beans:

<context:load-time-weaver/>
<bean id="emf" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean">
...
</bean>

However, if needed, one can manually specify a dedicated weaver through the loadTimeWeaver
property:

<bean id="emf" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean">

<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>
<!-- if no datasource is specified, use this one -->
<property name="defaultDataSource" ref="remoteDataSource"/>
</bean>

<bean id="emf" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean">

<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.

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Implementing DAOs based on JPA: EntityManagerFactory and

EntityManager

Note

Although EntityManagerFactory instances are thread-safe, EntityManager instances are

not. The injected JPA EntityManager behaves like an EntityManager fetched from an
application servers 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:

public class ProductDaoImpl implements ProductDao {

private EntityManagerFactory emf;

@PersistenceUnit
public void setEntityManagerFactory(EntityManagerFactory emf) {
this.emf = emf;
}

public Collection loadProductsByCategory(String category) {

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 post-processor for JPA annotations -->

<bean class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.support.PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor"/>

<bean id="myProductDao" class="product.ProductDaoImpl"/>

</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.

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<beans>

<!-- post-processors for all standard config annotations -->

<context:annotation-config/>

<bean id="myProductDao" class="product.ProductDaoImpl"/>

</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:

public class ProductDaoImpl implements ProductDao {

@PersistenceContext
private EntityManager em;

public Collection loadProductsByCategory(String category) {

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.

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 platform, they are used for dependency declaration and not for resource injection.

The injected EntityManager is Spring-managed (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.

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Spring-driven JPA transactions

Note

You are strongly encouraged to read Section 17.5, Declarative transaction management if you
have not done so, to get a more detailed coverage of Springs declarative transaction support.

The recommended strategy for JPA is local transactions via JPAs native transaction support. Springs
JpaTransactionManager provides many capabilities known from local JDBC transactions, such
as transaction-specific isolation levels and resource-level read-only optimizations, against any regular
JDBC connection pool (no XA requirement).

Spring JPA also allows a configured JpaTransactionManager to expose a JPA transaction to

JDBC access code that accesses the same DataSource, provided that the registered JpaDialect
supports retrieval of the underlying JDBC Connection. Out of the box, Spring provides dialects for
the EclipseLink, Hibernate and OpenJPA JPA implementations. See the next section for details on the
JpaDialect mechanism.

JpaDialect and JpaVendorAdapter

As an advanced feature JpaTransactionManager and subclasses of

AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean support a custom JpaDialect, to be passed into the
jpaDialect bean property. 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.

Tip

As an even broader provider adaptation facility primarily for Springs full-featured

LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean setup, JpaVendorAdapter combines
the capabilities of JpaDialect with other provider-specific defaults. Specifying a
HibernateJpaVendorAdapter or EclipseLinkJpaVendorAdapter is the most convenient
way of auto-configuring an EntityManagerFactory setup for Hibernate or EclipseLink,
respectively. Note that those provider adapters are primarily designed for use with Spring-driven
transaction management, i.e. for use with JpaTransactionManager.

See the JpaDialect and JpaVendorAdapter javadocs for more details of its operations and how
they are used within Springs JPA support.

Setting up JPA with JTA transaction management

As an alternative to JpaTransactionManager, Spring also allows for multi-resource transaction

coordination via JTA, either in a Java EE environment or with a standalone transaction

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coordinator such as Atomikos. Aside from choosing Springs JtaTransactionManager instead of

JpaTransactionManager, there are a few further steps to take:

The underlying JDBC connection pools need to be XA-capable and integrated with your transaction
coordinator. This is usually straightforward in a Java EE environment, simply exposing a different
kind of DataSource via JNDI. Check your application server documentation for details. Analogously,
a standalone transaction coordinator usually comes with special XA-integrated DataSource
implementations; again, check its docs.

The JPA EntityManagerFactory setup needs to be configured for JTA. This is

provider-specific, typically via special properties to be specified as "jpaProperties" on
LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean. In the case of Hibernate, these properties are
even version-specific; please check your Hibernate documentation for details.

Springs HibernateJpaVendorAdapter enforces certain Spring-oriented defaults such

as the connection release mode "on-close" which matches Hibernates own default in
Hibernate 5.0 but not anymore in 5.1/5.2. For a JTA setup, either do not declare
HibernateJpaVendorAdapter to begin with, or turn off its prepareConnection
flag. Alternatively, set Hibernate 5.2s "hibernate.connection.handling_mode" property to
"DELAYED_ACQUISITION_AND_RELEASE_AFTER_STATEMENT" to restore Hibernates own
default. See the section called Spurious application server warnings with Hibernate for a related
note about WebLogic.

Alternatively, consider obtaining the EntityManagerFactory from your application server itself, i.e.
via a JNDI lookup instead of a locally declared LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean.
A server-provided EntityManagerFactory might require special definitions in your server
configuration, making the deployment less portable, but will be set up for the servers JTA environment
out of the box.

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21. Marshalling XML using O/X Mappers

21.1 Introduction
In this chapter, we will describe Springs 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
Springs 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
Springs 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.

21.2 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.

Marshaller
Spring abstracts all marshalling operations behind the org.springframework.oxm.Marshaller
interface, the main method of which is shown below.

public interface Marshaller {

/**
* Marshal the object graph with the given root into the provided Result.
*/
void marshal(Object graph, Result result) throws XmlMappingException, IOException;
}

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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.

Unmarshaller

Similar to the Marshaller, there is the org.springframework.oxm.Unmarshaller interface.

public interface Unmarshaller {

/**
* Unmarshal 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.

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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

21.3 Using Marshaller and Unmarshaller

Springs 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.

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import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource;

import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.oxm.Marshaller;
import 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>

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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:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<settings foo-enabled="false"/>

21.4 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:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

21.5 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 21.2, Marshaller and Unmarshaller. The
corresponding integration classes reside in the org.springframework.oxm.jaxb package.

Jaxb2Marshaller

The Jaxb2Marshaller class implements both the Spring Marshaller and Unmarshaller
interface. It requires a context path to operate, which you can set using the contextPath property. The

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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>

XML Schema-based Configuration

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 class-to-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

21.6 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.

CastorMarshaller

As with JAXB, the CastorMarshaller implements both the Marshaller and Unmarshaller
interface. It can be wired up as follows:

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<beans>
<bean id="castorMarshaller" class="org.springframework.oxm.castor.CastorMarshaller" />
...
</beans>

Mapping

Although it is possible to rely on Castors 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>

XML Schema-based Configuration

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.xml"/>

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.

Available attributes are:

Attribute Description Required

id the id of the marshaller no

encoding the encoding to use for no

unmarshalling from XML

target-class a Java class name for a no

POJO for which an XML
class descriptor is available
(as generated through code
generation)

target-package a Java package name no

that identifies a package
that contains POJOs and
their corresponding Castor
XML descriptor classes (as
generated through code
generation from XML schemas)

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Attribute Description Required

mapping-location location of a Castor XML no

mapping file

21.7 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.

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.

XML Schema-based Configuration

The xmlbeans-marshaller tag configures a

org.springframework.oxm.xmlbeans.XmlBeansMarshaller. Here is an example:

<oxm:xmlbeans-marshaller id="marshaller"/>

Available attributes are:

Attribute Description Required

id the id of the marshaller no

options the bean name of the no

XmlOptions that is to be used
for this marshaller. Typically a
XmlOptionsFactoryBean
definition

21.8 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

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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.

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>
...
</beans>

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.

XML Schema-based Configuration

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"/>

Available attributes are:

Attribute Description Required

id the id of the marshaller no

target-class the target class for this yes

marshaller

bindingName the binding name used by this no

marshaller

21.9 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.

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 analias map, which consists of string aliases
mapped to classes:

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<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 lead to unsafe
Java serialization effects. As such, it is not recommended to use the XStreamMarshaller to
unmarshal XML from external sources (i.e. the Web), as this can result in security vulnerabilities.

If you choose to use the XStreamMarshaller to unmarshal XML from an external source, set
the supportedClasses property on the XStreamMarshaller, like as follows:

<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.

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This part of the reference documentation covers Spring Frameworks support for the presentation tier
(and specifically web-based presentation tiers) including support for WebSocket-style messaging in web
applications.

Spring Frameworks own web framework, Spring Web MVC, is covered in the first couple of chapters.
Subsequent chapters are concerned with Spring Frameworks integration with other web technologies,
such as JSF.

Following that is coverage of Spring Frameworks MVC portlet framework.

The section then concludes with comprehensive coverage of the Spring Framework Chapter 26,
WebSocket Support (including Section 26.4, STOMP Over WebSocket Messaging Architecture).

Chapter 22, Web MVC framework

Chapter 23, View technologies

Chapter 24, Integrating with other web frameworks

Chapter 25, Portlet MVC Framework

Chapter 26, WebSocket Support

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22. Web MVC framework

22.1 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, time
zone 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.

"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

Bob Martin, The Open-Closed 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
the section called Understanding AOP proxies for more information on AOP proxies and why
you cannot add advice to final methods.

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. Springs 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 do not need to 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.

Springs 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 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 format, such as JSP
request attributes, a Velocity template model.

Features of Spring Web MVC

Spring Web Flow

Spring Web Flow (SWF) aims to be the best solution for the management of web application page
flow.

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SWF integrates with existing frameworks like Spring MVC 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 self-contained 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.

Springs 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.

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, time zone 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 Chapter 43, spring JSP
Tag Library

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 Chapter 44, spring-form JSP
Tag Library

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 the section called Request, session, global session,
application, and WebSocket scopes

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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, for example with JSF.

If you do not want to use Springs 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 Springs respective helper method) from within any action object. No
"plug-ins" are involved, so no dedicated integration is necessary. From the web layers point of view,
you simply use Spring as a library, with the root application context instance as the entry point.

Your registered beans and Springs services can be at your fingertips even without Springs Web MVC.
Spring does not compete with other web frameworks 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.

22.2 The DispatcherServlet

Springs 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. Springs 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).

Figure 22.1. The request processing workflow in Spring Web MVC (high level)

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The DispatcherServlet is an actual Servlet (it inherits from the HttpServlet base class),
and as such is declared in your web application. You need to map requests that you want the
DispatcherServlet to handle, by using a URL mapping. Here is a standard Java EE Servlet
configuration in a Servlet 3.0+ environment:

public class MyWebApplicationInitializer implements WebApplicationInitializer {

@Override
public void onStartup(ServletContext container) {
ServletRegistration.Dynamic registration = container.addServlet("example", new
DispatcherServlet());
registration.setLoadOnStartup(1);
registration.addMapping("/example/*");
}

In the preceding example, all requests starting with /example will be handled by the
DispatcherServlet instance named 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 interface named
AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer makes it even easier to register
the DispatcherServlet by simply specifying its servlet mapping and listing configuration classes - its
even the recommended way to set up your Spring MVC application. See Code-based Servlet container
initialization for more details.

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:

Below is the web.xml equivalent of the above code based example:

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

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

</web-app>

As detailed in Section 7.15, 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. The root WebApplicationContext should contain all the infrastructure
beans that should be shared between your other contexts and Servlet instances. 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.

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Figure 22.2. Typical 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-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</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 /WEB-INF/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).

It is also possible to have just one root context for single DispatcherServlet scenarios.

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Figure 22.3. Single root context in Spring Web MVC

This can be configured by setting an empty contextConfigLocation servlet init parameter, as shown
below:

<web-app>
<context-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/root-context.xml</param-value>
</context-param>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value></param-value>
</init-param>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<listener>
<listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>
</web-app>

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

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is capable of resolving themes (see Section 22.9, 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.

Note that we can achieve the same with java-based configurations:

public class GolfingWebAppInitializer extends AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer {

@Override
protected Class<?>[] getRootConfigClasses() {
// GolfingAppConfig defines beans that would be in root-context.xml
return new Class[] { GolfingAppConfig.class };
}

@Override
protected Class<?>[] getServletConfigClasses() {
// GolfingWebConfig defines beans that would be in golfing-servlet.xml
return new Class[] { GolfingWebConfig.class };
}

@Override
protected String[] getServletMappings() {
return new String[] { "/golfing/*" };
}

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 dont need to do that
initially since Spring MVC maintains a list of default beans to use if you dont configure any. More on that
in the next section. First see the table below listing the special bean types the DispatcherServlet
relies on.
Table 22.1. 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.

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Bean type Explanation

ViewResolver Resolves logical String-based view names to

actual View types.

LocaleResolver & LocaleContextResolver Resolves the locale a client is using and possibly
their time zone, 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.

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 youll need
to customize one or more of the properties these beans provide. For example its 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 22.16, Configuring Spring MVC youll 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.

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:

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.

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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.

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.

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 22.10, Springs multipart (file upload) support for further information
about multipart handling.

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.

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 22.2. DispatcherServlet initialization parameters

Parameter Explanation

contextClass Class that implements

WebApplicationContext, which instantiates
the context used by this Servlet. By default, the
XmlWebApplicationContext is used.

contextConfigLocation String that is passed to the context instance

(specified by contextClass) to indicate where
context(s) can be found. The string consists
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.

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22.3 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 spring-projects Org on Github, 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.

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
dispatchers 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:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<context:component-scan base-package="org.springframework.samples.petclinic.web"/>

<!-- ... -->

</beans>

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(path = "/{day}", method = RequestMethod.GET)

public Map<String, Appointment> getForDay(@PathVariable @DateTimeFormat(iso=ISO.DATE) Date day,
Model model) {
return appointmentBook.getAppointmentsForDay(day);
}

@RequestMapping(path = "/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";
}
}

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In the above example, @RequestMapping is used in a number of places. The first usage is on
the type (class) level, which indicates that all handler methods in 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 add() 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
section called URI Template Patterns).

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());
}

The above example does not specify GET vs. PUT, POST, and so forth, because @RequestMapping
maps all HTTP methods by default. Use @RequestMapping(method=GET) or @GetMapping to
narrow the mapping.

Composed @RequestMapping Variants

Spring Framework 4.3 introduces the following method-level composed variants of the
@RequestMapping annotation that help to simplify mappings for common HTTP methods and better
express the semantics of the annotated handler method. For example, a @GetMapping can be read
as a GET @RequestMapping.

@GetMapping

@PostMapping

@PutMapping

@DeleteMapping

@PatchMapping

The following example shows a modified version of the AppointmentsController from the previous
section that has been simplified with composed @RequestMapping annotations.

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@Controller
@RequestMapping("/appointments")
public class AppointmentsController {

private final AppointmentBook appointmentBook;

@Autowired
public AppointmentsController(AppointmentBook appointmentBook) {
this.appointmentBook = appointmentBook;
}

@GetMapping
public Map<String, Appointment> get() {
return appointmentBook.getAppointmentsForToday();
}

@GetMapping("/{day}")
public Map<String, Appointment> getForDay(@PathVariable @DateTimeFormat(iso=ISO.DATE) Date day,
Model model) {
return appointmentBook.getAppointmentsForDay(day);
}

@GetMapping("/new")
public AppointmentForm getNewForm() {
return new AppointmentForm();
}

@PostMapping
public String add(@Valid AppointmentForm appointment, BindingResult result) {
if (result.hasErrors()) {
return "appointments/new";
}
appointmentBook.addAppointment(appointment);
return "redirect:/appointments";
}
}

@Controller and AOP Proxying

In some cases a controller may need to be decorated with an AOP proxy at runtime. One example is if
you choose to have @Transactional annotations directly on the controller. When this is the case, for
controllers specifically, we recommend using class-based proxying. This is typically the default choice
with controllers. However if a controller must implement an interface that is not a Spring Context callback
(e.g. InitializingBean, *Aware, etc), you may need to explicitly configure class-based proxying.
For example with <tx:annotation-driven/>, change to <tx:annotation-driven proxy-
target-class="true"/>.

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

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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 dont 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 youll 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:

@GetMapping("/owners/{ownerId}")
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:

@GetMapping("/owners/{ownerId}")
public String findOwner(@PathVariable("ownerId") String theOwner, Model model) {
// implementation omitted
}

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Or if the URI template variable name matches the method argument name you can omit that detail.
As long as your code is compiled with debugging information or the -parameters compiler flag
on Java 8, Spring MVC will match the method argument name to the URI template variable name:

@GetMapping("/owners/{ownerId}")
public String findOwner(@PathVariable String ownerId, Model model) {
// implementation omitted
}

A method can have any number of @PathVariable annotations:

@GetMapping("/owners/{ownerId}/pets/{petId}")
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 method 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) {
// implementation omitted
}

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 and all composed @RequestMapping
variants also support Ant-style path patterns (for example, /myPath/*.do). A combination of URI
template variables and Ant-style globs is also supported (e.g. /owners/*/pets/{petId}).

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Path Pattern Comparison

When a URL matches multiple patterns, a sort is used to find the most specific match.

A pattern with a lower count of URI variables and wild cards is considered more specific. For example
/hotels/{hotel}/* has 1 URI variable and 1 wild card and is considered more specific than /
hotels/{hotel}/** which as 1 URI variable and 2 wild cards.

If two patterns have the same count, the one that is longer is considered more specific. For example /
foo/bar* is longer and considered more specific than /foo/*.

When two patterns have the same count and length, the pattern with fewer wild cards is considered
more specific. For example /hotels/{hotel} is more specific than /hotels/*.

There are also some additional special rules:

The default mapping pattern /** is less specific than any other pattern. For example /api/{a}/
{b}/{c} is more specific.

A prefix pattern such as /public/** is less specific than any other pattern that doesnt contain
double wildcards. For example /public/path3/{a}/{b}/{c} is more specific.

For the full details see AntPatternComparator in AntPathMatcher. Note that the PathMatcher can
be customized (see the section called Path Matching in the section on configuring Spring MVC).

Path 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 javadocs of the PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer class.

Suffix Pattern Matching

By default Spring MVC performs ".*" suffix pattern matching so that a controller mapped to /person
is also implicitly mapped to /person.*. This makes it easy to request different representations of a
resource through the URL path (e.g. /person.pdf, /person.xml).

Suffix pattern matching can be turned off or restricted to a set of path extensions explicitly registered
for content negotiation purposes. This is generally recommended to minimize ambiguity with common
request mappings such as /person/{id} where a dot might not represent a file extension, e.g.
/person/joe@email.com vs /person/joe@email.com.json. Furthermore as explained in the
note below suffix pattern matching as well as content negotiation may be used in some circumstances
to attempt malicious attacks and there are good reasons to restrict them meaningfully.

See the section called Path Matching for suffix pattern matching configuration and also the section
called Content Negotiation for content negotiation configuration.

Suffix Pattern Matching and RFD

Reflected file download (RFD) attack was first described in a paper by Trustwave in 2014. The attack
is similar to XSS in that it relies on input (e.g. query parameter, URI variable) being reflected in the
response. However instead of inserting JavaScript into HTML, an RFD attack relies on the browser
switching to perform a download and treating the response as an executable script if double-clicked
based on the file extension (e.g. .bat, .cmd).

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In Spring MVC @ResponseBody and ResponseEntity methods are at risk because they can render
different content types which clients can request including via URL path extensions. Note however that
neither disabling suffix pattern matching nor disabling the use of path extensions for content negotiation
purposes alone are effective at preventing RFD attacks.

For comprehensive protection against RFD, prior to rendering the response body Spring MVC adds a
Content-Disposition:inline;filename=f.txt header to suggest a fixed and safe download
file filename. This is done only if the URL path contains a file extension that is neither whitelisted nor
explicitly registered for content negotiation purposes. However it may potentially have side effects when
URLs are typed directly into a browser.

Many common path extensions are whitelisted by default. Furthermore REST API calls are typically
not meant to be used as URLs directly in browsers. Nevertheless applications that use custom
HttpMessageConverter implementations can explicitly register file extensions for content negotiation
and the Content-Disposition header will not be added for such extensions. See the section called
Content Negotiation.

Note

This was originally introduced as part of work for CVE-2015-5211. Below are additional
recommendations from the report:

Encode rather than escape JSON responses. This is also an OWASP XSS recommendation.
For an example of how to do that with Spring see spring-jackson-owasp.

Configure suffix pattern matching to be turned off or restricted to explicitly registered suffixes
only.

Configure content negotiation with the properties "useJaf" and

"ignoreUnknownPathExtensions" set to false which would result in a 406 response for URLs
with unknown extensions. Note however that this may not be an option if URLs are naturally
expected to have a dot towards the end.

Add X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff header to responses. Spring Security 4 does

this by default.

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":

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// GET /pets/42;q=11;r=22

@GetMapping("/pets/{petId}")
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

@GetMapping("/owners/{ownerId}/pets/{petId}")
public void findPet(
@MatrixVariable(name="q", pathVar="ownerId") int q1,
@MatrixVariable(name="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

@GetMapping("/pets/{petId}")
public void findPet(@MatrixVariable(required=false, 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

@GetMapping("/owners/{ownerId}/pets/{petId}")
public void findPet(
@MatrixVariable MultiValueMap<String, String> matrixVars,
@MatrixVariable(pathVar="petId"") MultiValueMap<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 true.

Tip

The MVC Java config and the MVC namespace both provide options for enabling the use of matrix
variables.

If you are using Java config, The Advanced Customizations with MVC Java Config section
describes how the RequestMappingHandlerMapping can be customized.

In the MVC namespace, the <mvc:annotation-driven> element has an enable-matrix-

variables attribute that should be set to true. By default it is set to false.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
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
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd">

<mvc:annotation-driven enable-matrix-variables="true"/>

</beans>

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:

@PostMapping(path = "/pets", consumes = "application/json")

public void addPet(@RequestBody Pet pet, Model model) {
// implementation omitted
}

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. Also consider using constants provided in
MediaType such as APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE and APPLICATION_JSON_UTF8_VALUE.

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:

@GetMapping(path = "/pets/{petId}", produces = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_UTF8_VALUE)

@ResponseBody
public Pet getPet(@PathVariable String petId, Model model) {
// implementation omitted
}

Note

Be aware that the media type specified in the produces condition can also optionally specify a
character set. For example, in the code snippet above we specify the same media type than the
default one configured in MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter, including the UTF-8
charset.

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.

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Also consider using constants provided in MediaType such as APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE and

APPLICATION_JSON_UTF8_VALUE.

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("/owners/{ownerId}")
public class RelativePathUriTemplateController {

@GetMapping(path = "/pets/{petId}", params = "myParam=myValue")

public void findPet(@PathVariable String ownerId, @PathVariable String petId, Model model) {
// implementation omitted
}

The same can be done to test for request header presence/absence or to match based on a specific
request header value:

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/owners/{ownerId}")
public class RelativePathUriTemplateController {

@GetMapping(path = "/pets", headers = "myHeader=myValue")

public void findPet(@PathVariable String ownerId, @PathVariable String petId, Model model) {
// implementation omitted
}

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.

HTTP HEAD and HTTP OPTIONS

@RequestMapping methods mapped to "GET" are also implicitly mapped to "HEAD", i.e. there is no
need to have "HEAD" explicitly declared. An HTTP HEAD request is processed as if it were an HTTP
GET except instead of writing the body only the number of bytes are counted and the "Content-Length"
header set.

@RequestMapping methods have built-in support for HTTP OPTIONS. By default an HTTP OPTIONS
request is handled by setting the "Allow" response header to the HTTP methods explicitly declared on
all @RequestMapping methods with matching URL patterns. When no HTTP methods are explicitly

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declared the "Allow" header is set to "GET,HEAD,POST,PUT,PATCH,DELETE,OPTIONS". Ideally

always declare the HTTP method(s) that an @RequestMapping method is intended to handle, or
alternatively use one of the dedicated composed @RequestMapping variants (see the section called
Composed @RequestMapping Variants).

Although not necessary an @RequestMapping method can be mapped to and handle either HTTP
HEAD or HTTP OPTIONS, or both.

Defining @RequestMapping handler methods

@RequestMapping handler methods can have 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 being 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 / LocaleContextResolver in an MVC
environment.

java.util.TimeZone (Java 6+) / java.time.ZoneId (on Java 8) for the time zone associated
with the current request, as determined by a LocaleContextResolver.

java.io.InputStream / java.io.Reader for access to the requests content. This value is the
raw InputStream/Reader as exposed by the Servlet API.

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java.io.OutputStream / java.io.Writer for generating the responses content. This value is

the raw OutputStream/Writer as exposed by the Servlet API.

org.springframework.http.HttpMethod for the HTTP request method.

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. See the section called
Mapping request header attributes with the @RequestHeader annotation.

@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/form-data" request

part. See the section called Handling a file upload request from programmatic clients and
Section 22.10, Springs multipart (file upload) support.

@SessionAttribute annotated parameters for access to existing, permanent session attributes

(e.g. user authentication object) as opposed to model attributes temporarily stored in the session as
part of a controller workflow via @SessionAttributes.

@RequestAttribute annotated parameters for access to request attributes.

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). See the section
called Passing Data To the Redirect Target and Section 22.6, Using flash attributes.

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 name - e.g. model attribute

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"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 requests 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 than one model object and Spring will create a
separate BindingResult instance for each of them so the following sample wont work:

Invalid ordering of BindingResult and @ModelAttribute.

@PostMapping
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:

@PostMapping
public String processSubmit(@ModelAttribute("pet") Pet pet, BindingResult result, Model model) { ... }

Note

JDK 1.8s java.util.Optional is supported as a method parameter type with annotations

that have a required attribute (e.g. @RequestParam, @RequestHeader, etc. The use of
java.util.Optional in those cases is equivalent to having required=false.

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
RequestToViewNameTranslator and the model implicitly enriched with command objects and the
results of @ModelAttribute annotated reference data 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).

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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.

An 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.

An HttpHeaders object to return a response with no body.

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.

A ListenableFuture<?> or CompletableFuture<?>/CompletionStage<?> can be returned

when the application wants to produce the value from a thread pool submission.

A ResponseBodyEmitter can be returned to write multiple objects to the response asynchronously;

also supported as the body within a ResponseEntity.

An SseEmitter can be returned to write Server-Sent Events to the response asynchronously; also
supported as the body within a ResponseEntity.

A StreamingResponseBody can be returned to write to the response OutputStream

asynchronously; also supported as the body within a ResponseEntity.

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.

The following code snippet shows the usage:

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@Controller
@RequestMapping("/pets")
@SessionAttributes("pet")
public class EditPetForm {

// ...

@GetMapping
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(name="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.

When an @RequestParam annotation is used on a Map<String, String> or

MultiValueMap<String, String> argument, the map is populated with all request parameters.

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:

@PutMapping("/something")
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
the section called 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

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MVC Java config see the section called 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 the section called 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 placed 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:

@GetMapping("/something")
@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.

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Creating REST Controllers with the @RestController annotation

Its a very common use case to have Controllers implement a REST API, thus serving only JSON, XML
or custom MediaType content. For convenience, instead of annotating all your @RequestMapping
methods with @ResponseBody, you can annotate your controller Class with @RestController.

@RestController is a stereotype annotation that combines @ResponseBody and @Controller.

More than that, it gives more meaning to your Controller and also may carry additional semantics in
future releases of the framework.

As with regular @Controllers, a @RestController may be assisted by @ControllerAdvice

or @RestControllerAdvice beans. See the the section called Advising controllers with
@ControllerAdvice and @RestControllerAdvice section for more details.

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:

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// 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 @ControllerAdvice-annotated class

and such methods apply to many controllers. See the the section called Advising controllers with
@ControllerAdvice and @RestControllerAdvice section for more details.

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 then derived based on view name conventions instead, much like for
methods returning void see the section called The View - RequestToViewNameTranslator.

Using @ModelAttribute 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 arguments 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.

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@PostMapping("/owners/{ownerId}/pets/{petId}/edit")
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 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:

@PutMapping("/accounts/{account}")
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 9, 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:

@PostMapping("/owners/{ownerId}/pets/{petId}/edit")
public String processSubmit(@ModelAttribute("pet") Pet pet, BindingResult result) {

if (result.hasErrors()) {
return "petForm";
}

// ...

With a BindingResult you can check if errors were found in which case its common to render the
same form where the errors can be shown with the help of Springs <errors> form tag.

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Note that in some cases it may be useful to gain access to an attribute in the model without data binding.
For such cases you may inject the Model into the controller or alternatively use the binding flag on
the annotation:

@ModelAttribute
public AccountForm setUpForm() {
return new AccountForm();
}

@ModelAttribute
public Account findAccount(@PathVariable String accountId) {
return accountRepository.findOne(accountId);
}

@PostMapping("update")
public String update(@Valid AccountUpdateForm form, BindingResult result,
@ModelAttribute(binding=false) Account account) {

// ...
}

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:

@PostMapping("/owners/{ownerId}/pets/{petId}/edit")
public String processSubmit(@ModelAttribute("pet") Pet pet, BindingResult result) {

new PetValidator().validate(pet, result);

if (result.hasErrors()) {
return "petForm";
}

// ...

Or you can have validation invoked automatically by adding the JSR-303 @Valid annotation:

@PostMapping("/owners/{ownerId}/pets/{petId}/edit")
public String processSubmit(@Valid @ModelAttribute("pet") Pet pet, BindingResult result) {

if (result.hasErrors()) {
return "petForm";
}

// ...

See Section 9.8, Spring Validation and Chapter 9, 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:

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@Controller
@RequestMapping("/editPet.do")
@SessionAttributes("pet")
public class EditPetForm {
// ...
}

Using @SessionAttribute to access pre-existing global session attributes

If you need access to pre-existing session attributes that are managed globally, i.e. outside the controller
(e.g. by a filter), and may or may not be present use the @SessionAttribute annotation on a method
parameter:

@RequestMapping("/")
public String handle(@SessionAttribute User user) {
// ...
}

For use cases that require adding or removing session attributes

consider injecting org.springframework.web.context.request.WebRequest or
javax.servlet.http.HttpSession into the controller method.

For temporary storage of model attributes in the session as part of a controller workflow consider using
SessionAttributes as described in the section called Using @SessionAttributes to store model
attributes in the HTTP session between requests.

Using @RequestAttribute to access request attributes

Similar to @SessionAttribute the @RequestAttribute annotation can be used to access pre-

existing request attributes created by a filter or interceptor:

@RequestMapping("/")
public String handle(@RequestAttribute Client client) {
// ...
}

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:

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<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-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
</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 localhost:8080
Accept text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9
Accept-Language fr,en-gb;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive 300

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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.

When an @RequestHeader annotation is used on a Map<String, String>,

MultiValueMap<String, String>, or HttpHeaders argument, the map is populated with all
header values.

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) theyre 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 9.6, Spring Field
Formatting).

Customizing WebDataBinder initialization

To customize request parameter binding with PropertyEditors through Springs WebDataBinder, you
can use @InitBinder-annotated methods within your controller, @InitBinder methods within an
@ControllerAdvice class, or provide a custom WebBindingInitializer. See the the section
called Advising controllers with @ControllerAdvice and @RestControllerAdvice section for more
details.

Customizing data binding with @InitBinder

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 methods support, 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.

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The following example demonstrates the use of @InitBinder to configure a CustomDateEditor for
all java.util.Date form properties.

@Controller
public class MyFormController {

@InitBinder
protected void initBinder(WebDataBinder binder) {
SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
dateFormat.setLenient(false);
binder.registerCustomEditor(Date.class, new CustomDateEditor(dateFormat, false));
}

// ...
}

Alternatively, as of Spring 4.2, consider using addCustomFormatter to specify Formatter

implementations instead of PropertyEditor instances. This is particularly useful if you happen to
have a Formatter-based setup in a shared FormattingConversionService as well, with the same
approach to be reused for controller-specific tweaking of the binding rules.

@Controller
public class MyFormController {

@InitBinder
protected void initBinder(WebDataBinder binder) {
binder.addCustomFormatter(new DateFormatter("yyyy-MM-dd"));
}

// ...
}

Configuring a custom WebBindingInitializer

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>

@InitBinder methods can also be defined in an @ControllerAdvice-annotated class in which case

they apply to matching controllers. This provides an alternative to using a WebBindingInitializer.
See the the section called Advising controllers with @ControllerAdvice and @RestControllerAdvice
section for more details.

Advising controllers with @ControllerAdvice and @RestControllerAdvice

The @ControllerAdvice annotation is a component annotation allowing implementation classes

to be auto-detected through classpath scanning. It is automatically enabled when using the MVC
namespace or the MVC Java config.

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Classes annotated with @ControllerAdvice can contain @ExceptionHandler, @InitBinder,

and @ModelAttribute annotated methods, and these methods will apply to @RequestMapping
methods across all controller hierarchies as opposed to the controller hierarchy within which they are
declared.

@RestControllerAdvice is an alternative where @ExceptionHandler methods assume

@ResponseBody semantics by default.

Both @ControllerAdvice and @RestControllerAdvice can target a subset of controllers:

// Target all Controllers annotated with @RestController

@ControllerAdvice(annotations = RestController.class)
public class AnnotationAdvice {}

// Target all Controllers within specific packages

@ControllerAdvice("org.example.controllers")
public class BasePackageAdvice {}

// Target all Controllers assignable to specific classes

@ControllerAdvice(assignableTypes = {ControllerInterface.class, AbstractController.class})
public class AssignableTypesAdvice {}

Check out the @ControllerAdvice documentation for more details.

Jackson Serialization View Support

It can sometimes be useful to filter contextually the object that will be serialized to the HTTP response
body. In order to provide such capability, Spring MVC has built-in support for rendering with Jacksons
Serialization Views.

To use it with an @ResponseBody controller method or controller methods that return

ResponseEntity, simply add the @JsonView annotation with a class argument specifying the view
class or interface to be used:

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@RestController
public class UserController {

@GetMapping("/user")
@JsonView(User.WithoutPasswordView.class)
public User getUser() {
return new User("eric", "7!jd#h23");
}
}

public class User {

public interface WithoutPasswordView {};

public interface WithPasswordView extends WithoutPasswordView {};

private String username;

private String password;

public User() {
}

public User(String username, String password) {

this.username = username;
this.password = password;
}

@JsonView(WithoutPasswordView.class)
public String getUsername() {
return this.username;
}

@JsonView(WithPasswordView.class)
public String getPassword() {
return this.password;
}
}

Note

Note that despite @JsonView allowing for more than one class to be specified, the use on a
controller method is only supported with exactly one class argument. Consider the use of a
composite interface if you need to enable multiple views.

For controllers relying on view resolution, simply add the serialization view class to the model:

@Controller
public class UserController extends AbstractController {

@GetMapping("/user")
public String getUser(Model model) {
model.addAttribute("user", new User("eric", "7!jd#h23"));
model.addAttribute(JsonView.class.getName(), User.WithoutPasswordView.class);
return "userView";
}
}

Jackson JSONP Support

In order to enable JSONP support for @ResponseBody and ResponseEntity methods, declare an
@ControllerAdvice bean that extends AbstractJsonpResponseBodyAdvice as shown below
where the constructor argument indicates the JSONP query parameter name(s):

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@ControllerAdvice
public class JsonpAdvice extends AbstractJsonpResponseBodyAdvice {

public JsonpAdvice() {
super("callback");
}
}

For controllers relying on view resolution, JSONP is automatically enabled when the request
has a query parameter named jsonp or callback. Those names can be customized through
jsonpParameterNames property.

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 Spring MVC managed thread. Meanwhile the main Servlet container
thread is exited and 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 using the value returned by the
Callable. Here is an example of such a controller method:

@PostMapping
public Callable<String> processUpload(final MultipartFile file) {

return new Callable<String>() {

public String call() throws Exception {
// ...
return "someView";
}
};

Another option is for the controller method to return an instance of DeferredResult. In this case the
return value will also be produced from any thread, i.e. one that is not managed by Spring MVC. For
example the result may be produced in response to some external event such as a JMS message, a
scheduled task, and so on. Here is an example of such a controller method:

@RequestMapping("/quotes")
@ResponseBody
public DeferredResult<String> quotes() {
DeferredResult<String> deferredResult = new DeferredResult<String>();
// Save the deferredResult somewhere..
return deferredResult;
}

// In some other thread...

deferredResult.setResult(data);

This may be difficult to understand without any knowledge of the Servlet 3.0 asynchronous request
processing features. It would certainly help to read up on that. Here are a few basic facts about the
underlying mechanism:

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 to allow processing to complete later.

The call to request.startAsync() returns AsyncContext which can be used for further control
over async processing. For example it provides the method dispatch, that is similar to a forward from

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the Servlet API except it allows an application to resume request processing on a Servlet container
thread.

The ServletRequest provides access to the current DispatcherType that can be used to
distinguish between processing the initial request, an async dispatch, a forward, and other dispatcher
types.

With the above in mind, the following is the sequence of events for async request processing with a
Callable:

Controller returns a Callable.

Spring MVC starts asynchronous processing and submits the Callable to a TaskExecutor for
processing in a separate thread.

The DispatcherServlet and all Filters exit the Servlet container thread but the response remains
open.

The Callable produces a result and Spring MVC dispatches the request back to the Servlet
container to resume processing.

The DispatcherServlet is invoked again and processing resumes with the asynchronously
produced result from the Callable.

The sequence for DeferredResult is very similar except its up to the application to produce the
asynchronous result from any thread:

Controller returns a DeferredResult and saves it in some in-memory queue or list where it can
be accessed.

Spring MVC starts async processing.

The DispatcherServlet and all configured Filters exit the request processing thread but the
response remains open.

The application sets the DeferredResult from some thread and Spring MVC dispatches the request
back to the Servlet container.

The DispatcherServlet is invoked again and processing resumes with the asynchronously
produced result.

For further background on the motivation for async request processing and when or why to use it please
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 short answer is the same as what happens when a controller method raises an exception.
It goes through the regular exception handling mechanism. The longer explanation is that when a
Callable raises an Exception Spring MVC dispatches to the Servlet container with the Exception
as the result and that leads to resume request processing with the Exception instead of a controller
method return value. When using a DeferredResult you have a choice whether to call setResult
or setErrorResult with an Exception instance.

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Intercepting Async Requests

A HandlerInterceptor can also implement AsyncHandlerInterceptor in order to implement

the afterConcurrentHandlingStarted callback, which is called instead of postHandle and
afterCompletion when asynchronous processing starts.

A HandlerInterceptor can also register a CallableProcessingInterceptor or a

DeferredResultProcessingInterceptor in order to integrate more deeply with the lifecycle
of an asynchronous request and for example handle a timeout event. See the Javadoc of
AsyncHandlerInterceptor for more details.

The DeferredResult type also provides methods such as onTimeout(Runnable) and

onCompletion(Runnable). See the Javadoc of DeferredResult for more details.

When using a Callable you can wrap it with an instance of WebAsyncTask which also provides
registration methods for timeout and completion.

HTTP Streaming

A controller method can use DeferredResult and Callable to produce its return value
asynchronously and that can be used to implement techniques such as long polling where the server
can push an event to the client as soon as possible.

What if you wanted to push multiple events on a single HTTP response? This is a technique related
to "Long Polling" that is known as "HTTP Streaming". Spring MVC makes this possible through the
ResponseBodyEmitter return value type which can be used to send multiple Objects, instead of one
as is normally the case with @ResponseBody, where each Object sent is written to the response with
an HttpMessageConverter.

Here is an example of that:

@RequestMapping("/events")
public ResponseBodyEmitter handle() {
ResponseBodyEmitter emitter = new ResponseBodyEmitter();
// Save the emitter somewhere..
return emitter;
}

// In some other thread

emitter.send("Hello once");

// and again later on

emitter.send("Hello again");

// and done at some point

emitter.complete();

Note that ResponseBodyEmitter can also be used as the body in a ResponseEntity in order to
customize the status and headers of the response.

HTTP Streaming With Server-Sent Events

SseEmitter is a sub-class of ResponseBodyEmitter providing support for Server-Sent Events.

Server-sent events is a just another variation on the same "HTTP Streaming" technique except events
pushed from the server are formatted according to the W3C Server-Sent Events specification.

Server-Sent Events can be used for their intended purpose, that is to push events from the server to
clients. It is quite easy to do in Spring MVC and requires simply returning a value of type SseEmitter.

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Note however that Internet Explorer does not support Server-Sent Events and that for more advanced
web application messaging scenarios such as online games, collaboration, financial applicatinos,
and others its better to consider Springs WebSocket support that includes SockJS-style WebSocket
emulation falling back to a very wide range of browsers (including Internet Explorer) and also higher-
level messaging patterns for interacting with clients through a publish-subscribe model within a more
messaging-centric architecture. For further background on this see the following blog post.

HTTP Streaming Directly To The OutputStream

ResponseBodyEmitter allows sending events by writing Objects to the response through an

HttpMessageConverter. This is probably the most common case, for example when writing
JSON data. However sometimes it is useful to bypass message conversion and write directly to the
response OutputStream for example for a file download. This can be done with the help of the
StreamingResponseBody return value type.

Here is an example of that:

@RequestMapping("/download")
public StreamingResponseBody handle() {
return new StreamingResponseBody() {
@Override
public void writeTo(OutputStream outputStream) throws IOException {
// write...
}
};
}

Note that StreamingResponseBody can also be used as the body in a ResponseEntity in order
to customize the status and headers of the response.

Configuring Asynchronous Request Processing

Servlet Container Configuration

For applications configured with a web.xml be sure to update to version 3.0:

<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
version="3.0">

...

</web-app>

Asynchronous support must be enabled on the DispatcherServlet through the <async-

supported>true</async-supported> sub-element in web.xml. Additionally any Filter that
participates in asyncrequest processing must be configured to support the ASYNC dispatcher type. It
should be safe to enable the ASYNC dispatcher type for all filters provided with the Spring Framework
since they usually extend OncePerRequestFilter and that has runtime checks for whether the filter
needs to be involved in async dispatches or not.

Below is some example web.xml configuration:

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<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
version="3.0">

<filter>
<filter-name>Spring OpenEntityManagerInViewFilter</filter-name>
<filter-class>org.springframework.~.OpenEntityManagerInViewFilter</filter-class>
<async-supported>true</async-supported>
</filter>

<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>Spring OpenEntityManagerInViewFilter</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
<dispatcher>REQUEST</dispatcher>
<dispatcher>ASYNC</dispatcher>
</filter-mapping>

</web-app>

If using Servlet 3, Java based configuration for example via WebApplicationInitializer, youll
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 better AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer which automatically
set those options and make it very easy to register Filter instances.

Spring MVC Configuration

The MVC Java config and the MVC namespace provide options for configuring asynchronous
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.

Testing Controllers
The spring-test module offers first class support for testing annotated controllers. See Section 15.6,
Spring MVC Test Framework.

22.4 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 dont need to do that because the
RequestMappingHandlerMapping automatically looks for @RequestMapping annotations on all

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@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 the section

called 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 class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerMapping">
<property name="interceptors">
<bean class="example.MyInterceptor"/>
</property>
</bean>
<beans>

Intercepting requests with a HandlerInterceptor

Springs 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:

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<beans>
<bean id="handlerMapping"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerMapping">
<property name="interceptors">
<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;
}
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 the section called Enabling the MVC Java Config or the
MVC XML Namespace.

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Note that the postHandle method of HandlerInterceptor is not always ideally suited for use
with @ResponseBody and ResponseEntity methods. In such cases an HttpMessageConverter
writes to and commits the response before postHandle is called which makes it impossible
to change the response, for example to add a header. Instead an application can implement
ResponseBodyAdvice and either declare it as an @ControllerAdvice bean or configure it directly
on RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.

22.5 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 23, 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.

Resolving views with the ViewResolver interface

As discussed in Section 22.3, 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 22.3. 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 Springs XML bean factories. The default
configuration file is /WEB-INF/views.xml.

ResourceBundleViewResolver 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.

UrlBasedViewResolver 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

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ViewResolver Description
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
UrlBasedViewResolver javadocs for details.

VelocityViewResolver / Convenient subclass of

FreeMarkerViewResolver UrlBasedViewResolver that supports
VelocityView (in effect, Velocity templates)
or FreeMarkerView ,respectively, and custom
subclasses of them.

ContentNegotiatingViewResolver Implementation of the ViewResolver interface

that resolves a view based on the request file
name or Accept header. See the section called
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.

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Note

Subclasses of AbstractCachingViewResolver cache view instances that they resolve.

Caching improves performance of certain view technologies. Its 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.

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">

<property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView"/>
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/"/>
<property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/>
</bean>

<bean id="excelViewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.XmlViewResolver">

<property name="order" value="1"/>
<property name="location" value="/WEB-INF/views.xml"/>
</bean>

<!-- in views.xml -->

<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 javadocs of the specific 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!

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

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combination of InternalResourceViewResolver and InternalResourceView, which issues

an internal forward or include via the Servlet APIs 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 POST 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 Springs 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 in turn calls
HttpServletResponse.sendRedirect() to send an HTTP redirect to the client browser.

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 the section called The redirect: prefix
facilitates this decoupling.

Passing Data To the Redirect Target

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 @RequestMapping method can declare an argument
of type RedirectAttributes and use it to specify the exact attributes to make available to
RedirectView. If the method does redirect, the content of RedirectAttributes is used. Otherwise
the content of the 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 doesnt 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

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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:

@PostMapping("/files/{path}")
public String upload(...) {
// ...
return "redirect:files/{path}";
}

Another way of passing data to the redirect target is via Flash Attributes. Unlike other redirect attributes,
flash attributes are saved in the HTTP session (and hence do not appear in the URL). See Section 22.6,
Using flash attributes for more information.

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.

Note that the controller handler is annotated with the @ResponseStatus, the annotation value takes
precedence over the response status set by RedirectView.

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.

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.

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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 custom resolution of a view based on a file extension, use a

ContentNegotiationManager: see the section called Content Negotiation.

Here is an example configuration of a ContentNegotiatingViewResolver:

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.ContentNegotiatingViewResolver">
<property name="viewResolvers">
<list>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.BeanNameViewResolver"/>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/"/>
<property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/>
</bean>
</list>
</property>
<property name="defaultViews">
<list>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.json.MappingJackson2JsonView"/>
</list>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="content" class="com.foo.samples.rest.SampleContentAtomView"/>

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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 MappingJackson2JsonView
instance 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 `ContentNegotiatingViewResolvers 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>();

@GetMapping("/content")
public ModelAndView getContent() {
ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView();
mav.setViewName("content");
mav.addObject("sampleContentList", contentList);
return mav;
}

22.6 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.

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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 .

22.7 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:

UriComponents uriComponents = 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();

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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 ucb = 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 ucb = ServletUriComponentsBuilder.fromServletMapping(request)

.path("/accounts").build()

Building URIs to Controllers and methods

Spring MVC also provides a mechanism for building links to controller methods. For example, given:

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/hotels/{hotel}")
public class BookingController {

@GetMapping("/bookings/{booking}")
public String getBooking(@PathVariable Long booking) {

// ...
}
}

You can prepare a link by referring to the method by name:

UriComponents uriComponents = MvcUriComponentsBuilder

.fromMethodName(BookingController.class, "getBooking", 21).buildAndExpand(42);

URI uri = uriComponents.encode().toUri();

In the above example we provided actual method argument values, in this case the long value 21, to be
used as a path variable and inserted into the URL. Furthermore, we provided the value 42 in order to fill in
any remaining URI variables such as the "hotel" variable inherited from the type-level request mapping.
If the method had more arguments you can supply null for arguments not needed for the URL. In general
only @PathVariable and @RequestParam arguments are relevant for constructing the URL.

There are additional ways to use MvcUriComponentsBuilder. For example you can use a technique
akin to mock testing through proxies to avoid referring to the controller method by name (the example
assumes static import of MvcUriComponentsBuilder.on):

UriComponents uriComponents = MvcUriComponentsBuilder

.fromMethodCall(on(BookingController.class).getBooking(21)).buildAndExpand(42);

URI uri = uriComponents.encode().toUri();

The above examples use static methods in MvcUriComponentsBuilder. Internally they rely on
ServletUriComponentsBuilder to prepare a base URL from the scheme, host, port, context path
and servlet path of the current request. This works well in most cases, however sometimes it may be
insufficient. For example you may be outside the context of a request (e.g. a batch process that prepares

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links) or perhaps you need to insert a path prefix (e.g. a locale prefix that was removed from the request
path and needs to be re-inserted into links).

For such cases you can use the static "fromXxx" overloaded methods that accept
a UriComponentsBuilder to use base URL. Or you can create an instance of
MvcUriComponentsBuilder with a base URL and then use the instance-based "withXxx" methods.
For example:

UriComponentsBuilder base = ServletUriComponentsBuilder.fromCurrentContextPath().path("/en");

MvcUriComponentsBuilder builder = MvcUriComponentsBuilder.relativeTo(base);
builder.withMethodCall(on(BookingController.class).getBooking(21)).buildAndExpand(42);

URI uri = uriComponents.encode().toUri();

Working with "Forwarded" and "X-Forwarded-*" Headers

As a request goes through proxies such as load balancers the host, port, and scheme may change
presenting a challenge for applications that need to create links to resources since the links should
reflect the host, port, and scheme of the original request as seen from a client perspective.

RFC 7239 defines the "Forwarded" HTTP header for proxies to use to provide information about the
original request. There are also other non-standard headers in use such as "X-Forwarded-Host", "X-
Forwarded-Port", and "X-Forwarded-Proto".

Both ServletUriComponentsBuilder and MvcUriComponentsBuilder detect, extract, and use

information from the "Forwarded" header, or from "X-Forwarded-Host", "X-Forwarded-Port", and "X-
Forwarded-Proto" if "Forwarded" is not present, so that the resulting links reflect the original request.

The ForwardedHeaderFilter provides an alternative to do the same once and globally for the entire
application. The filter wraps the request in order to overlay host, port, and scheme information and also
"hides" any forwarded headers for subsequent processing.

Note that there are security considerations when using forwarded headers as explained in Section 8 of
RFC 7239. At the application level it is difficult to determine whether forwarded headers can be trusted
or not. This is why the network upstream should be configured correctly to filter out untrusted forwarded
headers from the outside.

Applications that dont have a proxy and dont need to use forwarded headers can configure the
ForwardedHeaderFilter to remove and ignore such headers.

Building URIs to Controllers and methods from views

You can also build links to annotated controllers from views such as JSP, Thymeleaf, FreeMarker. This
can be done using the fromMappingName method in MvcUriComponentsBuilder which refers to
mappings by name.

Every @RequestMapping is assigned a default name based on the capital letters of the
class and the full method name. For example, the method getFoo in class FooController
is assigned the name "FC#getFoo". This strategy can be replaced or customized by
creating an instance of HandlerMethodMappingNamingStrategy and plugging it into your
RequestMappingHandlerMapping. The default strategy implementation also looks at the name
attribute on @RequestMapping and uses that if present. That means if the default mapping name
assigned conflicts with another (e.g. overloaded methods) you can assign a name explicitly on the
@RequestMapping.

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Note

The assigned request mapping names are logged at TRACE level on startup.

The Spring JSP tag library provides a function called mvcUrl that can be used to prepare links to
controller methods based on this mechanism.

For example given:

@RequestMapping("/people/{id}/addresses")
public class PersonAddressController {

@RequestMapping("/{country}")
public HttpEntity getAddress(@PathVariable String country) { ... }
}

You can prepare a link from a JSP as follows:

<%@ taglib uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags" prefix="s" %>

...
<a href="${s:mvcUrl('PAC#getAddress').arg(0,'US').buildAndExpand('123')}">Get Address</a>

The above example relies on the mvcUrl JSP function declared in the Spring tag library (i.e. META-INF/
spring.tld). For more advanced cases (e.g. a custom base URL as explained in the previous section),
it is easy to define your own function, or use a custom tag file, in order to use a specific instance of
MvcUriComponentsBuilder with a custom base URL.

22.8 Using locales

Most parts of Springs architecture support internationalization, just as the Spring web MVC framework
does. DispatcherServlet enables you to automatically resolve messages using the clients 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 the section called 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.

Obtaining Time Zone Information

In addition to obtaining the clients locale, it is often useful to know their time zone. The
LocaleContextResolver interface offers an extension to LocaleResolver that allows resolvers
to provide a richer LocaleContext, which may include time zone information.

When available, the users TimeZone can be obtained using the RequestContext.getTimeZone()
method. Time zone information will automatically be used by Date/Time Converter and Formatter
objects registered with Springs ConversionService.

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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 clients operating system. Note
that this resolver does not support time zone information.

CookieLocaleResolver
This locale resolver inspects a Cookie that might exist on the client to see if a Locale or TimeZone
is specified. If so, it uses the specified details. 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"/>

<!-- in seconds. If set to -1, the cookie is not persisted (deleted when browser shuts down) -->
<property name="cookieMaxAge" value="100000"/>

</bean>

Table 22.4. CookieLocaleResolver properties

Property Default Description

cookieName classname + The name of the cookie

LOCALE

cookieMaxAge Servlet The maximum time a cookie will stay persistent on the client. If -1
container is specified, the cookie will not be persisted; it will only be available
default until the client shuts down their browser.

cookiePath / Limits the visibility of the cookie to a certain part of your site. When
cookiePath is specified, the cookie will only be visible to that path
and the paths below it.

SessionLocaleResolver
The SessionLocaleResolver allows you to retrieve Locale and TimeZone from the session that
might be associated with the users request. In contrast to CookieLocaleResolver, this strategy
stores locally chosen locale settings in the Servlet containers HttpSession. As a consequence, those
settings are just temporary for each session and therefore lost when each session terminates.

Note that there is no direct relationship with external session management mechanisms such as the
Spring Session project. This SessionLocaleResolver will simply evaluate and modify corresponding
HttpSession attributes against the current HttpServletRequest.

LocaleChangeInterceptor
You can enable changing of locales by adding the LocaleChangeInterceptor to one of the handler
mappings (see Section 22.4, 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.

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<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">
<property name="interceptors">
<list>
<ref bean="localeChangeInterceptor"/>
</list>
</property>
<property name="mappings">
<value>/**/*.view=someController</value>
</property>
</bean>

22.9 Using themes

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.

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>

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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.

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 requests theme. The following theme
resolvers are provided by Spring:

Table 22.5. ThemeResolver implementations

Class Description

Selects a fixed theme, set using the defaultThemeName property.

FixedThemeResolver

The theme is maintained in the users HTTP session. It only needs to be set
SessionThemeResolver
once for each session, but is not persisted between sessions.

The selected theme is stored in a cookie on the client.

CookieThemeResolver

Spring also provides a ThemeChangeInterceptor that allows theme changes on every request with
a simple request parameter.

22.10 Springs multipart (file upload) support

Introduction

Springs 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 applications
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.

Using a MultipartResolver with Commons FileUpload

The following example shows how to use the CommonsMultipartResolver:

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<bean id="multipartResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.multipart.commons.CommonsMultipartResolver">

<!-- one of the properties available; the maximum file size in bytes -->
<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.

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>

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:

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@Controller
public class FileUploadController {

@PostMapping("/form")
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";
}

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 {

@PostMapping("/form")
public String handleFormUpload(@RequestParam("name") String name,
@RequestParam("file") Part file) {

InputStream inputStream = file.getInputStream();

// store bytes from uploaded file somewhere

return "redirect:uploadSuccess";
}

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 ...

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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:

@PostMapping("/someUrl")
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.

22.11 Handling exceptions

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 to many @Controller
classes when defined within an @ControllerAdvice class. The following sections explain this in more
detail.

@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.

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You can do that with @ExceptionHandler methods. When declared within a controller such methods
apply to exceptions raised by @RequestMapping methods of that controller (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 many controllers. 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.

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 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)

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Exception HTTP Status Code

HttpRequestMethodNotSupportedException405 (Method Not Allowed)

MethodArgumentNotValidException 400 (Bad Request)

MissingPathVariableException 500 (Internal Server Error)

400 (Bad Request)

MissingServletRequestParameterException

MissingServletRequestPartException 400 (Bad Request)

NoHandlerFoundException 404 (Not Found)

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,
MappingJackson2JsonView, 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 ResponseEntityExceptionHandler javadocs for more details.

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.

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:

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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(path = "/error", produces = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_UTF8_VALUE)

@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") %>
}

22.12 Web Security

The Spring Security project provides features to protect web applications from malicious exploits. Check
out the reference documentation in the sections on "CSRF protection", "Security Response Headers",
and also "Spring MVC Integration". Note that using Spring Security to secure the application is not
necessarily required for all features. For example CSRF protection can be added simply by adding the
CsrfFilter and CsrfRequestDataValueProcessor to your configuration. See the Spring MVC
Showcase for an example.

Another option is to use a framework dedicated to Web Security. HDIV is one such framework and
integrates with Spring MVC.

22.13 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.

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.

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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">

<!-- inject dependencies as required... -->
</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.

Lets 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.

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.

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public class DisplayShoppingCartController implements Controller {

public ModelAndView handleRequest(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) {

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 objects 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.

What, no automatic pluralization?

Spring Web MVCs convention-over-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.

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 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.

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An empty java.util.ArrayList will not be added at all (in effect, the addObject(..) call will
essentially be a no-op).

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 {

public ModelAndView handleRequest(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) {

// 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
}

<?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">

<!-- this bean with the well known name generates view names for us -->
<bean id="viewNameTranslator"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.DefaultRequestToViewNameTranslator"/>

<bean class="x.y.RegistrationController">
<!-- inject dependencies as necessary -->
</bean>

<!-- maps request URLs to Controller names -->

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.support.ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping"/>

<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">

<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/"/>
<property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/>
</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

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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
DefaultRequestToViewNameTranslator javadocs for details on the various properties that can
be configured.

22.14 HTTP caching support

A good HTTP caching strategy can significantly improve the performance of a web application and the
experience of its clients. The 'Cache-Control' HTTP response header is mostly responsible for this,
along with conditional headers such as 'Last-Modified' and 'ETag'.

The 'Cache-Control' HTTP response header advises private caches (e.g. browsers) and public
caches (e.g. proxies) on how they can cache HTTP responses for further reuse.

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.

This section describes the different choices available to configure HTTP caching in a Spring Web MVC
application.

Cache-Control HTTP header

Spring Web MVC supports many use cases and ways to configure "Cache-Control" headers for an
application. While RFC 7234 Section 5.2.2 completely describes that header and its possible directives,
there are several ways to address the most common cases.

Spring Web MVC uses a configuration convention in several of its APIs: setCachePeriod(int
seconds):

A -1 value wont generate a 'Cache-Control' response header.

A 0 value will prevent caching using the 'Cache-Control: no-store' directive.

An n > 0 value will cache the given response for n seconds using the 'Cache-Control: max-
age=n' directive.

The CacheControl builder class simply describes the available "Cache-Control" directives and makes
it easier to build your own HTTP caching strategy. Once built, a CacheControl instance can then be
accepted as an argument in several Spring Web MVC APIs.

// Cache for an hour - "Cache-Control: max-age=3600"

CacheControl ccCacheOneHour = CacheControl.maxAge(1, TimeUnit.HOURS);

// Prevent caching - "Cache-Control: no-store"

CacheControl ccNoStore = CacheControl.noStore();

// Cache for ten days in public and private caches,

// public caches should not transform the response
// "Cache-Control: max-age=864000, public, no-transform"
CacheControl ccCustom = CacheControl.maxAge(10, TimeUnit.DAYS)
.noTransform().cachePublic();

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HTTP caching support for static resources

Static resources should be served with appropriate 'Cache-Control' and conditional headers for
optimal performance. Configuring a ResourceHttpRequestHandler for serving static resources
not only natively writes 'Last-Modified' headers by reading a files metadata, but also 'Cache-
Control' headers if properly configured.

You can set the cachePeriod attribute on a ResourceHttpRequestHandler or use a

CacheControl instance, which supports more specific directives:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) {
registry.addResourceHandler("/resources/**")
.addResourceLocations("/public-resources/")
.setCacheControl(CacheControl.maxAge(1, TimeUnit.HOURS).cachePublic());
}

And in XML:

<mvc:resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/public-resources/">

<mvc:cache-control max-age="3600" cache-public="true"/>
</mvc:resources>

Support for the Cache-Control, ETag and Last-Modified response headers

in Controllers

Controllers can support 'Cache-Control', 'ETag', and/or 'If-Modified-Since' HTTP

requests; this is indeed recommended if a 'Cache-Control' header is to be set on the response.
This involves calculating a lastModified long and/or an Etag 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).

As described in the section called Using HttpEntity, controllers can interact with the request/
response using HttpEntity types. Controllers returning ResponseEntity can include HTTP caching
information in responses like this:

@GetMapping("/book/{id}")
public ResponseEntity<Book> showBook(@PathVariable Long id) {

Book book = findBook(id);

String version = book.getVersion();

return ResponseEntity
.ok()
.cacheControl(CacheControl.maxAge(30, TimeUnit.DAYS))
.eTag(version) // lastModified is also available
.body(book);
}

Doing this will not only include 'ETag' and 'Cache-Control' headers in the response, it will also
convert the response to an HTTP 304 Not Modified response with an empty body if the
conditional headers sent by the client match the caching information set by the Controller.

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An @RequestMapping method may also wish to support the same behavior. This can be achieved
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 here: calling request.checkNotModified(lastModified) and

returning null. The former sets the appropriate response status and headers before it returns true.
The latter, in combination with the former, causes Spring MVC to do no further processing of the request.

Note that there are 3 variants for this:

request.checkNotModified(lastModified) compares lastModified with the 'If-

Modified-Since' or 'If-Unmodified-Since' request header

request.checkNotModified(eTag) compares eTag with the 'If-None-Match' request

header

request.checkNotModified(eTag, lastModified) does both, meaning that both conditions

should be valid

When receiving conditional 'GET'/'HEAD' requests, checkNotModified will check that the resource
has not been modified and if so, it will result in a HTTP 304 Not Modified response. In case of
conditional 'POST'/'PUT'/'DELETE' requests, checkNotModified will check that the resource has
not been modified and if it has been, it will result in a HTTP 409 Precondition Failed response
to prevent concurrent modifications.

Shallow ETag support

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.

Note that this strategy saves network bandwidth but not CPU, as the full response must be computed
for each request. Other strategies at the controller level (described above) can save network bandwidth
and avoid computation.

This filter has a writeWeakETag parameter that configures the filter to write Weak ETags, like this:
W/"02a2d595e6ed9a0b24f027f2b63b134d6", as defined in RFC 7232 Section 2.3.

You configure the ShallowEtagHeaderFilter in web.xml:

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<filter>
<filter-name>etagFilter</filter-name>
<filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.ShallowEtagHeaderFilter</filter-class>
<!-- Optional parameter that configures the filter to write weak ETags
<init-param>
<param-name>writeWeakETag</param-name>
<param-value>true</param-value>
</init-param>
-->
</filter>

<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>etagFilter</filter-name>
<servlet-name>petclinic</servlet-name>
</filter-mapping>

Or in Servlet 3.0+ environments,

public class MyWebAppInitializer extends AbstractDispatcherServletInitializer {

// ...

@Override
protected Filter[] getServletFilters() {
return new Filter[] { new ShallowEtagHeaderFilter() };
}

See Section 22.15, Code-based Servlet container initialization for more details.

22.15 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.

This is recommended for applications that use Java-based Spring configuration:

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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[] { "/" };
}

If using XML-based Spring configuration, you should 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.

Finally, if you need to further customize the DispatcherServlet itself, you can override the
createDispatcherServlet method.

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22.16 Configuring Spring MVC

the section called Special Bean Types In the WebApplicationContext and the section called
Default DispatcherServlet Configuration explained about Spring MVCs special beans and the default
implementations used by the DispatcherServlet. In this section youll 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 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 lets start
from the beginning.

Enabling the MVC Java Config or the MVC XML Namespace

To enable MVC Java config add the annotation @EnableWebMvc to one of your @Configuration
classes:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig {

To achieve the same in XML use the mvc:annotation-driven element in your DispatcherServlet
context (or in your root context if you have no DispatcherServlet context defined):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
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
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd">

<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.

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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:

a. ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter converts byte arrays.

b. StringHttpMessageConverter converts strings.

c. ResourceHttpMessageConverter converts to/from

org.springframework.core.io.Resource for all media types.

d. SourceHttpMessageConverter converts to/from a javax.xml.transform.Source.

e. FormHttpMessageConverter converts form data to/from a MultiValueMap<String,

String>.

f. Jaxb2RootElementHttpMessageConverter converts Java objects to/from XML added if

JAXB2 is present and Jackson 2 XML extension is not present on the classpath.

g. MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter converts to/from JSON added if Jackson 2 is

present on the classpath.

h. MappingJackson2XmlHttpMessageConverter converts to/from XML added if Jackson 2

XML extension is present on the classpath.

i. AtomFeedHttpMessageConverter converts Atom feeds added if Rome is present on the

classpath.

j. RssChannelHttpMessageConverter converts RSS feeds added if Rome is present on the

classpath.

See the section called Message Converters for more information about how to customize these default
converters.

Note

Jackson JSON and XML converters are created using ObjectMapper instances created by
Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder in order to provide a better default configuration.

This builder customizes Jacksons default properties with the following ones:

1. DeserializationFeature.FAIL_ON_UNKNOWN_PROPERTIES is disabled.

2. MapperFeature.DEFAULT_VIEW_INCLUSION is disabled.

It also automatically registers the following well-known modules if they are detected on the
classpath:

1. jackson-datatype-jdk7: support for Java 7 types like java.nio.file.Path.

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2. jackson-datatype-joda: support for Joda-Time types.

3. jackson-datatype-jsr310: support for Java 8 Date & Time API types.

4. jackson-datatype-jdk8: support for other Java 8 types like Optional.

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:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

// Override configuration methods...

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.

Conversion and Formatting

By default formatters for Number and Date types are 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 register custom formatters and converters,
override the addFormatters method:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
public void addFormatters(FormatterRegistry registry) {
// Add formatters and/or converters
}

In the MVC namespace the same defaults apply when <mvc:annotation-driven> is added. To
register custom formatters and converters simply supply a ConversionService:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
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
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd">

<mvc:annotation-driven conversion-service="conversionService"/>

<bean id="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 the section called FormatterRegistrar SPI and the

FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean for more information on when to use
FormatterRegistrars.

Validation

Spring provides a Validator interface that can be used for validation in all layers of an application. In
Spring MVC you can configure it for use as a global Validator instance, to be used whenever an
@Valid or @Validated controller method argument is encountered, and/or as a local Validator
within a controller through an @InitBinder method. Global and local validator instances can be
combined to provide composite validation.

Spring also supports JSR-303/JSR-349 Bean Validation via LocalValidatorFactoryBean which

adapts the Spring org.springframework.validation.Validator interface to the Bean
Validation javax.validation.Validator contract. This class can be plugged into Spring MVC as
a global validator as described next.

By default use of @EnableWebMvc or <mvc:annotation-driven> automatically registers Bean

Validation support in Spring MVC through the LocalValidatorFactoryBean when a Bean Validation
provider such as Hibernate Validator is detected on the classpath.

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Note

Sometimes its convenient to have a LocalValidatorFactoryBean injected into a controller

or another class. The easiest way to do that is to declare your own @Bean and also mark it with
@Primary in order to avoid a conflict with the one provided with the MVC Java config.

If you prefer to use the one from the MVC Java config, youll need to override the
mvcValidator method from WebMvcConfigurationSupport and declare the method to
explicitly return LocalValidatorFactory rather than Validator. See the section called
Advanced Customizations with MVC Java Config for information on how to switch to extend the
provided configuration.

Alternatively you can configure your own global Validator instance:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
public Validator getValidator(); {
// return "global" validator
}

and in XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
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
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd">

<mvc:annotation-driven validator="globalValidator"/>

</beans>

To combine global with local validation, simply add one or more local validator(s):

@Controller
public class MyController {

@InitBinder
protected void initBinder(WebDataBinder binder) {
binder.addValidators(new FooValidator());
}

With this minimal configuration any time an @Valid or @Validated method argument is encountered,
it will be validated by the configured validators. Any validation violations will automatically be exposed
as errors in the BindingResult accessible as a method argument and also renderable in Spring MVC
HTML views.

Interceptors
You can configure HandlerInterceptors or WebRequestInterceptors to be applied to all
incoming requests or restricted to specific URL path patterns.

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An example of registering interceptors in Java:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@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:mapping path="/**"/>
<mvc:exclude-mapping path="/admin/**"/>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.theme.ThemeChangeInterceptor"/>
</mvc:interceptor>
<mvc:interceptor>
<mvc:mapping path="/secure/*"/>
<bean class="org.example.SecurityInterceptor"/>
</mvc:interceptor>
</mvc:interceptors>

Content Negotiation

You can configure how Spring MVC determines the requested media types from the request. The
available options are to check the URL path for a file extension, check the "Accept" header, a specific
query parameter, or to fall back on a default content type when nothing is requested. By default the path
extension in the request URI is checked first and the "Accept" header is checked second.

The MVC Java config and the MVC namespace register json, xml, rss, atom by default if
corresponding dependencies are on the classpath. Additional path extension-to-media type mappings
may also be registered explicitly and that also has the effect of whitelisting them as safe extensions
for the purpose of RFD attack detection (see the section called Suffix Pattern Matching and RFD for
more detail).

Below is an example of customizing content negotiation options through the MVC Java config:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
public void configureContentNegotiation(ContentNegotiationConfigurer configurer) {
configurer.mediaType("json", MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON);
}
}

In the MVC namespace, the <mvc:annotation-driven> element has a content-negotiation-

manager attribute, which expects a ContentNegotiationManager that in turn can be created with
a ContentNegotiationManagerFactoryBean:

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<mvc:annotation-driven content-negotiation-manager="contentNegotiationManager"/>

<bean id="contentNegotiationManager" class="org.springframework.web.accept.ContentNegotiationManagerFactoryBean">

<property name="mediaTypes">
<value>
json=application/json
xml=application/xml
</value>
</property>
</bean>

If not using the MVC Java config or the MVC namespace, youll
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

ContentNegotiationManager, so you can use one shared 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.

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
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@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"/>

View Resolvers

The MVC config simplifies the registration of view resolvers.

The following is a Java config example that configures content negotiation view resolution using
FreeMarker HTML templates and Jackson as a default View for JSON rendering:

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@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
public void configureViewResolvers(ViewResolverRegistry registry) {
registry.enableContentNegotiation(new MappingJackson2JsonView());
registry.jsp();
}

And the same in XML:

<mvc:view-resolvers>
<mvc:content-negotiation>
<mvc:default-views>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.json.MappingJackson2JsonView"/>
</mvc:default-views>
</mvc:content-negotiation>
<mvc:jsp/>
</mvc:view-resolvers>

Note however that FreeMarker, Velocity, Tiles, Groovy Markup and script templates also require
configuration of the underlying view technology.

The MVC namespace provides dedicated elements. For example with FreeMarker:

<mvc:view-resolvers>
<mvc:content-negotiation>
<mvc:default-views>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.json.MappingJackson2JsonView"/>
</mvc:default-views>
</mvc:content-negotiation>
<mvc:freemarker cache="false"/>
</mvc:view-resolvers>

<mvc:freemarker-configurer>
<mvc:template-loader-path location="/freemarker"/>
</mvc:freemarker-configurer>

In Java config simply add the respective "Configurer" bean:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
public void configureViewResolvers(ViewResolverRegistry registry) {
registry.enableContentNegotiation(new MappingJackson2JsonView());
registry.freeMarker().cache(false);
}

@Bean
public FreeMarkerConfigurer freeMarkerConfigurer() {
FreeMarkerConfigurer configurer = new FreeMarkerConfigurer();
configurer.setTemplateLoaderPath("/WEB-INF/");
return configurer;
}

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

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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
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@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
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) {
registry.addResourceHandler("/resources/**").addResourceLocations("/public-
resources/").setCachePeriod(31556926);
}

And in XML:

<mvc:resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/public-resources/" cache-period="31556926"/>

For more details, see HTTP caching support for static resources.

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 /META-
INF/public-web-resources/ in any jar on the classpath use:

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@EnableWebMvc
@Configuration
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) {
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 applications
resources. Support for versioned URLs is built into the framework and can be enabled by configuring a
resource chain on the resource handler. The chain consists of one more ResourceResolver instances
followed by one or more ResourceTransformer instances. Together they can provide arbitrary
resolution and transformation of resources.

The built-in VersionResourceResolver can be configured with different strategies. For

example a FixedVersionStrategy can use a property, a date, or other as the version. A
ContentVersionStrategy uses an MD5 hash computed from the content of the resource (known as
"fingerprinting" URLs). Note that the VersionResourceResolver will automatically use the resolved
version strings as HTTP ETag header values when serving resources.

ContentVersionStrategy is a good default choice to use except in cases where it cannot be used
(e.g. with JavaScript module loaders). You can configure different version strategies against different
patterns as shown below. Keep in mind also that computing content-based versions is expensive and
therefore resource chain caching should be enabled in production.

Java config example;

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) {
registry.addResourceHandler("/resources/**")
.addResourceLocations("/public-resources/")
.resourceChain(true).addResolver(
new VersionResourceResolver().addContentVersionStrategy("/**"));
}

XML example:

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<mvc:resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/public-resources/">

<mvc:resource-chain>
<mvc:resource-cache/>
<mvc:resolvers>
<mvc:version-resolver>
<mvc:content-version-strategy patterns="/**"/>
</mvc:version-resolver>
</mvc:resolvers>
</mvc:resource-chain>
</mvc:resources>

In order for the above to work the application must also render URLs with versions. The easiest way to
do that is to configure the ResourceUrlEncodingFilter which wraps the response and overrides
its encodeURL method. This will work in JSPs, FreeMarker, Velocity, and any other view technology
that calls the response encodeURL method. Alternatively, an application can also inject and use directly
the ResourceUrlProvider bean, which is automatically declared with the MVC Java config and the
MVC namespace.

Webjars are also supported with WebJarsResourceResolver, which is automatically registered

when the "org.webjars:webjars-locator" library is on classpath. This resolver allows the
resource chain to resolve version agnostic libraries from HTTP GET requests "GET /jquery/
jquery.min.js" will return resource "/jquery/1.2.0/jquery.min.js". It also works by
rewriting resource URLs in templates <script src="/jquery/jquery.min.js"/> # <script
src="/jquery/1.2.0/jquery.min.js"/>.

Falling Back On the "Default" Servlet To Serve Resources

This allows for mapping the DispatcherServlet to "/" (thus overriding the mapping of the containers
default Servlet), while still allowing static resource requests to be handled by the containers 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
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@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

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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 Servlets
name must be explicitly provided as in the following example:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
public void configureDefaultServletHandling(DefaultServletHandlerConfigurer configurer) {
configurer.enable("myCustomDefaultServlet");
}

Or in XML:

<mvc:default-servlet-handler default-servlet-name="myCustomDefaultServlet"/>

Path Matching

This allows customizing various settings related to URL mapping and path matching. For details on the
individual options check out the PathMatchConfigurer API.

Below is an example in Java config:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
public void configurePathMatch(PathMatchConfigurer configurer) {
configurer
.setUseSuffixPatternMatch(true)
.setUseTrailingSlashMatch(false)
.setUseRegisteredSuffixPatternMatch(true)
.setPathMatcher(antPathMatcher())
.setUrlPathHelper(urlPathHelper());
}

@Bean
public UrlPathHelper urlPathHelper() {
//...
}

@Bean
public PathMatcher antPathMatcher() {
//...
}

And the same in XML, use the <mvc:path-matching> element:

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<mvc:annotation-driven>
<mvc:path-matching
suffix-pattern="true"
trailing-slash="false"
registered-suffixes-only="true"
path-helper="pathHelper"
path-matcher="pathMatcher"/>
</mvc:annotation-driven>

<bean id="pathHelper" class="org.example.app.MyPathHelper"/>

<bean id="pathMatcher" class="org.example.app.MyPathMatcher"/>

Message Converters

Customization of HttpMessageConverter can be achieved in Java config by overriding

configureMessageConverters() if you want to replace the default converters created by Spring
MVC, or by overriding extendMessageConverters() if you just want to customize them or add
additional converters to the default ones.

Below is an example that adds Jackson JSON and XML converters with a customized ObjectMapper
instead of default ones:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfiguration extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
public void configureMessageConverters(List<HttpMessageConverter<?>> converters) {
Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder builder = new Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder()
.indentOutput(true)
.dateFormat(new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd"))
.modulesToInstall(new ParameterNamesModule());
converters.add(new MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter(builder.build()));
converters.add(new MappingJackson2XmlHttpMessageConverter(builder.xml().build()));
}

In this example, Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder is used to create a

common configuration for both MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter and
MappingJackson2XmlHttpMessageConverter with indentation enabled, a customized date format
and the registration of jackson-module-parameter-names that adds support for accessing parameter
names (feature added in Java 8).

Note

Enabling indentation with Jackson XML support requires woodstox-core-asl dependency in

addition to jackson-dataformat-xml one.

Other interesting Jackson modules are available:

1. jackson-datatype-money: support for javax.money types (unofficial module)

2. jackson-datatype-hibernate: support for Hibernate specific types and properties (including lazy-
loading aspects)

It is also possible to do the same in XML:

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<mvc:annotation-driven>
<mvc:message-converters>
<bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter">
<property name="objectMapper" ref="objectMapper"/>
</bean>
<bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.xml.MappingJackson2XmlHttpMessageConverter">
<property name="objectMapper" ref="xmlMapper"/>
</bean>
</mvc:message-converters>
</mvc:annotation-driven>

<bean id="objectMapper" class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.Jackson2ObjectMapperFactoryBean"

p:indentOutput="true"
p:simpleDateFormat="yyyy-MM-dd"
p:modulesToInstall="com.fasterxml.jackson.module.paramnames.ParameterNamesModule"/>

<bean id="xmlMapper" parent="objectMapper" p:createXmlMapper="true"/>

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 javadocs 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
from DelegatingWebMvcConfiguration, a subclass of WebMvcConfigurationSupport. Here
is an example:

@Configuration
public class WebConfig extends DelegatingWebMvcConfiguration {

@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

An application should have only one configuration extending

DelegatingWebMvcConfiguration or a single @EnableWebMvc annotated class, since they
both register the same underlying beans.

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Modifying beans in this way does not prevent you from using any of the higher-level
constructs shown earlier in this section. WebMvcConfigurerAdapter subclasses and
WebMvcConfigurer implementations are still being used.

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.

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23. View technologies

23.1 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 Groovy Markup Templates or Thymeleaf 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 22.5, Resolving views which covers the basics of how views in general
are coupled to the MVC framework.

23.2 Thymeleaf
Thymeleaf is a good example of a view technology fitting perfectly in the MVC framework. Support for
this integration is not provided by the Spring team but by the Thymeleaf team itself.

Configuring Thymeleaf for Spring usually requires a few beans defined,

like a ServletContextTemplateResolver, a SpringTemplateEngine and a
ThymeleafViewResolver. Please refer to the Thymeleaf+Spring documentation section for more
details.

23.3 Groovy Markup Templates

The Groovy Markup Template Engine is another view technology, supported by Spring. This template
engine is a template engine primarily aimed at generating XML-like markup (XML, XHTML, HTML5,
), but that can be used to generate any text based content.

This requires Groovy 2.3.1+ on the classpath.

Configuration
Configuring the Groovy Markup Template Engine is quite easy:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
public void configureViewResolvers(ViewResolverRegistry registry) {
registry.groovy();
}

@Bean
public GroovyMarkupConfigurer groovyMarkupConfigurer() {
GroovyMarkupConfigurer configurer = new GroovyMarkupConfigurer();
configurer.setResourceLoaderPath("/WEB-INF/");
return configurer;
}
}

The XML counterpart using the MVC namespace is:

<mvc:annotation-driven/>

<mvc:view-resolvers>
<mvc:groovy/>
</mvc:view-resolvers>

<mvc:groovy-configurer resource-loader-path="/WEB-INF/"/>

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Example

Unlike traditional template engines, this one relies on a DSL that uses the builder syntax. Here is a
sample template for an HTML page:

yieldUnescaped '<!DOCTYPE html>'

html(lang:'en') {
head {
meta('http-equiv':'"Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"')
title('My page')
}
body {
p('This is an example of HTML contents')
}
}

23.4 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.

Note

As of Spring Framework 4.3, Velocity support has been deprecated due to six years without
active maintenance of the Apache Velocity project. We recommend Springs FreeMarker support
instead, or Thymeleaf which comes with Spring support itself.

Dependencies

Your web application will need to include velocity-1.x.x.jar or freemarker-2.x.jar in order

to work with Velocity or FreeMarker respectively and commons-collections.jar is required for
Velocity. Typically they are included in the WEB-INF/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
Springs 'dateToolAttribute' or 'numberToolAttribute' in your Velocity views, you will also need to include
the velocity-tools-generic-1.x.jar

Context configuration

A suitable configuration is initialized by adding the relevant configurer bean definition to your '*-
servlet.xml' as shown below:

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<!--
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>

<!-- freemarker config -->

<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="cache" value="true"/>
<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.

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
JSPs. 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 /WEB-INF/velocity/
welcome.vm template as appropriate.

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.

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<bean id="velocityConfig" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.velocity.VelocityConfigurer">

<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.

<bean id="velocityConfig" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.velocity.VelocityConfigurer">

<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.

Bind support and form handling

Spring provides a tag library for use in JSPs 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 /

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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) which act as a form view for a Spring MVC 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. Example code is shown below for the
personFormV/personFormF views configured earlier:

<!-- velocity macros are automatically available -->

<html>
...
<form action="" method="POST">
Name:
#springBind("myModelObject.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>

<!-- freemarker macros have to be imported into a namespace. We strongly

recommend sticking to 'spring' -->
<#import "/spring.ftl" as spring/>
<html>
...
<form action="" method="POST">
Name:
<@spring.bind "myModelObject.name"/>
<input type="text"
name="${spring.status.expression}"
value="${spring.status.value?html}"/><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

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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 23.1. Table of macro definitions

macro VTL definition FTL definition

message (output a string from a resource bundle based on #springMessage($code)

<@spring.message
the code parameter) code/>

messageText (output a string from a resource bundle #springMessageText($code

<@spring.messageText
based on the code parameter, falling back to the value of $text) code, text/>
the default parameter)

url (prefix a relative URL with the applications context #springUrl($relativeUrl)

<@spring.url
root) relativeUrl/>

formInput (standard input field for gathering user input) #springFormInput($path

<@spring.formInput
$attributes) path, attributes,
fieldType/>

formHiddenInput * (hidden input field for submitting non- #springFormHiddenInput($path

<@spring.formHiddenInput
user input) $attributes) path, attributes/>

formPasswordInput * (standard input field for gathering #springFormPasswordInput($path

<@spring.formPasswordInput
passwords. Note that no value will ever be populated in $attributes) path, attributes/>
fields of this type)

formTextarea (large text field for gathering long, freeform #springFormTextarea($path

<@spring.formTextarea
text input) $attributes) path, attributes/>

formSingleSelect (drop down box of options allowing a #springFormSingleSelect(

<@spring.formSingleSelect
$path
single required value to be selected) $options path, options,
$attributes) attributes/>

formMultiSelect (a list box of options allowing the user to #springFormMultiSelect($path

<@spring.formMultiSelect
select 0 or more values) $options path, options,
$attributes) attributes/>

formRadioButtons (a set of radio buttons allowing a #springFormRadioButtons($path

<@spring.formRadioButtons
single selection to be made from the available choices) $options path, options
$separator separator,
$attributes) attributes/>

formCheckboxes (a set of checkboxes allowing 0 or more #springFormCheckboxes($path

<@spring.formCheckboxes
values to be selected) $options path, options,
$separator separator,
$attributes) attributes/>

formCheckbox (a single checkbox) #springFormCheckbox($path

<@spring.formCheckbox
$attributes) path, attributes/>

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macro VTL definition FTL definition

showErrors (simplify display of validation errors for the #springShowErrors($separator

<@spring.showErrors
bound field) $classOrStyle) 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

<!-- the Name field example from above using form macros in VTL -->
...
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 doesnt 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:

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<@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 Springs 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 maps 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>
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="Paris" checked="checked">Paris</input>
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="New York">New York</input>

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.

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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>
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="PRS" checked="checked">Paris</input>
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="NYC">New York</input>

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 Springs 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 -->

23.5 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

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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.

View resolvers
Just as with any other view technology youre integrating with Spring, for JSPs youll 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:

<!-- the ResourceBundleViewResolver -->

<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.ResourceBundleViewResolver">
<property name="basename" value="views"/>
</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">

<property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView"/>
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/"/>
<property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/>
</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.

'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.

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 haveHTML 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 ???.

Using Springs 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

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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, Springs 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.

Lets 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.

Lets 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:

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<form method="POST">
<table>
<tr>
<td>First Name:</td>
<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">
<input type="submit" value="Save Changes"/>
</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 modelAttribute="user">
<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 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'.

Lets assume our User has preferences such as newsletter subscription and a list of hobbies. Below
is an example of the Preferences class:

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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>
<%-- Approach 2: Property is of an array or of type java.util.Collection --%>
<td>
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>
<%-- Approach 3: Property is of type java.lang.Object --%>
<td>
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.

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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"/>
<input type="hidden" value="1" name="_preferences.interests"/>
Defence Against the Dark
Arts: <input name="preferences.interests" type="checkbox" value="Defence Against the Dark Arts"/>
<input type="hidden" value="1" name="_preferences.interests"/>
</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 entrys 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".

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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 entrys 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.

Lets assume a User has a list of skills.

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<tr>
<td>Skills:</td>
<td><form:select path="skills" items="${skills}"/></td>
</tr>

If the Users 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 Users 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:

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<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.

Lets 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.

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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>
<td>First Name:</td>
<td><form:input path="firstName"/></td>
<%-- Show errors for firstName field --%>
<td><form:errors path="firstName"/></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>Last Name:</td>
<td><form:input path="lastName"/></td>
<%-- Show errors for lastName field --%>
<td><form:errors path="lastName"/></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="3">
<input type="submit" value="Save Changes"/>
</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:

<form method="POST">
<table>
<tr>
<td>First Name:</td>
<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">
<input type="submit" value="Save Changes"/>
</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.

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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 field-specific errors
next to the fields:

<form:form>
<form:errors path="*" cssClass="errorBox"/>
<table>
<tr>
<td>First Name:</td>
<td><form:input path="firstName"/></td>
<td><form:errors path="firstName"/></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Last Name:</td>
<td><form:input path="lastName"/></td>
<td><form:errors path="lastName"/></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="3">
<input type="submit" value="Save Changes"/>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form:form>

The HTML would look like:

<form method="POST">
<span name="*.errors" class="errorBox">Field is required.<br/>Field is required.</span>
<table>
<tr>
<td>First Name:</td>
<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">
<input type="submit" value="Save Changes"/>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</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

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form). This latter trick is what Springs 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.

23.6 Script templates

It is possible to integrate any templating library running on top of a JSR-223 script engine in web
applications using Spring. The following describes in a broad way how to do this. The script engine must
implement both ScriptEngine and Invocable interfaces.

It has been tested with:

Handlebars running on Nashorn

Mustache running on Nashorn

React running on Nashorn

EJS running on Nashorn

ERB running on JRuby

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String templates running on Jython

Dependencies
To be able to use script templates integration, you need to have available in your classpath the script
engine:

Nashorn Javascript engine is provided builtin with Java 8+. Using the latest update release available
is highly recommended.

Rhino Javascript engine is provided builtin with Java 6 and Java 7. Please notice that using Rhino is
not recommended since it does not support running most template engines.

JRuby dependency should be added in order to get Ruby support.

Jython dependency should be added in order to get Python support.

You should also need to add dependencies for your script based template engine. For example, for
Javascript you can use WebJars to add Maven/Gradle dependencies in order to make your javascript
libraries available in the classpath.

How to integrate script based templating

To be able to use script templates, you have to configure it in order to specify various parameters like the
script engine to use, the script files to load and what function should be called to render the templates.
This is done thanks to a ScriptTemplateConfigurer bean and optional script files.

For example, in order to render Mustache templates thanks to the Nashorn Javascript engine provided
with Java 8+, you should declare the following configuration:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class MustacheConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
public void configureViewResolvers(ViewResolverRegistry registry) {
registry.scriptTemplate();
}

@Bean
public ScriptTemplateConfigurer configurer() {
ScriptTemplateConfigurer configurer = new ScriptTemplateConfigurer();
configurer.setEngineName("nashorn");
configurer.setScripts("mustache.js");
configurer.setRenderObject("Mustache");
configurer.setRenderFunction("render");
return configurer;
}
}

The XML counterpart using MVC namespace is:

<mvc:annotation-driven/>

<mvc:view-resolvers>
<mvc:script-template/>
</mvc:view-resolvers>

<mvc:script-template-configurer engine-name="nashorn" render-object="Mustache" render-function="render">

<mvc:script location="mustache.js"/>
</mvc:script-template-configurer>

The controller is exactly what you should expect:

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@Controller
public class SampleController {

@RequestMapping
public ModelAndView test() {
ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView();
mav.addObject("title", "Sample title").addObject("body", "Sample body");
mav.setViewName("template.html");
return mav;
}
}

And the Mustache template is:

<html>
<head>
<title>{{title}}</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>{{body}}</p>
</body>
</html>

The render function is called with the following parameters:

String template: the template content

Map model: the view model

String url: the template url (since 4.2.2)

Mustache.render() is natively compatible with this signature, so you can call it directly.

If your templating technology requires some customization, you may provide a script that implements
a custom render function. For example, Handlerbars needs to compile templates before using them,
and requires a polyfill in order to emulate some browser facilities not available in the server-side script
engine.

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class MustacheConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
public void configureViewResolvers(ViewResolverRegistry registry) {
registry.scriptTemplate();
}

@Bean
public ScriptTemplateConfigurer configurer() {
ScriptTemplateConfigurer configurer = new ScriptTemplateConfigurer();
configurer.setEngineName("nashorn");
configurer.setScripts("polyfill.js", "handlebars.js", "render.js");
configurer.setRenderFunction("render");
configurer.setSharedEngine(false);
return configurer;
}
}

Note

Setting the sharedEngine property to false is required when using non thread-safe script
engines with templating libraries not designed for concurrency, like Handlebars or React running
on Nashorn for example. In that case, Java 8u60 or greater is required due to this bug.

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polyfill.js only defines the window object needed by Handlebars to run properly:

var window = {};

This basic render.js implementation compiles the template before using it. A production ready
implementation should also store and reused cached templates / pre-compiled templates. This can be
done on the script side, as well as any customization you need (managing template engine configuration
for example).

function render(template, model) {

var compiledTemplate = Handlebars.compile(template);
return compiledTemplate(model);
}

Check out Spring script templates unit tests (java, resources) for more configuration examples.

23.7 XML Marshalling View

The MarshallingView 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
MarhsallingViews `modelKey bean property. Alternatively, the view will iterate over all model
properties and marshal the first type that is 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.

23.8 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 Springs support for Tiles v3 in the

org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles3 package.

Dependencies

To be able to use Tiles, you have to add a dependency on Tiles version 3.0.1 or higher and its transitive
dependencies to your project.

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:

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<bean id="tilesConfigurer" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles3.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.

You can specify locale specific Tiles definitions by adding an underscore and then the locale. For
example:

<bean id="tilesConfigurer" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles3.TilesConfigurer">

<property name="definitions">
<list>
<value>/WEB-INF/defs/tiles.xml</value>
<value>/WEB-INF/defs/tiles_fr_FR.xml</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>

With this configuration, tiles_fr_FR.xml will be used for requests with the fr_FR locale, and
tiles.xml will be used by default.

Note

Since underscores are used to indicate locales, it is recommended to avoid using them otherwise
in the file names for Tiles definitions.

UrlBasedViewResolver

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.tiles3.TilesView"/>
</bean>

ResourceBundleViewResolver

The ResourceBundleViewResolver has to be provided with a property file containing viewnames

and viewclasses the resolver can use:

<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.ResourceBundleViewResolver">

<property name="basename" value="views"/>
</bean>

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...
welcomeView.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles3.TilesView
welcomeView.url=welcome (this is the name of a Tiles definition)

vetsView.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles3.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 supports JSTL (the JSP Standard Tag Library) out of the box.

SimpleSpringPreparerFactory and SpringBeanPreparerFactory

As an advanced feature, Spring also supports two special Tiles 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 Springs container callbacks as well as applying configured Spring
BeanPostProcessors. If Springs 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 DispatcherServlets 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.tiles3.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>

<!-- resolving preparer names as Spring bean definition names -->

<property name="preparerFactoryClass"
value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles3.SpringBeanPreparerFactory"/>

</bean>

23.9 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.

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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 22.3, Implementing Controllers for details of Spring Web MVCs Controller interface. The
XSLT Controller 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 MVC configuration has to define a
XsltViewResolver bean and regular MVC annotation configuration.

@EnableWebMvc
@ComponentScan
@Configuration
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Bean
public XsltViewResolver xsltViewResolver() {
XsltViewResolver viewResolver = new XsltViewResolver();
viewResolver.setPrefix("/WEB-INF/xsl/");
viewResolver.setSuffix(".xslt");
return viewResolver;
}

And we need a Controller that encapsulates our word generation logic.

Standard MVC controller code

The controller logic is encapsulated in a @Controller class, with the handler method being defined
like so

@Controller
public class XsltController {

@RequestMapping("/")
public String home(Model model) throws Exception {

Document document = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().newDocument();

Element root = document.createElement("wordList");

List<String> words = Arrays.asList("Hello", "Spring", "Framework");

for (String word : words) {
Element wordNode = document.createElement("word");
Text textNode = document.createTextNode(word);
wordNode.appendChild(textNode);
root.appendChild(wordNode);
}

model.addAttribute("wordList", root);
return "home";
}

So far weve only created a DOM document and added it to the Model map. Note that you can also load
an XML file as a Resource and use it instead of a custom DOM document.

Of course, 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.

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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.

Next, XsltViewResolver will resolve the "home" XSLT template file and merge the DOM document
into it to generate our view.

Document transformation

Finally, the XsltViewResolver will resolve the "home" XSLT template file and merge the DOM
document into it to generate our view. As shown in the XsltViewResolver configuration, XSLT
templates live in the war file in the 'WEB-INF/xsl' directory and end with a "xslt" file extension.

<?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>
<ul>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</ul>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="word">
<li><xsl:value-of select="."/></li>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

This is rendered as:

<html>
<head>
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Hello!</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>My First Words</h1>
<ul>
<li>Hello</li>
<li>Spring</li>
<li>Framework</li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>

23.10 Document views (PDF/Excel)

Introduction
Returning an HTML page isnt 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.

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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, lets 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 well 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, well 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.

Heres 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:

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package excel;

// imports omitted for brevity

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");

List words = (List) model.get("wordList");

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;

// imports omitted for brevity

public class HomePage extends AbstractJExcelView {

protected void buildExcelDocument(Map model, WritableWorkbook wb,

HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {

WritableSheet sheet = wb.createSheet("Spring", 0);

sheet.addCell(new Label(0, 0, "Spring-Excel test"));

List words = (List) model.get("wordList");

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. Weve 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.

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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;

// imports omitted for brevity

public class PDFPage extends AbstractPdfView {

protected void buildPdfDocument(Map model, Document doc, PdfWriter writer,

HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp) throws Exception {
List words = (List) model.get("wordList");
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.

23.11 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.

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.

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.

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Configuring the ViewResolver

Typically, you will use the ResourceBundleViewResolver to map view names to view classes and
files in a properties file.

<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.ResourceBundleViewResolver">

<property name="basename" value="views"/>
</bean>

Here weve 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 23.2. 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

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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,

HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {

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 23.3. 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.

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:

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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() {

Map model = new HashMap();
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.

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>

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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.

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!
&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td width="50%"&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/body&gt;&lt;/html&gt;
</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.

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23.12 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.nets 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) {
// implementation omitted
}

@Override
protected List<Entry> buildFeedEntries(Map<String, Object> model,
HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
// implementation omitted
}

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) {
// implementation omitted
}

@Override
protected List<Item> buildFeedItems(Map<String, Object> model,
HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
// implementation omitted
}

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 Arendsens Spring Team Blog entry.

23.13 JSON Mapping View

The MappingJackson2JsonView uses the Jackson librarys 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.

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JSON mapping can be customized as needed through the use of Jacksons 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.

JSONP is supported and automatically enabled when the request has a query parameter named
jsonp or callback. The JSONP query parameter name(s) could be customized through the
jsonpParameterNames property.

23.14 XML Mapping View

The MappingJackson2XmlView uses the Jackson XML extension's XmlMapper to render the
response content as XML. If the model contains multiples entries, the object to be serialized should be
set explicitly using the modelKey bean property. If the model contains a single entry, it will be serialized
automatically.

XML mapping can be customized as needed through the use of JAXB or Jacksons provided
annotations. When further control is needed, a custom XmlMapper can be injected through the
ObjectMapper property for cases where custom XML serializers/deserializers need to be provided
for specific types.

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24. Integrating with other web frameworks

24.1 Introduction

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 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 self-contained 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.

This chapter details Springs integration with third party web frameworks, such as JSF.

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 their 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 JSF, 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. 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 JSF for the presentation layer of your web application,
the assumption is that you are already familiar with JSF itself. If you need further details about
any of the supported web frameworks themselves, please do consult Section 24.6, Further
Resources at the end of this chapter.

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24.2 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 Springs own web framework, Spring MVC.)

One of the concepts (for want of a better word) espoused by (Springs) 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 ones application.

On to specifics: all that one need do is to declare a ContextLoaderListener in the standard Java EE
servlet web.xml file of ones 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-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>

Find below the <context-param/> configuration:

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

If you dont specify the contextConfigLocation context parameter, the

ContextLoaderListener will look for a file called /WEB-INF/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 dont

have to remember the name of the ServletContext attribute. Its
getWebApplicationContext() method will return null if an object doesnt exist under
the WebApplicationContext.ROOT_WEB_APPLICATION_CONTEXT_ATTRIBUTE key. Rather
than risk getting NullPointerExceptions in your application, its 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.

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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.

24.3 JavaServer Faces 1.2

JavaServer Faces (JSF) is the JCPs 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 Springs JSF integration is the JSF ELResolver mechanism.

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 Springs '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>

FacesContextUtils
A custom VariableResolver works well when mapping ones 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());

24.4 Apache Struts 2.x

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

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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.

Check out the Struts Spring Plugin for the built-in Spring integration shipped with Struts.

24.5 Tapestry 5.x

From the Tapestry homepage:

Tapestry is a "Component oriented framework for creating dynamic, robust, highly scalable web
applications in Java."

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.

For more information, check out Tapestrys dedicated integration module for Spring.

24.6 Further Resources

Find below links to further resources about the various web frameworks described in this chapter.

The JSF homepage

The Struts homepage

The Tapestry homepage

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25. Portlet MVC Framework

25.1 Introduction

JSR-286 The Java Portlet Specification

For more general information about portlet development, please review the JSR-286 Specification
itself.

In addition to supporting conventional (servlet-based) Web development, Spring also supports JSR-286
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 22, Web MVC framework and Chapter 23, 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-286 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.

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 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 self-contained 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.

The dual phases of portlet requests are one of the real strengths of the JSR-286 specification. For
example, dynamic search results can be updated routinely on the display without the user explicitly
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

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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(..) 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.

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.

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.

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 the section called Request, session, global session, application, and WebSocket
scopes

25.2 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.
Springs 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:

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<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 portlet-specific 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, well 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 dont have to worry about configuring them.

Table 25.1. Special beans in the WebApplicationContext

Expression Explanation

handler (Section 25.5, Handler mappings) a list of pre- and post-processors and
mapping(s) controllers that will be executed if they match certain criteria (for instance a
matching portlet mode specified with the controller)

controller(s) (Section 25.4, Controllers) the beans providing the actual functionality (or at
least, access to the functionality) as part of the MVC triad

view resolver (Section 25.6, Views and resolving them) capable of resolving view names to
view definitions

multipart resolver (Section 25.7, Multipart (file upload) support) offers functionality to process file
uploads from HTML forms

handler exception (Section 25.8, Handling exceptions) offers functionality to map exceptions to
resolver 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:

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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 25.7, 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 Springs DispatcherPortlet by adding context parameters in the portlet.xml
file or portlet init-parameters. The possibilities are listed below.

Table 25.2. DispatcherPortlet initialization parameters

Parameter Explanation

contextClass Class that implements WebApplicationContext, which will be used to

instantiate the context used by this portlet. If this parameter isnt specified, the
XmlPortletApplicationContext will be used.

String which is passed to the context instance (specified by contextClass)

contextConfigLocation
to indicate where context(s) can be found. The String is potentially 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.

viewRendererUrlThe URL at which DispatcherPortlet can access an instance of

ViewRendererServlet (see Section 25.3, The ViewRendererServlet).

25.3 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:

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<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.

25.4 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

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defines the most common functionality required of every controller: handling an action request, handling
a render request, and returning a model and a view.

AbstractController and PortletContentGenerator

Of course, just a Controller interface isnt enough. To provide a basic infrastructure, all of Spring
Portlet MVCs Controllers inherit from AbstractController, a class offering access to Springs
ApplicationContext and control over caching.

Table 25.3. 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.

Use this if you want handling by this controller to be synchronized

synchronizeSession
on the users 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
renderWhenMinimized
minimized state, set this to 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.

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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 25.5, Handler mappings) to get this very simple controller working.

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.

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 dont have to implement a framework-specific interface,
so you can directly manipulate your persistent objects if you desire. Lets 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 dont want to specify what views youre going to show the user in the application context.

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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.

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 post-process requests
going to these portlets. Since JSR-286 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.

25.5 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 lets 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

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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 MVCs 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 the section
called 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.

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>

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>

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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"> <!-- 'view' portlet mode -->
<map>
<entry key="add" value-ref="addItemHandler"/>
<entry key="edit" value-ref="editItemHandler"/>
<entry key="delete" value-ref="deleteItemHandler"/>
</map>
</entry>
<entry key="edit"> <!-- 'edit' portlet mode -->
<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.

Adding HandlerInterceptors
Springs 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 post- processing.

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

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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.

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.

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.

25.6 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 23, View technologies and
Section 22.5, 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.

25.7 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

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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 applications 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.

Using the PortletMultipartResolver

The following example shows how to use the CommonsPortletMultipartResolver:

<bean id="portletMultipartResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.portlet.multipart.CommonsPortletMultipartResolver">
<!-- one of the properties available; the maximum file size in bytes -->
<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-286
Portlet applications.

Now that you have seen how to set Portlet MVC up to handle multipart requests, lets 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.

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:

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<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, weve created a field named "file" that matches the property of the bean that holds
the byte[] array. Furthermore weve 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 thats 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. Theres 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.

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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:

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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

String 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 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
}
}

public class FileUploadBean {

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
wouldnt 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) objects class. In this case one does not need to register any custom property editor
because there is no type conversion to be performed.

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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

MultipartFile file = bean.getFile();
if (file == null) {
// hmm, that's strange, the user did not upload anything
}

// do something with the file here

}
}

public class FileUploadBean {

private MultipartFile file;

public void setFile(MultipartFile file) {

this.file = file;
}

public MultipartFile getFile() {

return file;
}

25.8 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.

25.9 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 APIs, 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.

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/

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or AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter is defined as well - provided that you intend to use

@RequestMapping.

<?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 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).

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
dispatchers context. However, the @Controller stereotype also allows for autodetection, aligned with
Spring 2.5s 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:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<context:component-scan base-package="org.springframework.samples.petportal.portlet"/>

// ...

</beans>

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

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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 controllers mapping would be
expressed through an @RequestMapping annotation. This works for pre-built Controller base
classes, such as SimpleFormController, too.

In the following discussion, well 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);
response.setRenderParameter("action", "list");
}
}

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As of Spring 3.0, there are dedicated @ActionMapping and @RenderMapping (as well as
@ResourceMapping and @EventMapping) annotations which can be used instead:

@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;
}

@RenderMapping // default (action=list)

public String showPetSites() {
return "petSitesEdit";
}

@RenderMapping(params = "action=add")
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";
}

@ActionMapping(params = "action=add")
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");
}
}

@ActionMapping(params = "action=delete")
public void removeSite(@RequestParam("site") String site, ActionResponse response) {
this.petSites.remove(site);
response.setRenderParameter("action", "list");
}
}

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.

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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.util.TimeZone / java.time.ZoneId for the current request time zone.

java.io.InputStream / java.io.Reader for access to the requests content. This will be the
raw InputStream/Reader as exposed by the Portlet API.

java.io.OutputStream / java.io.Writer for generating the responses 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 non-qualified 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

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
RequestToViewNameTranslator and the model implicitly enriched with command objects and the
results of @ModelAttribute annotated reference data 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).

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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 types class name otherwise). The model will be implicitly enriched
with command objects and the results of @ModelAttribute annotated reference data accessor
methods.

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
@RequestMapping("EDIT")
@SessionAttributes("site")
public class PetSitesEditController {

// ...

public void removeSite(@RequestParam("site") String site, ActionResponse response) {

this.petSites.remove(site);
response.setRenderParameter("action", "list");
}

// ...

Parameters using this annotation are required by default, but you can specify that a parameter is optional
by setting @RequestParams `required attribute to false (e.g., @RequestParam(name="id",
required=false)).

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

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@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
@RequestMapping("EDIT")
@SessionAttributes("site")
public class PetSitesEditController {

// ...

@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();
response.setRenderParameter("action", "list");
}
}
}

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
@RequestMapping("EDIT")
@SessionAttributes("site")
public class PetSitesEditController {
// ...
}

Customizing WebDataBinder initialization

To customize request parameter binding with PropertyEditors, etc. via Springs WebDataBinder, you
can either use @InitBinder-annotated methods within your controller or externalize your configuration
by providing a custom WebBindingInitializer.

Customizing data binding with @InitBinder

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

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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
protected void initBinder(WebDataBinder binder) {
SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
dateFormat.setLenient(false);
binder.registerCustomEditor(Date.class, new CustomDateEditor(dateFormat, false));
}

// ...

Configuring a custom WebBindingInitializer

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.

25.10 Portlet application deployment

The process of deploying a Spring Portlet MVC application is no different than deploying any JSR-286
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-286 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.

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26. WebSocket Support

This part of the reference documentation covers Spring Frameworks support for WebSocket-style
messaging in web applications including use of STOMP as an application level WebSocket sub-protocol.

Section 26.1, Introduction establishes a frame of mind in which to think about WebSocket, covering
adoption challenges, design considerations, and thoughts on when it is a good fit.

Section 26.2, WebSocket API reviews the Spring WebSocket API on the server-side, while
Section 26.3, SockJS Fallback Options explains the SockJS protocol and shows how to configure and
use it.

the section called Overview of STOMP introduces the STOMP messaging protocol. the section called
Enable STOMP over WebSocket demonstrates how to configure STOMP support in Spring. the
section called Annotation Message Handling and the following sections explain how to write annotated
message handling methods, send messages, choose message broker options, as well as work with the
special "user" destinations. Finally, the section called Testing Annotated Controller Methods lists three
approaches to testing STOMP/WebSocket applications.

26.1 Introduction
The WebSocket protocol RFC 6455 defines an important new capability for web applications: full-duplex,
two-way communication between client and server. It is an exciting new capability on the heels of a
long history of techniques to make the web more interactive including Java Applets, XMLHttpRequest,
Adobe Flash, ActiveXObject, various Comet techniques, server-sent events, and others.

A proper introduction to the WebSocket protocol is beyond the scope of this document. At a minimum
however its important to understand that HTTP is used only for the initial handshake, which relies on a
mechanism built into HTTP to request a protocol upgrade (or in this case a protocol switch) to which the
server can respond with HTTP status 101 (switching protocols) if it agrees. Assuming the handshake
succeeds the TCP socket underlying the HTTP upgrade request remains open and both client and
server can use it to send messages to each other.

Spring Framework 4 includes a new spring-websocket module with comprehensive WebSocket

support. It is compatible with the Java WebSocket API standard (JSR-356) and also provides additional
value-add as explained in the rest of the introduction.

WebSocket Fallback Options

An important challenge to adoption is the lack of support for WebSocket in some browsers. Notably the
first Internet Explorer version to support WebSocket is version 10 (see http://caniuse.com/websockets
for support by browser versions). Furthermore, some restrictive proxies may be configured in ways that
either preclude the attempt to do an HTTP upgrade or otherwise break connection after some time
because it has remained opened for too long. A good overview on this topic from Peter Lubbers is
available in the InfoQ article "How HTML5 Web Sockets Interact With Proxy Servers".

Therefore to build a WebSocket application today, fallback options are required in order to simulate the
WebSocket API where necessary. The Spring Framework provides such transparent fallback options
based on the SockJS protocol. These options can be enabled through configuration and do not require
modifying the application otherwise.

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A Messaging Architecture

Aside from short-to-midterm adoption challenges, using WebSocket brings up important design
considerations that are important to recognize early on, especially in contrast to what we know about
building web applications today.

Today REST is a widely accepted, understood, and supported architecture for building web applications.
It is an architecture that relies on having many URLs (nouns), a handful of HTTP methods (verbs), and
other principles such as using hypermedia (links), remaining stateless, etc.

By contrast a WebSocket application may use a single URL only for the initial HTTP handshake. All
messages thereafter share and flow on the same TCP connection. This points to an entirely different,
asynchronous, event-driven, messaging architecture. One that is much closer to traditional messaging
applications (e.g. JMS, AMQP).

Spring Framework 4 includes a new spring-messaging module with key abstractions from the Spring
Integration project such as Message, MessageChannel, MessageHandler, and others that can serve
as a foundation for such a messaging architecture. The module also includes a set of annotations for
mapping messages to methods, similar to the Spring MVC annotation based programming model.

Sub-Protocol Support in WebSocket

WebSocket does imply a messaging architecture but does not mandate the use of any specific
messaging protocol. It is a very thin layer over TCP that transforms a stream of bytes into a stream of
messages (either text or binary) and not much more. It is up to applications to interpret the meaning
of a message.

Unlike HTTP, which is an application-level protocol, in the WebSocket protocol there is simply not
enough information in an incoming message for a framework or container to know how to route it or
process it. Therefore WebSocket is arguably too low level for anything but a very trivial application. It
can be done, but it will likely lead to creating a framework on top. This is comparable to how most web
applications today are written using a web framework rather than the Servlet API alone.

For this reason the WebSocket RFC defines the use of sub-protocols. During the handshake, the
client and server can use the header Sec-WebSocket-Protocol to agree on a sub-protocol, i.e. a
higher, application-level protocol to use. The use of a sub-protocol is not required, but even if not used,
applications will still need to choose a message format that both the client and server can understand.
That format can be custom, framework-specific, or a standard messaging protocol.

The Spring Framework provides support for using STOMP a simple, messaging protocol originally
created for use in scripting languages with frames inspired by HTTP. STOMP is widely supported and
well suited for use over WebSocket and over the web.

Should I Use WebSocket?

With all the design considerations surrounding the use of WebSocket, it is reasonable to ask, "When
is it appropriate to use?".

The best fit for WebSocket is in web applications where the client and server need to exchange events
at high frequency and with low latency. Prime candidates include, but are not limited to, applications in
finance, games, collaboration, and others. Such applications are both very sensitive to time delays and
also need to exchange a wide variety of messages at a high frequency.

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For other application types, however, this may not be the case. For example, a news or social feed that
shows breaking news as it becomes available may be perfectly okay with simple polling once every few
minutes. Here latency is important, but it is acceptable if the news takes a few minutes to appear.

Even in cases where latency is crucial, if the volume of messages is relatively low (e.g. monitoring
network failures) the use of long polling should be considered as a relatively simple alternative that
works reliably and is comparable in terms of efficiency (again assuming the volume of messages is
relatively low).

It is the combination of both low latency and high frequency of messages that can make the use of
the WebSocket protocol critical. Even in such applications, the choice remains whether all client-server
communication should be done through WebSocket messages as opposed to using HTTP and REST.
The answer is going to vary by application; however, it is likely that some functionality may be exposed
over both WebSocket and as a REST API in order to provide clients with alternatives. Furthermore, a
REST API call may need to broadcast a message to interested clients connected via WebSocket.

The Spring Framework allows @Controller and @RestController classes to have both HTTP
request handling and WebSocket message handling methods. Furthermore, a Spring MVC request
handling method, or any application method for that matter, can easily broadcast a message to all
interested WebSocket clients or to a specific user.

26.2 WebSocket API

The Spring Framework provides a WebSocket API designed to adapt to various WebSocket engines.
Currently the list includes WebSocket runtimes such as Tomcat 7.0.47+, Jetty 9.1+, GlassFish 4.1+,
WebLogic 12.1.3+, and Undertow 1.0+ (and WildFly 8.0+). Additional support may be added as more
WebSocket runtimes become available.

Note

As explained in the introduction, direct use of a WebSocket API is too low level for
applications until assumptions are made about the format of a message there is little a
framework can do to interpret messages or route them via annotations. This is why applications
should consider using a sub-protocol and Springs STOMP over WebSocket support.

When using a higher level protocol, the details of the WebSocket API become less relevant,
much like the details of TCP communication are not exposed to applications when using HTTP.
Nevertheless this section covers the details of using WebSocket directly.

Create and Configure a WebSocketHandler

Creating a WebSocket server is as simple as implementing WebSocketHandler or more likely
extending either TextWebSocketHandler or BinaryWebSocketHandler:

import org.springframework.web.socket.WebSocketHandler;
import org.springframework.web.socket.WebSocketSession;
import org.springframework.web.socket.TextMessage;

public class MyHandler extends TextWebSocketHandler {

@Override
public void handleTextMessage(WebSocketSession session, TextMessage message) {
// ...
}

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There is dedicated WebSocket Java-config and XML namespace support for mapping the above
WebSocket handler to a specific URL:

import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.EnableWebSocket;
import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.WebSocketConfigurer;
import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.WebSocketHandlerRegistry;

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocket
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketConfigurer {

@Override
public void registerWebSocketHandlers(WebSocketHandlerRegistry registry) {
registry.addHandler(myHandler(), "/myHandler");
}

@Bean
public WebSocketHandler myHandler() {
return new MyHandler();
}

XML configuration equivalent:

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

<websocket:handlers>
<websocket:mapping path="/myHandler" handler="myHandler"/>
</websocket:handlers>

<bean id="myHandler" class="org.springframework.samples.MyHandler"/>

</beans>

The above is for use in Spring MVC applications and should be included in the configuration of
a DispatcherServlet. However, Springs WebSocket support does not depend on Spring MVC. It is
relatively simple to integrate a WebSocketHandler into other HTTP serving environments with the
help of WebSocketHttpRequestHandler.

Customizing the WebSocket Handshake

The easiest way to customize the initial HTTP WebSocket handshake request is through a
HandshakeInterceptor, which exposes "before" and "after" the handshake methods. Such an
interceptor can be used to preclude the handshake or to make any attributes available to the
WebSocketSession. For example, there is a built-in interceptor for passing HTTP session attributes
to the WebSocket session:

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@Configuration
@EnableWebSocket
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketConfigurer {

@Override
public void registerWebSocketHandlers(WebSocketHandlerRegistry registry) {
registry.addHandler(new MyHandler(), "/myHandler")
.addInterceptors(new HttpSessionHandshakeInterceptor());
}

And the XML configuration equivalent:

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

<websocket:handlers>
<websocket:mapping path="/myHandler" handler="myHandler"/>
<websocket:handshake-interceptors>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.socket.server.support.HttpSessionHandshakeInterceptor"/
>
</websocket:handshake-interceptors>
</websocket:handlers>

<bean id="myHandler" class="org.springframework.samples.MyHandler"/>

</beans>

A more advanced option is to extend the DefaultHandshakeHandler that performs the steps
of the WebSocket handshake, including validating the client origin, negotiating a sub-protocol,
and others. An application may also need to use this option if it needs to configure a custom
RequestUpgradeStrategy in order to adapt to a WebSocket server engine and version that is not
yet supported (also see the section called Deployment Considerations for more on this subject). Both
the Java-config and XML namespace make it possible to configure a custom HandshakeHandler.

WebSocketHandler Decoration
Spring provides a WebSocketHandlerDecorator base class that can be used to decorate a
WebSocketHandler with additional behavior. Logging and exception handling implementations
are provided and added by default when using the WebSocket Java-config or XML namespace.
The ExceptionWebSocketHandlerDecorator catches all uncaught exceptions arising from any
WebSocketHandler method and closes the WebSocket session with status 1011 that indicates a server
error.

Deployment Considerations
The Spring WebSocket API is easy to integrate into a Spring MVC application where the
DispatcherServlet serves both HTTP WebSocket handshake as well as other HTTP
requests. It is also easy to integrate into other HTTP processing scenarios by invoking
WebSocketHttpRequestHandler. This is convenient and easy to understand. However, special
considerations apply with regards to JSR-356 runtimes.

The Java WebSocket API (JSR-356) provides two deployment mechanisms. The first involves a Servlet
container classpath scan (Servlet 3 feature) at startup; and the other is a registration API to use at Servlet

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container initialization. Neither of these mechanism makes it possible to use a single "front controller"
for all HTTP processing including WebSocket handshake and all other HTTP requests such as
Spring MVCs DispatcherServlet.

This is a significant limitation of JSR-356 that Springs WebSocket support addresses by providing a
server-specific RequestUpgradeStrategy even when running in a JSR-356 runtime.

Note

A request to overcome the above limitation in the Java WebSocket API has been created and can
be followed at WEBSOCKET_SPEC-211. Also note that Tomcat and Jetty already provide native
API alternatives that makes it easy to overcome the limitation. We are hopeful that more servers
will follow their example regardless of when it is addressed in the Java WebSocket API.

A secondary consideration is that Servlet containers with JSR-356 support are expected to perform
a ServletContainerInitializer (SCI) scan that can slow down application startup, in some
cases dramatically. If a significant impact is observed after an upgrade to a Servlet container version
with JSR-356 support, it should be possible to selectively enable or disable web fragments (and SCI
scanning) through the use of the <absolute-ordering /> element in web.xml:

<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
version="3.0">

<absolute-ordering/>

</web-app>

You can then selectively enable web fragments by name, such as Springs own
SpringServletContainerInitializer that provides support for the Servlet 3 Java initialization
API, if required:

<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
version="3.0">

<absolute-ordering>
<name>spring_web</name>
</absolute-ordering>

</web-app>

Configuring the WebSocket Engine

Each underlying WebSocket engine exposes configuration properties that control runtime
characteristics such as the size of message buffer sizes, idle timeout, and others.

For Tomcat, WildFly, and GlassFish add a ServletServerContainerFactoryBean to your

WebSocket Java config:

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@Configuration
@EnableWebSocket
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketConfigurer {

@Bean
public ServletServerContainerFactoryBean createWebSocketContainer() {
ServletServerContainerFactoryBean container = new ServletServerContainerFactoryBean();
container.setMaxTextMessageBufferSize(8192);
container.setMaxBinaryMessageBufferSize(8192);
return container;
}

or WebSocket XML namespace:

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

<bean class="org.springframework...ServletServerContainerFactoryBean">
<property name="maxTextMessageBufferSize" value="8192"/>
<property name="maxBinaryMessageBufferSize" value="8192"/>
</bean>

</beans>

Note

For client side WebSocket configuration, you should use WebSocketContainerFactoryBean

(XML) or ContainerProvider.getWebSocketContainer() (Java config).

For Jetty, youll need to supply a pre-configured Jetty WebSocketServerFactory and plug that into
Springs DefaultHandshakeHandler through your WebSocket Java config:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocket
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketConfigurer {

@Override
public void registerWebSocketHandlers(WebSocketHandlerRegistry registry) {
registry.addHandler(echoWebSocketHandler(),
"/echo").setHandshakeHandler(handshakeHandler());
}

@Bean
public DefaultHandshakeHandler handshakeHandler() {

WebSocketPolicy policy = new WebSocketPolicy(WebSocketBehavior.SERVER);

policy.setInputBufferSize(8192);
policy.setIdleTimeout(600000);

return new DefaultHandshakeHandler(

new JettyRequestUpgradeStrategy(new WebSocketServerFactory(policy)));
}

or WebSocket XML namespace:

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

<websocket:handlers>
<websocket:mapping path="/echo" handler="echoHandler"/>
<websocket:handshake-handler ref="handshakeHandler"/>
</websocket:handlers>

<bean id="handshakeHandler" class="org.springframework...DefaultHandshakeHandler">

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

<bean id="upgradeStrategy" class="org.springframework...JettyRequestUpgradeStrategy">

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

<bean id="serverFactory" class="org.eclipse.jetty...WebSocketServerFactory">

<constructor-arg>
<bean class="org.eclipse.jetty...WebSocketPolicy">
<constructor-arg value="SERVER"/>
<property name="inputBufferSize" value="8092"/>
<property name="idleTimeout" value="600000"/>
</bean>
</constructor-arg>
</bean>

</beans>

Configuring allowed origins

As of Spring Framework 4.1.5, the default behavior for WebSocket and SockJS is to accept only same
origin requests. It is also possible to allow all or a specified list of origins. This check is mostly designed
for browser clients. There is nothing preventing other types of clients from modifying the Origin header
value (see RFC 6454: The Web Origin Concept for more details).

The 3 possible behaviors are:

Allow only same origin requests (default): in this mode, when SockJS is enabled, the Iframe HTTP
response header X-Frame-Options is set to SAMEORIGIN, and JSONP transport is disabled since
it does not allow to check the origin of a request. As a consequence, IE6 and IE7 are not supported
when this mode is enabled.

Allow a specified list of origins: each provided allowed origin must start with http:// or https://.
In this mode, when SockJS is enabled, both IFrame and JSONP based transports are disabled. As a
consequence, IE6 through IE9 are not supported when this mode is enabled.

Allow all origins: to enable this mode, you should provide * as the allowed origin value. In this mode,
all transports are available.

WebSocket and SockJS allowed origins can be configured as shown bellow:

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import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.EnableWebSocket;
import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.WebSocketConfigurer;
import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.WebSocketHandlerRegistry;

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocket
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketConfigurer {

@Override
public void registerWebSocketHandlers(WebSocketHandlerRegistry registry) {
registry.addHandler(myHandler(), "/myHandler").setAllowedOrigins("http://mydomain.com");
}

@Bean
public WebSocketHandler myHandler() {
return new MyHandler();
}

XML configuration equivalent:

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

<websocket:handlers allowed-origins="http://mydomain.com">
<websocket:mapping path="/myHandler" handler="myHandler" />
</websocket:handlers>

<bean id="myHandler" class="org.springframework.samples.MyHandler"/>

</beans>

26.3 SockJS Fallback Options

As explained in the introduction, WebSocket is not supported in all browsers yet and may be precluded
by restrictive network proxies. This is why Spring provides fallback options that emulate the WebSocket
API as close as possible based on the SockJS protocol (version 0.3.3).

Overview of SockJS
The goal of SockJS is to let applications use a WebSocket API but fall back to non-WebSocket
alternatives when necessary at runtime, i.e. without the need to change application code.

SockJS consists of:

The SockJS protocol defined in the form of executable narrated tests.

The SockJS JavaScript client - a client library for use in browsers.

SockJS server implementations including one in the Spring Framework spring-websocket

module.

As of 4.1 spring-websocket also provides a SockJS Java client.

SockJS is designed for use in browsers. It goes to great lengths to support a wide range of browser
versions using a variety of techniques. For the full list of SockJS transport types and browsers see the

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SockJS client page. Transports fall in 3 general categories: WebSocket, HTTP Streaming, and HTTP
Long Polling. For an overview of these categories see this blog post.

The SockJS client begins by sending "GET /info" to obtain basic information from the server. After
that it must decide what transport to use. If possible WebSocket is used. If not, in most browsers there
is at least one HTTP streaming option and if not then HTTP (long) polling is used.

All transport requests have the following URL structure:

http://host:port/myApp/myEndpoint/{server-id}/{session-id}/{transport}

{server-id} - useful for routing requests in a cluster but not used otherwise.

{session-id} - correlates HTTP requests belonging to a SockJS session.

{transport} - indicates the transport type, e.g. "websocket", "xhr-streaming", etc.

The WebSocket transport needs only a single HTTP request to do the WebSocket handshake. All
messages thereafter are exchanged on that socket.

HTTP transports require more requests. Ajax/XHR streaming for example relies on one long-
running request for server-to-client messages and additional HTTP POST requests for client-to-server
messages. Long polling is similar except it ends the current request after each server-to-client send.

SockJS adds minimal message framing. For example the server sends the letter o ("open" frame)
initially, messages are sent as a["message1","message2"] (JSON-encoded array), the letter h
("heartbeat" frame) if no messages flow for 25 seconds by default, and the letter c ("close" frame) to
close the session.

To learn more, run an example in a browser and watch the HTTP requests. The SockJS client allows
fixing the list of transports so it is possible to see each transport one at a time. The SockJS client also
provides a debug flag which enables helpful messages in the browser console. On the server side
enable TRACE logging for org.springframework.web.socket. For even more detail refer to the
SockJS protocol narrated test.

Enable SockJS

SockJS is easy to enable through Java configuration:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocket
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketConfigurer {

@Override
public void registerWebSocketHandlers(WebSocketHandlerRegistry registry) {
registry.addHandler(myHandler(), "/myHandler").withSockJS();
}

@Bean
public WebSocketHandler myHandler() {
return new MyHandler();
}

and the XML configuration equivalent:

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

<websocket:handlers>
<websocket:mapping path="/myHandler" handler="myHandler"/>
<websocket:sockjs/>
</websocket:handlers>

<bean id="myHandler" class="org.springframework.samples.MyHandler"/>

</beans>

The above is for use in Spring MVC applications and should be included in the configuration of a
DispatcherServlet. However, Springs WebSocket and SockJS support does not depend on Spring
MVC. It is relatively simple to integrate into other HTTP serving environments with the help of
SockJsHttpRequestHandler.

On the browser side, applications can use the sockjs-client (version 1.0.x) that emulates the W3C
WebSocket API and communicates with the server to select the best transport option depending on
the browser its running in. Review the sockjs-client page and the list of transport types supported by
browser. The client also provides several configuration options, for example, to specify which transports
to include.

HTTP Streaming in IE 8, 9: Ajax/XHR vs IFrame

Internet Explorer 8 and 9 are and will remain common for some time. They are a key reason for having
SockJS. This section covers important considerations about running in those browsers.

The SockJS client supports Ajax/XHR streaming in IE 8 and 9 via Microsofts XDomainRequest. That
works across domains but does not support sending cookies. Cookies are very often essential for Java
applications. However since the SockJS client can be used with many server types (not just Java ones),
it needs to know whether cookies matter. If so the SockJS client prefers Ajax/XHR for streaming or
otherwise it relies on a iframe-based technique.

The very first "/info" request from the SockJS client is a request for information that can influence
the clients choice of transports. One of those details is whether the server application relies on cookies,
e.g. for authentication purposes or clustering with sticky sessions. Springs SockJS support includes
a property called sessionCookieNeeded. It is enabled by default since most Java applications rely
on the JSESSIONID cookie. If your application does not need it, you can turn off this option and the
SockJS client should choose xdr-streaming in IE 8 and 9.

If you do use an iframe-based transport, and in any case, it is good to know that browsers can be
instructed to block the use of IFrames on a given page by setting the HTTP response header X-Frame-
Options to DENY, SAMEORIGIN, or ALLOW-FROM <origin>. This is used to prevent clickjacking.

Note

Spring Security 3.2+ provides support for setting X-Frame-Options on every response. By
default the Spring Security Java config sets it to DENY. In 3.2 the Spring Security XML namespace
does not set that header by default but may be configured to do so, and in the future it may set
it by default.

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See Section 7.1. "Default Security Headers" of the Spring Security documentation for details on
how to configure the setting of the X-Frame-Options header. You may also check or watch
SEC-2501 for additional background.

If your application adds the X-Frame-Options response header (as it should!) and relies on an iframe-
based transport, you will need to set the header value to SAMEORIGIN or ALLOW-FROM <origin>.
Along with that the Spring SockJS support also needs to know the location of the SockJS client because
it is loaded from the iframe. By default the iframe is set to download the SockJS client from a CDN
location. It is a good idea to configure this option to a URL from the same origin as the application.

In Java config this can be done as shown below. The XML namespace provides a similar option via
the <websocket:sockjs> element:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocket
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketConfigurer {

@Override
public void registerStompEndpoints(StompEndpointRegistry registry) {
registry.addEndpoint("/portfolio").withSockJS()
.setClientLibraryUrl("http://localhost:8080/myapp/js/sockjs-client.js");
}

// ...

Note

During initial development, do enable the SockJS client devel mode that prevents the browser
from caching SockJS requests (like the iframe) that would otherwise be cached. For details on
how to enable it see the SockJS client page.

Heartbeat Messages
The SockJS protocol requires servers to send heartbeat messages to preclude proxies from concluding
a connection is hung. The Spring SockJS configuration has a property called heartbeatTime that
can be used to customize the frequency. By default a heartbeat is sent after 25 seconds assuming no
other messages were sent on that connection. This 25 seconds value is in line with the following IETF
recommendation for public Internet applications.

Note

When using STOMP over WebSocket/SockJS, if the STOMP client and server negotiate
heartbeats to be exchanged, the SockJS heartbeats are disabled.

The Spring SockJS support also allows configuring the TaskScheduler to use for scheduling
heartbeats tasks. The task scheduler is backed by a thread pool with default settings based on the
number of available processors. Applications should consider customizing the settings according to their
specific needs.

Servlet 3 Async Requests

HTTP streaming and HTTP long polling SockJS transports require a connection to remain open longer
than usual. For an overview of these techniques see this blog post.

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In Servlet containers this is done through Servlet 3 async support that allows exiting the Servlet container
thread processing a request and continuing to write to the response from another thread.

A specific issue is that the Servlet API does not provide notifications for a client that has gone away, see
SERVLET_SPEC-44. However, Servlet containers raise an exception on subsequent attempts to write
to the response. Since Springs SockJS Service supports sever-sent heartbeats (every 25 seconds by
default), that means a client disconnect is usually detected within that time period or earlier if messages
are sent more frequently.

Note

As a result network IO failures may occur simply because a client has disconnected, which
can fill the log with unnecessary stack traces. Spring makes a best effort to identify such
network failures that represent client disconnects (specific to each server) and log a minimal
message using the dedicated log category DISCONNECTED_CLIENT_LOG_CATEGORY defined in
AbstractSockJsSession. If you need to see the stack traces, set that log category to TRACE.

CORS Headers for SockJS

If you allow cross-origin requests (see the section called Configuring allowed origins), the SockJS
protocol uses CORS for cross-domain support in the XHR streaming and polling transports. Therefore
CORS headers are added automatically unless the presence of CORS headers in the response is
detected. So if an application is already configured to provide CORS support, e.g. through a Servlet
Filter, Springs SockJsService will skip this part.

It is also possible to disable the addition of these CORS headers via the suppressCors property in
Springs SockJsService.

The following is the list of headers and values expected by SockJS:

"Access-Control-Allow-Origin" - initialized from the value of the "Origin" request header.

"Access-Control-Allow-Credentials" - always set to true.

"Access-Control-Request-Headers" - initialized from values from the equivalent request

header.

"Access-Control-Allow-Methods" - the HTTP methods a transport supports (see

TransportType enum).

"Access-Control-Max-Age" - set to 31536000 (1 year).

For the exact implementation see addCorsHeaders in AbstractSockJsService as well as the

TransportType enum in the source code.

Alternatively if the CORS configuration allows it consider excluding URLs with the SockJS endpoint
prefix thus letting Springs SockJsService handle it.

SockJS Client

A SockJS Java client is provided in order to connect to remote SockJS endpoints without using a
browser. This can be especially useful when there is a need for bidirectional communication between
2 servers over a public network, i.e. where network proxies may preclude the use of the WebSocket

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protocol. A SockJS Java client is also very useful for testing purposes, for example to simulate a large
number of concurrent users.

The SockJS Java client supports the "websocket", "xhr-streaming", and "xhr-polling" transports. The
remaining ones only make sense for use in a browser.

The WebSocketTransport can be configured with:

StandardWebSocketClient in a JSR-356 runtime

JettyWebSocketClient using the Jetty 9+ native WebSocket API

Any implementation of Springs WebSocketClient

An XhrTransport by definition supports both "xhr-streaming" and "xhr-polling" since from a client
perspective there is no difference other than in the URL used to connect to the server. At present there
are two implementations:

RestTemplateXhrTransport uses Springs RestTemplate for HTTP requests.

JettyXhrTransport uses Jettys HttpClient for HTTP requests.

The example below shows how to create a SockJS client and connect to a SockJS endpoint:

List<Transport> transports = new ArrayList<>(2);

transports.add(new WebSocketTransport(new StandardWebSocketClient()));
transports.add(new RestTemplateXhrTransport());

SockJsClient sockJsClient = new SockJsClient(transports);

sockJsClient.doHandshake(new MyWebSocketHandler(), "ws://example.com:8080/sockjs");

Note

SockJS uses JSON formatted arrays for messages. By default Jackson 2 is used and
needs to be on the classpath. Alternatively you can configure a custom implementation of
SockJsMessageCodec and configure it on the SockJsClient.

To use the SockJsClient for simulating a large number of concurrent users you will need to configure
the underlying HTTP client (for XHR transports) to allow a sufficient number of connections and threads.
For example with Jetty:

HttpClient jettyHttpClient = new HttpClient();

jettyHttpClient.setMaxConnectionsPerDestination(1000);
jettyHttpClient.setExecutor(new QueuedThreadPool(1000));

Consider also customizing these server-side SockJS related properties (see Javadoc for details):

@Configuration
public class WebSocketConfig extends WebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurationSupport {

@Override
public void registerStompEndpoints(StompEndpointRegistry registry) {
registry.addEndpoint("/sockjs").withSockJS()
.setStreamBytesLimit(512 * 1024)
.setHttpMessageCacheSize(1000)
.setDisconnectDelay(30 * 1000);
}

// ...

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26.4 STOMP Over WebSocket Messaging Architecture

The WebSocket protocol defines two types of messages, text and binary, but their content is undefined.
Its expected that the client and server may agree on using a sub-protocol (i.e. a higher-level protocol)
to define message semantics. While the use of a sub-protocol with WebSocket is completely optional
either way client and server will need to agree on some kind of protocol to help interpret messages.

Overview of STOMP
STOMP is a simple text-oriented messaging protocol that was originally created for scripting languages
such as Ruby, Python, and Perl to connect to enterprise message brokers. It is designed to address a
subset of commonly used messaging patterns. STOMP can be used over any reliable 2-way streaming
network protocol such as TCP and WebSocket. Although STOMP is a text-oriented protocol, the payload
of messages can be either text or binary.

STOMP is a frame based protocol whose frames are modeled on HTTP. The structure of a STOMP
frame:

COMMAND
header1:value1
header2:value2

Body^@

Clients can use the SEND or SUBSCRIBE commands to send or subscribe for messages along with a
"destination" header that describes what the message is about and who should receive it. This enables
a simple publish-subscribe mechanism that can be used to send messages through the broker to other
connected clients or to send messages to the server to request that some work be performed.

When using Springs STOMP support, the Spring WebSocket application acts as the STOMP broker to
clients. Messages are routed to @Controller message-handling methods or to a simple, in-memory
broker that keeps track of subscriptions and broadcasts messages to subscribed users. You can
also configure Spring to work with a dedicated STOMP broker (e.g. RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, etc) for
the actual broadcasting of messages. In that case Spring maintains TCP connections to the broker,
relays messages to it, and also passes messages from it down to connected WebSocket clients. Thus
Spring web applications can rely on unified HTTP-based security, common validation, and a familiar
programming model message-handling work.

Here is an example of a client subscribing to receive stock quotes which the server may emit periodically
e.g. via a scheduled task sending messages through a SimpMessagingTemplate to the broker:

SUBSCRIBE
id:sub-1
destination:/topic/price.stock.*

^@

Here is an example of a client sending a trade request, which the server may handle through an
@MessageMapping method and later on, after the execution, broadcast a trade confirmation message
and details down to the client:

SEND
destination:/queue/trade
content-type:application/json
content-length:44

{"action":"BUY","ticker":"MMM","shares",44}^@

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The meaning of a destination is intentionally left opaque in the STOMP spec. It can be any string,
and its entirely up to STOMP servers to define the semantics and the syntax of the destinations that
they support. It is very common, however, for destinations to be path-like strings where "/topic/.."
implies publish-subscribe (one-to-many) and "/queue/" implies point-to-point (one-to-one) message
exchanges.

STOMP servers can use the MESSAGE command to broadcast messages to all subscribers. Here is
an example of a server sending a stock quote to a subscribed client:

MESSAGE
message-id:nxahklf6-1
subscription:sub-1
destination:/topic/price.stock.MMM

{"ticker":"MMM","price":129.45}^@

It is important to know that a server cannot send unsolicited messages. All messages from a server must
be in response to a specific client subscription, and the "subscription-id" header of the server message
must match the "id" header of the client subscription.

The above overview is intended to provide the most basic understanding of the STOMP protocol. It is
recommended to review the protocol specification in full.

The benefits of using STOMP as a WebSocket sub-protocol:

No need to invent a custom message format

Use existing stomp.js client in the browser

Ability to route messages to based on destination

Option to use full-fledged message broker such as RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, etc. for broadcasting

Most importantly the use of STOMP (vs plain WebSocket) enables the Spring Framework to provide a
programming model for application-level use in the same way that Spring MVC provides a programming
model based on HTTP.

Enable STOMP over WebSocket

The Spring Framework provides support for using STOMP over WebSocket through the spring-
messaging and spring-websocket modules. Here is an example of exposing a STOMP WebSocket/
SockJS endpoint at the URL path /portfolio where messages whose destination starts with "/app"
are routed to message-handling methods (i.e. application work) and messages whose destinations start
with "/topic" or "/queue" will be routed to the message broker (i.e. broadcasting to other connected
clients):

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import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.EnableWebSocketMessageBroker;
import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.StompEndpointRegistry;

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocketMessageBroker
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer {

@Override
public void registerStompEndpoints(StompEndpointRegistry registry) {
registry.addEndpoint("/portfolio").withSockJS();
}

@Override
public void configureMessageBroker(MessageBrokerRegistry config) {
config.setApplicationDestinationPrefixes("/app");
config.enableSimpleBroker("/topic", "/queue");
}

and in XML:

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

<websocket:message-broker application-destination-prefix="/app">
<websocket:stomp-endpoint path="/portfolio">
<websocket:sockjs/>
</websocket:stomp-endpoint>
<websocket:simple-broker prefix="/topic, /queue"/>
</websocket:message-broker>

</beans>

Note

The "/app" prefix is arbitrary. You can pick any prefix. Its simply meant to differentiate messages
to be routed to message-handling methods to do application work vs messages to be routed to
the broker to broadcast to subscribed clients.

The "/topic" and "/queue" prefixes depend on the broker in use. In the case of the simple, in-
memory broker the prefixes do not have any special meaning; its merely a convention that
indicates how the destination is used (pub-sub targetting many subscribers or point-to-point
messages typically targeting an individual recipient). In the case of using a dedicated broker,
most brokers use "/topic" as a prefix for destinations with pub-sub semantics and "/queue" for
destinations with point-to-point semantics. Check the STOMP page of the broker to see the
destination semantics it supports.

On the browser side, a client might connect as follows using stomp.js and the sockjs-client:

var socket = new SockJS("/spring-websocket-portfolio/portfolio");

var stompClient = Stomp.over(socket);

stompClient.connect({}, function(frame) {
}

Or if connecting via WebSocket (without SockJS):

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var socket = new WebSocket("/spring-websocket-portfolio/portfolio");

var stompClient = Stomp.over(socket);

stompClient.connect({}, function(frame) {
}

Note that the stompClient above does not need to specify login and passcode headers. Even if it
did, they would be ignored, or rather overridden, on the server side. See the sections the section called
Connections To Full-Featured Broker and the section called Authentication for more information on
authentication.

Flow of Messages
When a STOMP endpoint is configured, the Spring application acts as the STOMP broker to connected
clients. This section provides a big picture overview of how messages flow within the application.

The spring-messaging module provides the foundation for asynchronous message processing. It
contains a number of abstractions that originated in the Spring Integration project and are intended for
use as building blocks in messaging applications:

Message a message with headers and a payload.

MessageHandler a contract for handling a message.

MessageChannel a contract for sending a message enabling loose coupling between senders and
receivers.

SubscribableChannel extends MessageChannel and sends messages to registered

MessageHandler subscribers.

ExecutorSubscribableChannel a concrete implementation of SubscribableChannel that can

deliver messages asynchronously via a thread pool.

The @EnableWebSocketMessageBroker Java config and the <websocket:message-broker>

XML config both assemble a concrete message flow. Below is a diagram of the part of the setup when
using the simple, in-memory broker:

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The above setup that includes 3 message channels:

"clientInboundChannel" for messages from WebSocket clients.

"clientOutboundChannel" for messages to WebSocket clients.

"brokerChannel" for messages to the broker from within the application.

The same three channels are also used with a dedicated broker except here a "broker relay" takes the
place of the simple broker:

Messages on the "clientInboundChannel" can flow to annotated methods for application handling
(e.g. a stock trade execution request) or can be forwarded to the broker (e.g. client subscribing for
stock quotes). The STOMP destination is used for simple prefix-based routing. For example the "/app"
prefix could route messages to annotated methods while the "/topic" and "/queue" prefixes could route
messages to the broker.

When a message-handling annotated method has a return type, its return value is sent as the payload
of a Spring Message to the "brokerChannel". The broker in turn broadcasts the message to clients.
Sending a message to a destination can also be done from anywhere in the application with the help
of a messaging template. For example, an HTTP POST handling method can broadcast a message to
connected clients, or a service component may periodically broadcast stock quotes.

Below is a simple example to illustrate the flow of messages:

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@Configuration
@EnableWebSocketMessageBroker
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer {

@Override
public void registerStompEndpoints(StompEndpointRegistry registry) {
registry.addEndpoint("/portfolio");
}

@Override
public void configureMessageBroker(MessageBrokerRegistry registry) {
registry.setApplicationDestinationPrefixes("/app");
registry.enableSimpleBroker("/topic");
}

@Controller
public class GreetingController {

@MessageMapping("/greeting") {
public String handle(String greeting) {
return "[" + getTimestamp() + ": " + greeting;
}

The following explains the message flow for the above example:

WebSocket clients connect to the WebSocket endpoint at "/portfolio".

Subscriptions to "/topic/greeting" pass through the "clientInboundChannel" and are forwarded to the
broker.

Greetings sent to "/app/greeting" pass through the "clientInboundChannel" and are forwarded to the
GreetingController. The controller adds the current time, and the return value is passed through
the "brokerChannel" as a message to "/topic/greeting" (destination is selected based on a convention
but can be overridden via @SendTo).

The broker in turn broadcasts messages to subscribers, and they pass through the
"clientOutboundChannel".

The next section provides more details on annotated methods including the kinds of arguments and
return values supported.

Annotation Message Handling

The @MessageMapping annotation is supported on methods of @Controller classes. It can be

used for mapping methods to message destinations and can also be combined with the type-level
@MessageMapping for expressing shared mappings across all annotated methods within a controller.

By default destination mappings are treated as Ant-style, slash-separated, path patterns, e.g. "/foo*",
"/foo/**". etc. They can also contain template variables, e.g. "/foo/{id}" that can then be referenced via
@DestinationVariable-annotated method arguments.

Note

Applications can also use dot-separated destinations (vs slash). See the section called Using
Dot as Separator in @MessageMapping Destinations.

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The following method arguments are supported for @MessageMapping methods:

Message method argument to get access to the complete message being processed.

@Payload-annotated argument for access to the payload of a message, converted with a

org.springframework.messaging.converter.MessageConverter. The presence of the
annotation is not required since it is assumed by default. Payload method arguments annotated with
validation annotations (like @Validated) will be subject to JSR-303 validation.

@Header-annotated arguments for access to a specific header value along with type conversion using
an org.springframework.core.convert.converter.Converter if necessary.

@Headers-annotated method argument that must also be assignable to java.util.Map for access
to all headers in the message.

MessageHeaders method argument for getting access to a map of all headers.

MessageHeaderAccessor, SimpMessageHeaderAccessor, or StompHeaderAccessor for

access to headers via typed accessor methods.

@DestinationVariable-annotated arguments for access to template variables extracted from the

message destination. Values will be converted to the declared method argument type as necessary.

java.security.Principal method arguments reflecting the user logged in at the time of the
WebSocket HTTP handshake.

A return value from an @MessageMapping method will be converted with a

org.springframework.messaging.converter.MessageConverter and used as the body of a
new message that is then sent, by default, to the "brokerChannel" with the same destination as the
client message but using the prefix "/topic" by default. An @SendTo message level annotation can
be used to specify any other destination instead. It can also be set a class-level to share a common
destination.

A response message may also be provided asynchronously via a ListenableFuture or

CompletableFuture/CompletionStage return type signature, analogous to deferred results in an
MVC handler method.

A @SubscribeMapping annotation can be used to map subscription requests to @Controller

methods. It is supported on the method level, but can also be combined with a type level
@MessageMapping annotation that expresses shared mappings across all message handling methods
within the same controller.

By default the return value from an @SubscribeMapping method is sent as a message directly back to
the connected client and does not pass through the broker. This is useful for implementing request-reply
message interactions; for example, to fetch application data when the application UI is being initialized.
Or alternatively an @SubscribeMapping method can be annotated with @SendTo in which case the
resulting message is sent to the "brokerChannel" using the specified target destination.

Note

In some cases a controller may need to be decorated with an AOP proxy at runtime. One example
is if you choose to have @Transactional annotations directly on the controller. When this is

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the case, for controllers specifically, we recommend using class-based proxying. This is typically
the default choice with controllers. However if a controller must implement an interface that is not
a Spring Context callback (e.g. InitializingBean, *Aware, etc), you may need to explicitly
configure class-based proxying. For example with <tx:annotation-driven />, change to
<tx:annotation-driven proxy-target-class="true" />.

Sending Messages

What if you want to send messages to connected clients from any part of the application? Any application
component can send messages to the "brokerChannel". The easiest way to do that is to have a
SimpMessagingTemplate injected, and use it to send messages. Typically it should be easy to have
it injected by type, for example:

@Controller
public class GreetingController {

private SimpMessagingTemplate template;

@Autowired
public GreetingController(SimpMessagingTemplate template) {
this.template = template;
}

@RequestMapping(path="/greetings", method=POST)
public void greet(String greeting) {
String text = "[" + getTimestamp() + "]:" + greeting;
this.template.convertAndSend("/topic/greetings", text);
}

But it can also be qualified by its name "brokerMessagingTemplate" if another bean of the same type
exists.

Simple Broker

The built-in, simple message broker handles subscription requests from clients, stores them in memory,
and broadcasts messages to connected clients with matching destinations. The broker supports path-
like destinations, including subscriptions to Ant-style destination patterns.

Note

Applications can also use dot-separated destinations (vs slash). See the section called Using
Dot as Separator in @MessageMapping Destinations.

Full-Featured Broker

The simple broker is great for getting started but supports only a subset of STOMP commands (e.g. no
acks, receipts, etc.), relies on a simple message sending loop, and is not suitable for clustering. As an
alternative, applications can upgrade to using a full-featured message broker.

Check the STOMP documentation for your message broker of choice (e.g. RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, etc.),
install the broker, and run it with STOMP support enabled. Then enable the STOMP broker relay in the
Spring configuration instead of the simple broker.

Below is example configuration that enables a full-featured broker:

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@Configuration
@EnableWebSocketMessageBroker
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer {

@Override
public void registerStompEndpoints(StompEndpointRegistry registry) {
registry.addEndpoint("/portfolio").withSockJS();
}

@Override
public void configureMessageBroker(MessageBrokerRegistry registry) {
registry.enableStompBrokerRelay("/topic", "/queue");
registry.setApplicationDestinationPrefixes("/app");
}

XML configuration equivalent:

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

<websocket:message-broker application-destination-prefix="/app">
<websocket:stomp-endpoint path="/portfolio" />
<websocket:sockjs/>
</websocket:stomp-endpoint>
<websocket:stomp-broker-relay prefix="/topic,/queue" />
</websocket:message-broker>

</beans>

The "STOMP broker relay" in the above configuration is a Spring MessageHandler that handles
messages by forwarding them to an external message broker. To do so it establishes TCP connections
to the broker, forwards all messages to it, and then forwards all messages received from the broker
to clients through their WebSocket sessions. Essentially it acts as a "relay" that forwards messages in
both directions.

Note

Spring uses org.projectreactor:reactor-net and io.netty:netty-all for managing

TCP connections to the broker both of which need to be added as project dependencies.

The STOMP broker support in Spring Framework 4.3.x is compatible with the 2.0.x generation
of Reactor. Therefore it is not supported in combination with the spring-cloud-stream-
reactive module which requires Reactor 3.x.

Spring Framework 5 relies on Reactor 3 and Reactor Netty, which has independent versioning, for
TCP connections to the STOMP broker but also to provide broad support for reactive programming
models.

Furthermore, application components (e.g. HTTP request handling methods, business services, etc.)
can also send messages to the broker relay, as described in the section called Sending Messages, in
order to broadcast messages to subscribed WebSocket clients.

In effect, the broker relay enables robust and scalable message broadcasting.

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Connections To Full-Featured Broker

A STOMP broker relay maintains a single "system" TCP connection to the broker. This connection
is used for messages originating from the server-side application only, not for receiving messages.
You can configure the STOMP credentials for this connection, i.e. the STOMP frame login and
passcode headers. This is exposed in both the XML namespace and the Java config as the
systemLogin/systemPasscode properties with default values guest/guest.

The STOMP broker relay also creates a separate TCP connection for every connected WebSocket
client. You can configure the STOMP credentials to use for all TCP connections created on
behalf of clients. This is exposed in both the XML namespace and the Java config as the
clientLogin/clientPasscode properties with default values guest/guest.

Note

The STOMP broker relay always sets the login and passcode headers on every CONNECT
frame that it forwards to the broker on behalf of clients. Therefore WebSocket clients need not
set those headers; they will be ignored. As the following section explains, instead WebSocket
clients should rely on HTTP authentication to protect the WebSocket endpoint and establish the
client identity.

The STOMP broker relay also sends and receives heartbeats to and from the message broker over
the "system" TCP connection. You can configure the intervals for sending and receiving heartbeats (10
seconds each by default). If connectivity to the broker is lost, the broker relay will continue to try to
reconnect, every 5 seconds, until it succeeds.

Note

A Spring bean can implement ApplicationListener<BrokerAvailabilityEvent> in

order to receive notifications when the "system" connection to the broker is lost and re-established.
For example a Stock Quote service broadcasting stock quotes can stop trying to send messages
when there is no active "system" connection.

The STOMP broker relay can also be configured with a virtualHost property. The value of this
property will be set as the host header of every CONNECT frame and may be useful for example in a
cloud environment where the actual host to which the TCP connection is established is different from
the host providing the cloud-based STOMP service.

Using Dot as Separator in @MessageMapping Destinations

Although slash-separated path patterns are familiar to web developers, in messaging it is common to
use a "." as the separator, for example in the names of topics, queues, exchanges, etc. Applications
can also switch to using "." (dot) instead of "/" (slash) as the separator in @MessageMapping mappings
by configuring a custom AntPathMatcher.

In Java config:

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@Configuration
@EnableWebSocketMessageBroker
public class WebSocketConfig extends AbstractWebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer {

// ...

@Override
public void configureMessageBroker(MessageBrokerRegistry registry) {
registry.enableStompBrokerRelay("/queue/", "/topic/");
registry.setApplicationDestinationPrefixes("/app");
registry.setPathMatcher(new AntPathMatcher("."));
}

In XML config:

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

<websocket:message-broker application-destination-prefix="/app" path-matcher="pathMatcher">

<websocket:stomp-endpoint path="/stomp" />
<websocket:simple-broker prefix="/topic, /queue"/>
</websocket:message-broker>

<bean id="pathMatcher" class="org.springframework.util.AntPathMatcher">

<constructor-arg index="0" value="." />
</bean>

</beans>

And below is a simple example to illustrate a controller with "." separator:

@Controller
@MessageMapping("foo")
public class FooController {

@MessageMapping("bar.{baz}")
public void handleBaz(@DestinationVariable String baz) {
}

If the application prefix is set to "/app" then the foo method is effectively mapped to "/app/foo.bar.{baz}".

Authentication
Every STOMP over WebSocket messaging session begins with an HTTP request that can be a
request to upgrade to WebSockets (i.e. a WebSocket handshake) or in the case of SockJS fallbacks
a series of SockJS HTTP transport requests.

Web applications already have authentication and authorization in place to secure HTTP requests.
Typically a user is authenticated via Spring Security using some mechanism such as a login page, HTTP
basic authentication, or other. The security context for the authenticated user is saved in the HTTP
session and is associated with subsequent requests in the same cookie-based session.

Therefore for a WebSocket handshake, or for SockJS HTTP transport requests, typically there will
already be an authenticated user accessible via HttpServletRequest#getUserPrincipal().

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Spring automatically associates that user with a WebSocket or SockJS session created for them and
subsequently with all STOMP messages transported over that session through a user header.

In short there is nothing special a typical web application needs to do above and beyond what it already
does for security. The user is authenticated at the HTTP request level with a security context maintained
through a cookie-based HTTP session which is then associated with WebSocket or SockJS sessions
created for that user and results in a user header stamped on every Message flowing through the
application.

Note that the STOMP protocol does have a "login" and "passcode" headers on the CONNECT frame.
Those were originally designed for and are still needed for example for STOMP over TCP. However
for STOMP over WebSocket by default Spring ignores authorization headers at the STOMP protocol
level and assumes the user is already authenticated at the HTTP transport level and expects that the
WebSocket or SockJS session contain the authenticated user.

Note

Spring Security provides WebSocket sub-protocol authorization that uses a

ChannelInterceptor to authorize messages based on the user header in them. Also Spring
Session provides a WebSocket integration that ensures the user HTTP session does not expire
when the WebSocket session is still active.

Token-based Authentication

Spring Security OAuth provides support for token based security including JSON Web Token (JWT).
This can be used as the authentication mechanism in Web applications including STOMP over
WebSocket interactions just as described in the previous section, i.e. maintaining identity through a
cookie-based session.

At the same time cookie-based sessions are not always the best fit for example in applications that
dont wish to maintain a server-side session at all or in mobile applications where its common to use
headers for authentication.

The WebSocket protocol RFC 6455 "doesnt prescribe any particular way that servers can authenticate
clients during the WebSocket handshake." In practice however browser clients can only use standard
authentication headers (i.e. basic HTTP authentication) or cookies and cannot for example provide
custom headers. Likewise the SockJS JavaScript client does not provide a way to send HTTP headers
with SockJS transport requests, see sockjs-client issue 196. Instead it does allow sending query
parameters that can be used to send a token but that has its own drawbacks, for example as the token
may be inadvertently logged with the URL in server logs.

Note

The above limitations are for browser-based clients and do not apply to the Spring Java-based
STOMP client which does support sending headers with both WebSocket and SockJS requests.

Therefore applications that wish to avoid the use of cookies may not have any good alternatives for
authentication at the HTTP protocol level. Instead of using cookies they may prefer to authenticate with
headers at the STOMP messaging protocol level There are 2 simple steps to doing that:

1. Use the STOMP client to pass authentication header(s) at connect time.

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2. Process the authentication header(s) with a ChannelInterceptor.

Below is the example server-side configuration to register a custom authentication interceptor. Note
that an interceptor only needs to authenticate and set the user header on the CONNECT Message.
Spring will note and save the authenticated user and associate it with subsequent STOMP messages
on the same session:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocketMessageBroker
public class MyConfig extends AbstractWebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer {

@Override
public void configureClientInboundChannel(ChannelRegistration registration) {
registration.setInterceptors(new ChannelInterceptorAdapter() {

@Override
public Message<?> preSend(Message<?> message, MessageChannel channel) {

StompHeaderAccessor accessor =
MessageHeaderAccessor.getAccessor(message, StompHeaderAccessor.class);

if (StompCommand.CONNECT.equals(accessor.getCommand())) {
Principal user = ... ; // access authentication header(s)
accessor.setUser(user);
}

return message;
}
});
}
}

Also note that when using Spring Securitys authorization for messages, at present
you will need to ensure that the authentication ChannelInterceptor config is ordered
ahead of Spring Securitys. This is best done by declaring the custom interceptor
in its own sub-class of AbstractWebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer marked with
@Order(Ordered.HIGHEST_PRECEDENCE + 99).

User Destinations

An application can send messages targeting a specific user, and Springs STOMP support recognizes
destinations prefixed with "/user/" for this purpose. For example, a client might subscribe to
the destination "/user/queue/position-updates". This destination will be handled by the
UserDestinationMessageHandler and transformed into a destination unique to the user session,
e.g. "/queue/position-updates-user123". This provides the convenience of subscribing to a
generically named destination while at the same time ensuring no collisions with other users subscribing
to the same destination so that each user can receive unique stock position updates.

On the sending side messages can be sent to a destination such as "/user/{username}/queue/

position-updates", which in turn will be translated by the UserDestinationMessageHandler
into one or more destinations, one for each session associated with the user. This allows any component
within the application to send messages targeting a specific user without necessarily knowing anything
more than their name and the generic destination. This is also supported through an annotation as well
as a messaging template.

For example, a message-handling method can send messages to the user associated with the message
being handled through the @SendToUser annotation (also supported on the class-level to share a
common destination):

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@Controller
public class PortfolioController {

@MessageMapping("/trade")
@SendToUser("/queue/position-updates")
public TradeResult executeTrade(Trade trade, Principal principal) {
// ...
return tradeResult;
}
}

If the user has more than one session, by default all of the sessions subscribed to the given destination
are targeted. However sometimes, it may be necessary to target only the session that sent the message
being handled. This can be done by setting the broadcast attribute to false, for example:

@Controller
public class MyController {

@MessageMapping("/action")
public void handleAction() throws Exception{
// raise MyBusinessException here
}

@MessageExceptionHandler
@SendToUser(destinations="/queue/errors", broadcast=false)
public ApplicationError handleException(MyBusinessException exception) {
// ...
return appError;
}
}

Note

While user destinations generally imply an authenticated user, it isnt required strictly. A
WebSocket session that is not associated with an authenticated user can subscribe to a user
destination. In such cases the @SendToUser annotation will behave exactly the same as with
broadcast=false, i.e. targeting only the session that sent the message being handled.

It is also possible to send a message to user destinations from any application component by injecting
the SimpMessagingTemplate created by the Java config or XML namespace, for example (the bean
name is "brokerMessagingTemplate" if required for qualification with @Qualifier):

@Service
public class TradeServiceImpl implements TradeService {

private final SimpMessagingTemplate messagingTemplate;

@Autowired
public TradeServiceImpl(SimpMessagingTemplate messagingTemplate) {
this.messagingTemplate = messagingTemplate;
}

// ...

public void afterTradeExecuted(Trade trade) {

this.messagingTemplate.convertAndSendToUser(
trade.getUserName(), "/queue/position-updates", trade.getResult());
}
}

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Note

When using user destinations with an external message broker, check the broker documentation
on how to manage inactive queues, so that when the user session is over, all unique user
queues are removed. For example, RabbitMQ creates auto-delete queues when destinations
like /exchange/amq.direct/position-updates are used. So in that case the client could
subscribe to /user/exchange/amq.direct/position-updates. Similarly, ActiveMQ has
configuration options for purging inactive destinations.

In a multi-application server scenario a user destination may remain unresolved because the user
is connected to a different server. In such cases you can configure a destination to broadcast
unresolved messages to so that other servers have a chance to try. This can be done through the
userDestinationBroadcast property of the MessageBrokerRegistry in Java config and the
user-destination-broadcast attribute of the message-broker element in XML.

Listening To ApplicationContext Events and Intercepting Messages

Several ApplicationContext events (listed below) are published and can be received by
implementing Springs ApplicationListener interface.

BrokerAvailabilityEvent indicates when the broker becomes available/unavailable. While

the "simple" broker becomes available immediately on startup and remains so while the application is
running, the STOMP "broker relay" may lose its connection to the full featured broker, for example if the
broker is restarted. The broker relay has reconnect logic and will re-establish the "system" connection
to the broker when it comes back, hence this event is published whenever the state changes
from connected to disconnected and vice versa. Components using the SimpMessagingTemplate
should subscribe to this event and avoid sending messages at times when the broker is not available.
In any case they should be prepared to handle MessageDeliveryException when sending a
message.

SessionConnectEvent published when a new STOMP CONNECT is received indicating the

start of a new client session. The event contains the message representing the connect including the
session id, user information (if any), and any custom headers the client may have sent. This is useful
for tracking client sessions. Components subscribed to this event can wrap the contained message
using SimpMessageHeaderAccessor or StompMessageHeaderAccessor.

SessionConnectedEvent published shortly after a SessionConnectEvent when the broker

has sent a STOMP CONNECTED frame in response to the CONNECT. At this point the STOMP
session can be considered fully established.

SessionSubscribeEvent published when a new STOMP SUBSCRIBE is received.

SessionUnsubscribeEvent published when a new STOMP UNSUBSCRIBE is received.

SessionDisconnectEvent published when a STOMP session ends. The DISCONNECT may

have been sent from the client, or it may also be automatically generated when the WebSocket session
is closed. In some cases this event may be published more than once per session. Components
should be idempotent with regard to multiple disconnect events.

Note

When using a full-featured broker, the STOMP "broker relay" automatically reconnects the
"system" connection in case the broker becomes temporarily unavailable. Client connections

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however are not automatically reconnected. Assuming heartbeats are enabled, the client will
typically notice the broker is not responding within 10 seconds. Clients need to implement their
own reconnect logic.

Furthermore, an application can directly intercept every incoming and outgoing message by registering
a ChannelInterceptor on the respective message channel. For example to intercept inbound
messages:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocketMessageBroker
public class WebSocketConfig extends AbstractWebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer {

@Override
public void configureClientInboundChannel(ChannelRegistration registration) {
registration.setInterceptors(new MyChannelInterceptor());
}
}

A custom ChannelInterceptor can extend the empty method base

class ChannelInterceptorAdapter and use StompHeaderAccessor or
SimpMessageHeaderAccessor to access information about the message.

public class MyChannelInterceptor extends ChannelInterceptorAdapter {

@Override
public Message<?> preSend(Message<?> message, MessageChannel channel) {
StompHeaderAccessor accessor = StompHeaderAccessor.wrap(message);
StompCommand command = accessor.getStompCommand();
// ...
return message;
}
}

STOMP Client

Spring provides a STOMP over WebSocket client and a STOMP over TCP client.

To begin create and configure WebSocketStompClient:

WebSocketClient webSocketClient = new StandardWebSocketClient();

WebSocketStompClient stompClient = new WebSocketStompClient(webSocketClient);
stompClient.setMessageConverter(new StringMessageConverter());
stompClient.setTaskScheduler(taskScheduler); // for heartbeats

In the above example StandardWebSocketClient could be replaced with SockJsClient since that
is also an implementation of WebSocketClient. The SockJsClient can use WebSocket or HTTP-
based transport as a fallback. For more details see the section called SockJS Client.

Next establish a connection and provide a handler for the STOMP session:

String url = "ws://127.0.0.1:8080/endpoint";

StompSessionHandler sessionHandler = new MyStompSessionHandler();
stompClient.connect(url, sessionHandler);

When the session is ready for use the handler is notified:

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public class MyStompSessionHandler extends StompSessionHandlerAdapter {

@Override
public void afterConnected(StompSession session, StompHeaders connectedHeaders) {
// ...
}
}

Once the session is established any payload can be sent and that will be serialized with the configured
MessageConverter:

session.send("/topic/foo", "payload");

You can also subscribe to destinations. The subscribe methods require a handler for messages on the
subscription and return a Subscription handle that can be used to unsubscribe. For each received
message the handler can specify the target Object type the payload should be deserialized to:

session.subscribe("/topic/foo", new StompFrameHandler() {

@Override
public Type getPayloadType(StompHeaders headers) {
return String.class;
}

@Override
public void handleFrame(StompHeaders headers, Object payload) {
// ...
}

});

To enable STOMP heartbeat configure WebSocketStompClient with a TaskScheduler and

optionally customize the heartbeat intervals, 10 seconds for write inactivity which causes a heartbeat to
be sent and 10 seconds for read inactivity which closes the connection.

Note

When using WebSocketStompClient for performance tests to simulate thousands of clients

from the same machine consider turning off heartbeats since each connection schedules its own
heartbeat tasks and thats not optimized for a a large number of clients running on the same
machine.

The STOMP protocol also supports receipts where the client must add a "receipt" header to which the
server responds with a RECEIPT frame after the send or subscribe are processed. To support this the
StompSession offers setAutoReceipt(boolean) that causes a "receipt" header to be added on
every subsequent send or subscribe. Alternatively you can also manually add a "receipt" header to the
StompHeaders. Both send and subscribe return an instance of Receiptable that can be used to
register for receipt success and failure callbacks. For this feature the client must be configured with a
TaskScheduler and the amount of time before a receipt expires (15 seconds by default).

Note that StompSessionHandler itself is a StompFrameHandler which allows it to handle ERROR

frames in addition to the handleException callback for exceptions from the handling of messages,
and handleTransportError for transport-level errors including ConnectionLostException.

WebSocket Scope
Each WebSocket session has a map of attributes. The map is attached as a header to inbound client
messages and may be accessed from a controller method, for example:

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@Controller
public class MyController {

@MessageMapping("/action")
public void handle(SimpMessageHeaderAccessor headerAccessor) {
Map<String, Object> attrs = headerAccessor.getSessionAttributes();
// ...
}
}

It is also possible to declare a Spring-managed bean in the websocket scope. WebSocket-

scoped beans can be injected into controllers and any channel interceptors registered on the
"clientInboundChannel". Those are typically singletons and live longer than any individual WebSocket
session. Therefore you will need to use a scope proxy mode for WebSocket-scoped beans:

@Component
@Scope(scopeName = "websocket", proxyMode = ScopedProxyMode.TARGET_CLASS)
public class MyBean {

@PostConstruct
public void init() {
// Invoked after dependencies injected
}

// ...

@PreDestroy
public void destroy() {
// Invoked when the WebSocket session ends
}
}

@Controller
public class MyController {

private final MyBean myBean;

@Autowired
public MyController(MyBean myBean) {
this.myBean = myBean;
}

@MessageMapping("/action")
public void handle() {
// this.myBean from the current WebSocket session
}
}

As with any custom scope, Spring initializes a new MyBean instance the first time it is accessed from the
controller and stores the instance in the WebSocket session attributes. The same instance is returned
subsequently until the session ends. WebSocket-scoped beans will have all Spring lifecycle methods
invoked as shown in the examples above.

Configuration and Performance

There is no silver bullet when it comes to performance. Many factors may affect it including the size
of messages, the volume, whether application methods perform work that requires blocking, as well as
external factors such as network speed and others. The goal of this section is to provide an overview of
the available configuration options along with some thoughts on how to reason about scaling.

In a messaging application messages are passed through channels for asynchronous executions
backed by thread pools. Configuring such an application requires good knowledge of the channels and
the flow of messages. Therefore it is recommended to review the section called Flow of Messages.

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The obvious place to start is to configure the thread pools backing the "clientInboundChannel"
and the "clientOutboundChannel". By default both are configured at twice the number of available
processors.

If the handling of messages in annotated methods is mainly CPU bound then the number of threads
for the "clientInboundChannel" should remain close to the number of processors. If the work they
do is more IO bound and requires blocking or waiting on a database or other external system then the
thread pool size will need to be increased.

Note

ThreadPoolExecutor has 3 important properties. Those are the core and the max thread pool
size as well as the capacity for the queue to store tasks for which there are no available threads.

A common point of confusion is that configuring the core pool size (e.g. 10) and max pool size
(e.g. 20) results in a thread pool with 10 to 20 threads. In fact if the capacity is left at its default
value of Integer.MAX_VALUE then the thread pool will never increase beyond the core pool size
since all additional tasks will be queued.

Please review the Javadoc of ThreadPoolExecutor to learn how these properties work and
understand the various queuing strategies.

On the "clientOutboundChannel" side it is all about sending messages to WebSocket clients. If

clients are on a fast network then the number of threads should remain close to the number of available
processors. If they are slow or on low bandwidth they will take longer to consume messages and put a
burden on the thread pool. Therefore increasing the thread pool size will be necessary.

While the workload for the "clientInboundChannel" is possible to predict after all it is based on what
the application does how to configure the "clientOutboundChannel" is harder as it is based on factors
beyond the control of the application. For this reason there are two additional properties related to the
sending of messages. Those are the "sendTimeLimit" and the "sendBufferSizeLimit". Those
are used to configure how long a send is allowed to take and how much data can be buffered when
sending messages to a client.

The general idea is that at any given time only a single thread may be used to send to a client. All
additional messages meanwhile get buffered and you can use these properties to decide how long
sending a message is allowed to take and how much data can be buffered in the mean time. Please
review the Javadoc and documentation of the XML schema for this configuration for important additional
details.

Here is example configuration:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocketMessageBroker
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer {

@Override
public void configureWebSocketTransport(WebSocketTransportRegistration registration) {
registration.setSendTimeLimit(15 * 1000).setSendBufferSizeLimit(512 * 1024);
}

// ...

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

<websocket:message-broker>
<websocket:transport send-timeout="15000" send-buffer-size="524288" />
<!-- ... -->
</websocket:message-broker>

</beans>

The WebSocket transport configuration shown above can also be used to configure the maximum
allowed size for incoming STOMP messages. Although in theory a WebSocket message can be almost
unlimited in size, in practice WebSocket servers impose limits for example, 8K on Tomcat and 64K on
Jetty. For this reason STOMP clients such as stomp.js split larger STOMP messages at 16K boundaries
and send them as multiple WebSocket messages thus requiring the server to buffer and re-assemble.

Springs STOMP over WebSocket support does this so applications can configure the maximum size
for STOMP messages irrespective of WebSocket server specific message sizes. Do keep in mind that
the WebSocket message size will be automatically adjusted if necessary to ensure they can carry 16K
WebSocket messages at a minimum.

Here is example configuration:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocketMessageBroker
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer {

@Override
public void configureWebSocketTransport(WebSocketTransportRegistration registration) {
registration.setMessageSizeLimit(128 * 1024);
}

// ...

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

<websocket:message-broker>
<websocket:transport message-size="131072" />
<!-- ... -->
</websocket:message-broker>

</beans>

An important point about scaling is using multiple application instances. Currently it is not possible to
do that with the simple broker. However when using a full-featured broker such as RabbitMQ, each
application instance connects to the broker and messages broadcast from one application instance
can be broadcast through the broker to WebSocket clients connected through any other application
instances.

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Runtime Monitoring

When using @EnableWebSocketMessageBroker or <websocket:message-broker> key

infrastructure components automatically gather stats and counters that provide important insight
into the internal state of the application. The configuration also declares a bean of type
WebSocketMessageBrokerStats that gathers all available information in one place and by default
logs it at INFO level once every 30 minutes. This bean can be exported to JMX through Springs
MBeanExporter for viewing at runtime, for example through JDKs jconsole. Below is a summary
of the available information.

Client WebSocket Sessions

Current
indicates how many client sessions there are currently with the count further broken down by
WebSocket vs HTTP streaming and polling SockJS sessions.

Total
indicates how many total sessions have been established.

Abnormally Closed

Connect Failures
these are sessions that got established but were closed after not having received any
messages within 60 seconds. This is usually an indication of proxy or network issues.

Send Limit Exceeded

sessions closed after exceeding the configured send timeout or the send buffer limits which
can occur with slow clients (see previous section).

Transport Errors
sessions closed after a transport error such as failure to read or write to a WebSocket
connection or HTTP request/response.

STOMP Frames
the total number of CONNECT, CONNECTED, and DISCONNECT frames processed indicating
how many clients connected on the STOMP level. Note that the DISCONNECT count may
be lower when sessions get closed abnormally or when clients close without sending a
DISCONNECT frame.

STOMP Broker Relay

TCP Connections
indicates how many TCP connections on behalf of client WebSocket sessions are established
to the broker. This should be equal to the number of client WebSocket sessions + 1 additional
shared "system" connection for sending messages from within the application.

STOMP Frames
the total number of CONNECT, CONNECTED, and DISCONNECT frames forwarded to or
received from the broker on behalf of clients. Note that a DISCONNECT frame is sent to
the broker regardless of how the client WebSocket session was closed. Therefore a lower
DISCONNECT frame count is an indication that the broker is pro-actively closing connections,
may be because of a heartbeat that didnt arrive in time, an invalid input frame, or other.

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Client Inbound Channel

stats from thread pool backing the "clientInboundChannel" providing insight into the health of
incoming message processing. Tasks queueing up here is an indication the application may be too
slow to handle messages. If there I/O bound tasks (e.g. slow database query, HTTP request to 3rd
party REST API, etc) consider increasing the thread pool size.

Client Outbound Channel

stats from the thread pool backing the "clientOutboundChannel" providing insight into the health of
broadcasting messages to clients. Tasks queueing up here is an indication clients are too slow to
consume messages. One way to address this is to increase the thread pool size to accommodate
the number of concurrent slow clients expected. Another option is to reduce the send timeout and
send buffer size limits (see the previous section).

SockJS Task Scheduler

stats from thread pool of the SockJS task scheduler which is used to send heartbeats. Note that
when heartbeats are negotiated on the STOMP level the SockJS heartbeats are disabled.

Testing Annotated Controller Methods

There are two main approaches to testing applications using Springs STOMP over WebSocket support.
The first is to write server-side tests verifying the functionality of controllers and their annotated message
handling methods. The second is to write full end-to-end tests that involve running a client and a server.

The two approaches are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary each has a place in an overall test
strategy. Server-side tests are more focused and easier to write and maintain. End-to-end integration
tests on the other hand are more complete and test much more, but theyre also more involved to write
and maintain.

The simplest form of server-side tests is to write controller unit tests. However this is not useful enough
since much of what a controller does depends on its annotations. Pure unit tests simply cant test that.

Ideally controllers under test should be invoked as they are at runtime, much like the approach to testing
controllers handling HTTP requests using the Spring MVC Test framework. i.e. without running a Servlet
container but relying on the Spring Framework to invoke the annotated controllers. Just like with Spring
MVC Test here there are two two possible alternatives, either using a "context-based" or "standalone"
setup:

1. Load the actual Spring configuration with the help of the Spring TestContext framework, inject
"clientInboundChannel" as a test field, and use it to send messages to be handled by controller
methods.

2. Manually set up the minimum Spring framework infrastructure required to invoke controllers (namely
the SimpAnnotationMethodMessageHandler) and pass messages for controllers directly to it.

Both of these setup scenarios are demonstrated in the tests for the stock portfolio sample application.

The second approach is to create end-to-end integration tests. For that you will need to run a WebSocket
server in embedded mode and connect to it as a WebSocket client sending WebSocket messages
containing STOMP frames. The tests for the stock portfolio sample application also demonstrates this
approach using Tomcat as the embedded WebSocket server and a simple STOMP client for test
purposes.

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27. CORS Support

27.1 Introduction
For security reasons, browsers prohibit AJAX calls to resources residing outside the current origin. For
example, as youre checking your bank account in one tab, you could have the evil.com website open
in another tab. The scripts from evil.com should not be able to make AJAX requests to your bank API
(e.g., withdrawing money from your account!) using your credentials.

Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) is a W3C specification implemented by most browsers that allows
you to specify in a flexible way what kind of cross domain requests are authorized, instead of using
some less secured and less powerful hacks like IFRAME or JSONP.

As of Spring Framework 4.2, CORS is supported out of the box. CORS requests (including preflight ones
with an OPTIONS method) are automatically dispatched to the various registered HandlerMappings.
They handle CORS preflight requests and intercept CORS simple and actual requests thanks to a
CorsProcessor implementation (DefaultCorsProcessor by default) in order to add the relevant CORS
response headers (like Access-Control-Allow-Origin) based on the CORS configuration you
have provided.

Note

Since CORS requests are automatically dispatched, you do not need to change the
DispatcherServlet dispatchOptionsRequest init parameter value; using its default value
(false) is the recommended approach.

27.2 Controller method CORS configuration

You can add an @CrossOrigin annotation to your @RequestMapping annotated handler method
in order to enable CORS on it. By default @CrossOrigin allows all origins and the HTTP methods
specified in the @RequestMapping annotation:

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/account")
public class AccountController {

@CrossOrigin
@RequestMapping("/{id}")
public Account retrieve(@PathVariable Long id) {
// ...
}

@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.DELETE, path = "/{id}")

public void remove(@PathVariable Long id) {
// ...
}
}

It is also possible to enable CORS for the whole controller:

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@CrossOrigin(origins = "http://domain2.com", maxAge = 3600)

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/account")
public class AccountController {

@RequestMapping("/{id}")
public Account retrieve(@PathVariable Long id) {
// ...
}

@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.DELETE, path = "/{id}")

public void remove(@PathVariable Long id) {
// ...
}
}

In the above example CORS support is enabled for both the retrieve() and the remove() handler
methods, and you can also see how you can customize the CORS configuration using @CrossOrigin
attributes.

You can even use both controller-level and method-level CORS configurations; Spring will then combine
attributes from both annotations to create merged CORS configuration.

@CrossOrigin(maxAge = 3600)
@RestController
@RequestMapping("/account")
public class AccountController {

@CrossOrigin("http://domain2.com")
@RequestMapping("/{id}")
public Account retrieve(@PathVariable Long id) {
// ...
}

@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.DELETE, path = "/{id}")

public void remove(@PathVariable Long id) {
// ...
}
}

27.3 Global CORS configuration

In addition to fine-grained, annotation-based configuration youll probably want to define some global
CORS configuration as well. This is similar to using filters but can be declared within Spring MVC and
combined with fine-grained @CrossOrigin configuration. By default all origins and GET, HEAD, and
POST methods are allowed.

JavaConfig
Enabling CORS for the whole application is as simple as:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
public void addCorsMappings(CorsRegistry registry) {
registry.addMapping("/**");
}
}

You can easily change any properties, as well as only apply this CORS configuration to a specific path
pattern:

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@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
public void addCorsMappings(CorsRegistry registry) {
registry.addMapping("/api/**")
.allowedOrigins("http://domain2.com")
.allowedMethods("PUT", "DELETE")
.allowedHeaders("header1", "header2", "header3")
.exposedHeaders("header1", "header2")
.allowCredentials(false).maxAge(3600);
}
}

XML namespace

The following minimal XML configuration enables CORS for the /** path pattern with the same default
properties as with the aforementioned JavaConfig examples:

<mvc:cors>
<mvc:mapping path="/**" />
</mvc:cors>

It is also possible to declare several CORS mappings with customized properties:

<mvc:cors>

<mvc:mapping path="/api/**"
allowed-origins="http://domain1.com, http://domain2.com"
allowed-methods="GET, PUT"
allowed-headers="header1, header2, header3"
exposed-headers="header1, header2" allow-credentials="false"
max-age="123" />

<mvc:mapping path="/resources/**"
allowed-origins="http://domain1.com" />

</mvc:cors>

27.4 Advanced Customization

CorsConfiguration allows you to specify how the CORS requests should be processed: allowed origins,
headers, methods, etc. It can be provided in various ways:

AbstractHandlerMapping#setCorsConfiguration() allows to specify a Map with several

CorsConfiguration instances mapped to path patterns like /api/**.

Subclasses can provide their own CorsConfiguration by overriding the

AbstractHandlerMapping#getCorsConfiguration(Object, HttpServletRequest)
method.

Handlers can implement the CorsConfigurationSource interface (like

ResourceHttpRequestHandler now does) in order to provide a CorsConfiguration instance for
each request.

27.5 Filter based CORS support

In order to support CORS with filter-based security frameworks like Spring Security, or with other libraries
that do not support natively CORS, Spring Framework also provides a CorsFilter. Instead of using

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@CrossOrigin or WebMvcConfigurer#addCorsMappings(CorsRegistry), you need to register

a custom filter defined like bellow:

import org.springframework.web.cors.CorsConfiguration;
import org.springframework.web.cors.UrlBasedCorsConfigurationSource;
import org.springframework.web.filter.CorsFilter;

public class MyCorsFilter extends CorsFilter {

public MyCorsFilter() {
super(configurationSource());
}

private static UrlBasedCorsConfigurationSource configurationSource() {

CorsConfiguration config = new CorsConfiguration();
config.setAllowCredentials(true);
config.addAllowedOrigin("http://domain1.com");
config.addAllowedHeader("*");
config.addAllowedMethod("*");
UrlBasedCorsConfigurationSource source = new UrlBasedCorsConfigurationSource();
source.registerCorsConfiguration("/**", config);
return source;
}
}

You need to ensure that CorsFilter is ordered before the other filters, see this blog post about how
to configure Spring Boot accordingly.

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

Chapter 28, Remoting and web services using Spring

Chapter 29, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) integration

Chapter 30, JMS (Java Message Service)

Chapter 31, JMX

Chapter 32, JCA CCI

Chapter 33, Email

Chapter 34, Task Execution and Scheduling

Chapter 35, Dynamic language support

Chapter 36, Cache Abstraction

 Spring Framework Reference Documentation

28. Remoting and web services using Spring

28.1 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).

Springs 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 Springs HessianProxyFactoryBean and the HessianServiceExporter

you can transparently expose your services using the lightweight binary HTTP-based protocol
provided by Caucho.

Burlap. Burlap is Cauchos XML-based alternative to Hessian. Spring provides support classes such
as BurlapProxyFactoryBean and BurlapServiceExporter.

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.

AMQP. Remoting using AMQP as the underlying protocol is supported by the Spring AMQP project.

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

public class Account implements Serializable{

private String name;

public String getName(){

return name;
}

public void setName(String name) {

this.name = name;
}

public interface AccountService {

public void insertAccount(Account account);

public List<Account> getAccounts(String name);

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// 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. Well then continue to show an example using Hessian as the protocol.

28.2 Exposing services using RMI

Using Springs 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.

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">

<!-- any additional properties, maybe a DAO? -->
</bean>

Next well have to expose our service using the RmiServiceExporter:

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

As you can see, were 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'. Well 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.

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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, well 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"/>
<property name="serviceInterface" value="example.AccountService"/>
</bean>

Thats 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 were linking it in using the RmiProxyFactoryBean.

28.3 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.

Wiring up the DispatcherServlet for Hessian and co.

Hessian communicates via HTTP and does so using a custom servlet. Using Springs
DispatcherServlet principles, as known from Spring Web MVC usage, you can easily wire up such
a servlet exposing your services. First well have to create a new servlet in your application (this is an
excerpt from 'web.xml'):

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

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

Youre probably familiar with Springs DispatcherServlet principles and if so, you know that now
youll 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.

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Alternatively, consider the use of Springs 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.

Exposing your beans by using the HessianServiceExporter

In the newly created application context called remoting-servlet.xml, well create a

HessianServiceExporter exporting your services:

<bean id="accountService" class="example.AccountServiceImpl">

<!-- any additional properties, maybe a DAO? -->
</bean>

<bean name="/AccountService" class="org.springframework.remoting.caucho.HessianServiceExporter">

<property name="service" ref="accountService"/>
<property name="serviceInterface" value="example.AccountService"/>
</bean>

Now were 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 DispatcherServlets
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">

<property name="service" ref="accountService"/>
<property name="serviceInterface" value="example.AccountService"/>
</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>
<servlet-name>accountExporter</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/remoting/AccountService</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

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. Well 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"/>
<property name="serviceInterface" value="example.AccountService"/>
</bean>

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Using Burlap

We wont 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 youre all set to go.

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 dont
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 doesnt 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://projects.spring.io/
spring-security/.

28.4 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 the JDK or Apache
HttpComponents to perform HTTP calls. Use the latter if you need more advanced and easier-to-use
functionality. Refer to hc.apache.org/httpcomponents-client-ga/ for more information.

Warning

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

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

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, Springs 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 dispatchers application context:

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

Such an exporter definition will be exposed through the `DispatcherServlets 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">

<property name="service" ref="accountService"/>
<property name="serviceInterface" value="example.AccountService"/>
</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-name>accountExporter</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.context.support.HttpRequestHandlerServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>

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

If you are running outside of a servlet container and are using Oracles 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:

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

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"/>
<property name="serviceInterface" value="example.AccountService"/>
</bean>

As mentioned before, you can choose what HTTP client you want to use. By default, the
HttpInvokerProxy uses the JDKs HTTP functionality, but you can also use the Apache
HttpComponents client by setting the httpInvokerRequestExecutor property:

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

28.5 Web services

Spring provides full support for standard Java web services APIs:

Exposing web services using JAX-WS

Accessing web services using JAX-WS

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

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 Springs
SpringBeanAutowiringSupport class and implement our business logic here, usually delegating
the call to the business layer. Well simply use Springs @Autowired annotation for expressing such
dependencies on Spring-managed beans.

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/**
* 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
private AccountService biz;

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

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

Our AccountServiceEndpoint needs to run in the same web application as the Spring context to
allow for access to Springs 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.

Exporting standalone web services using JAX-WS

The built-in JAX-WS provider that comes with Oracles JDK 1.6 supports exposure of web services using
the built-in HTTP server thats included in JDK 1.6 as well. Springs 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, annotation-driven 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>

...

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The AccountServiceEndpoint may derive from Springs SpringBeanAutowiringSupport but

doesnt 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 Springs @Autowired
configuration annotation still being honored:

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

@Autowired
private AccountService biz;

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

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

Exporting web services using the JAX-WS RIs Spring support

Oracles JAX-WS RI, developed as part of the GlassFish project, ships Spring support as part of its JAX-
WS Commons project. This allows for defining JAX-WS endpoints as Spring-managed beans, similar
to the standalone mode discussed in the previous section - but this time in a Servlet environment. 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), youll 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.java.net/spring/ for details on setup and usage style.

Accessing web services using JAX-WS

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="serviceInterface" value="example.AccountService"/>
<property name="wsdlDocumentUrl" value="http://localhost:8888/AccountServiceEndpoint?WSDL"/>
<property name="namespaceUri" value="http://example/"/>
<property name="serviceName" value="AccountService"/>
<property name="portName" value="AccountServiceEndpointPort"/>
</bean>

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.

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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:

public class AccountClientImpl {

private AccountService service;

public void setService(AccountService service) {

this.service = service;
}

public void foo() {

service.insertAccount(...);
}
}

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.

28.6 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 Springs JMS remoting support. See Chapter 30, JMS (Java Message Service) for information
on Springs 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 + "]");
}

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This configuration file contains the JMS-infrastructure beans that are shared on both the client and
server.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<bean id="connectionFactory" class="org.apache.activemq.ActiveMQConnectionFactory">

<property name="brokerURL" value="tcp://ep-t43:61616"/>
</bean>

<bean id="queue" class="org.apache.activemq.command.ActiveMQQueue">

<constructor-arg value="mmm"/>
</bean>

</beans>

Server-side configuration

On the server, you just need to expose the service object using the JmsInvokerServiceExporter.

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

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

</beans>

package com.foo;

import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;

public class Server {

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

new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(new String[]{"com/foo/server.xml", "com/foo/jms.xml"});
}

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.

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

</beans>

package com.foo;

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

public class Client {

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

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

28.7 AMQP
Refer to the Spring AMQP Reference Document 'Spring Remoting with AMQP' section for more
information.

28.8 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.

28.9 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 youll be sending over the wire when choosing
a technology.

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When using RMI, its not possible to access the objects through the HTTP protocol, unless youre
tunneling the RMI traffic. RMI is a fairly heavy-weight protocol in that it supports full-object 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.

Springs 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 Springs 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 third-party or custom solutions here.

28.10 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. RestTemplates 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.

RestTemplate

Invoking RESTful services in Java is typically done using a helper class such as Apache
HttpComponents HttpClient. For common REST operations this approach is too low level as shown
below.

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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.

Note

RestTemplate has an asynchronous counter-part: see the section called Async RestTemplate.

Table 28.1. Overview of RestTemplate methods

HTTP Method RestTemplate Method

DELETE delete

GET getForObject getForEntity

HEAD headForHeaders(String url, String uriVariables)

OPTIONS optionsForAllow(String url, String uriVariables)

POST postForLocation(String url, Object request, String uriVariables)

postForObject(String url, Object request, Class<T> responseType,
String uriVariables)

PUT put(String url, Object request, StringuriVariables)

PATCH and others exchange execute

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.

The exchange and execute methods are generalized versions of the more specific methods
listed above them and can support additional combinations and methods, like HTTP PATCH.
However, note that the underlying HTTP library must also support the desired combination. The JDK
HttpURLConnection does not support the PATCH method, but Apache HttpComponents HttpClient
version 4.2 or later does. They also enable RestTemplate to read an HTTP response to a generic type
(e.g. List<Account>), using a ParameterizedTypeReference, a new class that enables capturing
and passing generic type info.

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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");

To use Apache HttpComponents instead of the native java.net functionality, construct the
RestTemplate as follows:

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

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Tip

Apache HttpClient supports gzip encoding. To use it, construct a

HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory like so:

HttpClient httpClient = HttpClientBuilder.create().build();

ClientHttpRequestFactory requestFactory = new HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory(httpClient);
RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate(requestFactory);

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... uriVariables)

// also has an overload with uriVariables 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:

UriComponents uriComponents = UriComponentsBuilder.fromUriString(

"http://example.com/hotels/{hotel}/bookings/{booking}").build()
.expand("42", "21")
.encode();

URI uri = uriComponents.toUri();

Or specify each URI component individually:

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UriComponents uriComponents = 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.

Jackson JSON Views support

It is possible to specify a Jackson JSON View to serialize only a subset of the object properties. For
example:

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

value.setSerializationView(User.WithoutPasswordView.class);
HttpEntity<MappingJacksonValue> entity = new HttpEntity<MappingJacksonValue>(value);
String s = template.postForObject("http://example.com/user", entity, String.class);

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

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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 Springs
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).

MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter

An HttpMessageConverter implementation that can read and write JSON using Jacksons
ObjectMapper. JSON mapping can be customized as needed through the use of Jacksons provided

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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).

MappingJackson2XmlHttpMessageConverter

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

SourceHttpMessageConverter

An HttpMessageConverter implementation that can read and write

javax.xml.transform.Source from the HTTP request and response. Only DOMSource,
SAXSource, and StreamSource are supported. By default, this converter supports ( text/xml) and
( application/xml).

BufferedImageHttpMessageConverter

An HttpMessageConverter implementation that can read and write

java.awt.image.BufferedImage from the HTTP request and response. This converter reads and
writes the media type supported by the Java I/O API.

Async RestTemplate

Web applications often need to query external REST services those days. The very nature of HTTP
and synchronous calls can lead up to challenges when scaling applications for those needs: multiple
threads may be blocked, waiting for remote HTTP responses.

AsyncRestTemplate and the section called RestTemplate's APIs are very similar; see
Table 28.1, Overview of RestTemplate methods. The main difference between those APIs is that
AsyncRestTemplate returns ListenableFuture wrappers as opposed to concrete results.

The previous RestTemplate example translates to:

// async call
Future<ResponseEntity<String>> futureEntity = template.getForEntity(
"http://example.com/hotels/{hotel}/bookings/{booking}", String.class, "42", "21");

// get the concrete result - synchronous call

ResponseEntity<String> entity = futureEntity.get();

ListenableFuture accepts completion callbacks:

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ListenableFuture<ResponseEntity<String>> futureEntity = template.getForEntity(

"http://example.com/hotels/{hotel}/bookings/{booking}", String.class, "42", "21");

// register a callback
futureEntity.addCallback(new ListenableFutureCallback<ResponseEntity<String>>() {
@Override
public void onSuccess(ResponseEntity<String> entity) {
//...
}

@Override
public void onFailure(Throwable t) {
//...
}
});

Note

The default AsyncRestTemplate constructor registers a SimpleAsyncTaskExecutor for

executing HTTP requests. When dealing with a large number of short-lived requests, a thread-
pooling TaskExecutor implementation like ThreadPoolTaskExecutor may be a good choice.

See the ListenableFuture javadocs and AsyncRestTemplate javadocs for more details.

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29. Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) integration

29.1 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 well begin by discussing this.

29.2 Accessing EJBs

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.

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.

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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 Springs "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

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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.

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.

Springs 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 dont. 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.

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. Springs
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).

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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:remote-slsb> lookups simply provides consistent and
more explicit EJB access configuration.

29.3 Using Springs EJB implementation support classes

EJB 3 injection interceptor

For EJB 3 Session Beans and Message-Driven Beans, Spring provides a convenient
interceptor that resolves Springs @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 SpringBeanAutowiringInterceptors `getBeanFactory

method, e.g. obtaining a shared ApplicationContext from a custom holder class.

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30. JMS (Java Message Service)

30.1 Introduction
Spring provides a JMS integration framework that simplifies the use of the JMS API much like Springs
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 EEs message-driven bean style, Spring provides
a number of message listener containers that are used to create Message-Driven POJOs (MDPs).
Spring also provides a declarative way of creating message listeners.

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.

The package org.springframework.jms.annotation provides the necessary infrastructure to

support annotation-driven listener endpoints using @JmsListener.

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

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 Springs PlatformTransactionManager for JMS (the cunningly named
JmsTransactionManager). This allows for seamless integration of JMS as a transactional resource
into Springs transaction management mechanisms.

30.2 Using Spring JMS

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.

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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 MessageProducers 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.

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

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.

As of Spring Framework 4.1, JmsMessagingTemplate is built on top of JmsTemplate and provides

an integration with the messaging abstraction, i.e. org.springframework.messaging.Message.
This allows you to create the message to send in generic manner.

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

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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 ConnectionFactory 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 acknowledgment mode. 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).

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 objects
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

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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.

Message Listener Containers

One of the most common uses of JMS messages in the EJB world is to drive message-driven beans
(MDBs). Spring offers a solution to create message-driven POJOs (MDPs) in a way that does not tie a
user to an EJB container. (See the section called Asynchronous Reception - Message-Driven POJOs
for detailed coverage of Springs MDP support.) As from Spring Framework 4.1, endpoint methods can
be simply annotated using @JmsListener see Section 30.6, Annotation-driven listener endpoints for
more details.

A message listener container is used to receive messages from a JMS message queue and drive the
MessageListener that is injected into it. The listener container is responsible for all threading of
message reception and dispatches into the listener for processing. A message listener container is
the intermediary between an MDP and a messaging provider, and takes care of registering to receive
messages, participating in transactions, resource acquisition and release, exception conversion and
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 EEs JMS restrictions.

Note

While SimpleMessageListenerContainer does not allow for the participation in

externally managed transactions, it does support native JMS transactions: simply switch
the 'sessionTransacted' flag to 'true' or, in the namespace, set the 'acknowledge' attribute
to 'transacted': Exceptions thrown from your listener will lead to a rollback then, with the
message getting redelivered. Alternatively, consider using 'CLIENT_ACKNOWLEDGE' mode

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which provides redelivery in case of an exception as well but does not use transacted Sessions
and therefore does not include any other Session operations (such as sending response
messages) in the transaction protocol.

DefaultMessageListenerContainer

This message listener container is the one used in most cases. In contrast to
SimpleMessageListenerContainer, this container variant allows for dynamic adaptation to runtime
demands and is able to participate in externally managed transactions. Each received message is
registered with an XA transaction when configured with a JtaTransactionManager; 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 the participation in externally
managed transactions, and compatibility with Java EE environments.

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

This container also has recoverable capabilities when the broker goes down. By default, a simple
BackOff implementation retries every 5 seconds. It is possible to specify a custom BackOff
implementation for more fine-grained recovery options, see ExponentialBackOff for an example.

Note

Like its sibling SimpleMessageListenerContainer,

DefaultMessageListenerContainer supports native JMS transactions and also allows for
customizing the acknowledgment mode. This is strongly recommended over externally managed
transactions if feasible for your scenario: that is, if you can live with occasional duplicate
messages in case of the JVM dying. Custom duplicate message detection steps in your business
logic may cover such situations, e.g. in the form of a business entity existence check or
a protocol table check. Any such arrangements will be significantly more efficient than the
alternative: wrapping your entire processing with an XA transaction (through configuring your
DefaultMessageListenerContainer with an JtaTransactionManager), covering the
reception of the JMS message as well as the execution of the business logic in your message
listener (including database operations etc).

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 17, 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 Springs
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 ActiveMQs PooledConnectionFactory class.

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JmsTemplate can also be used with the JtaTransactionManager and an XA-capable 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
servers / JMS providers documentation.)

Reusing code across a managed and unmanaged transactional environment can be confusing when
using the JMS API to create a Session from a Connection. This is because the JMS API
has only one factory method to create a Session and it requires values for the transaction and
acknowledgment modes. In a managed environment, setting these values is the responsibility of the
environments transactional infrastructure, so these values are ignored by the vendors 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.

30.3 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.

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

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

public class JmsQueueSender {

private JmsTemplate jmsTemplate;

private Queue queue;

public void setConnectionFactory(ConnectionFactory cf) {

this.jmsTemplate = new JmsTemplate(cf);
}

public void setQueue(Queue queue) {

this.queue = queue;
}

public void simpleSend() {

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

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 Springs JmsGatewaySupport convenience base class, which provides pre-
built bean properties for JMS configuration.

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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.

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 messages 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 messages 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}
}
}

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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.

30.4 Receiving a message

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.

Asynchronous Reception - Message-Driven POJOs

Note

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

In a fashion similar to a Message-Driven Bean (MDB) in the EJB world, the Message-Driven POJO
(MDP) acts as a receiver for JMS messages. The one restriction (but see 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 javax.jms.JMSException;
import javax.jms.Message;
import javax.jms.MessageListener;
import javax.jms.TextMessage;

public class ExampleListener implements MessageListener {

public void onMessage(Message message) {

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

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Once youve implemented your MessageListener, its 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).

<!-- this is the Message Driven POJO (MDP) -->

<bean id="messageListener" class="jmsexample.ExampleListener" />

<!-- and this is the message listener container -->

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

Please refer to the Spring javadocs of the various message listener containers for a full description of
the features supported by each implementation.

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.

the MessageListenerAdapter
The MessageListenerAdapter class is the final component in Springs 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.

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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.

<!-- this is the Message Driven POJO (MDP) -->

<bean id="messageListener" class="org.springframework.jms.listener.adapter.MessageListenerAdapter">
<constructor-arg>
<bean class="jmsexample.DefaultMessageDelegate"/>
</constructor-arg>
</bean>

<!-- and this is the message listener container... -->

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

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 {

// implementation elided for clarity...
}

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"/>
<!-- we don't want automatic message context extraction -->
<property name="messageConverter">
<null/>
</property>
</bean>

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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 {

// implementation elided for clarity...
}

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).

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.

<bean id="jmsContainer" class="org.springframework.jms.listener.DefaultMessageListenerContainer">

<property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
<property name="destination" ref="destination"/>
<property name="messageListener" ref="messageListener"/>
<property name="sessionTransacted" value="true"/>
</bean>

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, youll want to configure
a JtaTransactionManager (which, by default, delegates to the Java EE servers 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 servers 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"/>

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Then you just need to add it to our earlier container configuration. The container will take care of the rest.

<bean id="jmsContainer" class="org.springframework.jms.listener.DefaultMessageListenerContainer">

<property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
<property name="destination" ref="destination"/>
<property name="messageListener" ref="messageListener"/>
<property name="transactionManager" ref="transactionManager"/>
</bean>

30.5 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 providers ResourceAdapter class name. Therefore, it is
typically possible to just provide Springs 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 Springs 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
SimpleTaskWorkManagers "asyncTaskExecutor" property. Consider defining a shared thread pool
for all your ResourceAdapter instances if you happen to use multiple adapters.

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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 servers 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 providers documentation to find out about the actual
capabilities of your connector, and consult `GenericMessageEndpointManagers 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.

30.6 Annotation-driven listener endpoints

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

@Component
public class MyService {

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

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

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

Tip

@JmsListener is a repeatable annotation on Java 8, so it is possible to associate several JMS

destinations to the same method by adding additional @JmsListener declarations to it. On Java
6 and 7, you can use the @JmsListeners annotation.

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Enable listener endpoint annotations

To enable support for @JmsListener annotations add @EnableJms to one of your @Configuration
classes.

@Configuration
@EnableJms
public class AppConfig {

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

By default, the infrastructure looks for a bean named jmsListenerContainerFactory as the source
for the factory to use to create message listener containers. In this case, and ignoring the JMS
infrastructure setup, the processOrder method can be invoked with a core poll size of 3 threads and
a maximum pool size of 10 threads.

It is possible to customize the listener container factory to use per annotation or an explicit default can
be configured by implementing the JmsListenerConfigurer interface. The default is only required
if at least one endpoint is registered without a specific container factory. See the javadoc for full details
and examples.

If you prefer XML configuration use the <jms:annotation-driven> element.

<jms:annotation-driven/>

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

Programmatic endpoints registration

JmsListenerEndpoint provides a model of an JMS endpoint and is responsible for configuring

the container for that model. The infrastructure allows you to configure endpoints programmatically in
addition to the ones that are detected by the JmsListener annotation.

@Configuration
@EnableJms
public class AppConfig implements JmsListenerConfigurer {

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

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In the example above, we used SimpleJmsListenerEndpoint which provides the actual

MessageListener to invoke but you could just as well build your own endpoint variant describing a
custom invocation mechanism.

It should be noted that you could just as well skip the use of @JmsListener altogether and only register
your endpoints programmatically through JmsListenerConfigurer.

Annotated endpoint method signature

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

@Component
public class MyService {

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

These are the main elements you can inject in JMS listener endpoints:

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

The javax.jms.Session for optional access to the native JMS API e.g. for sending a custom reply.

The org.springframework.messaging.Message representing the incoming JMS message.

Note that this message holds both the custom and the standard headers (as defined by JmsHeaders).

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

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

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

The ability to inject Springs Message abstraction is particularly useful to benefit from all the information
stored in the transport-specific message without relying on transport-specific API.

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

Handling of method arguments is provided by DefaultMessageHandlerMethodFactory which can

be further customized to support additional method arguments. The conversion and validation support
can be customized there as well.

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

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@Configuration
@EnableJms
public class AppConfig implements JmsListenerConfigurer {

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

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

Response management

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

Assuming our processOrder method should now return an OrderStatus, it is possible to write it as
follow to automatically send a response:

@JmsListener(destination = "myDestination")
@SendTo("status")
public OrderStatus processOrder(Order order) {
// order processing
return status;
}

Tip

If you have several @JmsListener-annotated methods, you can also place the @SendTo
annotation at the class level to share a default reply destination.

If you need to set additional headers in a transport-independent manner, you could return a Message
instead, something like:

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

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

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

30.7 JMS namespace support

Spring provides an XML namespace for simplifying JMS configuration. To use the JMS namespace
elements you will need to reference the JMS schema:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<!-- bean definitions here -->

</beans>

The namespace consists of three top-level elements: <annotation-driven/>, <listener-

container/> and <jca-listener-container/>. <annotation-driven enables the use
of annotation-driven listener endpoints. <listener-container/> and <jca-listener-
container/> defines shared listener container configuration and may contain <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 the section called 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 30.1. 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 The destination name for this listener, resolved through the DestinationResolver
(required) strategy.

ref The bean name of the handler object.

(required)

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Attribute Description

method The name of the handler method to invoke. If the ref points to a MessageListener
or Spring SessionAwareMessageListener, this attribute may be omitted.

response- The name of the default response destination to send response messages to. This
destination 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-containers
"response-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.

concurrency The number of concurrent sessions/consumers to start for this 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 might be ignored at runtime. Default is the value provided by the container

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

Such settings can be automatically exposed as a JmsListenerContainerFactory by specifying the

id of the bean to expose through the factory-id attribute.

<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 javadocs of the
AbstractMessageListenerContainer and its concrete subclasses for more details on the
individual properties. The javadocs also provide a discussion of transaction choices and message
redelivery scenarios.

Table 30.2. Attributes of the JMS <listener-container> element

Attribute Description

container- The type of this listener container. Available options are: default, simple,
type default102, or simple102 (the default value is 'default').

container- A custom listener container implementation class as fully qualified class name.
class Default is Springs standard DefaultMessageListenerContainer or
SimpleMessageListenerContainer, according to the "container-type" attribute.

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Attribute Description

factory-id Exposes the settings defined by this element as a

JmsListenerContainerFactory with the specified id so that they can be reused
with other endpoints.

connection- A reference to the JMS ConnectionFactory bean (the default bean name is
factory 'connectionFactory').

task- A reference to the Spring TaskExecutor for the JMS listener invokers.
executor

destination- A reference to the DestinationResolver strategy for resolving JMS

resolver Destinations.

message- A reference to the MessageConverter strategy for converting JMS Messages to

converter listener method arguments. Default is a SimpleMessageConverter.

error- A reference to an ErrorHandler strategy for handling any uncaught Exceptions that
handler may occur during the execution of the MessageListener.

destination- The JMS destination type for this listener: queue, topic, durableTopic,
type sharedTopic or sharedDurableTopic. This enables potentially the
pubSubDomain, subscriptionDurable and subscriptionShared properties
of the container. The default is queue (i.e. disabling those 3 properties).

response- The JMS destination type for responses: "queue", "topic". Default is the value of the
destination- "destination-type" attribute.
type

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).

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

transaction- A reference to an external PlatformTransactionManager (typically an XA-based

manager transaction coordinator, e.g. Springs JtaTransactionManager). If not specified,
native acknowledging will be used (see "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 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.

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Attribute Description

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

receive- The timeout to use for receive calls (in milliseconds). The default is 1000 ms (1 sec);
timeout -1 indicates no timeout at all.

back-off Specify the BackOff instance to use to compute the interval between
recovery attempts. If the BackOffExecution implementation returns
BackOffExecution#STOP, the listener container will not further attempt to recover.
The recovery-interval value is ignored when this property is set. The default is
a FixedBackOff with an interval of 5000 ms, that is 5 seconds.

recovery- Specify the interval between recovery attempts, in milliseconds. Convenience way
interval to create a FixedBackOff with the specified interval. For more recovery options,
consider specifying a BackOff instance instead. The default is 5000 ms, that is 5
seconds.

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

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 30.3. Attributes of the JMS <jca-listener-container/> element

Attribute Description

factory-id Exposes the settings defined by this element as a

JmsListenerContainerFactory with the specified id so that they can be reused
with other endpoints.

resource- A reference to the JCA ResourceAdapter bean (the default bean name is
adapter 'resourceAdapter').

activation- A reference to the JmsActivationSpecFactory. The default is to

spec-factory autodetect the JMS provider and its ActivationSpec class (see
DefaultJmsActivationSpecFactory)

destination- A reference to the DestinationResolver strategy for resolving JMS

resolver Destinations.

message- A reference to the MessageConverter strategy for converting JMS Messages to

converter listener method arguments. Default is a SimpleMessageConverter.

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Attribute Description

destination- The JMS destination type for this listener: queue, topic, durableTopic,
type sharedTopic or sharedDurableTopic. This enables potentially the
pubSubDomain, subscriptionDurable and subscriptionShared properties
of the container. The default is queue (i.e. disabling those 3 properties).

response- The JMS destination type for responses: "queue", "topic". Default is the value of the
destination- "destination-type" attribute.
type

client-id The JMS client id for this listener container. Needs to be specified when using
durable subscriptions.

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

transaction- A reference to a Spring JtaTransactionManager or a

manager 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!

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31. JMX
31.1 Introduction
The JMX support in Spring provides you with the features to easily and transparently integrate your
Spring application into a JMX infrastructure.

JMX?

This chapter is not an introduction to JMX it doesnt 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 31.8, Further Resources at the end of this chapter.

Specifically, Springs JMX support provides four core features:

The automatic registration of any Spring bean as a JMX MBean

A flexible mechanism for controlling the management interface of your beans

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

The simple proxying of both local and remote MBean resources

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

31.2 Exporting your beans to JMX

The core class in Springs 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:

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package org.springframework.jmx;

public class JmxTestBean implements IJmxTestBean {

private String name;

private int age;
private boolean isSuperman;

public int getAge() {

return age;
}

public void setAge(int age) {

this.age = age;
}

public void setName(String name) {

this.name = name;
}

public String getName() {

return name;
}

public int add(int x, int y) {

return x + y;
}

public void dontExposeMe() {

throw new RuntimeException();
}
}

To expose the properties and methods of this bean as attributes and operations of an MBean you simply
configure an instance of the MBeanExporter class in your configuration file and pass in the bean as
shown below:

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

The pertinent bean definition from the 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 31.4, 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.

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Note

MBeanExporter is a Lifecycle bean (see the section called Startup and shutdown callbacks)
and MBeans are exported as late as possible during the application lifecycle by default. It is
possible to configure the phase at which the export happens or disable automatic registration by
setting the autoStartup flag.

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 MBeanExporters `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">
<property name="beans">
<map>
<entry key="bean:name=testBean1" value-ref="testBean"/>
</map>
</property>
<property name="server" ref="mbeanServer"/>
</bean>

<bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">

<property name="name" value="TEST"/>
<property name="age" value="100"/>
</bean>

</beans>

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.

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

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

For platforms/cases where the existing MBeanServer has a dynamic (or unknown) agentId which is
retrieved through lookup methods, one should use factory-method:

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

<!-- other beans here -->

</beans>

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.

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:

<bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">

<property name="autodetect" value="true"/>
</bean>

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

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 31.4, Controlling the
ObjectNames for your beans.

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).

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It is possible to control the behavior of exactly what happens when an MBean is registered with an
MBeanServer. Springs 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 31.1. Registration Behaviors

Registration Explanation
behavior

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

If an MBean instance has already been registered under the same

REGISTRATION_IGNORE_EXISTING
ObjectName, 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 registered under the same

REGISTRATION_REPLACE_EXISTING
ObjectName, the existing MBean that was previously 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>

<bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">

<property name="beans">
<map>
<entry key="bean:name=testBean1" value-ref="testBean"/>
</map>
</property>
<property name="registrationBehaviorName" value="REGISTRATION_REPLACE_EXISTING"/>
</bean>

<bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">

<property name="name" value="TEST"/>
<property name="age" value="100"/>
</bean>

</beans>

31.3 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

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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.

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.

Using Source-Level Metadata (Java 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 Java 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.

Note

A ManagedResource annotated bean must be public as well as the methods exposing an

operation or an attribute.

The example below shows the annotated version of the JmxTestBean class that you saw earlier:

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package org.springframework.jmx;

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

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

private String name;

private int age;

@ManagedAttribute(description="The Age Attribute", currencyTimeLimit=15)

public int getAge() {
return age;
}

public void setAge(int age) {

this.age = age;
}

@ManagedAttribute(description="The Name Attribute",

currencyTimeLimit=20,
defaultValue="bar",
persistPolicy="OnUpdate")
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}

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

@ManagedOperation(description="Add two numbers")

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

public void dontExposeMe() {

throw new RuntimeException();
}

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 the section called 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.

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

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

<!-- will create management interface using annotation metadata -->

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

<!-- will pick up the ObjectName from the annotation -->

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

<bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.AnnotationTestBean">

<property name="name" value="TEST"/>
<property name="age" value="100"/>
</bean>
</beans>

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.

Source-Level Metadata Types

The following source level metadata types are available for use in Spring JMX:

Table 31.2. Source-Level Metadata Types

Purpose Annotation Annotation Type

Mark all instances of a Class @ManagedResource Class

as JMX managed resources

Mark a method as a JMX @ManagedOperation Method

operation

Mark a getter or setter as one @ManagedAttribute Method (only getters and

half of a JMX attribute setters)

Define descriptions for Method

@ManagedOperationParameter
operation parameters and
@ManagedOperationParameters

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

Table 31.3. Source-Level Metadata Parameters

Parameter Description Applies to

ObjectName Used by MetadataNamingStrategy to determine the ManagedResource

ObjectName of a managed resource

description Sets the friendly description of the resource, attribute or ManagedResource,

operation ManagedAttribute,
ManagedOperation,
ManagedOperationParameter

Sets the value of the currencyTimeLimit descriptor

currencyTimeLimit ManagedResource,
field ManagedAttribute

defaultValue Sets the value of the defaultValue descriptor field ManagedAttribute

log Sets the value of the log descriptor field ManagedResource

logFile Sets the value of the logFile descriptor field ManagedResource

persistPolicy Sets the value of the persistPolicy descriptor field ManagedResource

persistPeriod Sets the value of the persistPeriod descriptor field ManagedResource

persistLocationSets the value of the persistLocation descriptor field ManagedResource

persistName Sets the value of the persistName descriptor field ManagedResource

name Sets the display name of an operation parameter ManagedOperationParameter

index Sets the index of an operation parameter ManagedOperationParameter

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:

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<beans>

<bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">

<!-- notice how no 'beans' are explicitly configured here -->
<property name="autodetect" value="true"/>
<property name="assembler" ref="assembler"/>
</bean>

<bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">

<property name="name" value="TEST"/>
<property name="age" value="100"/>
</bean>

<bean id="assembler" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.assembler.MetadataMBeanInfoAssembler">

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

</beans>

Notice that in 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 31.4, Controlling the
ObjectNames for your beans.

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:

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<beans>

<bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">

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

<bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">

<property name="name" value="TEST"/>
<property name="age" value="100"/>
</bean>

</beans>

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.

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:

<bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">

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

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

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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.

31.4 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.

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>

<bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">

<property name="beans">
<map>
<entry key="testBean" value-ref="testBean"/>
</map>
</property>
<property name="namingStrategy" ref="namingStrategy"/>
</bean>

<bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">

<property name="name" value="TEST"/>
<property name="age" value="100"/>
</bean>

<bean id="namingStrategy" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.naming.KeyNamingStrategy">

<property name="mappings">
<props>
<prop key="testBean">bean:name=testBean1</prop>
</props>
</property>
<property name="mappingLocations">
<value>names1.properties,names2.properties</value>
</property>
</bean>

</beans>

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.

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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>

<bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">

<property name="beans">
<map>
<entry key="testBean" value-ref="testBean"/>
</map>
</property>
<property name="namingStrategy" ref="namingStrategy"/>
</bean>

<bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">

<property name="name" value="TEST"/>
<property name="age" value="100"/>
</bean>

<bean id="namingStrategy" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.naming.MetadataNamingStrategy">

<property name="attributeSource" ref="attributeSource"/>
</bean>

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

</beans>

If no objectName has been provided for the ManagedResource attribute, then an

ObjectName will be created with the following format:[fully-qualified-package-name]:type=[short-
classname],name=[bean-name]. For example, the generated ObjectName for the following bean would
be: com.foo:type=MyClass,name=myBean.

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

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
public class AppConfig {

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

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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. Interface-based 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

31.5 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.

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 the JDK 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:

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<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>

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>

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.

31.6 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>

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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.

31.7 Notifications
Springs JMX offering includes comprehensive support for JMX notifications.

Registering Listeners for Notifications

Springs JMX support makes it very easy to register any number of NotificationListeners with
any number of MBeans (this includes MBeans exported by Springs 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 javax.management.AttributeChangeNotification;
import javax.management.Notification;
import javax.management.NotificationFilter;
import javax.management.NotificationListener;

public class ConsoleLoggingNotificationListener

implements NotificationListener, NotificationFilter {

public void handleNotification(Notification notification, Object handback) {

System.out.println(notification);
System.out.println(handback);
}

public boolean isNotificationEnabled(Notification notification) {

return AttributeChangeNotification.class.isAssignableFrom(notification.getClass());
}

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<beans>

<bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">

<property name="beans">
<map>
<entry key="bean:name=testBean1" value-ref="testBean"/>
</map>
</property>
<property name="notificationListenerMappings">
<map>
<entry key="bean:name=testBean1">
<bean class="com.example.ConsoleLoggingNotificationListener"/>
</entry>
</map>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">

<property name="name" value="TEST"/>
<property name="age" value="100"/>
</bean>

</beans>

With the 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>

<bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">

<property name="beans">
<map>
<entry key="bean:name=testBean1" value-ref="testBean"/>
</map>
</property>
<property name="notificationListenerMappings">
<map>
<entry key="testBean">
<bean class="com.example.ConsoleLoggingNotificationListener"/>
</entry>
</map>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">

<property name="name" value="TEST"/>
<property name="age" value="100"/>
</bean>

</beans>

If 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:

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

<bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">

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

<bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">

<property name="name" value="TEST"/>
<property name="age" value="100"/>
</bean>

</beans>

The 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'.)

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<beans>

<bean id="exporter" class="org.springframework.jmx.export.MBeanExporter">

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

<!-- implements both the NotificationListener and NotificationFilter interfaces -->

<bean id="customerNotificationListener" class="com.example.ConsoleLoggingNotificationListener"/>

<bean id="testBean1" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">

<property name="name" value="TEST"/>
<property name="age" value="100"/>
</bean>

<bean id="testBean2" class="org.springframework.jmx.JmxTestBean">

<property name="name" value="ANOTHER TEST"/>
<property name="age" value="200"/>
</bean>

</beans>

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 Springs 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

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NotificationPublisher to the implementing bean via a simple setter method, which the bean can
then use to publish Notifications.

As stated in the javadocs of 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 Springs 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.

package org.springframework.jmx;

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

public class JmxTestBean implements IJmxTestBean, NotificationPublisherAware {

private String name;

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

// other getters and setters omitted for clarity

public int add(int x, int y) {

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

public void dontExposeMe() {

throw new RuntimeException();
}

public void setNotificationPublisher(NotificationPublisher notificationPublisher) {

this.publisher = notificationPublisher;
}

The NotificationPublisher interface and the machinery to get it all working is one of the nicer
features of Springs 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.

31.8 Further Resources

This section contains links to further resources about JMX.

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The JMX homepage at Oracle

The JMX specification (JSR-000003)

The JMX Remote API specification (JSR-000160)

The MX4J homepage (an Open Source implementation of various JMX specs)

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32. JCA CCI

32.1 Introduction
Java EE provides a specification to standardize access to enterprise information systems (EIS): the JCA
(Java EE 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 Frameworks general resource and transaction management facilities.

Note

The client side of connectors doesnt 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.

32.2 Configuring CCI

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 servers 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
Springs 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 connectors 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 Springs
support classes for CCI access (e.g. CciTemplate).

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Note

When you use a connector in non-managed mode, you cant 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.

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 cant 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.

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;
...
}

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Spring provides a ConnectionSpecConnectionFactoryAdapter that allows for specifying

a ConnectionSpec instance to use for all operations on a given factory. If the adapters
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"/>
<property name="password" value=""/>
</bean>
</property>
</bean>

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

<bean id="eciConnectionFactory"
class="org.springframework.jca.cci.connection.SingleConnectionFactory">
<property name="targetConnectionFactory" ref="targetEciConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>

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.

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32.3 Using Springs CCI access support

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
Springs CciTemplate. The following interfaces will configure the strategy to use input and output
records if you dont 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 Springs 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);
String field2 = string.substring(6,1);
return new OutputObject(Long.parseLong(field1), field2);
}

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

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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)

throws DataAccessException { ... }

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

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public class CciTemplate implements CciOperations {

public Record execute(InteractionSpec spec,

RecordCreator inputCreator) throws DataAccessException {
// ...
}

public Object execute(InteractionSpec spec, Record inputRecord,

RecordExtractor outputExtractor) throws DataAccessException {
// ...
}

public Object execute(InteractionSpec spec, RecordCreator creator,

RecordExtractor extractor) throws DataAccessException {
// ...
}

Unless the outputRecordCreator property is set on the template (see the following section), every
method 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 class CciTemplate implements CciOperations {

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

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

DAO support

Springs 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() {

// ...
}

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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 the section called 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.

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

Table 32.1. Usage of Interaction execute methods

CciTemplate method signature CciTemplate execute method called on the CCI

outputRecordCreator
Interaction
property

Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record) not set Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record)

Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record) set boolean execute(InteractionSpec,

Record, Record)

void execute(InteractionSpec, Record, not set void execute(InteractionSpec, Record,

Record) Record)

void execute(InteractionSpec, Record, set void execute(InteractionSpec, Record,

Record) Record)

Record execute(InteractionSpec, not set Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record)

RecordCreator)

Record execute(InteractionSpec, set void execute(InteractionSpec, Record,

RecordCreator) Record)

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CciTemplate method signature CciTemplate execute method called on the CCI

outputRecordCreator
Interaction
property

Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record, not set Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record)

RecordExtractor)

Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record, set void execute(InteractionSpec, Record,

RecordExtractor) Record)

Record execute(InteractionSpec, not set Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record)

RecordCreator, RecordExtractor)

Record execute(InteractionSpec, set void execute(InteractionSpec, Record,

RecordCreator, RecordExtractor) Record)

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.

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.

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ECIInteractionSpec interactionSpec = new ECIInteractionSpec();

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

Then the program can use CCI via Springs 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() {
public Record createRecord(RecordFactory recordFactory) throws ResourceException {
return new CommAreaRecord(input.toString().getBytes());
}
},
new RecordExtractor() {
public Object extractData(Record record) throws ResourceException {
CommAreaRecord commAreaRecord = (CommAreaRecord)record;
String str = new String(commAreaRecord.toByteArray());
String field1 = string.substring(0,6);
String field2 = string.substring(6,1);
return new OutputObject(Long.parseLong(field1), field2);
}
});

return output;
}
}

As discussed previously, callbacks can be used to work directly on CCI connections or interactions.

public class MyDaoImpl extends CciDaoSupport implements MyDao {

public OutputObject getData(InputObject input) {

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

// do something...

}
});
}
return output;
}

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.

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public class MyDaoImpl extends CciDaoSupport implements MyDao {

public String getData(String input) {

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

For the 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="serverName" value="TXSERIES"/>
<property name="connectionURL" value="local:"/>
<property name="userName" value="CICSUSER"/>
<property name="password" value="CICS"/>
</bean>

<bean id="connectionFactory" class="org.springframework.jca.support.LocalConnectionFactoryBean">

<property name="managedConnectionFactory" ref="managedConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>

<bean id="component" class="mypackage.MyDaoImpl">

<property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
</bean>

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

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

<bean id="component" class="MyDaoImpl">

<property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
</bean>

32.4 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 Springs 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 Springs core CCI support.

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

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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);
...

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.

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public abstract class MappingCommAreaOperation extends MappingRecordOperation {

...

protected abstract byte[] objectToBytes(Object inObject)

throws IOException, DataAccessException;

protected abstract Object bytesToObject(byte[] bytes)

throws IOException, DataAccessException;

...

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 the
section called Automatic output record generation.

Summary

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

Table 32.2. Usage of Interaction execute methods

MappingRecordOperation method MappingRecordOperation

execute method called on the CCI
signature outputRecordCreator
Interaction
property

Object execute(Object) not set Record execute(InteractionSpec, Record)

Object execute(Object) set boolean execute(InteractionSpec,

Record, Record)

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 Oracle.

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.

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public class PersonMappingOperation extends MappingRecordOperation {

public PersonMappingOperation(ConnectionFactory connectionFactory) {

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

protected Record createInputRecord(RecordFactory recordFactory,

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

protected Object extractOutputData(Record outputRecord)

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

Then the application can execute the operation object, with the person identifier as argument. Note that
operation object could be set up as shared instance, as it is thread-safe.

public class MyDaoImpl extends CciDaoSupport implements MyDao {

public Person getPerson(int id) {

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

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

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

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

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

<bean id="component" class="MyDaoImpl">

<property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
</bean>

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

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

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

<bean id="component" class="MyDaoImpl">

<property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
</bean>

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.

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public abstract class EciMappingOperation extends MappingCommAreaOperation {

public EciMappingOperation(ConnectionFactory connectionFactory, String programName) {

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

private static class EciOutputRecordCreator implements RecordCreator {

public Record createRecord(RecordFactory recordFactory) throws ResourceException {
return new CommAreaRecord();
}
}

The abstract EciMappingOperation class can then be subclassed to specify mappings between
custom objects and Records.

public class MyDaoImpl extends CciDaoSupport implements MyDao {

public OutputObject getData(Integer id) {

EciMappingOperation query = new EciMappingOperation(getConnectionFactory(), "MYPROG") {

protected abstract byte[] objectToBytes(Object inObject) throws IOException {

Integer id = (Integer) inObject;
return String.valueOf(id);
}

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

String str = new String(bytes);
String field1 = str.substring(0,6);
String field2 = str.substring(6,1);
String field3 = str.substring(7,1);
return new OutputObject(field1, field2, field3);
}
});

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

}

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

<bean id="managedConnectionFactory" class="com.ibm.connector2.cics.ECIManagedConnectionFactory">

<property name="serverName" value="TXSERIES"/>
<property name="connectionURL" value="local:"/>
<property name="userName" value="CICSUSER"/>
<property name="password" value="CICS"/>
</bean>

<bean id="connectionFactory" class="org.springframework.jca.support.LocalConnectionFactoryBean">

<property name="managedConnectionFactory" ref="managedConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>

<bean id="component" class="MyDaoImpl">

<property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
</bean>

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

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

<bean id="component" class="MyDaoImpl">

<property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
</bean>

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

For global transactions, you can use Springs generic transaction infrastructure to demarcate
transactions, with JtaTransactionManager as backend (delegating to the Java EE servers
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.
Springs CciLocalTransactionManager executes such local CCI transactions, fully compliant with
Springs 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 Springs transaction demarcation
facilities, be it declarative or programmatic. This is a consequence of Springs 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 Springs transaction facilities, see the chapter entitled Chapter 17, Transaction
Management.

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33. Email
33.1 Introduction

Library dependencies

The following JAR needs to be on the classpath of your application in order to use the Spring
Frameworks email library.

The JavaMail library

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

The Spring Framework provides a helpful utility library for sending email that shields 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 the root level package for the Spring Frameworks
email support. The central interface for sending 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 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

33.2 Usage
Lets 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.

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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>

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

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:

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

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

public class SimpleOrderManager implements OrderManager {

private JavaMailSender mailSender;

public void setMailSender(JavaMailSender mailSender) {

this.mailSender = mailSender;
}

public void placeOrder(final Order order) {

// Do the business calculations...

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

MimeMessagePreparator preparator = new MimeMessagePreparator() {

public void prepare(MimeMessage mimeMessage) throws Exception {

mimeMessage.setRecipient(Message.RecipientType.TO,
new InternetAddress(order.getCustomer().getEmailAddress()));
mimeMessage.setFrom(new InternetAddress("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 Frameworks mail support ships with the standard JavaMail implementation. Please refer to
the relevant javadocs for more information.

33.3 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

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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);

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 dont 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.

JavaMailSenderImpl sender = new JavaMailSenderImpl();

sender.setHost("mail.host.com");

MimeMessage message = sender.createMimeMessage();

// use the true flag to indicate you need a multipart message

MimeMessageHelper helper = new MimeMessageHelper(message, true);
helper.setTo("test@host.com");

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

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

sender.send(message);

Inline resources

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

JavaMailSenderImpl sender = new JavaMailSenderImpl();

sender.setHost("mail.host.com");

MimeMessage message = sender.createMimeMessage();

// use the true flag to indicate you need a multipart message

MimeMessageHelper helper = new MimeMessageHelper(message, true);
helper.setTo("test@host.com");

// use the true flag to indicate the text included is HTML

helper.setText("<html><body><img src='cid:identifier1234'></body></html>", true);

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

sender.send(message);

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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 wont work!

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
Frameworks 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).

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package com.foo;

import org.apache.velocity.app.VelocityEngine;
import org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSender;
import org.springframework.mail.javamail.MimeMessageHelper;
import org.springframework.mail.javamail.MimeMessagePreparator;
import 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) {

this.mailSender = 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...
Map model = new HashMap();
model.put("user", user);
String text = VelocityEngineUtils.mergeTemplateIntoString(
velocityEngine, "com/dns/registration-confirmation.vm", model);
message.setText(text, true);
}
};
this.mailSender.send(preparator);
}

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<?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="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>

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34. Task Execution and Scheduling

34.1 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).

34.2 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. Springs abstraction hides implementation details between Java SE 1.4, Java SE 5 and
Java EE environments.

Springs TaskExecutor interface is identical to the java.util.concurrent.Executor interface.

In fact, its primary reason for existence was to abstract away the need for Java 5 when using thread
pools. The interface has a single method execute(Runnable task) that accepts a task for execution
based on the semantics and configuration of the thread pool.

The TaskExecutor was originally created to give other Spring components an abstraction
for thread pooling where needed. Components such as the ApplicationEventMulticaster,
JMSs 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.

TaskExecutor types
There are a number of pre-built implementations of TaskExecutor included with the Spring distribution.
In all likelihood, you shouldnt 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 are looking for true pooling, see
the discussions of SimpleThreadPoolTaskExecutor and ThreadPoolTaskExecutor below.

SyncTaskExecutor This implementation doesnt execute invocations asynchronously. Instead,

each invocation takes place in the calling thread. It is primarily used in situations where multi-threading
isnt necessary such as simple test cases.

ConcurrentTaskExecutor This implementation is an adapter for

a java.util.concurrent.Executor object. There is an alternative,

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ThreadPoolTaskExecutor, that exposes the Executor configuration parameters as

bean properties. It is rare to need to use the ConcurrentTaskExecutor, but if the
ThreadPoolTaskExecutor isnt flexible enough for your needs, the ConcurrentTaskExecutor
is an alternative.

SimpleThreadPoolTaskExecutor This implementation is actually a subclass of Quartzs

SimpleThreadPool which listens to Springs 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 is the most commonly used one. It exposes bean
properties for configuring a java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor and wraps it in a
TaskExecutor. If you need to adapt to a different kind of java.util.concurrent.Executor, it
is recommended that you use a ConcurrentTaskExecutor instead.

WorkManagerTaskExecutor

CommonJ is a set of specifications jointly developed between BEA and IBM. These
specifications are not Java EE standards, but are standard across BEAs and IBMs Application
Server implementations.

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.

Using a TaskExecutor

Springs 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.

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import org.springframework.core.task.TaskExecutor;

public class TaskExecutorExample {

private class MessagePrinterTask implements Runnable {

private String message;

public MessagePrinterTask(String message) {

this.message = message;
}

public void run() {

System.out.println(message);
}

private TaskExecutor taskExecutor;

public TaskExecutorExample(TaskExecutor taskExecutor) {

this.taskExecutor = taskExecutor;
}

public void printMessages() {

for(int i = 0; i < 25; i++) {
taskExecutor.execute(new MessagePrinterTask("Message" + i));
}
}

As you can see, rather than retrieving a thread from the pool and executing 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>

34.3 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.

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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.

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();

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("0 15 9-17 * * MON-FRI"));

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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 and
therefore easily modified or extended.

TaskScheduler implementations
As with Springs 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 JNDI-lookup.

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 Springs 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.

34.4 Annotation Support for Scheduling and Asynchronous

Execution
Spring provides annotation support for both task scheduling and asynchronous method execution.

Enable scheduling annotations

To enable support for @Scheduled and @Async annotations add @EnableScheduling and
@EnableAsync to one of your @Configuration classes:

@Configuration
@EnableAsync
@EnableScheduling
public class AppConfig {
}

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 fine-grained control you can
additionally implement the SchedulingConfigurer and/or AsyncConfigurer interfaces. See the
javadocs 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.

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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)
public void doSomething() {
// something that should execute periodically
}

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)
public void doSomething() {
// something that should execute periodically
}

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")
public void doSomething() {
// something that should execute on weekdays only
}

Tip

You can additionally use the zone attribute to specify the time zone in which the cron expression
will be resolved.

Notice that the methods to be scheduled must have void returns and must not expect any arguments. If
the method needs to interact with other objects from the Application Context, then those would typically
have been provided through dependency injection.

Note

As of Spring Framework 4.3, @Scheduled methods are supported on beans of any scope.

Make sure that you are not initializing multiple instances of the same @Scheduled annotation
class at runtime, unless you do want to schedule callbacks to each such instance. Related to
this, make sure that you do not use @Configurable on bean classes 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.

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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) {
// this will be executed asynchronously
}

Even methods that return a value can be invoked asynchronously. However, such methods are required
to have a Future typed return value. This still provides the benefit of asynchronous execution so that
the caller can perform other tasks prior to calling get() on that Future.

@Async
Future<String> returnSomething(int i) {
// this will be executed asynchronously
}

Tip

@Async methods may not only declare a regular java.util.concurrent.Future return type
but also Springs org.springframework.util.concurrent.ListenableFuture or, as of
Spring 4.2, JDK 8s java.util.concurrent.CompletableFuture: for richer interaction with
the asynchronous task and for immediate composition with further processing steps.

@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.

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public class SampleBeanImpl implements SampleBean {

@Async
void doSomething() {
// ...
}

public class SampleBeanInitializer {

private final SampleBean bean;

public SampleBeanInitializer(SampleBean bean) {

this.bean = bean;
}

@PostConstruct
public void initialize() {
bean.doSomething();
}

Note

There is no direct XML equivalent for @Async since such methods should be designed for
asynchronous execution in the first place, not externally re-declared to be async. However, you
may manually set up Springs AsyncExecutionInterceptor with Spring AOP, in combination
with a custom pointcut.

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 Springs @Qualifier annotation.

Exception management with @Async

When an @Async method has a Future typed return value, it is easy to manage an exception that was
thrown during the method execution as this exception will be thrown when calling get on the Future
result. With a void return type however, the exception is uncaught and cannot be transmitted. For those
cases, an AsyncUncaughtExceptionHandler can be provided to handle such exceptions.

public class MyAsyncUncaughtExceptionHandler implements AsyncUncaughtExceptionHandler {

@Override
public void handleUncaughtException(Throwable ex, Method method, Object... params) {
// handle exception
}
}

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By default, the exception is simply logged. A custom AsyncUncaughtExceptionHandler can be

defined via AsyncConfigurer or the task:annotation-driven XML element.

34.5 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.

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 'pool-size' attribute, the default
thread pool will only have a single thread. There are no other configuration options for the scheduler.

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 executors
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' elements '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 executors 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 queues 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).

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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, lets 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"/>

Finally, the keep-alive setting determines the time limit (in seconds) for which threads may remain
idle before being terminated. If there are more than the core number of threads currently in the pool, after
waiting this amount of time without processing a task, excess threads will get terminated. A time value
of zero will cause excess threads to terminate immediately after executing a task without remaining
follow-up work in the task queue.

<task:executor
id="executorWithKeepAlive"
pool-size="5-25"
keep-alive="120"/>

The 'scheduled-tasks' element

The most powerful feature of Springs task namespace is the support for configuring tasks to be
scheduled within a Spring Application Context. This follows an approach similar to other "method-
invokers" in Spring, such as that provided by the JMS namespace for configuring Message-driven
POJOs. Basically a "ref" attribute can point to any Spring-managed object, and the "method" attribute
provides the name of a method to be invoked on that object. 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.

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<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"/>

34.6 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.

Using the JobDetailFactoryBean

Quartz JobDetail objects contain all information needed to run a job. Spring provides a
JobDetailFactoryBean which provides bean-style properties for XML configuration purposes. Lets
have a look at an example:

<bean name="exampleJob" class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.JobDetailFactoryBean">

<property name="jobClass" value="example.ExampleJob"/>
<property name="jobDataAsMap">
<map>
<entry key="timeout" value="5"/>
</map>
</property>
</bean>

The job detail configuration has all information it needs to run the job (ExampleJob). The timeout is
specified in the job data map. The job data map is available through the JobExecutionContext
(passed to you at execution time), but the JobDetail also gets its properties from the job data mapped
to properties of the job instance. So in this case, if the ExampleJob contains a bean property named
timeout, the JobDetail will have it applied automatically:

package example;

public class ExampleJob extends QuartzJobBean {

private int timeout;

/**
* Setter called after the ExampleJob is instantiated
* with the value from the JobDetailFactoryBean (5)
*/
public void setTimeout(int timeout) {
this.timeout = timeout;
}

protected void executeInternal(JobExecutionContext ctx) throws JobExecutionException {

// do the actual work
}

All additional properties from the job data map are of course available to you as well.

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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
JobDetailFactoryBean (in the example above, this is exampleJob).

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 dont need to create one-line 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 wont
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.

Wiring up jobs using triggers and the SchedulerFactoryBean

Weve created job details and jobs. Weve 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.

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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">

<!-- see the example of method invoking job above -->
<property name="jobDetail" ref="jobDetail"/>
<!-- 10 seconds -->
<property name="startDelay" value="10000"/>
<!-- repeat every 50 seconds -->
<property name="repeatInterval" value="50000"/>
</bean>

<bean id="cronTrigger" class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.CronTriggerFactoryBean">

<property name="jobDetail" ref="exampleJob"/>
<!-- run every morning at 6 AM -->
<property name="cronExpression" value="0 0 6 * * ?"/>
</bean>

Now weve 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 javadocs for more information.

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35. Dynamic language support

35.1 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 1.5+

Groovy 1.8+

BeanShell 2.0

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 at the time that this support
was added, and c) the Spring developers were most familiar with them.

Fully working examples of where this dynamic language support can be immediately useful are
described in Section 35.4, Scenarios.

35.2 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, lets 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
wont 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.

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package org.springframework.scripting;

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 dynamic-language-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 Chapter 41, XML Schema-based
configuration.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<!-- this is the bean definition for the Groovy-backed Messenger implementation -->
<lang:groovy id="messenger" script-source="classpath:Messenger.groovy">
<lang:property name="message" value="I Can Do The Frug" />
</lang:groovy>

<!-- an otherwise normal bean that will be injected by the Groovy-backed Messenger -->
<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 dont worry unduly if it isnt. Keep reading for
the in-depth detail on the whys and wherefores of the above configuration.

35.3 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 35.6, Further Resources at the end of this chapter.

Common concepts

The steps involved in using dynamic-language-backed beans are as follows:

Write the test for the dynamic language source code (naturally)

Then write the dynamic language source code itself :)

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

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rest of this chapter though, as Springs 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 dynamic-language-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 configured by the
container, you use the <lang:language/> element to define the dynamic language-backed bean.

Each of the supported languages has a corresponding <lang:language/> element:

<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

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.

Lets 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, heres what we would change in the Spring XML configuration to effect refreshable beans:

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<beans>

<!-- this bean is now 'refreshable' due to the presence of the 'refresh-check-delay' attribute -->
<lang:groovy id="messenger"
refresh-check-delay="5000" <!-- switches refreshing on with 5 seconds between checks -->
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>

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-check-delay' attribute. Remember that, by default, the refresh
behavior is disabled. If you dont want the refresh behavior, then simply dont 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.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.scripting.Messenger;

public final class Boot {

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

ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("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());
}
}

Lets 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

class GroovyMessenger implements Messenger {

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
}
}

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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-language-backed 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 dynamic-language-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:inline-script/> 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>

package org.springframework.scripting.groovy;

import org.springframework.scripting.Messenger

class GroovyMessenger implements Messenger {

String message
}

</lang:inline-script>
<lang:property name="message" value="I Can Do The Frug" />
</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 moments work using inline source. (See the section called 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.)

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<lang:jruby id="messenger" script-interfaces="org.springframework.scripting.Messenger">

<lang:inline-script>

require 'java'

include_class 'org.springframework.scripting.Messenger'

class RubyMessenger &lt; 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-language-backed beans

There is one very important thing to be aware of with regard to Springs dynamic language support.
Namely, it is not (currently) possible to supply constructor arguments to dynamic-language-backed
beans (and hence constructor-injection is not available for dynamic-language-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'

package org.springframework.scripting.groovy;

import org.springframework.scripting.Messenger

class GroovyMessenger implements Messenger {

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">
<!-- this next constructor argument will not be injected into the GroovyMessenger -->
<!-- in fact, this isn't even allowed according to the schema -->
<constructor-arg value="This will not work" />

<!-- only property values are injected into the dynamic-language-backed object -->
<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 (lets leave the discussion as to whether
that is a good thing to another day).

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JRuby beans

The JRuby library dependencies

The JRuby scripting support in Spring requires the following libraries to be on the classpath of
your application.

jruby.jar

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, Springs dynamic language support also
supports beans defined in the JRuby language. The JRuby language is based on the quite 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).

package org.springframework.scripting;

public interface Messenger {

String getMessage();

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.

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<lang:jruby id="messageService"
script-interfaces="org.springframework.scripting.Messenger"
script-source="classpath:RubyMessenger.rb">

<lang:property name="message" value="Hello World!" />

</lang:jruby>

Take note of the last line of that JRuby source ( 'RubyMessenger.new'). When using JRuby in the
context of Springs 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 youll 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 dont
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 35.4, Scenarios for some scenarios where you might want to use JRuby-based beans.

Groovy beans

The Groovy library dependencies

The Groovy scripting support in Spring requires the following libraries to be on the classpath of
your application.

groovy-1.8.jar

asm-3.2.jar

antlr-2.7.7.jar

From the Groovy homepage

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"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. Lets look at another example (again using an example from the Spring
test suite).

package org.springframework.scripting;

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.

package org.springframework.scripting;

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

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 35.4, 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.

Customizing 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

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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 namespace support.

<!-- define the GroovyObjectCustomizer just like any other bean -->
<bean id="tracingCustomizer" class="example.SimpleMethodTracingCustomizer"/>

<!-- ... and plug it into the desired Groovy bean via the 'customizer-ref' attribute -->
<lang:groovy id="calculator"
script-source="classpath:org/springframework/scripting/groovy/Calculator.groovy"
customizer-ref="tracingCustomizer"/>

If you are not using the Spring 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"/>
<!-- define the GroovyObjectCustomizer (as an inner bean) -->
<constructor-arg>
<bean id="tracingCustomizer" class="example.SimpleMethodTracingCustomizer"/>
</constructor-arg>
</bean>

<bean class="org.springframework.scripting.support.ScriptFactoryPostProcessor"/>

Note

As of Spring Framework 4.3.3, you may also specify a Groovy CompilationCustomizer (such
as an ImportCustomizer) or even a full Groovy CompilerConfiguration object in the same
place as Springs GroovyObjectCustomizer.

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BeanShell beans

The BeanShell library dependencies

The BeanShell scripting support in Spring requires the following libraries to be on the classpath
of your application.

bsh-2.0b4.jar

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 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.

Lets 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).

package org.springframework.scripting;

public interface Messenger {

String getMessage();

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:property name="message" value="Hello World!" />

</lang:bsh>

See Section 35.4, Scenarios for some scenarios where you might want to use BeanShell-based beans.

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35.4 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.

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 dynamic-language-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 org.springframework.showcase.fortune.service.FortuneService
import org.springframework.showcase.fortune.domain.Fortune
import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView
import 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>

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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 9.2, Validation using Springs 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.")
}

35.5 Bits and bobs

This last section contains some bits and bobs related to the dynamic language support.

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 interface-based 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.

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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.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<lang:groovy id="messenger" script-source="classpath:Messenger.groovy" scope="prototype">

<lang:property name="message" value="I Can Do The RoboCop" />
</lang:groovy>

<bean id="bookingService" class="x.y.DefaultBookingService">

<property name="messenger" ref="messenger" />
</bean>

</beans>

See Section 7.5, Bean scopes in Chapter 7, The IoC container for a fuller discussion of the scoping
support in the Spring Framework.

35.6 Further Resources

Find below links to further resources about the various dynamic languages described in this chapter.

The JRuby homepage

The Groovy homepage

The BeanShell homepage

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36. Cache Abstraction

36.1 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.

As from Spring 4.1, the cache abstraction has been significantly improved with the support of JSR-107
annotations and more customization options.

36.2 Understanding the cache abstraction

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 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.

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

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.

Other cache-related operations are provided by the abstraction such as the ability to update the content
of the cache or remove one of all entries. These are useful if the cache deals with data that can change
during the course of the application.

Just like other services in the 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

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actual stores. This abstraction is materialized by the org.springframework.cache.Cache and

org.springframework.cache.CacheManager interfaces.

There are a few implementations of that abstraction available out of the box: JDK
java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentMap based caches, Ehcache 2.x, Gemfire cache, Caffeine,
Guava caches and JSR-107 compliant caches (e.g. Ehcache 3.x). See Section 36.7, Plugging-in
different back-end caches for more information on plugging in other cache stores/providers.

Important

The caching abstraction has no special handling of multi-threaded and multi-process

environments as such features are handled by the cache implementation. .

If you have a multi-process environment (i.e. an application deployed on several nodes), you will need
to configure your cache provider accordingly. Depending on your use cases, a copy of the same data
on several nodes may be enough but if you change the data during the course of the application, you
may need to enable other propagation mechanisms.

Caching a particular item is a direct equivalent of the typical get-if-not-found-then- proceed-and-put-

eventually code blocks found with programmatic cache interaction: no locks are applied and several
threads may try to load the same item concurrently. The same applies to eviction: if several threads
are trying to update or evict data concurrently, you may use stale data. Certain cache providers offer
advanced features in that area, refer to the documentation of the cache provider that you are using for
more details.

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

36.3 Declarative annotation-based caching

For caching declaration, the abstraction provides a set of Java annotations:

@Cacheable triggers cache population

@CacheEvict triggers cache eviction

@CachePut updates the cache without interfering with the method execution

@Caching regroups multiple cache operations to be applied on a method

@CacheConfig shares some common cache-related settings at class-level

Let us take a closer look at each annotation:

@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) {...}

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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 than 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 value 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 SimpleKey.EMPTY.

If only one param is given, return that instance.

If more the one param is given, return a SimpleKey containing all parameters.

This approach works well for most use-cases; As long as parameters have natural keys and implement
valid hashCode() and equals() methods. If that is not the case then the strategy needs to be
changed.

To provide a different default key generator, one needs to implement the

org.springframework.cache.interceptor.KeyGenerator interface.

Note

The default key generation strategy changed with the release of Spring 4.0. Earlier versions of
Spring used a key generation strategy that, for multiple key parameters, only considered the
hashCode() of parameters and not equals(); this could cause unexpected key collisions (see
SPR-10237 for background). The new 'SimpleKeyGenerator' uses a compound key for such
scenarios.

If you want to keep using the previous key strategy, you can configure the deprecated
org.springframework.cache.interceptor.DefaultKeyGenerator class or create a
custom hash-based 'KeyGenerator' implementation.

Custom Key Generation Declaration

Since caching is generic, 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:

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@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
favor and read Chapter 10, Spring Expression Language (SpEL):

@Cacheable(cacheNames="books", key="#isbn")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)

@Cacheable(cacheNames="books", key="#isbn.rawNumber")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)

@Cacheable(cacheNames="books", key="T(someType).hash(#isbn)")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)

The snippets above show how easy it is to select a certain argument, one of its properties or even an
arbitrary (static) method.

If the algorithm responsible to generate the key is too specific or if it needs to be shared, you may define
a custom keyGenerator on the operation. To do this, specify the name of the KeyGenerator bean
implementation to use:

@Cacheable(cacheNames="books", keyGenerator="myKeyGenerator")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)

Note

The key and keyGenerator parameters are mutually exclusive and an operation specifying
both will result in an exception.

Default Cache Resolution

Out of the box, the caching abstraction uses a simple CacheResolver that retrieves the cache(s)
defined at the operation level using the configured CacheManager.

To provide a different default cache resolver, one needs to implement the

org.springframework.cache.interceptor.CacheResolver interface.

Custom cache resolution

The default cache resolution fits well for applications working with a single CacheManager and with no
complex cache resolution requirements.

For applications working with several cache managers, it is possible to set the cacheManager to use
per operation:

@Cacheable(cacheNames="books", cacheManager="anotherCacheManager")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn) {...}

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It is also possible to replace the CacheResolver entirely in a similar fashion as for key generation.
The resolution is requested for every cache operation, giving a chance to the implementation to actually
resolve the cache(s) to use based on runtime arguments:

@Cacheable(cacheResolver="runtimeCacheResolver")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn) {...}

Note

Since Spring 4.1, the value attribute of the cache annotations are no longer mandatory since
this particular information can be provided by the CacheResolver regardless of the content of
the annotation.

Similarly to key and keyGenerator, the cacheManager and cacheResolver parameters

are mutually exclusive and an operation specifying both will result in an exception as a custom
CacheManager will be ignored by the CacheResolver implementation. This is probably not
what you expect.

Synchronized caching

In a multi-threaded environment, certain operations might be concurrently invoked for the same
argument (typically on startup). By default, the cache abstraction does not lock anything and the same
value may be computed several times, defeating the purpose of caching.

For those particular cases, the sync attribute can be used to instruct the underlying cache provider
to lock the cache entry while the value is being computed. As a result, only one thread will be busy
computing the value while the others are blocked until the entry is updated in the cache.

@Cacheable(cacheNames="foos", sync="true")
public Foo executeExpensiveOperation(String id) {...}

Note

This is an optional feature and your favorite cache library may not support it. All CacheManager
implementations provided by the core framework support it. Check the documentation of your
cache provider for more details.

Conditional caching

Sometimes, a method might not be suitable for caching all the time (for example, it might depend on the
given arguments). The cache annotations support such functionality through the condition parameter
which takes a SpEL expression that is evaluated to either true or false. If true, the method is cached
- if not, it behaves as if the method is not cached, that is executed every 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 than 32:

@Cacheable(cacheNames="book", condition="#name.length() < 32")

public Book findBook(String name)

In addition the condition parameter, the unless parameter can be used to veto the adding of a value
to the cache. Unlike condition, unless expressions are evaluated after the method has been called.
Expanding on the previous example - perhaps we only want to cache paperback books:

@Cacheable(cacheNames="book", condition="#name.length() < 32", unless="#result.hardback")

public Book findBook(String name)

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The cache abstraction supports java.util.Optional, using its content as cached value only if it
present. #result always refers to the business entity and never on a supported wrapper so the previous
example can be rewritten as follows:

@Cacheable(cacheNames="book", condition="#name.length() < 32", unless="#result?.hardback")

public Optional<Book> findBook(String name)

Note that result still refers to Book and not Optional. As it might be null, we should use the safe
navigation operator.

Available caching SpEL evaluation context

Each SpEL expression evaluates 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 computations:

Table 36.1. Cache SpEL available metadata

Name Location Description Example

methodName root object The name of the #root.methodName

method being invoked

method root object The method being #root.method.name

invoked

target root object The target object being #root.target

invoked

targetClass root object The class of the target #root.targetClass

being invoked

args root object The arguments (as #root.args[0]

array) used for invoking
the target

caches root object Collection of caches #root.caches[0].name

against which the
current method is
executed

argument name evaluation context Name of any of the #iban or #a0 (one
method arguments. can also use #p0 or
If for some reason #p<#arg> notation as
the names are not an alias).
available (e.g. no
debug information),
the argument names
are also available
under the #a<#arg>
where #arg stands for
the argument index
(starting from 0).

result evaluation context The result of the #result

method call (the value

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Name Location Description Example

to be cached). Only
available in unless
expressions, cache
put expressions (to
compute the key),
or cache evict
expressions (when
beforeInvocation
is false). For
supported wrappers
such as Optional,
#result refers to the
actual object, not the
wrapper.

@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 than method flow optimization:

@CachePut(cacheNames="book", key="#isbn")
public Book updateBook(ISBN isbn, BookDescriptor descriptor)

Important

Note that using @CachePut and @Cacheable annotations on the same method is generally
strongly discouraged because they have different behaviors. While the latter causes the method
execution to be skipped by using the cache, the former forces the execution in order to execute a
cache update. This leads to unexpected behavior and with the exception of specific corner-cases
(such as annotations having conditions that exclude them from each other), such declaration
should be avoided. Note also that such condition should not rely on the result object (i.e. the
#result variable) as these are validated upfront to confirm the exclusion.

@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 specifying one (or multiple) caches that
are affected by the action, allows a custom cache and key resolution 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(cacheNames="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 entries are removed in one

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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 dont interact with the cache) - this is not the case with
@Cacheable which adds/updates data into the cache and thus requires a result.

@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. @Caching allows multiple nested @Cacheable, @CachePut and @CacheEvict to
be used on the same method:

@Caching(evict = { @CacheEvict("primary"), @CacheEvict(cacheNames="secondary", key="#p0") })

public Book importBooks(String deposit, Date date)

@CacheConfig annotation
So far we have seen that caching operations offered many customization options and these can be
set on an operation basis. However, some of the customization options can be tedious to configure
if they apply to all operations of the class. For instance, specifying the name of the cache to use for
every cache operation of the class could be replaced by a single class-level definition. This is where
@CacheConfig comes into play.

@CacheConfig("books")
public class BookRepositoryImpl implements BookRepository {

@Cacheable
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn) {...}
}

@CacheConfig is a class-level annotation that allows to share the cache names, the custom
KeyGenerator, the custom CacheManager and finally the custom CacheResolver. Placing this
annotation on the class does not turn on any caching operation.

An operation-level customization will always override a customization set on @CacheConfig. This gives
therefore three levels of customizations per cache operation:

Globally configured, available for CacheManager, KeyGenerator

At class level, using @CacheConfig

At the operation level

Enable caching annotations

It is important to note that even though declaring the cache annotations does not automatically trigger
their actions - like many things in Spring, the feature has to be declaratively enabled (which means if

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you ever suspect caching is to blame, you can disable it by removing only one configuration line rather
than all the annotations in your code).

To enable caching annotations add the annotation @EnableCaching to one of your @Configuration
classes:

@Configuration
@EnableCaching
public class AppConfig {
}

Alternatively for XML configuration use the cache:annotation-driven element:

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

Note

Advanced customizations using Java config require to implement CachingConfigurer, refer

to the javadoc for more details.

Table 36.2. Cache annotation settings

XML Attribute Annotation Default Description

Attribute

cache- N/A (See cacheManager Name of cache manager to use. A default

manager CachingConfigurer CacheResolver will be initialized behind
javadocs) the scenes with this cache manager (or
`cacheManager`if not set). For more fine-grained
management of the cache resolution, consider
setting the 'cache-resolver' attribute.

cache- N/A (See A The bean name of the CacheResolver that is

resolver CachingConfigurer to be used to resolve the backing caches. This
SimpleCacheResolver
javadocs) using the attribute is not required, and only needs to be
configured specified as an alternative to the 'cache-manager'
cacheManager.attribute.

key- N/A (See Name of the custom key generator to use.

SimpleKeyGenerator
generator CachingConfigurer
javadocs)

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XML Attribute Annotation Default Description

Attribute

error- N/A (See Name of the custom cache error handler to use.
SimpleCacheErrorHandler
handler CachingConfigurer By default, any exception throw during a cache
javadocs) related operations are thrown back at the client.

mode mode proxy The default mode "proxy" processes annotated

beans to be proxied using Springs 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 Springs AspectJ caching aspect,
modifying the target class byte code to apply
to any kind of method call. AspectJ weaving
requires spring-aspects.jar in the classpath
as well as load-time weaving (or compile-time
weaving) enabled. (See the section called Spring
configuration for details on how to set up load-
time weaving.)

proxy- false
proxyTargetClass Applies to proxy mode only. Controls what type of
target- caching proxies are created for classes annotated
class with the @Cacheable or @CacheEvict
annotations. If the proxy-target-class
attribute is set to true, then class-based proxies
are created. If proxy-target-class is false
or if the attribute is omitted, then standard
JDK interface-based proxies are created. (See
Section 11.6, Proxying mechanisms for a
detailed examination of the different proxy types.)

order order Ordered.LOWEST_PRECEDENCE

Defines the order of the cache advice that is
applied to beans annotated with @Cacheable or
@CacheEvict. (For more information about the
rules related to ordering of 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/@CachePut/@CacheEvict/

@Caching 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 beans in your controllers, and not your services. See
Section 22.2, The DispatcherServlet for more information.

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Method visibility and cache annotations

When using proxies, you should apply the cache annotations only to methods with public visibility.
If you do annotate protected, private or package-visible methods with these annotations, no error
is raised, but the annotated method does not exhibit the configured caching settings. Consider
the use of AspectJ (see below) if you need to annotate non-public methods as it changes the
bytecode itself.

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-target-
class="true") or the weaving-based 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.

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. Also, the
proxy must be fully initialized to provide the expected behaviour so you should not rely on this
feature in your initialization code, i.e. @PostConstruct.

Using custom annotations

Custom annotation and AspectJ

This feature only works out-of-the-box with the proxy-based approach but can be enabled with a
bit of extra effort using AspectJ.

The spring-aspects module defines an aspect for the standard annotations only. If you
have defined your own annotations, you also need to define an aspect for those. Check
AnnotationCacheAspect for an example.

The caching abstraction allows you to use your own annotations to identify what method triggers cache
population or eviction. This is quite handy as a template mechanism as it eliminates the need to
duplicate cache annotation declarations (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, @Cacheable, @CachePut, @CacheEvict and @CacheConfig 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:

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target({ElementType.METHOD})
@Cacheable(cacheNames="books", key="#isbn")
public @interface SlowService {
}

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Above, we have defined our own SlowService annotation which itself is annotated with @Cacheable
- now we can replace the following code:

@Cacheable(cacheNames="books", key="#isbn")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)

with:

@SlowService
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)

Even though @SlowService is not a Spring annotation, the container automatically picks up its
declaration at runtime and understands its meaning. Note that as mentioned above, the annotation-
driven behavior needs to be enabled.

36.4 JCache (JSR-107) annotations

Since the Spring Framework 4.1, the caching abstraction fully supports the JCache standard
annotations: these are @CacheResult, @CachePut, @CacheRemove and @CacheRemoveAll as
well as the @CacheDefaults, @CacheKey and @CacheValue companions. These annotations can
be used right the way without migrating your cache store to JSR-107: the internal implementation
uses Springs caching abstraction and provides default CacheResolver and KeyGenerator
implementations that are compliant with the specification. In other words, if you are already using
Springs caching abstraction, you can switch to these standard annotations without changing your cache
storage (or configuration, for that matter).

Features summary
For those who are familiar with Springs caching annotations, the following table describes the main
differences between the Spring annotations and the JSR-107 counterpart:

Table 36.3. Spring vs. JSR-107 caching annotations

Spring JSR-107 Remark

@Cacheable @CacheResult Fairly similar. @CacheResult can cache specific

exceptions and force the execution of the method
regardless of the content of the cache.

@CachePut @CachePut While Spring updates the cache with the result of the
method invocation, JCache requires to pass it as an
argument that is annotated with @CacheValue. Due to this
difference, JCache allows to update the cache before or
after the actual method invocation.

@CacheEvict @CacheRemove Fairly similar. @CacheRemove supports a conditional evict

in case the method invocation results in an exception.

@CacheEvict(allEntries=true)
@CacheRemoveAllSee @CacheRemove.

@CacheConfig @CacheDefaults Allows to configure the same concepts, in a similar fashion.

JCache has the notion of javax.cache.annotation.CacheResolver that is identical to the

Springs CacheResolver interface, except that JCache only supports a single cache. By default, a
simple implementation retrieves the cache to use based on the name declared on the annotation.

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It should be noted that if no cache name is specified on the annotation, a default is automatically
generated, check the javadoc of @CacheResult#cacheName() for more information.

CacheResolver instances are retrieved by a CacheResolverFactory. It is possible to customize

the factory per cache operation:

@CacheResult(cacheNames="books", cacheResolverFactory=MyCacheResolverFactory.class)
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn)

Note

For all referenced classes, Spring tries to locate a bean with the given type. If more than one
match exists, a new instance is created and can use the regular bean lifecycle callbacks such
as dependency injection.

Keys are generated by a javax.cache.annotation.CacheKeyGenerator that serves the same

purpose as Springs KeyGenerator. By default, all method arguments are taken into account unless
at least one parameter is annotated with @CacheKey. This is similar to Springs custom key generation
declaration. For instance these are identical operations, one using Springs abstraction and the other
with JCache:

@Cacheable(cacheNames="books", key="#isbn")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)

@CacheResult(cacheName="books")
public Book findBook(@CacheKey ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)

The CacheKeyResolver to use can also be specified on the operation, in a similar fashion as the
CacheResolverFactory.

JCache can manage exceptions thrown by annotated methods: this can prevent an update of the cache
but it can also cache the exception as an indicator of the failure instead of calling the method again.
Lets assume that InvalidIsbnNotFoundException is thrown if the structure of the ISBN is invalid.
This is a permanent failure, no book could ever be retrieved with such parameter. The following caches
the exception so that further calls with the same, invalid ISBN, throws the cached exception directly
instead of invoking the method again.

@CacheResult(cacheName="books", exceptionCacheName="failures"
cachedExceptions = InvalidIsbnNotFoundException.class)
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn)

Enabling JSR-107 support

Nothing specific needs to be done to enable the JSR-107 support alongside Springs declarative
annotation support. Both @EnableCaching and the cache:annotation-driven element will
enable automatically the JCache support if both the JSR-107 API and the spring-context-support
module are present in the classpath.

Note

Depending of your use case, the choice is basically yours. You can even mix and match services
using the JSR-107 API and others using Springs own annotations. Be aware however that if these
services are impacting the same caches, a consistent and identical key generation implementation
should be used.

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36.5 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:

<!-- the service we want to make cacheable -->

<bean id="bookService" class="x.y.service.DefaultBookService"/>

<!-- cache definitions -->

<cache:advice id="cacheAdvice" cache-manager="cacheManager">
<cache:caching cache="books">
<cache:cacheable method="findBook" key="#isbn"/>
<cache:cache-evict method="loadBooks" all-entries="true"/>
</cache:caching>
</cache:advice>

<!-- apply the cacheable behavior to all BookService interfaces -->

<aop:config>
<aop:advisor advice-ref="cacheAdvice" pointcut="execution(* x.y.BookService.*(..))"/>
</aop:config>

<!-- cache manager definition omitted -->

In the 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 11, 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).

36.6 Configuring the cache storage

Out of the box, the cache abstraction provides several storage integration. 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.

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.

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<!-- simple cache manager -->

<bean id="cacheManager" class="org.springframework.cache.support.SimpleCacheManager">
<property name="caches">
<set>

<bean class="org.springframework.cache.concurrent.ConcurrentMapCacheFactoryBean" p:name="default"/>

<bean class="org.springframework.cache.concurrent.ConcurrentMapCacheFactoryBean" p:name="books"/>

</set>
</property>
</bean>

The snippet above uses the SimpleCacheManager to create a CacheManager for the two nested
ConcurrentMapCache instances named default and books. Note that the names are configured
directly for each cache.

As the cache is created by the application, it is bound to its lifecycle, making it suitable for basic use
cases, tests or simple applications. The cache scales well and is very fast but it does not provide any
management or persistence capabilities nor eviction contracts.

Ehcache-based Cache

Note

Ehcache 3.x is fully JSR-107 compliant and no dedicated support is required for it.

The Ehcache 2.x 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"/>

<!-- EhCache library setup -->

<bean id="ehcache"
class="org.springframework.cache.ehcache.EhCacheManagerFactoryBean" p:config-
location="ehcache.xml"/>

This setup bootstraps the ehcache library inside Spring IoC (through the ehcache bean) which is then
wired into the dedicated CacheManager implementation. Note the entire ehcache-specific configuration
is read from ehcache.xml.

Caffeine Cache

Caffeine is a Java 8 rewrite of Guavas cache and its implementation is located under
org.springframework.cache.caffeine package and provides access to several features of
Caffeine.

Configuring a CacheManager that creates the cache on demand is straightforward:

<bean id="cacheManager"
class="org.springframework.cache.caffeine.CaffeineCacheManager"/>

It is also possible to provide the caches to use explicitly. In that case, only those will be made available
by the manager:

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<bean id="cacheManager" class="org.springframework.cache.caffeine.CaffeineCacheManager">

<property name="caches">
<set>
<value>default</value>
<value>books</value>
</set>
</property>
</bean>

The Caffeine CacheManager also supports customs Caffeine and CacheLoader. See the Caffeine
documentation for more information about those.

Guava Cache

The Guava implementation is located under org.springframework.cache.guava package and

provides access to several features of Guava.

Configuring a CacheManager that creates the cache on demand is straightforward:

<bean id="cacheManager"
class="org.springframework.cache.guava.GuavaCacheManager"/>

It is also possible to provide the caches to use explicitly. In that case, only those will be made available
by the manager:

<bean id="cacheManager" class="org.springframework.cache.guava.GuavaCacheManager">

<property name="caches">
<set>
<value>default</value>
<value>books</value>
</set>
</property>
</bean>

The Guava CacheManager also supports customs CacheBuilder and CacheLoader. See the
Guava documentation for more information about those.

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 Data GemFire reference documentation.

JSR-107 Cache

JSR-107 compliant caches can also be used by Springs caching abstraction. The JCache
implementation is located under org.springframework.cache.jcache package.

Again, to use it, one simply needs to declare the appropriate CacheManager:

<bean id="cacheManager"
class="org.springframework.cache.jcache.JCacheCacheManager"
p:cache-manager-ref="jCacheManager"/>

<!-- JSR-107 cache manager setup -->

<bean id="jCacheManager" .../>

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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
thrown 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.

36.7 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 than it is since in practice,
the classes tend to be simple adapters that map the caching abstraction framework on top of the
storage API as the ehcache classes 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.

36.8 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.

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37. Migrating to Spring Framework 4.x

Migration guides for upgrading from previous releases of the Spring Framework are now provided as
a Wiki page.

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38. Spring Annotation Programming Model

Springs annotation programming model is documented in the Spring Framework Wiki.

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39. 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.

39.1 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 ORM chapter.

Hibernate

For the currently recommended usage patterns for Hibernate see Section 20.3, 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 id="myProductDao" class="product.ProductDaoImpl">

<property name="sessionFactory" ref="mySessionFactory"/>
</bean>

</beans>

public class ProductDaoImpl implements ProductDao {

private HibernateTemplate hibernateTemplate;

public void setSessionFactory(SessionFactory sessionFactory) {

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.

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public class ProductDaoImpl implements ProductDao {

private HibernateTemplate hibernateTemplate;

public void setSessionFactory(SessionFactory sessionFactory) {

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 thread-safe 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 {

public Collection loadProductsByCategory(String category) throws DataAccessException {

return this.getHibernateTemplate().find(
"from test.Product product where product.category=?", category);
}

Implementing Spring-based DAOs without callbacks

As alternative to using Springs HibernateTemplate to implement DAOs, data access 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 Springs 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).

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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.

39.2 JMS Usage

One of the benefits of Springs 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.

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-to-point (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 provider you can transactionally consume a
message from one domain and produce a message on the other using the same Session.

Note

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.

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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.

Asynchronous Message Reception

MessageListenerAdapters are used in conjunction with Springs 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
classes such as MessageListenerAdapter102, 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.

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.

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.

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40. 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.

40.1 Pointcut API in Spring

Lets look at how Spring handles the crucial pointcut concept.

Concepts
Springs pointcut model enables pointcut reuse independent of advice types. Its 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.

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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.

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.

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.

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 methods
arguments. Static pointcuts are sufficient - and best - for most usages. Its 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.

Lets 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+.

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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">
<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 bean="beanNameOfAopAllianceInterceptor"/>
</property>
<property name="patterns">
<list>
<value>.set.</value>
<value>.*absquatulate</value>
</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
methodarguments, 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.

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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.

Pointcut superclasses

Spring provides useful pointcut superclasses to help you to implement your own pointcuts.

Because static pointcuts are most useful, youll probably subclass StaticMethodMatcherPointcut, as
shown below. This requires implementing just one abstract method (although its 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.

Custom pointcuts

Because pointcuts in Spring AOP are Java classes, rather than language features (as in AspectJ)
its 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."

40.2 Advice API in Spring

Lets now look at how Spring AOP handles advice.

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.

Its possible to use a mix of shared and per-instance advice in the same AOP proxy.

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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.

Interception around advice

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 invocations 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 MethodInvocations 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 dont want to do this without good reason!

Note

MethodInterceptors offer interoperability with other AOP Alliance-compliant 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.

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The MethodBeforeAdvice interface is shown below. (Springs API design would allow for field before
advice, although the usual objects apply to field interception and its 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:

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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 {

public void afterThrowing(RemoteException ex) throws Throwable {

// Do something with remote exception
}

public void afterThrowing(Method m, Object[] args, Object target, ServletException ex) {

// Do something with all arguments
}
}

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 methods signature!

Tip

Throws advice can be used with any pointcut.

After Returning advice

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:

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public class CountingAfterReturningAdvice implements AfterReturningAdvice {

private int count;

public void afterReturning(Object returnValue, Method m, Object[] args,

Object target) throws Throwable {
++count;
}

public int getCount() {

return count;
}

This advice doesnt 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 {

ClassFilter getClassFilter();

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.

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The validateInterfaces() method is used internally to see whether or not the introduced interfaces
can be implemented by the configured IntroductionInterceptor.

Lets look at a simple example from the Spring test suite. Lets 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, well 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. Its
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
dont 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.

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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;
}

public Object invoke(MethodInvocation invocation) throws Throwable {

if (locked() && invocation.getMethod().getName().indexOf("set") == 0) {
throw new LockedException();
}
return super.invoke(invocation);
}

Often it isnt 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, theres
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: Its
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 objects 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.

40.3 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

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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.

40.4 Using the ProxyFactoryBean to create AOP proxies

If youre using the Spring IoC container (an ApplicationContext or BeanFactory) for your business objects
- and you should be! - you will want to use one of Springs 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 dont need such control.

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 ProxyFactoryBeans
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.

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 the section called JDK- and CGLIB-based
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 the section
called JDK- and CGLIB-based proxies).

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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 dont 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 isnt supplied, a CGLIB proxy for the target
class will be used (but see also below the section called 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
cant 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 the section called 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.

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 JDK- or 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.

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If the class of a target object that is to be proxied (hereafter simply referred to as the target class) doesnt
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 isnt 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.

Proxying interfaces

Lets 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.

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<bean id="personTarget" class="com.mycompany.PersonImpl">

<property name="name"><value>Tony</value></property>
<property name="age"><value>51</value></property>
</bean>

<bean id="myAdvisor" class="com.mycompany.MyAdvisor">

<property name="someProperty"><value>Custom string property value</value></property>
</bean>

<bean id="debugInterceptor" class="org.springframework.aop.interceptor.DebugInterceptor">

</bean>

<bean id="person" class="org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean">

<property name="proxyInterfaces"><value>com.mycompany.Person</value></property>
<property name="target"><ref bean="personTarget"/></property>
<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 doesnt hold bean references. The reason for this is that if
the ProxyFactoryBeans 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 its necessary to be able to obtain an instance of the prototype from the factory;
holding a reference isnt 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 bean="person" /></property>
</bean>

The PersonUser class in this example would expose a property of type Person. As far as its 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).

Its 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:

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<bean id="myAdvisor" class="com.mycompany.MyAdvisor">

<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>
<!-- Use inner bean, not local reference to target -->
<property name="target">
<bean class="com.mycompany.PersonImpl">
<property name="name"><value>Tony</value></property>
<property name="age"><value>51</value></property>
</bean>
</property>
<property name="interceptorNames">
<list>
<value>myAdvisor</value>
<value>debugInterceptor</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>

This has the advantage that theres 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. Theres 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.

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 didnt 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 its best to program to interfaces, rather than classes, the ability
to advise classes that dont implement interfaces can be useful when working with legacy code. (In
general, Spring isnt 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 cant be advised, as they cant 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.

Theres 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.

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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"/>
<property name="interceptorNames">
<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"/
>

40.5 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"

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">

<property name="target">
<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:

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<bean id="mySpecialService" parent="txProxyTemplate">

<property name="target">
<bean class="org.springframework.samples.MySpecialServiceImpl">
</bean>
</property>
<property name="transactionAttributes">
<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 pre-instantiate 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
theabstract attribute to true, otherwise the application context will actually try to pre-instantiate it.

40.6 Creating AOP proxies programmatically with the

ProxyFactory
Its 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.

40.7 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:

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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, its possible to add or remove advisors or interceptors even once a proxy has been created.
The only restriction is that its 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

Its questionable whether its 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.

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(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.

40.8 Using the "autoproxy" facility

So far weve 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 dont
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.

Autoproxy bean definitions

The org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy package provides the following

standard autoproxy creators.

BeanNameAutoProxyCreator

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>
<property name="interceptorNames">
<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.

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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.

DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator

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 advisors 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">

<!-- Properties omitted -->
</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

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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.

AbstractAdvisorAutoProxyCreator

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.

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, theres 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 class="org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy.DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator"/>

<bean class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor">
<property name="transactionInterceptor" ref="transactionInterceptor"/>
</bean>

<bean id="transactionInterceptor"
class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor">
<property name="transactionManager" ref="transactionManager"/>
<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.)

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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 Springs Transactional annotation, leading to implicit proxies for beans containing that annotation:

<bean class="org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy.DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator"/>

<bean class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor">
<property name="transactionInterceptor" ref="transactionInterceptor"/>
</bean>

<bean id="transactionInterceptor"
class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor">
<property name="transactionManager" ref="transactionManager"/>
<property name="transactionAttributeSource">
<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
applications 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
wont need to work directly with AOP, and the programming model is similar to that of .NET
ServicedComponents.

This mechanism is extensible. Its 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.

Its 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.

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The myAttributeAwarePointcut pointcut can be a singleton definition, as it doesnt hold state for
individual advised objects.

40.9 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 dont 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).

Lets 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.

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 sources 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 doesnt add any advice - and its not necessary to add advice to use a
TargetSource - of course any TargetSource can be used in conjunction with arbitrary advice.

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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 non-invasive way.

Spring provides out-of-the-box support for Commons Pool 2.2, which provides
a fairly efficient pooling implementation. Youll need the commons-pool Jar on
your applications classpath to use this feature. Its also possible to subclass
org.springframework.aop.target.AbstractPoolingTargetSource to support any other
pooling API.

Note

Commons Pool 1.5+ is also supported but deprecated as of Spring Framework 4.2.

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.CommonsPool2TargetSource">

<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 isnt necessary to specify interceptors to use pooling. If you want only pooling,
and no other advice, dont set the interceptorNames property at all.

Its 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. Youll 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 advisors name ("poolConfigAdvisor" here)
must be in the list of interceptors names in the ProxyFactoryBean exposing the pooled object.

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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 dont 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. Its possible to set the TargetSources used by any
autoproxy creator.

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 isnt
high in a modern JVM, the cost of wiring up the new object (satisfying its IoC dependencies) may be
more expensive. Thus you shouldnt use this approach without very good reason.

To do this, you could modify the poolTargetSource definition shown above as follows. (Ive also
changed the name, for clarity.)

<bean id="prototypeTargetSource" class="org.springframework.aop.target.PrototypeTargetSource">

<property name="targetBeanName" ref="businessObjectTarget"/>
</bean>

Theres 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.

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">

<property name="targetBeanName" value="businessObjectTarget"/>
</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. Springs ThreadLocal support does this for you and should always be considered in
favor of using ThreadLocals without other proper handling code.

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40.10 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 packages Javadocs for

further information.

40.11 Further resources

Please refer to the Spring sample applications for further examples of Spring AOP:

The JPetStores 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.

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41. XML Schema-based configuration

41.1 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.

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-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
BeanDefinition instances).

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, everything is a bean. Thats 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 developers point-of-view. The objects defined in a Spring XML
configuration file are not all generic, vanilla beans. Usually, each bean requires some degree of specific
configuration.

Spring 2.0s new XML Schema-based 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 application-specific 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 applications
domain; the process involved in doing so is covered in the appendix entitled Chapter 42, Extensible
XML authoring.

41.2 XML Schema-based configuration

Referencing the schemas
To switch over from the DTD-style to the new XML Schema-style, you need to make the following
change.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC "-//SPRING//DTD BEAN 2.0//EN"
"http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans-2.0.dtd">

<beans>

<!-- bean definitions here -->

</beans>

The equivalent file in the XML Schema-style would be

<?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 definitions here -->

</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 the section called 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.

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.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util" xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-
beans.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/util http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-
util.xsd"> <!-- bean definitions here -->

</beans>

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<util:constant/>

Before

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

<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 Springs internal plumbing to the end user.

The following XML Schema-based version is more concise and clearly expresses the developers intent
('inject this constant value'), and it just reads better.

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

<property name="isolation">
<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:

<bean id="java.sql.Connection.TRANSACTION_SERIALIZABLE"
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 doesnt have to be specified for the bean reference:

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

<property name="isolation">
<bean id="java.sql.Connection.TRANSACTION_SERIALIZABLE"
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 dont actually have to do anything or know anything about the Spring internals (or

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even about classes such as the FieldRetrievingFactoryBean). Lets 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;
}

a. 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

<!-- target bean to be referenced by name -->

<bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.beans.TestBean" scope="prototype">
<property name="age" value="10"/>
<property name="spouse">
<bean class="org.springframework.beans.TestBean">
<property name="age" value="11"/>
</bean>
</property>
</bean>

<!-- will result in 10, which is the value of property 'age' of bean 'testBean' -->
<bean id="testBean.age" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPathFactoryBean"/>

The above configuration uses a Spring FactoryBean implementation, the

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

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<!-- target bean to be referenced by name -->

<bean id="testBean" class="org.springframework.beans.TestBean" scope="prototype">
<property name="age" value="10"/>
<property name="spouse">
<bean class="org.springframework.beans.TestBean">
<property name="age" value="11"/>
</bean>
</property>
</bean>

<!-- will result in 10, which is the value of property 'age' of bean 'testBean' -->
<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 constructor-argument

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.

Heres 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">
<property name="age" value="10"/>
<property name="spouse">
<bean class="org.springframework.beans.TestBean">
<property name="age" value="11"/>
</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:

<!-- will result in 12, which is the value of property 'age' of the inner bean -->
<bean id="theAge"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPathFactoryBean">
<property name="targetObject">
<bean class="org.springframework.beans.TestBean">
<property name="age" value="12"/>
</bean>
</property>
<property name="propertyPath" value="age"/>
</bean>

There is also a shortcut form, where the bean name is the property path.

<!-- will result in 10, which is the value of property 'age' of bean 'person' -->
<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:

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

<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

<!-- creates a java.util.Properties instance with values loaded from the supplied location -->
<bean id="jdbcConfiguration" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertiesFactoryBean">
<property name="location" value="classpath:com/foo/jdbc-production.properties"/>
</bean>

The above configuration uses a Spring FactoryBean implementation, the

PropertiesFactoryBean, to instantiate a java.util.Properties instance with values loaded
from the supplied Resource location).

After

<!-- creates a java.util.Properties instance with values loaded from the supplied location -->
<util:properties id="jdbcConfiguration" location="classpath:com/foo/jdbc-production.properties"/>

<util:list/>

Before

<!-- creates a java.util.List instance with values loaded from the supplied 'sourceList' -->
<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>

The above configuration uses a Spring FactoryBean implementation, the ListFactoryBean, to

create a java.util.List instance initialized with values taken from the supplied sourceList.

After

<!-- creates a java.util.List instance with the supplied values -->

<util:list id="emails">
<value>pechorin@hero.org</value>
<value>raskolnikov@slums.org</value>
<value>stavrogin@gov.org</value>
<value>porfiry@gov.org</value>
</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:

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<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

<!-- creates a java.util.Map instance with values loaded from the supplied 'sourceMap' -->
<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>

The above configuration uses a Spring FactoryBean implementation, the MapFactoryBean, to create
a java.util.Map instance initialized with key-value pairs taken from the supplied 'sourceMap'.

After

<!-- creates a java.util.Map instance with the supplied key-value pairs -->
<util:map id="emails">
<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"/>
</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">

<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"/>
</util:map>

If no 'map-class' attribute is supplied, a Map implementation will be chosen by the container.

<util:set/>

Before

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<!-- creates a java.util.Set instance with values loaded from the supplied 'sourceSet' -->
<bean id="emails" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.SetFactoryBean">
<property name="sourceSet">
<set>
<value>pechorin@hero.org</value>
<value>raskolnikov@slums.org</value>
<value>stavrogin@gov.org</value>
<value>porfiry@gov.org</value>
</set>
</property>
</bean>

The above configuration uses a Spring FactoryBean implementation, the SetFactoryBean, to create
a java.util.Set instance initialized with values taken from the supplied 'sourceSet'.

After

<!-- creates a java.util.Set instance with the supplied values -->

<util:set id="emails">
<value>pechorin@hero.org</value>
<value>raskolnikov@slums.org</value>
<value>stavrogin@gov.org</value>
<value>porfiry@gov.org</value>
</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">

<value>pechorin@hero.org</value>
<value>raskolnikov@slums.org</value>
<value>stavrogin@gov.org</value>
<value>porfiry@gov.org</value>
</util:set>

If no 'set-class' attribute is supplied, a Set implementation will be chosen by the container.

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.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:jee="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee" xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-
beans.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee/spring-
jee.xsd"> <!-- bean definitions here -->

</beans>

<jee:jndi-lookup/> (simple)

Before

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<bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">

<property name="jndiName" value="jdbc/MyDataSource"/>
</bean>
<bean id="userDao" class="com.foo.JdbcUserDao">
<!-- Spring will do the cast automatically (as usual) -->
<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
</bean>

After

<jee:jndi-lookup id="dataSource" jndi-name="jdbc/MyDataSource"/>

<bean id="userDao" class="com.foo.JdbcUserDao">

<!-- Spring will do the cast automatically (as usual) -->
<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
</bean>

<jee:jndi-lookup/> (with single JNDI environment setting)

Before

<bean id="simple" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">

<property name="jndiName" value="jdbc/MyDataSource"/>
<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

<bean id="simple" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">

<property name="jndiName" value="jdbc/MyDataSource"/>
<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">

<!-- newline-separated, key-value pairs for the environment (standard Properties format) -->
<jee:environment>
foo=bar
ping=pong
</jee:environment>
</jee:jndi-lookup>

<jee:jndi-lookup/> (complex)

Before

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<bean id="simple" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">

<property name="jndiName" value="jdbc/MyDataSource"/>
<property name="cache" value="true"/>
<property name="resourceRef" value="true"/>
<property name="lookupOnStartup" value="false"/>
<property name="expectedType" value="com.myapp.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"
class="org.springframework.ejb.access.LocalStatelessSessionProxyFactoryBean">
<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"
class="org.springframework.ejb.access.LocalStatelessSessionProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="jndiName" value="ejb/RentalServiceBean"/>
<property name="businessInterface" value="com.foo.service.RentalService"/>
<property name="cacheHome" value="true"/>
<property name="lookupHomeOnStartup" value="true"/>
<property name="resourceRef" 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

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<bean id="complexRemoteEjb"
class="org.springframework.ejb.access.SimpleRemoteStatelessSessionProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="jndiName" value="ejb/MyRemoteBean"/>
<property name="businessInterface" value="com.foo.service.RentalService"/>
<property name="cacheHome" value="true"/>
<property name="lookupHomeOnStartup" value="true"/>
<property name="resourceRef" value="true"/>
<property name="homeInterface" value="com.foo.service.RentalService"/>
<property name="refreshHomeOnConnectFailure" value="true"/>
</bean>

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">

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 35, 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.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:lang="http://www.springframework.org/schema/lang" xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-
beans.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/lang http://www.springframework.org/schema/lang/spring-
lang.xsd"> <!-- bean definitions here -->

</beans>

the jms schema

The jms tags deal with configuring JMS-related beans such as Springs MessageListenerContainers.
These tags are detailed in the section of the JMS chapter entitled Section 30.7, 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 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 jms namespace are available to you.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:jms="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jms" xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-
beans.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/jms http://www.springframework.org/schema/jms/spring-
jms.xsd"> <!-- bean definitions here -->

</beans>

the tx (transaction) schema

The tx tags deal with configuring all of those beans in Springs comprehensive support for transactions.
These tags are covered in the chapter entitled Chapter 17, 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 Springs 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 (Dont Repeat Yourself) principle.

In the interest of completeness, to use the tags in the tx 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 tx namespace are available to you.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx" xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-
beans.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-
aop.xsd"> <!-- bean definitions here -->

</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.

the aop schema

The aop tags deal with configuring all things AOP in Spring: this includes Springs own proxy-based AOP
framework and Springs integration with the AspectJ AOP framework. These tags are comprehensively
covered in the chapter entitled Chapter 11, Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring.

In the interest of completeness, to use the tags in the aop 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 aop namespace are available to you.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop" xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-
beans.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-
aop.xsd"> <!-- bean definitions here -->

</beans>

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.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context" xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-
beans.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/
spring-context.xsd"> <!-- bean definitions here -->

</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 aPropertyPlaceholderConfigurer 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: Springs
@Required and @Autowired, as well as JSR 250s @PostConstruct, @PreDestroy and
@Resource (if available), and JPAs @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 Springs @Transactional annotation. Use the
<tx:annotation-driven/> element for that purpose.

<component-scan/>

This element is detailed in Section 7.9, Annotation-based container configuration.

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<load-time-weaver/>

This element is detailed in the section called Load-time weaving with AspectJ in the Spring Framework.

<spring-configured/>

This element is detailed in the section called Using AspectJ to dependency inject domain objects with
Spring.

<mbean-export/>

This element is detailed in the section called Configuring annotation based MBean export.

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.

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 19.8, Embedded database support and ??? 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.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:jdbc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jdbc" xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-
beans.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/jdbc http://www.springframework.org/schema/jdbc/spring-
jdbc.xsd"> <!-- bean definitions here -->

</beans>

the cache schema

The cache tags can be used to enable support for Springs @CacheEvict, @CachePut and @Caching
annotations. It it also supports declarative XML-based caching. See the section called Enable caching
annotations and Section 36.5, 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.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:cache="http://www.springframework.org/schema/cache" xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-
beans.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/cache http://www.springframework.org/schema/cache/spring-
cache.xsd"> <!-- bean definitions here -->

</beans>

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 the section called 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 Chapter 42,
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).

<?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="foo" class="x.y.Foo">

<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.

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42. Extensible XML authoring

42.1 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, Springs extensible
XML configuration mechanism is based on XML Schema. If you are not familiar with Springs current
XML configuration extensions that come with the standard Spring distribution, please first read the
appendix entitled???.

Creating new XML configuration extensions can be done by following these (relatively) simple steps:

Authoring an XML schema to describe your custom element(s).

Coding a custom NamespaceHandler implementation (this is an easy step, dont worry).

Coding one or more BeanDefinitionParser implementations (this is where the real work is done).

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"/>

(Dont 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.)

42.2 Authoring the schema

Creating an XML configuration extension for use with Springs IoC container starts with authoring
an XML Schema to describe the extension. What follows is the schema well use to configure
SimpleDateFormat objects.

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<!-- myns.xsd (inside package org/springframework/samples/xml) -->

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<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 weve created the infrastructure classes, the above snippet of XML will essentially be
exactly the same as the following XML snippet. In other words, were 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.

42.3 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:

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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 theout-of-the-box scopes Spring
2.0 supports. Well 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, well make use the NamespaceHandlerSupport class:

package org.springframework.samples.xml;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.NamespaceHandlerSupport;

public class MyNamespaceHandler extends NamespaceHandlerSupport {

public void init() {

registerBeanDefinitionParser("dateformat", new SimpleDateFormatBeanDefinitionParser());
}

The observant reader will notice that there isnt 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

42.4 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, well 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:

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package org.springframework.samples.xml;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.support.BeanDefinitionBuilder;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.AbstractSingleBeanDefinitionParser;
import org.springframework.util.StringUtils;
import 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 definitions unique identifier.

42.5 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.

'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.

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'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.

42.6 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.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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

<!-- as a top-level bean -->

<myns:dateformat id="defaultDateFormat" pattern="yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm" lenient="true"/>

<bean id="jobDetailTemplate" abstract="true">

<property name="dateFormat">
<!-- as an inner bean -->
<myns:dateformat pattern="HH:mm MM-dd-yyyy"/>
</property>
</bean>

</beans>

42.7 Meatier examples

Find below some much meatier examples of custom XML extensions.

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:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:foo="http://www.foo.com/schema/component"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-
beans.xsd
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 String name;

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;
}

public String getName() {

return name;
}

public void setName(String 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.

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package com.foo;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.FactoryBean;

import java.util.List;

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, well 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"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
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>

Well then create a custom NamespaceHandler.

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package com.foo;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.NamespaceHandlerSupport;

public class ComponentNamespaceHandler extends NamespaceHandlerSupport {

public void init() {

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 org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanDefinition;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanDefinition;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.support.BeanDefinitionBuilder;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.support.ManagedList;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.AbstractBeanDefinitionParser;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.ParserContext;
import org.springframework.util.xml.DomUtils;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;

import java.util.List;

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

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# in 'META-INF/spring.schemas'
http\://www.foo.com/schema/component/component.xsd=com/foo/component.xsd

Custom attributes on 'normal' elements

Writing your own custom parser and the associated artifacts isnt 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 dont 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, lets 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">
<!-- other dependencies here... -->
</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 JCache-initializing BeanDefinition.

package com.foo;

public class JCacheInitializer {

private String name;

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"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
targetNamespace="http://www.foo.com/schema/jcache"
elementFormDefault="qualified">

<xsd:attribute name="cache-name" type="xsd:string"/>

</xsd:schema>

Next, the associated NamespaceHandler.

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package com.foo;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.NamespaceHandlerSupport;

public class JCacheNamespaceHandler extends NamespaceHandlerSupport {

public void init() {

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 org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanDefinitionHolder;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanDefinition;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.support.BeanDefinitionBuilder;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.BeanDefinitionDecorator;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.ParserContext;
import org.w3c.dom.Attr;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;

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;
}

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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

42.8 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

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43. spring JSP Tag Library

43.1 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 43.2, The argument tag

Section 43.3, The bind tag

Section 43.4, The escapeBody tag

Section 43.6, The hasBindErrors tag

Section 43.7, The htmlEscape tag

Section 43.8, The message tag

Section 43.9, The nestedPath tag

Section 43.10, The param tag

Section 43.11, The theme tag

Section 43.12, The transform tag

Section 43.13, The url tag

Section 43.5, The eval tag

43.2 The argument tag

Argument tag based on the JSTL fmt:param tag. The purpose is to support arguments inside the
message and theme tags.

Table 43.1. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

value false true The value of the argument.

43.3 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).

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Table 43.2. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

htmlEscape 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.

path true 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

43.4 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).

Table 43.3. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

htmlEscape false true Set HTML escaping for this tag, as boolean value.
Overrides the default HTML escaping setting for
the current page.

javaScriptEscapefalse true Set JavaScript escaping for this tag, as boolean

value. Default is false.

43.5 The eval tag

Evaluates a Spring expression (SpEL) and either prints the result or assigns it to a variable.

Table 43.4. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

expression true true The expression to evaluate.

htmlEscape false true Set HTML escaping for this tag, as a boolean
value. Overrides the default HTML escaping
setting for the current page.

javaScriptEscapefalse true Set JavaScript escaping for this tag, as a boolean

value. Default is false.

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Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

scope false 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.

var false 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.

43.6 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" context-param in web.xml).

Table 43.5. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

htmlEscape false true Set HTML escaping for this tag, as boolean value.
Overrides the default HTML escaping setting for
the current page.

name true 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.

43.7 The htmlEscape tag

Sets default HTML escape value for the current page. Overrides a "defaultHtmlEscape" context-param
in web.xml, if any.

Table 43.6. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

defaultHtmlEscape
true true Set the default value for HTML escaping, to be
put into the current PageContext.

43.8 The message tag

Retrieves the message with the given code, or text if code isnt resolvable. 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).

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Table 43.7. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

arguments false 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).

argumentSeparator
false 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 Set HTML escaping for this tag, as boolean value.
Overrides the default HTML escaping setting for
the current page.

javaScriptEscapefalse true Set JavaScript escaping for this tag, as boolean

value. Default is false.

message false true A MessageSourceResolvable argument

(direct or through JSP EL). Fits nicely when
used in conjunction with Springs own
validation error classes which all implement
the MessageSourceResolvable 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.

scope false 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.

text false 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.

var false 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).

43.9 The nestedPath tag

Sets a nested path to be used by the bind tags path.

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Table 43.8. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

path true true Set the path that this tag should apply. E.g.
'customer' to allow bind paths like 'address.street'
rather than 'customer.address.street'.

43.10 The param tag

Parameter tag based on the JSTL c:param tag. The sole purpose is to support params inside the url tag.

Table 43.9. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

name true true The name of the parameter.

value false true The value of the parameter.

43.11 The theme tag

Retrieves the theme message with the given code, or text if code isnt resolvable. 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 43.10. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

arguments false 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).

argumentSeparator
false 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 Set HTML escaping for this tag, as boolean value.
Overrides the default HTML escaping setting for
the current page.

javaScriptEscapefalse true Set JavaScript escaping for this tag, as boolean

value. Default is false.

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Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

message false true A MessageSourceResolvable argument (direct or

through JSP EL).

scope false 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.

text false 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.

var false 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).

43.12 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' context-param in web.xml).

Table 43.11. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

htmlEscape false true Set HTML escaping for this tag, as boolean value.
Overrides the default HTML escaping setting for
the current page.

scope false 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 page, request,
session and application.

value true 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.

var false 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).

43.13 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.

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Table 43.12. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

value true true 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.

context false true Specifies a remote application context path. The

default is the current application context path.

var false true The name of the variable to export the URL value
to. If not specified the URL is written as output.

scope false 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.

htmlEscape false true Set HTML escaping for this tag, as a boolean
value. Overrides the default HTML escaping
setting for the current page.

javaScriptEscapefalse true Set JavaScript escaping for this tag, as a boolean

value. Default is false.

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44. spring-form JSP Tag Library

44.1 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 44.2, The button tag

Section 44.3, The checkbox tag

Section 44.4, The checkboxes tag

Section 44.5, The errors tag

Section 44.6, The form tag

Section 44.7, The hidden tag

Section 44.8, The input tag

Section 44.9, The label tag

Section 44.10, The option tag

Section 44.11, The options tag

Section 44.12, The password tag

Section 44.13, The radiobutton tag

Section 44.14, The radiobuttons tag

Section 44.15, The select tag

Section 44.16, The textarea tag

44.2 The button tag

Renders a form field label in an HTML 'button' tag.

Table 44.1. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

disabled false true HTML Optional Attribute. Setting the value of this
attribute to 'true' will disable the HTML element.

id false true HTML Standard Attribute

name false true The name attribute for the HTML button tag

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Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

value false true The name attribute for the HTML button tag

44.3 The checkbox tag

Renders an HTML 'input' tag with type 'checkbox'.

Table 44.2. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

accesskey false true HTML Standard Attribute

cssClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute

cssErrorClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute.

Used when the bound field has errors.

cssStyle false true Equivalent to "style" - HTML Optional Attribute

dir false true HTML Standard Attribute

disabled false true HTML Optional Attribute. Setting the value of this
attribute to 'true' will disable the HTML element.

htmlEscape false true Enable/disable HTML escaping of rendered

values.

id false true HTML Standard Attribute

label false true Value to be displayed as part of the tag

lang false true HTML Standard Attribute

onblur false true HTML Event Attribute

onchange false true HTML Event Attribute

onclick false true HTML Event Attribute

ondblclick false true HTML Event Attribute

onfocus false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeydown false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeypress false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeyup false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousedown false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousemove false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseout false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseover false true HTML Event Attribute

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Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

onmouseup false true HTML Event Attribute

path true true Path to property for data binding

tabindex false true HTML Standard Attribute

title false true HTML Standard Attribute

value false true HTML Optional Attribute

44.4 The checkboxes tag

Renders multiple HTML 'input' tags with type 'checkbox'.

Table 44.3. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

accesskey false true HTML Standard Attribute

cssClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute

cssErrorClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute.

Used when the bound field has errors.

cssStyle false true Equivalent to "style" - HTML Optional Attribute

delimiter false true Delimiter to use between each 'input' tag with type
'checkbox'. There is no delimiter by default.

dir false true HTML Standard Attribute

disabled false true HTML Optional Attribute. Setting the value of this
attribute to 'true' will disable the HTML element.

element false true Specifies the HTML element that is used to

enclose each 'input' tag with type 'checkbox'.
Defaults to 'span'.

htmlEscape false true Enable/disable HTML escaping of rendered

values.

id false true HTML Standard Attribute

itemLabel false true Value to be displayed as part of 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 HTML Standard Attribute

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Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

onblur false true HTML Event Attribute

onchange false true HTML Event Attribute

onclick false true HTML Event Attribute

ondblclick false true HTML Event Attribute

onfocus false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeydown false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeypress false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeyup false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousedown false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousemove false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseout false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseover false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseup false true HTML Event Attribute

path true true Path to property for data binding

tabindex false true HTML Standard Attribute

title false true HTML Standard Attribute

44.5 The errors tag

Renders field errors in an HTML 'span' tag.

Table 44.4. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

cssClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute

cssStyle false true Equivalent to "style" - HTML Optional Attribute

delimiter false true Delimiter for displaying multiple error messages.

Defaults to the br tag.

dir false true HTML Standard Attribute

element false true Specifies the HTML element that is used to

render the enclosing errors.

htmlEscape false true Enable/disable HTML escaping of rendered

values.

id false true HTML Standard Attribute

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Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

lang false true HTML Standard Attribute

onclick false true HTML Event Attribute

ondblclick false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeydown false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeypress false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeyup false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousedown false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousemove false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseout false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseover false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseup false true HTML Event Attribute

path false true Path to errors object for data binding

tabindex false true HTML Standard Attribute

title false true HTML Standard Attribute

44.6 The form tag

Renders an HTML 'form' tag and exposes a binding path to inner tags for binding.

Table 44.5. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

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

cssClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute

cssStyle false true Equivalent to "style" - HTML Optional Attribute

dir false true HTML Standard Attribute

enctype false true HTML Optional Attribute

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Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

htmlEscape false true Enable/disable HTML escaping of rendered

values.

id false true HTML Standard Attribute

lang false true HTML Standard Attribute

method false true HTML Optional Attribute

methodParam false true The parameter name used for HTTP methods
other then GET and POST. Default is '_method'.

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 HTML Event Attribute

ondblclick false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeydown false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeypress false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeyup false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousedown false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousemove false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseout false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseover false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseup false true HTML Event Attribute

onreset false true HTML Event Attribute

onsubmit false true HTML Event Attribute

servletRelativeAction
false true Action reference to be appended to the current
servlet path

target false true HTML Optional Attribute

title false true HTML Standard Attribute

44.7 The hidden tag

Renders an HTML 'input' tag with type 'hidden' using the bound value.

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Table 44.6. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

htmlEscape false true Enable/disable HTML escaping of rendered

values.

id false true HTML Standard Attribute

path true true Path to property for data binding

44.8 The input tag

Renders an HTML 'input' tag with type 'text' using the bound value.

Table 44.7. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

accesskey false true HTML Standard Attribute

alt false true HTML Optional Attribute

autocomplete false true Common Optional Attribute

cssClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute

cssErrorClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute.

Used when the bound field has errors.

cssStyle false true Equivalent to "style" - HTML Optional Attribute

dir false true HTML Standard Attribute

disabled false true HTML Optional Attribute. Setting the value of this
attribute to 'true' will disable the HTML element.

htmlEscape false true Enable/disable HTML escaping of rendered

values.

id false true HTML Standard Attribute

lang false true HTML Standard Attribute

maxlength false true HTML Optional Attribute

onblur false true HTML Event Attribute

onchange false true HTML Event Attribute

onclick false true HTML Event Attribute

ondblclick false true HTML Event Attribute

onfocus false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeydown false true HTML Event Attribute

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Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

onkeypress false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeyup false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousedown false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousemove false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseout false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseover false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseup false true HTML Event Attribute

onselect false true HTML Event Attribute

path true true Path to property for data binding

readonly false true HTML Optional Attribute. Setting the value of this
attribute to 'true' will make the HTML element
readonly.

size false true HTML Optional Attribute

tabindex false true HTML Standard Attribute

title false true HTML Standard Attribute

44.9 The label tag

Renders a form field label in an HTML 'label' tag.

Table 44.8. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

cssClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute.

cssErrorClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute.

Used only when errors are present.

cssStyle false true Equivalent to "style" - HTML Optional Attribute

dir false true HTML Standard Attribute

for false true HTML Standard Attribute

htmlEscape false true Enable/disable HTML escaping of rendered

values.

id false true HTML Standard Attribute

lang false true HTML Standard Attribute

onclick false true HTML Event Attribute

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Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

ondblclick false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeydown false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeypress false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeyup false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousedown false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousemove false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseout false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseover false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseup false true HTML Event Attribute

path true true Path to errors object for data binding

tabindex false true HTML Standard Attribute

title false true HTML Standard Attribute

44.10 The option tag

Renders a single HTML 'option'. Sets 'selected' as appropriate based on bound value.

Table 44.9. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

cssClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute

cssErrorClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute.

Used when the bound field has errors.

cssStyle false true Equivalent to "style" - HTML Optional Attribute

dir false true HTML Standard Attribute

disabled false true HTML Optional Attribute. Setting the value of this
attribute to 'true' will disable the HTML element.

htmlEscape false true Enable/disable HTML escaping of rendered

values.

id false true HTML Standard Attribute

label false true HTML Optional Attribute

lang false true HTML Standard Attribute

onclick false true HTML Event Attribute

ondblclick false true HTML Event Attribute

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Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

onkeydown false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeypress false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeyup false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousedown false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousemove false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseout false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseover false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseup false true HTML Event Attribute

tabindex false true HTML Standard Attribute

title false true HTML Standard Attribute

value true true HTML Optional Attribute

44.11 The options tag

Renders a list of HTML 'option' tags. Sets 'selected' as appropriate based on bound value.

Table 44.10. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

cssClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute

cssErrorClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute.

Used when the bound field has errors.

cssStyle false true Equivalent to "style" - HTML Optional Attribute

dir false true HTML Standard Attribute

disabled false true HTML Optional Attribute. Setting the value of this
attribute to 'true' will disable the HTML element.

htmlEscape false true Enable/disable HTML escaping of rendered

values.

id false true HTML Standard Attribute

itemLabel false true Name of the property mapped to the inner text of
the 'option' tag

items true true The Collection, Map or array of objects used to

generate the inner 'option' tags

itemValue false true Name of the property mapped to 'value' attribute

of the 'option' tag

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Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

lang false true HTML Standard Attribute

onclick false true HTML Event Attribute

ondblclick false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeydown false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeypress false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeyup false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousedown false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousemove false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseout false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseover false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseup false true HTML Event Attribute

tabindex false true HTML Standard Attribute

title false true HTML Standard Attribute

44.12 The password tag

Renders an HTML 'input' tag with type 'password' using the bound value.

Table 44.11. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

accesskey false true HTML Standard Attribute

alt false true HTML Optional Attribute

autocomplete false true Common Optional Attribute

cssClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute

cssErrorClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute.

Used when the bound field has errors.

cssStyle false true Equivalent to "style" - HTML Optional Attribute

dir false true HTML Standard Attribute

disabled false true HTML Optional Attribute. Setting the value of this
attribute to 'true' will disable the HTML element.

htmlEscape false true Enable/disable HTML escaping of rendered

values.

id false true HTML Standard Attribute

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Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

lang false true HTML Standard Attribute

maxlength false true HTML Optional Attribute

onblur false true HTML Event Attribute

onchange false true HTML Event Attribute

onclick false true HTML Event Attribute

ondblclick false true HTML Event Attribute

onfocus false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeydown false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeypress false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeyup false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousedown false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousemove false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseout false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseover false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseup false true HTML Event Attribute

onselect false true HTML Event Attribute

path true true Path to property for data binding

readonly false true HTML Optional Attribute. Setting the value of this
attribute to 'true' will make the HTML element
readonly.

showPassword false true Is the password value to be shown? Defaults to

false.

size false true HTML Optional Attribute

tabindex false true HTML Standard Attribute

title false true HTML Standard Attribute

44.13 The radiobutton tag

Renders an HTML 'input' tag with type 'radio'.

Table 44.12. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

accesskey false true HTML Standard Attribute

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Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

cssClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute

cssErrorClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute.

Used when the bound field has errors.

cssStyle false true Equivalent to "style" - HTML Optional Attribute

dir false true HTML Standard Attribute

disabled false true HTML Optional Attribute. Setting the value of this
attribute to 'true' will disable the HTML element.

htmlEscape false true Enable/disable HTML escaping of rendered

values.

id false true HTML Standard Attribute

label false true Value to be displayed as part of the tag

lang false true HTML Standard Attribute

onblur false true HTML Event Attribute

onchange false true HTML Event Attribute

onclick false true HTML Event Attribute

ondblclick false true HTML Event Attribute

onfocus false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeydown false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeypress false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeyup false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousedown false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousemove false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseout false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseover false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseup false true HTML Event Attribute

path true true Path to property for data binding

tabindex false true HTML Standard Attribute

title false true HTML Standard Attribute

value false true HTML Optional Attribute

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44.14 The radiobuttons tag

Renders multiple HTML 'input' tags with type 'radio'.

Table 44.13. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

accesskey false true HTML Standard Attribute

cssClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute

cssErrorClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute.

Used when the bound field has errors.

cssStyle false true Equivalent to "style" - HTML Optional Attribute

delimiter false true Delimiter to use between each 'input' tag with type
'radio'. There is no delimiter by default.

dir false true HTML Standard Attribute

disabled false true HTML Optional Attribute. Setting the value of this
attribute to 'true' will disable the HTML element.

element false true Specifies the HTML element that is used to

enclose each 'input' tag with type 'radio'. Defaults
to 'span'.

htmlEscape false true Enable/disable HTML escaping of rendered

values.

id false true HTML Standard Attribute

itemLabel false true Value to be displayed as part of the 'input' tags

with type 'radio'

items true true The Collection, Map or array of objects used to

generate the 'input' tags with type 'radio'

itemValue false true Name of the property mapped to 'value' attribute

of the 'input' tags with type 'radio'

lang false true HTML Standard Attribute

onblur false true HTML Event Attribute

onchange false true HTML Event Attribute

onclick false true HTML Event Attribute

ondblclick false true HTML Event Attribute

onfocus false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeydown false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeypress false true HTML Event Attribute

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Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

onkeyup false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousedown false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousemove false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseout false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseover false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseup false true HTML Event Attribute

path true true Path to property for data binding

tabindex false true HTML Standard Attribute

title false true HTML Standard Attribute

44.15 The select tag

Renders an HTML 'select' element. Supports databinding to the selected option.

Table 44.14. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

accesskey false true HTML Standard Attribute

cssClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute

cssErrorClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute.

Used when the bound field has errors.

cssStyle false true Equivalent to "style" - HTML Optional Attribute

dir false true HTML Standard Attribute

disabled false true HTML Optional Attribute. Setting the value of this
attribute to 'true' will disable the HTML element.

htmlEscape false true Enable/disable HTML escaping of rendered

values.

id false true HTML Standard Attribute

itemLabel false true Name of the property mapped to the inner text of
the 'option' tag

items false true The Collection, Map or array of objects used to

generate the inner 'option' tags

itemValue false true Name of the property mapped to 'value' attribute

of the 'option' tag

lang false true HTML Standard Attribute

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Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

multiple false true HTML Optional Attribute

onblur false true HTML Event Attribute

onchange false true HTML Event Attribute

onclick false true HTML Event Attribute

ondblclick false true HTML Event Attribute

onfocus false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeydown false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeypress false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeyup false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousedown false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousemove false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseout false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseover false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseup false true HTML Event Attribute

path true true Path to property for data binding

size false true HTML Optional Attribute

tabindex false true HTML Standard Attribute

title false true HTML Standard Attribute

44.16 The textarea tag

Renders an HTML 'textarea'.

Table 44.15. Attributes

Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

accesskey false true HTML Standard Attribute

cols false true HTML Required Attribute

cssClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute

cssErrorClass false true Equivalent to "class" - HTML Optional Attribute.

Used when the bound field has errors.

cssStyle false true Equivalent to "style" - HTML Optional Attribute

dir false true HTML Standard Attribute

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Attribute Required? Runtime Description

Expression?

disabled false true HTML Optional Attribute. Setting the value of this
attribute to 'true' will disable the HTML element.

htmlEscape false true Enable/disable HTML escaping of rendered

values.

id false true HTML Standard Attribute

lang false true HTML Standard Attribute

onblur false true HTML Event Attribute

onchange false true HTML Event Attribute

onclick false true HTML Event Attribute

ondblclick false true HTML Event Attribute

onfocus false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeydown false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeypress false true HTML Event Attribute

onkeyup false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousedown false true HTML Event Attribute

onmousemove false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseout false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseover false true HTML Event Attribute

onmouseup false true HTML Event Attribute

onselect false true HTML Event Attribute

path true true Path to property for data binding

readonly false true HTML Optional Attribute. Setting the value of this
attribute to 'true' will make the HTML element
readonly.

rows false true HTML Required Attribute

tabindex false true HTML Standard Attribute

title false true HTML Standard Attribute

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