The Spring Framework

Simplifying J2EE

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 Introductions
Your experience with Spring?
Your experience with J2EE?
What do you hope to learn today?
Open Source experience: Ant, XDoclet, Hibernate?
Favorite IDE? Favorite OS?

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 Who is Matt Raible?
Developing websites since 1994 - Developing J2EE
webapps since 1999
Committer on several open source projects:
AppFuse, Roller Weblogger, XDoclet, Struts Menu,
Display Tag
J2EE 5.0 and JSF 1.2 Expert Group Member
Author: Spring Live (SourceBeat) and contributor to
Pro JSP (Apress)

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 Spring Mission Statement
J2EE should be easier to use.
It’s best to program to interfaces, rather than
classes. Spring reduces the complexity of using
interfaces to zero.
JavaBeans offer a great way of configuring
applications.
OO Design is more important than any
implementation technology, such as J2EE.

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 Spring Mission Statement
Checked exceptions are overused in Java. A
framework shouldn’t force you to catch exception
you’re unlikely to recover from.

Testability is essential, and a framework such as

Spring should help make your code easier to test.

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 What is Spring?
A J2EE Framework designed to make building
applications easier
Provides a means to manage your business objects
and their dependencies
Inversion of Control allows classes to be loosely
coupled and dependencies written in XML
À la carte framework that allows you to pick and
choose features to use

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 Spring Modules

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 Sample Architecture

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 The BeanFactory

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 Dependency Injection
Hollywood Principle:
“Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”
http://martinfowler.com/articles/injection.html
Lookup dependencies vs. Exposing dependencies
Easy to mock dependencies (i.e. in unit tests)
Spring supports constructor injection, setter
injection and method injection

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 Example: Controller and DAO
Controller has a setter or a constructor argument for
the DAO
DAO is configured as a dependency
<bean id="userController" class="org.appfuse.web.UserController">
<property name="userDAO" ref="userDAO"/>
</bean>

<bean id="userDAO" class="org.appfuse.dao.UserDAOHibernate">

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

Makes it easy to swap out implementations

Tests can verify operations succeed on the interface

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 Code before IoC
public class UserController implements Controller {

public ModelAndView handleRequest(HttpServletRequest request,

HttpServletResponse response)
throws Exception {
Connection conn = DatabaseUtils.getConnection();
UserDAO dao = DAOFactory.createUserDAO("hibernate", conn);

List users = dao.getUsers();

DatabaseUtils.closeConnection(conn);

return new ModelAndView("userList", "users", users);

}
}

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 Code after IoC
public class UserController implements Controller {
private UserDAO dao = null;

public void setUserDAO(UserDAO userDAO) {

this.dao = userDAO;
}

public ModelAndView handleRequest(HttpServletRequest request,

HttpServletResponse response)
throws Exception {

List users = dao.getUsers();

return new ModelAndView("userList", "users", users);

}
}

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 Spring vs. J2EE
It’s not really a comparison, Spring builds off J2EE
and merely makes the APIs easier
It’s still using many of J2EE’s and Java’s underlying
infrastructure
EJB vs. Spring Managed POJOs
Opinions and Hesitations?

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 Spring simplifies EJBs
Abstract classes in org.springframework.ejb.support
override methods that you normally don’t
implement
Expose EJBs as Spring beans with classes in
org.springframework.ejb.access package
<bean id="simpleService" lazy-init="true"
class="org.springframework.ejb.access.SimpleRemoteStatelessSessionProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="jndiName" value="jndiName"/>
<property name="cacheHome" value="true"/>
<property name="businessInterface" value="org.appfuse.ejb.SimpleService"/>
</bean>

Configuring a JtaTransactionManager will allow

Spring beans to participate in CMT

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 Spring MVC
Front-Controller Servlet: DispatcherServlet
Controllers loaded as beans from servlet’s XML
context files
ContextLoaderListener loads other XML context
files
Many different Controller options: Controller,
SimpleFormController, Wizard

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 Controllers
The Controller interface is generally used to display
data, not for forms
SimpleFormController easiest for forms
Views: JSP Tags, Tiles, Velocity, FreeMarker, PDF,
Excel
Validation: Commons Validator or Validation
classes

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 PropertyEditors
PropertyEditors allow you to convert Dates, Integers
and custom types
Built-in PropertyEditor examples:
ByteArrayPropertyEditor (file upload),
CustomDateEditor, CustomNumberEditor
Register for context files by defining
CustomEditorConfigurer bean
Register in Spring MVC in initBinder() method of
SimpleFormController

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 Page Decoration and
Composition
Tiles vs. SiteMesh
Tiles works great for page composition - soon to be
come top-level project at Apache
SiteMesh is easiest to use for page decoration
Can be used together or separately

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 Spring Supports many
Java MVC Frameworks
ContextLoaderListener loads beans into
ServletContext - can retrieve with:
WebApplicationContext ctx =
WebApplicationContextUtils.getWebApplicationContext(servletContext);

Struts has ContextLoaderPlugin and ActionSupport

classes
WebWork has SpringObjectFactory
Tapestry - override BaseEngine and stuff the context
into the Global
JSF - DelegatingVariableResolver

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 Integrating Struts
with Spring
ContextLoaderPlugin - match action “path” with bean
“name”
Override default RequestProcessor with Spring's
DelegatingRequestProcessor
Use the DelegatingActionProxy class in the "type"
attribute of your <action-mapping>
TIP: Load all context files in plugin to make testing with
StrutsTestCase easier
Use a Spring ActionSupport class (subclass of the standard
Struts Actions) and call getWebApplicationContext()

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 MVC Tips
Using IoC for setting Controller/Action
dependencies makes it easy to mock them
JSP 2.0 Tag files in JIRA - for syntax simplification
Use SiteMesh - simple yet powerful
AppFuse and Equinox have good integration
examples

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 Data Access
Spring JDBC Framework
No exceptions to catch or resources to close
Base DAO and Template classes for many
frameworks:
Hibernate, iBATIS, OJB, JDO - even TopLink

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 DataAccessException

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 Data Access Examples
UserDAOTest
Hibernate
iBATIS
Spring JDBC
JDO

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 Transactions
Much easier to use than UserTransaction in J2EE
CMT-like capabilities with XML and transparent
AOP
Supports Commons Attributes and JDK 5
Annotations
Pluggable Transaction Managers, including JTA

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 Declarative Transactions
<bean id="userManager"
class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="transactionManager"><ref bean="transactionManager"/></property>
<property name="target"><ref bean="userManagerTarget"/></property>
<property name="transactionAttributes">
<props>
<prop key="save*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
<prop key="remove*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
<prop key="*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED,readOnly</prop>
</props>
</property>

<bean id="userManagerTarget" class="org.appfuse.service.impl.UserManagerImpl">

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

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 Testing Spring Applications
Easy to mock dependencies with EasyMock and
jMock
Load context in tests and bind dependencies as you
would in production
TIP: Use a static block or Spring classes in Spring
Mock (in org.springframework.test package)

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 AOP
AOP - Reduces duplication among classes
Interceptors make it easy to add before, around and
after method advice
Useful for caching, logging and security
EHCache, Performance/Tracing interceptors,
Acegi for Security

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 App Server Support
Spring should run on any app server
Hooks into many app server’s Transaction Manager
Built-in Support in Geronimo
Survey: which app servers are you running it on?

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 Tools
Spring IDE Plugin For Eclipse
http://springide.org
BeanDoc
http://opensource.atlassian.com/confluence/spring/
display/BDOC/Home
Gaijin Studio
http://gaijin-studio.sf.net
Screenshots ➪

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 Resources
Web: www.springframework.org and
forum.springframework.org
Print: Spring Live, Pro Spring, Spring in Action and
Professional Spring Development
Examples: AppFuse (appfuse.dev.java.net), Equinox
(equinox.dev.java.net), JPetstore
Training: Interface21, Virtuas, Bouvet, Arc-Mind

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