Spring - Java/J2EE Application Framework

Spring - Java/J2EE Application Framework

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Spring - Java/J2EE Application

Framework
Reference Documentation
Rod Johnson
Juergen Hoeller
Alef Arendsen
Colin Sampaleanu
Darren Davison
Dmitriy Kopylenko
Thomas Risberg
Mark Pollack
Version 1.1.2
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.
(Work in progress)

Table of Contents
Preface
1. Introduction
1.1. Overview
1.2. Usage scenarios
2. Background information

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2.1. Inversion of Control / Dependency Injection

3. Beans, BeanFactory and the ApplicationContext
3.1. Introduction
3.2. BeanFactory and BeanDefinitions - the basics
3.2.1. The BeanFactory
3.2.2. The BeanDefinition
3.2.3. The bean class
3.2.3.1. Bean creation via constructor
3.2.3.2. Bean creation via static factory method
3.2.3.3. Bean creation via instance factory method
3.2.4. The bean identifiers (id and name)
3.2.5. To singleton or not to singleton
3.3. Properties, collaborators, autowiring and dependency checking
3.3.1. Setting bean properties and collaborators
3.3.2. Bean properties and constructor arguments detailed
3.3.3. Method Injection
3.3.3.1. Lookup method Injection
3.3.3.2. Arbitrary method replacement
3.3.4. Using depends-on
3.3.5. Autowiring collaborators
3.3.6. Checking for dependencies
3.4. Customizing the nature of a bean
3.4.1. Lifecycle interfaces
3.4.1.1. InitializingBean / init-method
3.4.1.2. DisposableBean / destroy-method
3.4.2. Knowing who you are
3.4.2.1. BeanFactoryAware
3.4.2.2. BeanNameAware
3.4.3. FactoryBean
3.5. Abstract and child bean definitions
3.6. Interacting with the BeanFactory
3.6.1. Obtaining a FactoryBean, not its product
3.7. Customizing beans with BeanPostprocessors

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3.8. Customizing bean factories with BeanFactoryPostprocessors

3.8.1. The PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer
3.8.2. The PropertyOverrideConfigurer
3.9. Registering additional custom PropertyEditors
3.10. Introduction to the ApplicationContext
3.11. Added functionality of the ApplicationContext
3.11.1. Using the MessageSource
3.11.2. Propagating events
3.11.3. Using resources within Spring
3.12. Customized behavior in the ApplicationContext
3.12.1. ApplicationContextAware marker interface
3.12.2. The BeanPostProcessor
3.12.3. The BeanFactoryPostProcessor
3.12.4. The PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer
3.13. Registering additional custom PropertyEditors
3.14. Setting a bean property as the result of a method invocation
3.15. Creating an ApplicationContext from a web application
3.16. Glue code and the evil singleton
3.16.1. Using SingletonBeanFactoryLocator and ContextSingletonBeanFactoryLocator
4. PropertyEditors, data binding, validation and the BeanWrapper
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Binding data using the DataBinder
4.3. Bean manipulation and the BeanWrapper
4.3.1. Setting and getting basic and nested properties
4.3.2. Built-in PropertyEditors, converting types
4.3.3. Other features worth mentioning
5. Spring AOP: Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring
5.1. Concepts
5.1.1. AOP concepts
5.1.2. Spring AOP capabilities and goals
5.1.3. AOP Proxies in Spring
5.2. Pointcuts in Spring
5.2.1. Concepts

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5.2.2. Operations on pointcuts

5.2.3. Convenience pointcut implementations
5.2.3.1. Static pointcuts
5.2.3.2. Dynamic pointcuts
5.2.4. Pointcut superclasses
5.2.5. Custom pointcuts
5.3. Advice types in Spring
5.3.1. Advice lifecycles
5.3.2. Advice types in Spring
5.3.2.1. Interception around advice
5.3.2.2. Before advice
5.3.2.3. Throws advice
5.3.2.4. After Returning advice
5.3.2.5. Introduction advice
5.4. Advisors in Spring
5.5. Using the ProxyFactoryBean to create AOP proxies
5.5.1. Basics
5.5.2. JavaBean properties
5.5.3. Proxying interfaces
5.5.4. Proxying classes
5.6. Convenient proxy creation
5.6.1. TransactionProxyFactoryBean
5.6.2. EJB proxies
5.7. Concise proxy definitions
5.8. Creating AOP proxies programmatically with the ProxyFactory
5.9. Manipulating advised objects
5.10. Using the "autoproxy" facility
5.10.1. Autoproxy bean definitions
5.10.1.1. BeanNameAutoProxyCreator
5.10.1.2. DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator
5.10.1.3. AbstractAdvisorAutoProxyCreator
5.10.2. Using metadata-driven autoproxying
5.11. Using TargetSources

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5.11.1. Hot swappable target sources

5.11.2. Pooling target sources
5.11.3. Prototype" target sources
5.12. Defining new Advice types
5.13. Further reading and resources
5.14. Roadmap
6. AspectJ Integration
6.1. Overview
6.2. Configuring AspectJ aspects using Spring IoC
6.2.1. "Singleton" aspects
6.2.1.1. Example
6.2.1.2. Ordering issues
6.2.2. Non-singleton aspects
6.2.3. Gotchas
6.3. Using AspectJ pointcuts to target Spring advice
6.4. Spring aspects for AspectJ
7. Transaction management
7.1. The Spring transaction abstraction
7.2. Transaction strategies
7.3. Programmatic transaction management
7.3.1. Using the TransactionTemplate
7.3.2. Using the PlatformTransactionManager
7.4. Declarative transaction management
7.4.1. BeanNameAutoProxyCreator, another declarative approach
7.5. Choosing between programmatic and declarative transaction management
7.6. Do you need an application server for transaction management?
7.7. Common problems
8. Source Level Metadata Support
8.1. Source-level metadata
8.2. Spring's metadata support
8.3. Integration with Jakarta Commons Attributes
8.4. Metadata and Spring AOP autoproxying
8.4.1. Fundamentals

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8.4.2. Declarative transaction management

8.4.3. Pooling
8.4.4. Custom metadata
8.5. Using attributes to minimize MVC web tier configuration
8.6. Other uses of metadata attributes
8.7. Adding support for additional metadata APIs
9. DAO support
9.1. Introduction
9.2. Consistent Exception Hierarchy
9.3. Consistent Abstract Classes for DAO Support
10. Data Access using JDBC
10.1. Introduction
10.2. Using the JDBC Core classes to control basic JDBC processing and error handling
10.2.1. JdbcTemplate
10.2.2. DataSource
10.2.3. SQLExceptionTranslator
10.2.4. Executing Statements
10.2.5. Running Queries
10.2.6. Updating the database
10.3. Controling how we connect to the database
10.3.1. DataSourceUtils
10.3.2. SmartDataSource
10.3.3. AbstractDataSource
10.3.4. SingleConnectionDataSource
10.3.5. DriverManagerDataSource
10.3.6. DataSourceTransactionManager
10.4. Modeling JDBC operations as Java objects
10.4.1. SqlQuery
10.4.2. MappingSqlQuery
10.4.3. SqlUpdate
10.4.4. StoredProcedure
10.4.5. SqlFunction
11. Data Access using O/R Mappers

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11.1. Introduction
11.2. Hibernate
11.2.1. Resource Management
11.2.2. Resource Definitions in an Application Context
11.2.3. Inversion of Control: Template and Callback
11.2.4. Applying an AOP Interceptor Instead of a Template
11.2.5. Programmatic Transaction Demarcation
11.2.6. Declarative Transaction Demarcation
11.2.7. Transaction Management Strategies
11.2.8. Container Resources versus Local Resources
11.2.9. Samples
11.3. JDO
11.4. iBATIS
11.4.1. Overview and differences between 1.3.x and 2.0
11.4.2. Setting up the SqlMap
11.4.3. Using SqlMapDaoSupport
11.4.4. Transaction management
12. Web framework
12.1. Introduction to the web framework
12.1.1. Pluggability of MVC implementation
12.1.2. Features of Spring MVC
12.2. The DispatcherServlet
12.3. Controllers
12.3.1. AbstractController and WebContentGenerator
12.3.2. Other simple controllers
12.3.3. The MultiActionController
12.3.4. CommandControllers
12.4. Handler mappings
12.4.1. BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping
12.4.2. SimpleUrlHandlerMapping
12.4.3. Adding HandlerInterceptors
12.5. Views and resolving them
12.5.1. ViewResolvers

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12.6. Using locales

12.6.1. AcceptHeaderLocaleResolver
12.6.2. CookieLocaleResolver
12.6.3. SessionLocaleResolver
12.6.4. LocaleChangeInterceptor
12.7. Using themes
12.8. Spring's multipart (fileupload) support
12.8.1. Introduction
12.8.2. Using the MultipartResolver
12.8.3. Handling a fileupload in a form
12.9. Handling exceptions
12.10. Commonly used utilities
12.10.1. A little story about the pathmatcher
13. Integrating view technologies
13.1. Introduction
13.2. JSP & JSTL
13.2.1. View resolvers
13.2.2. 'Plain-old' JSPs versus JSTL
13.2.3. Additional tags facilitating development
13.3. Tiles
13.3.1. Dependencies
13.3.2. How to integrate Tiles
13.3.2.1. InternalResourceViewResolver
13.3.2.2. ResourceBundleViewResolver
13.4. Velocity & FreeMarker
13.4.1. Dependencies
13.4.2. Context configuration
13.4.3. Creating templates
13.4.4. Advanced configuration
13.4.4.1. velocity.properties
13.4.4.2. FreeMarker
13.4.5. Bind support and form handling
13.4.5.1. the bind macros

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13.4.5.2. simple binding

13.4.5.3. form input generation macros
13.4.5.4. overriding HTML escaping and making tags XHTML compliant
13.5. XSLT
13.5.1. My First Words
13.5.1.1. Bean definitions
13.5.1.2. Standard MVC controller code
13.5.1.3. Convert the model data to XML
13.5.1.4. Defining the view properties
13.5.1.5. Document transformation
13.5.2. Summary
13.6. Document views (PDF/Excel)
13.6.1. Introduction
13.6.2. Configuration and setup
13.6.2.1. Document view definitions
13.6.2.2. Controller code
13.6.2.3. Subclassing for Excel views
13.6.2.4. Subclassing for PDF views
13.7. Tapestry
13.7.1. Architecture
13.7.2. Implementation
13.7.2.1. Sample application context
13.7.2.2. Obtaining beans in Tapestry pages
13.7.2.3. Exposing the application context to Tapestry
13.7.2.4. Component definition files
13.7.2.5. Adding abstract accessors
13.7.3. Summary
14. JMS
14.1. Introduction
14.2. Domain unification
14.3. JmsTemplate
14.3.1. ConnectionFactory
14.3.2. Transaction Management

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14.3.3. Destination Management

14.4. Using the JmsTemplate
14.4.1. Sending a message
14.4.2. Synchronous Receiving
14.4.3. Using Message Converters
14.4.4. SessionCallback and ProducerCallback
15. Accessing and implementing EJBs
15.1. Accessing EJBs
15.1.1. Concepts
15.1.2. Accessing local SLSBs
15.1.3. Accessing remote SLSBs
15.2. Using Spring convenience EJB implementation classes
16. Remoting and web services using Spring
16.1. Introduction
16.2. Exposing services using RMI
16.2.1. Exporting the service using the RmiServiceExporter
16.2.2. Linking in the service at the client
16.3. Using Hessian or Burlap to remotely call services via HTTP
16.3.1. Wiring up the DispatcherServlet for Hessian
16.3.2. Exposing your beans by using the HessianServiceExporter
16.3.3. Linking in the service on the client
16.3.4. Using Burlap
16.3.5. Applying HTTP basic authentication to a service exposed through Hessian or Burlap
16.4. Exposing services using HTTP invokers
16.4.1. Exposing the service object
16.4.2. Linking in the service at the client
16.5. Considerations when choosing a technology
17. Sending Email with Spring mail abstraction layer
17.1. Introduction
17.2. Spring mail abstraction structure
17.3. Using Spring mail abstraction
17.3.1. Pluggable MailSender implementations
17.4. Using the JavaMail MimeMessageHelper

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17.4.1. Creating a simple MimeMessage and sending it

17.4.2. Sending attachments and inline resources
18. Scheduling jobs using Quartz or Timer
18.1. Introduction
18.2. Using the OpenSymphony Quartz Scheduler
18.2.1. Using the JobDetailBean
18.2.2. Using the MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean
18.2.3. Wiring up jobs using triggers and the SchedulerFactoryBean
18.3. Using JDK Timer support
18.3.1. Creating custom timers
18.3.2. Using the MethodInvokingTimerTaskFactoryBean
18.3.3. Wrapping up: setting up the tasks using the TimerFactoryBean
A. Spring's beans.dtd

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Preface

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 Preface

Preface
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Preface
Developing software applications is hard enough even with good tools and technologies. Implementing
applications using platforms which promise everything but turn out to be heavy-weight, hard to control
and not very efficient during the development cycle makes it even harder. Spring provides a light-weight
solution for building enterprise-ready applications, while still supporting the possibility of using
declarative transaction management, remote access to your logic using RMI or webservices, mailing
facilities and various options in persisting your data to a database. Spring provides an MVC framework,
transparent ways of integrating AOP into your software and a well-structured exception hierarchy
including automatic mapping from proprietary exception hierarchies.
Spring could potentially be a one-stop-shop for all your enterprise applications, however, Spring is
modular, allowing you to use parts of it, without having to bring in the rest. You can use the bean
container, with Struts on top, but you could also choose to just use the Hibernate integration or the JDBC
abstraction layer. Spring is non-intrusive, meaning dependencies on the framework are generally none or
absolutely minimal, depending on the area of use..
This document provides a reference guide to Spring's features. Since this document is still a
work-in-progress, if you have any requests or comments, please post them on the user mailing list or on
the forum at the SourceForge project page: http://www.sf.net/projects/springframework

Before we go on, a few words of gratitude: Chris Bauer (of the Hibernate team) prepared and adapted the
DocBook-XSL software in order to be able to create Hibernate's reference guide, also allowing us to
create this one.

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Spring - Java/J2EE Application Chapter 1. Introduction
Home
Framework

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 Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 1. Introduction
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Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1. Overview
Spring contains a lot of functionality and features, which are well-organized in seven modules shown in the diagram below. This section
discusses each the of modules in turn.

Overview of the the Spring Framework

The Core package is the most fundamental part of the framework and provides the Dependency Injection features allowing you to manage
bean container functionality. The basic concept here is the BeanFactory, which provides a factory pattern removing the need for
programmatic singletons and allowing you to decouple the configuration and specification of dependencies from your actual program logic.
On top of the Core package sits the Context package, providing a way to access beans in a framework-style manner, somewhat resembling
a JNDI-registry. The context package inherits its features from the beans package and adds support for text messaging using e.g. resource
bundles, event-propagation, resource-loading and transparent creation of contexts by, for example, a servlet container.
The DAO package provides a JDBC-abstraction layer that removes the need to do tedious JDBC coding and parsing of database-vendor
specific error codes. Also, the JDBC package provides a way to do programmatic as well as declarative transaction management, not only
for classes implementing special interfaces, but for all your POJOs (plain old java objects).
The ORM package provides integration layers for popular object-relational mapping APIs, including JDO, Hibernate and iBatis. Using the
ORM package you can use all those O/R-mappers in combination with all the other features Spring offers, like simple declarative
transaction management mentioned before.
Spring's AOP package provides an AOP Alliance compliant aspect-oriented programming implemention allowing you to define, for
example, method-interceptors and pointcuts to cleanly decouple code implementing functionality that should logically speaking be
separated. Using source-level metadata functionality you can incorporate all kinds of behavioral information into your code, a little like
.NET attributes.
Spring's Web package provides basic web-oriented integration features, such as multipart functionality, initialization of contexts using

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servlet listeners and a web-oriented application context. When using Spring together with WebWork or Struts, this is the package to
integrate with.
Spring's Web MVC package provides a Model-View-Controller implementation for web-applications. Spring's MVC implementation is not
just any implementation, it provides a clean separation between domain model code and web forms and allows you to use all the other
features of the Spring Framework like validation.

1.2. Usage scenarios

With the building blocks described above you can use Spring in all sorts of scenarios, from applets up to fully-fledged enterprise
applications using Spring's transaction management functionality and Web framework.

Typical full-fledged Spring web application

A typical web application using most of Spring's features. Using TransactionProxyFactoryBeans the web application is fully
transactional, just as it would be when using container managed transaction as provided by Enterprise JavaBeans. All your custom business
logic can be implemented using simple POJOs, managed by Spring's Dependency Injection container. Additional services such as sending
email and validation, independent of the web layer enable you to choose where to execute validation rules. Spring's ORM support is
integrated with Hibernate, JDO and iBatis. Using for example HibernateDaoSupport, you can re-use your existing Hibernate
mappings. Form controllers seamlessly integrate the web-layer with the domain model, removing the need for ActionForms or other
classes that transform HTTP parameters to values for your domain model.

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Spring middle-tier using a third-party web framework

Sometimes the current circumstances do not allow you to completely switch to a different framework. Spring does not force you to use
everything within it; it's not an all-or-nothing solution. Existing frontends using WebWork, Struts, Tapestry, or other UI frameworks can be
integrated perfectly well with a Spring-based middle-tier, allowing you to use the transaction features that Spring offers. The only thing you
need to do is wire up your business logic using an ApplicationContext and integrate your Web UI layer using a
WebApplicationContext.

Remoting usage scenario

When you need to access existing code via webservices, you can use Spring's Hessian-, Burlap-, Rmi- or JaxRpcProxyFactory
classes. Enabling remote access to existing application is all of a sudden not that hard anymore.

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EJBs - Wrapping existing POJOs

Spring also provides an access layer and abstraction layer for Enterprise JavaBeans, enabling you to reuse your existing POJOs and wrap
them in Stateless Session Beans, for use in scalable failsafe webapplications, that might need declarative security.

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Preface Home Chapter 2. Background information

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Chapter 2. Background information

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Chapter 2. Background information

2.1. Inversion of Control / Dependency Injection
In early 2004, Martin Fowler asked the readers of his site: when talking about Inversion of Control: "the
question, is what aspect of control are they inverting?". After talking about the term Inversion of Control
Martin suggests renaming the pattern, or at least giving it a more self-explanatory name, and starts to use
the term Dependency Injection. His article continues to explain some of the ideas behind Inversion of
Control or Dependency Injection. If you need a decent insight:
http://martinfowler.com/articles/injection.html.

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Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 3. Beans, BeanFactory and the
Home
ApplicationContext

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 Chapter 3. Beans, BeanFactory and the ApplicationContext

Chapter 3. Beans, BeanFactory and the ApplicationContext

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Chapter 3. Beans, BeanFactory and the ApplicationContext

3.1. Introduction
Two of the most elementary and important packages in Spring are the org.springframework.beans and
org.springframework.context packages. Code in these packages provides the basis for Spring's Inversion of Control
(alternately called Dependency Injection) features. The BeanFactory provides an advanced configuration mechanism capable
of managing beans (objects) of any nature, using potentially any kind of storage facility. The ApplicationContext builds on top
of the BeanFactory and adds other functionality such as easier integration with Springs AOP features, message resource
handling (for use in internationalization), event propagation, declarative mechanisms to create the ApplicationContext and
optional parent contexts, and application-layer specific contexts such as the WebApplicationContext, among other
enhancements.
In short, the BeanFactory provides the configuration framework and basic functionality, while the
ApplicationContext adds enhanced capabilities to it, some of them perhaps more J2EE and enterprise-centric. In general,
an ApplicationContext is a complete superset of a BeanFactory, and any description of BeanFactory capabilities and behavior
should be considered to apply to ApplicationContexts as well.
Users are sometimes unsure whether BeanFactory or ApplicationContext are best suited for use in a particular situation.
Normally when building most applications in a J2EE-environment, the best option is to use the ApplicationContext, since it
offers all the features of the BeanFactory and adds on to it in terms of features, while also allowing a more declarative approach
to use of some functionality, which is generally desirable. The main usage scenario when you might prefer to use the
BeanFactory is when memory usage is the greatest concern (such as in an applet where every last kilobyte counts), and you don't
need all the features of the ApplicationContext.
This chapter is roughly divided into two parts, the first part covering the basic principles that apply to both the BeanFactory and
the ApplicationContext. The second part will cover some of the features that only apply to the ApplicationContext.

3.2. BeanFactory and BeanDefinitions - the basics

3.2.1. The BeanFactory
The BeanFactory is the actual container which instantiates, configures, and manages a number of beans. These beans
typically collaborate with one another, and thus have dependencies between themselves. These dependencies are reflected in the
configuration data used by the BeanFactory (although some dependencies may not be visible as configuration data, but rather be
a function of programmatic interactions between beans at runtime).
A BeanFactory is represented by the interface org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanFactory, for which
there are multiple implementations. The most commonly used simple BeanFactory implementation is
org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanFactory. (This should be qualified with the reminder that
ApplicationContexts are a subclass of BeanFactory, and most users ultimately prefer to use XML variants of
ApplicationContext).
Although for most scenarios, almost all user code managed by the BeanFactory does not have to be aware of the BeanFactory,
the BeanFactory does have to be instantiated somehow. This can happen via explicit user code such as:
InputStream is = new FileInputStream("beans.xml");
XmlBeanFactory factory = new XmlBeanFactory(is);
or
ClassPathResource res = new ClassPathResource("beans.xml");

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XmlBeanFactory factory = new XmlBeanFactory(res);

or
ClassPathXmlApplicationContext appContext = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(
new String[] {"applicationContext.xml", "applicationContext-part2.xml"});
// of course, an ApplicationContext is just a BeanFactory
BeanFactory factory = (BeanFactory) appContext;
For many usage scenarios, user code will not have to instantiate the BeanFactory, since Spring Framework code will do it. For
example, the web layer provides support code to load a Spring ApplicationContext automatically as part of the normal startup
process of a J2EE web-app. This declarative process is described here:
While programmatic manipulation of BeanFactories will be described later, the following sections will concentrate on
describing the configuration of BeanFactories.
A BeanFactory configuration consists of, at its most basic level, definitions of one or more beans that the BeanFactory must
manage. In an XmlBeanFactory, these are configured as one or more bean elements inside a top-level beans element.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC "-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN"
"http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd">

<beans>

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

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

...

</beans>

3.2.2. The BeanDefinition

Bean definitions inside an XmlBeanFactory variant contain, among other information, the following details:
● a classname: this is normally the actual implementation class of the bean being described in the bean definition. However,
if the bean is to be constructed by calling a static factory method instead of using a normal constructor, this will actually
be the classname of the factory class.
● bean behavioral configuration elements, which state how the bean should behave in the container (i.e. prototype or
singleton, autowiring mode, dependency checking mode, initialization and destruction methods)
● constructor arguments and property values to set in the newly created bean. An example would be the number of
connections to use in a bean that manages a connection pool (either specified as a property or as a constructor argument),
or the pool size limit.
● other beans a bean needs to do its work, i.e. collaborators (also specified as properties or as constructor arguments).
These can also be called dependencies.
The concepts listed above directly translate to a set of elements the bean definition consists of. Some of these element groups are
are listed below, along with a link to further documentation about each of them.
Table 3.1. Bean definition explanation
Feature More info
class Section 3.2.3, The bean class

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id and name Section 3.2.4, The bean identifiers (id and name)
singleton or prototype Section 3.2.5, To singleton or not to singleton
constructor arguments Section 3.3.1, Setting bean properties and collaborators
bean properties Section 3.3.1, Setting bean properties and collaborators
autowiring mode Section 3.3.5, Autowiring collaborators
dependency checking mode Section 3.3.6, Checking for dependencies
initialization method Section 3.4.1, Lifecycle interfaces
destruction method Section 3.4.1, Lifecycle interfaces

Note that a bean definition is represented by the real interface

org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanDefinition, and its various subinterfaces and
implementations. However, it is very unlikely that most user code would ever work with a BeanDefinition.

3.2.3. The bean class

The class attribute is normally mandatory (see Section 3.2.3.3, Bean creation via instance factory method and Section 3.5,
Abstract and child bean definitions for the two exception) and is used for one of two purposes. In the much more common case
where the BeanFactory itself directly creates the bean by calling its constructor (equivalent to Java code calling new), the class
attribute specifies the class of the bean to be constructed. In the less common case where the BeanFactory calls a static, so-called
factory method on a class to create the bean, the class attribute specifies the actual class containing the static factory method.
(the type of the returned bean from the static factory method may be the same class or another class entirely, it doesn't matter).

3.2.3.1. Bean creation via constructor

When creating a bean using the constructor approach, all normal classes are usable by Spring and compatible with Spring. That
is, the class being created does not need to implement any specific interfaces or be coded in a specific fashion. Just specifying
the bean class should be enough. However, depending on what type of IoC you are going to use for that specific bean, you may
need a default (empty) constructor.
Additionally, the BeanFactory isn't limited to just managing true JavaBeans, it is also able to manage virtually any class you
want it to manage. Most people using Spring prefer to have actual JavaBeans (having just a default (no-argument) constructor
and appropriate setters and getters modelled after the properties) in the BeanFactory, but it it's also possible to have more exotic
non-bean-style classes in your BeanFactory. If, for example, you need to use a legacy connection pool that absolutely does not
adhere to the JavaBean specification, no worries, Spring can manage it as well.
Using the XmlBeanFactory you can specify your bean class as follows:
<bean id="exampleBean"
class="examples.ExampleBean"/>
<bean name="anotherExample"
class="examples.ExampleBeanTwo"/>
The mechanism for supplying (optional) arguments to the constructor, or setting properties of the object instance after it has
been constructed, will be described shortly.

3.2.3.2. Bean creation via static factory method

When defining a bean which is to be created using a static factory method, along with the class attribute which specifies the
class containing the static factory method, another attribute named factory-method is needed to specify the name of the
factory method itself. Spring expects to be able to call this method (with an optional list of arguments as described later) and get
back a live object, which from that point on is treated as if it had been created normally via a constructor. One use for such a
bean definition is to call static factories in legacy code.
Following is an example of a bean definition which specifies that the bean is to be created by calling a factory-method. Note that
the definition does not specify the type (class) of the returned object, only the class containing the factory method. In this

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example, createInstance must be a static method.

<bean id="exampleBean"
class="examples.ExampleBean2"
factory-method="createInstance"/>
The mechanism for supplying (optional) arguments to the factory method, or setting properties of the object instance after it has
been returned from the factory, will be described shortly.

3.2.3.3. Bean creation via instance factory method

Quite similar to using a static factory method to create a bean, is the the use of an instance (non-static) factory method, where a
factory method of an existing bean from the factory is called to create the new bean.
To use this mechanism, the class attribute must be left empty, and the factory-bean attribute must specify the name of a
bean in the current or an ancestor bean factory which contains the factory method. The factory method itself should still be set
via the factory-method attribute.
Following is an example:
<!-- The factory bean, which contains a method called
createInstance -->
<bean id="myFactoryBean"
class="...">
...
</bean>
<!-- The bean to be created via the factory bean -->
<bean id="exampleBean"
factory-bean="myFactoryBean"
factory-method="createInstance"/>
Although the mechanisms for setting bean properties are still to be discussed, one implication of this approach is that the factory
bean itself can be managed and configured via Dependency Injection, by the container.

3.2.4. The bean identifiers (id and name)

Every bean has one or more ids (also called identifiers, or names; these terms refer to the same thing). These ids must be unique
within the BeanFactory or ApplicationContext the bean is hosted in. A bean will almost always have only one id, but if a bean
has more than one id, the extra ones can essentially be considered aliases.
In an XmlBeanFactory (including ApplicationContext variants), you use the id or name attributes to specify the bean id(s), and
at least one id must be specified in one or both of these attributes. The id attribute allows you to specify one id, and as it is
marked in the XML DTD (definition document) as a real XML element ID attribute, the parser is able to do some extra
validation when other elements point back to this one. As such, it is the preferred way to specify a bean id. However, the XML
spec does limit the characters which are legal in XML IDs. This is usually not really a constraint, but if you have a need to use
one of these characters, or want to introduce other aliases to the bean, you may also or instead specify one or more bean ids
(separated by a comma (,) or semicolon (;) via the name attribute.

3.2.5. To singleton or not to singleton

Beans are defined to be deployed in one of two modes: singleton or non-singleton. (The latter is also called a prototype,
although the term is used loosely as it doesn't quite fit). When a bean is a singleton, only one shared instance of the bean will be
managed and all requests for beans with an id or ids matching that bean definition will result in that one specific bean instance
being returned.
The non-singleton, prototype mode of a bean deployment results in the creation of a new bean instance every time a request for
that specific bean is done. This is ideal for situations where for example each user needs an independent user object or
something similar.
Beans are deployed in singleton mode by default, unless you specify otherwise. Keep in mind that by changing the type to

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non-singleton (prototype), each request for a bean will result in a newly created bean and this might not be what you actually
want. So only change the mode to prototype when absolutely necessary.
In the example below, two beans are declared of which one is defined as a singleton, and the other one is a non-singleton
(prototype). exampleBean is created each and every time a client asks the BeanFactory for this bean, while
yetAnotherExample is only created once; a reference to the exact same instance is returned on each request for this bean.
<bean id="exampleBean"
class="examples.ExampleBean" singleton="false"/>
<bean name="yetAnotherExample"
class="examples.ExampleBeanTwo" singleton="true"/>
Note: when deploying a bean in the prototype mode, the lifecycle of the bean changes slightly. By definition, Spring can not
manage the complete lifecycle of a non-singleton/prototype bean, since after it is created, it is given to the client and the
container does not keep track of it at all any longer. You can think of Spring's role when talking about a non-singleton/prototype
bean as a replacement for the 'new' operator. Any lifecycle aspects past that point have to be handled by the client. The lifecycle
of a bean in the BeanFactory is further described in Section 3.4.1, Lifecycle interfaces .

3.3. Properties, collaborators, autowiring and dependency

checking
3.3.1. Setting bean properties and collaborators
Inversion of Control has already been referred to as Dependency Injection. The basic principle is that beans define their
dependencies (i.e. the other objects they work with) only through constructor arguments, arguments to a factory method, or
properties which are set on the object instance after it has been constructed or returned from a factory method. Then, it is the job
of the container to actually inject those dependencies when it creates the bean. This is fundamentally the inverse (hence the
name Inversion of Control) of the bean instantiating or locating its dependencies on its own using direct construction of classes,
or something like the Service Locator pattern. While we will not elaborate too much on the advantages of Dependency Injection,
it becomes evident upon usage that code gets much cleaner and reaching a higher grade of decoupling is much easier when
beans do not look up their dependencies, but are provided with them, and additionally do not even know where the dependencies
are located and of what actual type they are.
As touched on in the previous paragraph, Inversion of Control/Dependency Injection exists in two major variants:
● setter-based dependency injection is realized by calling setters on your beans after invoking a no-argument constructor or
no-argument static factory method to instantiate your bean. Beans defined in the BeanFactory that use setter-based
dependency injection are true JavaBeans. Spring generally advocates usage of setter-based dependency injection, since a
large number of constructor arguments can get unwieldy, especially when some properties are optional.
● constructor-based dependency injection is realized by invoking a constructor with a number of arguments, each
representing a collaborator or property. Additionally, calling a static factory method with specific arguments, to construct
the bean, can be considered almost equivalent, and the rest of this text will consider arguments to a constructor and
arguments to a static factory method similarily. Although Spring generally advocates usage of setter-based dependency
injection for most situations, it does fully support the constructor-based approach as well, since you may wish to use it
with pre-existing beans which provide only multi-argument constructors, and no setters. Additionally, for simpler beans,
some people prefer the constructor approach as a means of ensuring beans can not be constructed in an invalid state.
The BeanFactory supports both of these variants for injecting dependencies into beans it manages. (It in fact also supports
injecting setter-based dependencies after some dependencies have already been supplied via the constructor approach.) The
configuration for the dependencies comes in the form of a BeanDefinition, which is used together with JavaBeans
PropertyEditors to know how to convert properties from one format to another. The actual values being passed around are
done in the form of PropertyValue objects. However, most users of Spring will not be dealing with these classes directly
(i.e. programatically), but rather with an XML definition file which will be converted internally into instances of these classes,
and used to load an entire BeanFactory or ApplicationContext.
Bean dependency resolution generally happens as follows:

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1. The BeanFactory is created and initialized with a configuration which describes all the beans. Most Spring users use a
BeanFactory or ApplicationContext variant which supports XML format configuration files.
2. Each bean has dependencies expressed in the form of properties, constructor arguments, or arguments to the static-factory
method when that is used instead of a normal constructor. These dependencies will be provided to the bean, when the
bean is actually created.
3. Each property or constructor-arg is either an actual definition of the value to set, or a reference to another bean in the
BeanFactory. In the case of the ApplicationContext, the reference can be to a bean in a parent ApplicationContext.
4. Each property or constructor argument which is a value must be able to be converted from whatever format it was
specified in, 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. Additionally, when talking about the
XML based BeanFactory variants (including the ApplicationContext variants), these have built-in support for defining
Lists, Maps, Sets, and Properties collection types. Additionally, Spring uses JavaBeans PropertyEditor definitions to
be able to convert string values to other, arbitrary types. (You can provide the BeanFactory with your own
PropertyEditor definitions to be able to convert your own custom types; more information about PropertyEditors
and how to manually add custom ones, can be found in Section 3.9, Registering additional custom PropertyEditors ).
When a bean property is a Java Class type, Spring allows you to specify the value for that property as a string value which
is the name of the class, and the ClassEditor PropertyEditor, which is built-in, will take care of converting that class
name to an actual Class instance.
5. It is important to realize that Spring validates the configuration of each bean in the BeanFactory when the BeanFactory is
created, including the validation that properties which are bean references are actually referring to valid beans (i.e. the
beans being referred to are also defined in the BeanFactory, or in the case of ApplicationContext, a parent context).
However, the bean properties themselves are not set until the bean is actually created. For beans which are singleton and
set to be pre-instantiated (such as singleton beans in an ApplicationContext), creation happens at the time that the
BeanFactory is created, but otherwise this is only when the bean is requested. When a bean actually has to be created, this
will potentially cause a graph of other beans to be created, as its dependencies and its dependencies' dependencies (and so
on) are created and assigned.
6. You can generally trust Spring to do the right thing. It will pick up configuraton issues, including references to
non-existent beans and circular dependencies, at BeanFactory load-time. It will actually set properties and resolve
dependencies (i.e. create those dependencies if needed) as late as possible, which is when the bean is actually created.
This does mean that a BeanFactory which has loaded correctly, can later generate an exception when you request a bean,
if there is a problem creating that bean or one of its dependencies. This could happen if the bean throws an exception as a
result of a missing or invalid property, for example. This potentially delayed visibility of some configuration issues is why
ApplicationContext by default pre-instantiates singleton beans. At the cost of some upfront time and memory to create
these beans before they are actually needed, you find out about configuration issues when the ApplicationContext is
created, not later. If you wish, you can still override this default behavior and set any of these singleton beans to lazy-load
(not be preinstantiated).
Some examples:
First, an example of using the BeanFactory for setter-based dependency injection. Below is a small part of an
XmlBeanFactory config file specifying some bean definitions. Following is the code for the actual main bean itself, showing
the appropriate setters declared.
<bean id="exampleBean" class="examples.ExampleBean">
<property name="beanOne"><ref bean="anotherExampleBean"/></property>
<property name="beanTwo"><ref bean="yetAnotherBean"/></property>
<property name="integerProperty"><value>1</value></property>
</bean>

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

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

private AnotherBean beanOne;

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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;
}
}
As you can see, setters have been declared to match against the properties specified in the XML file. (The properties from the
XML file, directly relate to the PropertyValues object from the RootBeanDefinition)
Now, an example of using the BeanFactory for IoC type 3 (constructor-based dependency injection). Below is a snippet from an
XML configuration that specifies constructor arguments and the actual bean code, showing the constructor:
<bean id="exampleBean" class="examples.ExampleBean">
<constructor-arg><ref bean="anotherExampleBean"/></constructor-arg>
<constructor-arg><ref bean="yetAnotherBean"/></constructor-arg>
<constructor-arg><value>1</value></constructor-arg>
</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;
}
}
As you can see, the constructor arguments specified in the bean definition will be used to pass in as arguments to the constructor
of the ExampleBean.
Now consider a variant of this 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 bean="anotherExampleBean"/></constructor-arg>
<constructor-arg><ref bean="yetAnotherBean"/></constructor-arg>
<constructor-arg><value>1</value></constructor-arg>
</bean>

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

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

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 ExampleBean(AnotherBean anotherBean,
YetAnotherBean yetAnotherBean, int i) {
ExampleBean eb = new ExampleBean(...);
// some other operations
...
return eb;
}
}
Note that arguments to the static factory method are supplied via constructor-arg elements, exactly the same as if a
constructor had actually been used. These areguments are optional. Also, it is important to realize that the type of the class being
returned by the factory method does not have to be of the same type as the class which contains the static factory method,
although in this example it is. An instance (non-static) factory method, mentioned previously, would be used in an essentially
identical fashion (aside from the use of the factory-bean attribute instead of the class attribute), so will not be detailed
here.

3.3.2. Bean properties and constructor arguments detailed

As mentioned in the previous section, bean properties and constructor arguments can be defined as either references to other
managed beans (collaborators), or values defined inline. The XmlBeanFactory supports a number of subelement types within
its property and constructor-arg elements for this purpose.
The value element specifies a property or constructor argument as a human-readable string representation. As mentioned in
detail previously, JavaBeans PropertyEditors are used to convert these string values from a java.lang.String to the actual
property or argument type.
<beans>
<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</value>
</property>
<property name="url">
<value>jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mydb</value>
</property>
<property name="username">
<value>root</value>
</property>
</bean>
</beans>
The null element is used to handle null values. Spring treats empty arguments for properties and the like as empty Strings. The

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following XmlBeanFactory configuration:

<bean class="ExampleBean">
<property name="email"><value></value></property>
</bean>
results in the email property being set to "", equivalent to the java code: exampleBean.setEmail(""). The special
<null> element may be used to indicate a null value, so that:
<bean class="ExampleBean">
<property name="email"><null/></property>
</bean>
is equivalent to the java code: exampleBean.setEmail(null).
The list, set, map, and props elements allow properties and arguments of Java type List, Set, Map, and Properties,
respectively, to be defined and set.
<beans>
...
<bean id="moreComplexObject" class="example.ComplexObject">
<!-- results in a setPeople(java.util.Properties) call -->
<property name="people">
<props>
<prop key="HarryPotter">The magic property</prop>
<prop key="JerrySeinfeld">The funny property</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="yup an entry">
<value>just some string</value>
</entry>
<entry key="yup a ref">
<ref bean="myDataSource"/>
</entry>
</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>
</beans>
Note that the value of a Map entry, or a set value, can also again be any of the elements:
(bean | ref | idref | list | set | map | props | value | null)

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A bean element inside the property element is used to define a bean value inline, instead of referring to a bean defined
elsewhere in the BeanFactory. The inline bean definition does not need to have any id defined.
<bean id="outer" class="...">
<!-- Instead of using a reference to target, just use an inner bean -->
<property name="target">
<bean class="com.mycompany.PersonImpl">
<property name="name"><value>Tony</value></property>
<property name="age"><value>51</value></property>
</bean>
</property>
</bean>
An idref element is simply a shorthand and error-proof way to set a property to the String id or name of another bean in the
container.
<bean id="theTargetBean" class="...">
</bean>
<bean id="theClientBean" class="...">
<property name="targetName">
<idref bean="theTargetBean"/>
</property>
</bean>
This is exactly equivalent at runtime to the following fragment:
<bean id="theTargetBean" class="...">
</bean>
<bean id="theClientBean" class="...">
<property name="targetName">
<value>theTargetBean</value>
</property>
</bean>
The main reason the first form is preferrable to the second is that using the idref tag will allow Spring to validate at
deployment time that the other bean actually exists. In the second variation, the class who's targetName property is forced to do
its own validation, and that will only happen when that class is actually instantiated by Spring, possibly long after the container
is actually deployed.
Additionally, if the bean being referred to is in the same actual XML file, and the bean name is the bean id, the local attribute
may be used, which will allow the XML parser itself to validate the bean name even earlier, at XML document parse time.
<property name="targetName">
<idref local="theTargetBean"/>
</property>
The ref element is the final element allowed inside a property definition element. It is used to set the value of the specified
property to be a reference to another bean managed by the container, a collaborator, so to speak. As mentioned in a previous
section, the referred-to bean is considered to be a dependency of the bean who's property is being set, and will be initialized on
demand as needed (if it is a singleton bean it may have already been initialized by the container) before the property is set. All
references are ultimately just a reference to another object, but there are 3 variations on how the id/name of the other object may
be specified, which determines how scoping and validation is handled.
Specifying the target bean by using the bean attribute of the ref tag is the most general form, and will allow creating a
reference to any bean in the same BeanFactory/ApplicationContext (whether or not in the same XML file), or parent
BeanFactory/ApplicationContext. The value of the bean 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.
<ref bean="someBean"/>
Specifying the target bean by using the local attribute leverages the ability of the XML parser to validate XML id references
within the same file. The value of the local attribute must be the same as the id attribute of the target bean. The XML parser

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will issue an error if no matching element is found in the same file. As such, using the local variant is the best choice (in order to
know about errors are early as possible) if the target bean is in the same XML file.
<ref local="someBean"/>
Specifying the target bean by using the parent attribute allows a reference to be created to a bean which is in a parent
BeanFactory (or ApplicationContext) of the current BeanFactory (or ApplicationContext). The value of the parent attribute
may be ther 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 BeanFactory or ApplicationContext to the current one. The main use of this bean reference
variant is when there is a need to wrap an existing bean in a parent context with some sort of proxy (which may have the same
name as the parent), and needs the original object so it may wrap it.
<ref parent="someBean"/>

3.3.3. Method Injection

For most users, the majority of the beans in the container will be singletons. When a singleton bean needs to collaborate with
(use) another singleton bean, or a non-singleton bean needs to collaborate with another non-singleton bean, the typical and
common approach of handling this dependency by defining one bean to be a property of the other, is quite adequate. There is
however a problem when the bean lifecycles are different. Consider a singleton bean A which needs to use a non-singleton
(prototype) bean B, perhaps on each method invocation on A. The container will only create the singleton bean A once, and thus
only get the opportunity to set its properties once. There is no opportunity for the container to provide bean A with a new
instance of bean B every time one is needed.
One solution to this problem is to forgo some inversion of control. Bean A can be aware of the container (as described here) by
implementing BeanFactoryAware, and use programmatic means (as described here) to ask the container via a
getBean("B") call for (a new) bean B every time it needs it. This is generally not a desireable solution since the bean code is
then aware of and coupled to Spring.
Method Injection, an advanced feature of the BeanFactory, allows this use case to be handled in a clean fashion, along with
some other scenarios.

3.3.3.1. Lookup method Injection

Lookup method injection refers to the ability of the container to override abstract or concrete methods on managed beans in the
container, to return the result of looking up another named bean in the container. The lookup will typically be of a non-singleton
bean as per the scenario described above (although it can also be a singleton). Spring implements this by performing bytecode
modification on the client class, using the CGLIB library.
In the client class containing the method to be injected, the method definition must be an abstract (or concrete) definition in this
form:
protected abstract SingleShotHelper createSingleShotHelper();
If the method is not abstract, Spring will simply override the existing implementation. In the XmlBeanFactory case, you instruct
Spring to inject/override this method to return a particular bean from the container, by using the lookup-method element
inside the bean definition. For example:
<!-- a stateful bean deployed as a protype (non-singleton) -->
<bean id="singleShotHelper class="..." singleton="false">
</bean>

<!-- myBean uses singleShotHelper -->

<bean id="myBean" class="...">
<lookup-method name="createSingleShotHelper"
bean="singleShotHelper"/>
<property>
...
</property>
</bean>

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The bean identified as myBean will call its own method createSingleShotHelper whenever it needs a new instance of
the singleShotHelper bean. It is important to note that the person deploying the beans must be careful to deploy
singleShotHelper as a non-singleton (if that is actually what is needed). If it is deployed as a singleton (either explicitly, or
relying on the default true setting for this flag), the same instance of singleShotHelper will be returned each time!
Note that lookup method injection can be combined with Constructor Injection (supplying optional constructor arguments to the
bean being constructed), and also with Setter Injection (settings properties on the bean being constructed).

3.3.3.2. Arbitrary method replacement

A less commonly 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 (which describes this
somewhat advanced feature), until this functionality is actually needed.
In an XmlBeanFactory, the replaced-method element may be used 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 is
needed to provide the new method defintion.
/** meant to be used to override the existing computeValue
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 BeanFactory deployment definition to deploy the original class and specify the method override would look like:
<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">

</bean>
One or more contained arg-type elements within the replaced-method element may be used to indicate the method
signature of the method being overriden. Note that the signature for the arguments is actually only needed in the case that the
method is actually overloaded and there are mutliple variants within the class. For convenience, the type string for an argument
may be a substring of the fully qualified type name. For example, all the following would match java.lang.String.
java.lang.String
String
Str

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Since the number of arguments is often enough to distinguish between each possible choice, this shortcut can save a lot of
typing, by just using the shortest string which will match an argument.

3.3.4. Using depends-on

For most situations, the fact that a bean is a dependency of another is expressed simply by the fact that one bean is set as a
property of another. This is typically done with the ref element in the XmlBeanFactory. In a variation of this, sometimes a
bean which is aware of the container is simply given the id of its dependency (using a string value or alternately the idref
element, which evaluates the same as a string value). The first bean then programmatically asks the container for its dependency.
In either case, the dependency is properly initialized before the dependent bean.
For the relatively infrequent situations where dependencies between beans are less direct (for example, when a static initializer
in a class needs to be triggered, such as database driver registration), the depends-on element may be used to explicitly force
one or more beans to be initialized before the bean using this element is initialized.
Following is an example config:
<bean id="beanOne" class="ExampleBean" depends-on="manager">
<property name="manager"><ref local="manager"/></property>
</bean>

<bean id="manager" class="ManagerBean"/>

3.3.5. Autowiring collaborators

A BeanFactory is able to autowire relationships between collaborating beans. This means it's possible to automatically let
Spring resolve collaborators (other beans) for your bean by inspecting the contents of the BeanFactory. The autowiring
functionality has five modes. Autowiring is specified per bean and can thus be enabled for some beans, while other beans won't
be autowired. Using autowiring, it is possible to reduce or eliminate the need to specify properties or constructor arguments,
saving a significant amount of typing.[1]In an XmlBeanFactory, the autowire mode for a bean definition is specified by using the
autowire attribute of the bean element. The following values are allowed.
Table 3.2. Autowiring modes
Mode Explanation
No autowiring at all. Bean references must be defined via a ref element. This is the default, and changing this is
no discouraged for larger deployments, since explicitly specifying collaborators gives greater control and clarity. To
some extent, it is a form of documentation about the structure of a system.
Autowiring by property name. This option will inspect the BeanFactory and look for a bean named exactly the
same as the property which needs to be autowired. For example, if you have a bean definition which is set to
byName
autowire by name, and it contains a master property (that is, it has a setMaster(...) method), Spring will look for a
bean definition named master, and use it to set the property.
Allows a property to be autowired if there is exactly one bean of the property type in the BeanFactory. If there is
more than one, a fatal exception is thrown, and this indicates that you may not use byType autowiring for that bean.
byType
If there are no matching beans, nothing happens; the property is not set. If this is not desirable, setting the
dependency-check="objects" attribute value specifies that an error should be thrown in this case.
This is analogous to byType, but applies to constructor arguments. If there isn't exactly one bean of the constructor
constructor
argument type in the bean factory, a fatal error is raised.
Chooses constructor or byType through introspection of the bean class. If a default constructor is found, byType
autodetect
gets applied.

Note that explicit dependencies, i.e. property and constructor-arg elements, always override autowiring. Autowire
behaviour can be combined with dependency checking, which will be performed after all autowiring has been completed.
Note: as has already been mentioned, for larger applications, it is discouraged to use autowiring because it removes the
transparency and the structure from your collaborating classes.

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3.3.6. Checking for dependencies

Spring has the ability to try to check for the existence of unresolved dependencies of a bean deployed into the BeanFactory.
These are JavaBeans properties of the bean, which do not have actual values set for them in the bean definition, or alternately
provided automatically by the autowiring feature.
This feature is sometimes useful when you want to ensure that all properties (or all properties of a certain type) are set on a bean.
Of course, in many cases a bean class will have default values for many properties, or some properties do not apply to all usage
scenarios, so this feature is of limited use. Dependency checking can also be enabled and disabled per bean, just as with the
autowiring functionality. The default is to not check dependencies. Dependency checking can be handled in serveral different
modes. In an XmlBeanFactory, this is specified via the dependency-check attribute in a bean definition, which may have
the following values.
Table 3.3. Dependency checking modes
Mode Explanation
none No dependency checking. Properties of the bean which have no value specified for them are simply not set.
Dependency checking is performed for primitive types and collections (everything except collaborators, i.e. other
simple
beans)
object Dependency checking is performed for collaborators
all Dependency checking is done for collaborators, primitive types and collections

3.4. Customizing the nature of a bean

3.4.1. Lifecycle interfaces
Spring provides several marker interfaces to change the behavior of your bean in the BeanFactory. They include
InitializingBean and DisposableBean. Implementing these interfaces will result in the BeanFactory calling
afterPropertiesSet() for the former and destroy() for the latter to allow the bean to perform certain actions upon
initialization and destruction.
Internally, Spring uses BeanPostProcessors to process any marker interfaces it can find and call the appropriate methods.
If you need custom features or other lifecycle behavior Spring doesn't offer out-of-the-box, you can implement a
BeanPostProcessor yourself. More information about this can be found in Section 3.7, Customizing beans with
BeanPostprocessors .
All the different lifecycle marker interfaces are described below. In one of the appendices, you can find diagram that show how
Spring manages beans and how those lifecycle features change the nature of your beans and how they are managed.

3.4.1.1. InitializingBean / init-method

Implementing the org.springframework.beans.factory.InitializingBean allows a bean to perform

initialization work after all necessary properties on the bean are set by the BeanFactory. The InitializingBean interface specifies
exactly one method:
* Invoked by a BeanFactory after it has set all bean properties supplied
* (and satisfied BeanFactoryAware and ApplicationContextAware).
* <p>This method allows the bean instance to perform initialization only
* possible when all bean properties have been set and to throw an
* exception in the event of misconfiguration.
* @throws Exception in the event of misconfiguration (such
* as failure to set an essential property) or if initialization fails.
*/
void afterPropertiesSet() throws Exception;
Note: generally, the use of the InitializingBean marker interface can be avoided (and is discouraged since it

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unecessarily couples the code to Spring). A bean definition provides support for a generic initialization method to be specified.
In the case of the XmlBeanFactory, this is done via the init-method attribute. For example, the following definition:
<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.

3.4.1.2. DisposableBean / destroy-method

Implementing the org.springframework.beans.factory.DisposableBean interface allows a bean to get a

callback when the BeanFactory containing it is destroyed. The DisposableBean interface specifies one method:
/**
* Invoked by a BeanFactory on destruction of a singleton.
* @throws Exception in case of shutdown errors.
* Exceptions will get logged but not rethrown to allow
* other beans to release their resources too.
*/
void destroy() throws Exception;
Note: generally, the use of the DisposableBean marker interface can be avoided (and is discouraged since it unecessarily
couples the code to Spring). A bean definition provides support for a generic destroy method to be specified. In the case of the
XmlBeanFactory, this is done via the destroy-method attribute. For example, the following definition:
<bean id="exampleInitBean" class="examples.ExampleBean" destroy-method="destroy"/>

public class ExampleBean {

public void cleanup() {
// do some destruction work (like closing connection)
}
}
Is exactly the same as:
<bean id="exampleInitBean" class="examples.AnotherExampleBean"/>

public class AnotherExampleBean implements DisposableBean {

public void destroy() {
// do some destruction work
}
}
but does not couple the code to Spring.
Important note: when deploying a bean in the prototype mode, the lifecycle of the bean changes slightly. By definition, Spring
can not manage the complete lifecycle of a non-singleton/prototype bean, since after it is created, it is given to the client and the

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container does not keep track of it at all any longer. You can think of Spring's role when talking about a non-singleton/prototype
bean as a replacement for the 'new' operator. Any lifecycle aspects past that point have to be handled by the client. The lifecycle
of a bean in the BeanFactory is further described in Section 3.4.1, Lifecycle interfaces .

3.4.2. Knowing who you are

3.4.2.1. BeanFactoryAware

A class which implements the org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanFactoryAware interface is provided

with a reference to the BeanFactory that created it, when it is created by that BeanFactory.
public interface BeanFactoryAware {
/**
* Callback that supplies the owning factory to a bean instance.
* <p>Invoked after population of normal bean properties but before an init
* callback like InitializingBean's afterPropertiesSet or a custom init-method.
* @param beanFactory owning BeanFactory (may not be null).
* The bean can immediately call methods on the factory.
* @throws BeansException in case of initialization errors
* @see BeanInitializationException
*/
void setBeanFactory(BeanFactory beanFactory) throws BeansException;
}
This allows beans to manipulate the BeanFactory that created them programmatically, through the
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanFactory interface, or by casting the reference to a known subclass of
this which exposes additional functionality. Primarily this would consist of programmatic retrieval of other beans. While there
are cases when this capability is useful, it should generally be avoided, since it couples the code to Spring, and does not follow
the Inversion of Control style, where collaborators are provided to beans as properties.

3.4.2.2. BeanNameAware

If a bean implements the org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanNameAware interface and is deployed in a

BeanFactory, the BeanFactory will call the bean through this interface to inform the bean of the id it was deployed under. The
callback will be Invoked after population of normal bean properties but before an init callback like InitializingBean's
afterPropertiesSet or a custom init-method.

3.4.3. FactoryBean
The org.springframework.beans.factory.FactoryBean interface is to be implemented by objects that are
themselves factories. The BeanFactory interface provides three method:
● Object getObject(): has to return 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(): has to return true if this FactoryBean returns singletons, false otherwise
● Class getObjectType(): has to return either the object type returned by the getObject() method or null if
the type isn't known in advance

3.5. Abstract and child bean definitions

A bean definition potentially contains a large amount of configuration information, including container specific information (i.e.
initialization method, static factory method name, etc.) and constructor arguments and property values. A child bean definition is
a bean definition which inherits configuration data from a parent definition. It is then able to override some values, or add
others, as needed. Using parent and child bean definitions can potentially save a lot of typing. Effectively, this is a form of
templating.

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When working with a BeanFactory programmatically, child bean definitions are represented by the ChildBeanDefinition
class. Most users will never work with them on this level, instead configuring bean definitions declaratively in something like
the XmlBeanFactory. In an XmlBeanFactory bean definition, a child bean definition is indicated simply 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</value></property>
<property name="age"><value>1</value></property>
</bean>

<bean id="inheritsWithDifferentClass"
class="org.springframework.beans.DerivedTestBean"
parent="inheritedTestBean" init-method="initialize">
<property name="name"><value>override</value></property>
<!-- age should inherit value of 1 from parent -->
</bean>
A child bean definition will use 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, i.e. it must accept the parent's property values.
A child bean definition will inherit constructor argument values, property values and method overrides from the parent, with the
option to add new values. If init method, destroy method and/or static factory method are specified, they will override the
corresponding parent settings.
The remaining settings will always be taken from the child definition: depends on, autowire mode, dependency check, singleton,
lazy init.
Note that in the example above, we have explicitly marked the parent bean definition as abstract by using the abstract attribute.
In the case that the parent definition does not specify a class:
<bean id="inheritedTestBeanWithoutClass">
<property name="name"><value>parent</value></property>
<property name="age"><value>1</value></property>
</bean>

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

parent="inheritedTestBeanWithoutClass" init-method="initialize">
<property name="name"><value>override</value></property>
<!-- age should inherit value of 1 from parent -->
</bean>
the parent bean can not get instantiated on its own since it is incomplete, and it's also considered abstract. When a definition is
considered abstract like this (explicitely or implicitly), it's usable just as a pure template or abstract bean definition that will
serve as 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, will result in an error. Similarly, the
container's internal preInstantiateSingletons method will completely ignore bean definitions which are considered abstract.
Important Note: XmlBeanFactory will by default pre-instantiate all singletons. Therefore it is important (at least for singleton
beans) that if you have a (parent) bean definition which you intend to use only as a template, and this definition specifies a class,
you must make sure to set the abstract attribute to true, otherwise the XmlBeanFactory (and possibly other containers) will
actually pre-instantiate it.

3.6. Interacting with the BeanFactory

A BeanFactory is essentially nothing more than the interface for an advanced factory capable of maintaining a registry of
different beans and their dependencies. The BeanFactory enables you to read bean definitions and access them using the bean
factory. When using just the BeanFactory you would create one and read in some bean definitions in the XML format as
follows:

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InputStream is = new FileInputStream("beans.xml");

XmlBeanFactory factory = new XmlBeanFactory(is);
Basically that's all there is to it. Using getBean(String) you can retrieve instances of your beans. You'll get a reference to
the same bean if you defined it as a singleton (the default) or you'll get a new instance each time if you set singleton to false.
The client-side view of the BeanFactory is surprisingly simple. The BeanFactory interface has only five methods for clients
to call:
● boolean containsBean(String): returns true if the BeanFactory contains a beandefinition that matches the
given name
● Object getBean(String): returns an instance of the bean registered under the given name. Depending on how the
bean was configured by the BeanFactory configuration, either a singleton and thus shared instance or a newly created
bean will be returned. A BeansException will be thrown when either the bean could not be found (in which case it'll
be a NoSuchBeanDefinitionException), or an exception occured while instantiating and preparing the bean
● Object getBean(String,Class): returns a bean, registered under the given name. The bean returned will be cast
to the given Class. If the bean could not be cast, corresponding exceptions will be thrown
(BeanNotOfRequiredTypeException). Furthermore, all rules of the getBean(String) method apply (see above)
● boolean isSingleton(String): determines whether or not the beandefinition registered under the given name is
a singleton or a prototype. If the beandefinition corresponding to the given name could not be found, an exception will be
thrown (NoSuchBeanDefinitionException)
● String[] getAliases(String): Return the aliases for the given bean name, if any were defined in the
BeanDefinition

3.6.1. Obtaining a FactoryBean, not its product

Sometimes there is a need to ask a BeanFactory for an actual FactoryBean instance itself, not the bean it produces. This may be
done by prepending the bean id with & when calling the getBean method of BeanFactory (including ApplicationContext). So
for a given FactoryBean with an id myBean, invoking getBean("myBean") on the BeanFactory will return the product of
the FactoryBean, but invoking getBean("&myBean") will return the FactoryBean instance itself.

3.7. Customizing beans with BeanPostprocessors

A bean post-processor is a java class which implements the
org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanPostProcessor interface, which consists of two callback
methods. When such a class is registered as a post-processor with the BeanFactory, for each bean instance that is created by the
BeanFactory, the post-processor will get a callback from the BeanFactory before any initialization methods (afterPropertiesSet
and any declared init method) are called, and also afterwards.The post-processor is free to do what it wishes with the bean,
including ignoring the callback completely. A bean post-processor will typically check for marker interfaces, or do something
such as wrap a bean with a proxy. Some Spring helper classes are implemented as bean post-processors.
It is important to know that a BeanFactory treats bean post-processors slightly differently than an ApplicationContext. An
ApplicationContext will automatically detect any beans which are deployed into it which implement the
BeanPostProcessor interface, and register them as post-processors, to be then called appropriately by the factory on bean
creation. Nothing else needs to be done other than deploying the post-processor in a similar fashion to any other bean. On the
other hand, when using plain BeanFactories, bean post-processors have to manually be explicitly registerd, with a code sequence
such as the following:
ConfigurableBeanFactory bf = new .....; // create BeanFactory
... // now register some beans
// now register any needed BeanPostProcessors
MyBeanPostProcessor pp = new MyBeanPostProcessor();
bf.addBeanPostProcessor(pp);

// now start using the factory

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...
Since this manual registration step is not convenient, and ApplictionContexts are functionally supersets of BeanFactories, it is
generally recommended that ApplicationContext variants are used when bean post-processors are needed.

3.8. Customizing bean factories with

BeanFactoryPostprocessors
A bean factory post-processor is a java class which implements the
org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanFactoryPostProcessor interface. It is executed
manually (in the case of the BeanFactory) or automatically (in the case of the ApplicationContext) to apply changes of some sort
to an entire BeanFactory, after it has been constructed. Spring includes a number of pre-existing bean factory post-processors,
such as PropertyResourceConfigurer and PropertyPlaceHolderConfigurer, both described below, and
BeanNameAutoProxyCreator, very useful for wrapping other beans transactionally or with any other kind of proxy, as
described later in this manual. The BeanFactoryPostProcessor can be used to add custom editors (as also mentioned in
Section 4.3.2, Built-in PropertyEditors, converting types ).
In a BeanFactory, the process of applying a BeanFactoryPostProcessor is manual, and will be similar to this:
XmlBeanFactory factory = new XmlBeanFactory(new FileSystemResource("beans.xml"));
// create placeholderconfigurer to 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);
An ApplicationContext will detect any beans which are deployed into it which implement the
BeanFactoryPostProcessor interface, and automatically use them as bean factory post-processors, at the appropriate
time. Nothing else needs to be done other than deploying these post-processor in a similar fashion to any other bean.
Since this manual step is not convenient, and ApplictionContexts are functionally supersets of BeanFactories, it is generally
recommended that ApplicationContext variants are used when bean factory post-processors are needed.

3.8.1. The PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer

The PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer, implemented as a bean factory post-processor, is used to externalize some
property values from a BeanFactory definition, into another separate file in Java Properties format. This is useful to allow the
person deploying an application to customize some key properties (for example database URLs, usernames and passwords),
without the complexity or risk of modifying the main XML definition file or files for the BeanFactory.
Consider a fragment from a BeanFactory definition, where a DataSource with placeholder values is defined:
In the example below, a datasource is defined, and we will configure some properties from an external Properties file. At
runtime, we will apply a PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer to the BeanFactory which will replace some properties of
the datasource:
<bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource"
destroy-method="close">
<property
name="driverClassName"><value>${jdbc.driverClassName}</value></property>
<property name="url"><value>${jdbc.url}</value></property>
<property name="username"><value>${jdbc.username}</value></property>
<property name="password"><value>${jdbc.password}</value></property>
</bean>
The actual values come from another file in Properties format:
jdbc.driverClassName=org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver

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jdbc.url=jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://production:9002
jdbc.username=sa
jdbc.password=root
To use this with a BeanFactory, the bean factory post-processor is manually executed on it:
XmlBeanFactory factory = new XmlBeanFactory(new FileSystemResource("beans.xml"));
PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer cfg = new PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer();
cfg.setLocation(new FileSystemResource("jdbc.properties"));
cfg.postProcessBeanFactory(factory);
Note that ApplicationContexts are able to automatically recognize and apply beans deployed in them which implement
BeanFactoryPostProcessor. This means that as described here, applying PropertyPlaceholderConfiguer is much more convenient
when using an ApplicationContext. For this reason, it is recommended that users wishing to use this or other bean factory
postprocessors use an ApplicationContext instead of a BeanFactory.
The PropertyPlaceHolderConfigurer doesn't only look for properties in the Properties file you specify, but also
checks against the Java System properties if it cannot find a property you are trying to use. This behavior can be customized by
setting the systemPropertiesMode property of the configurer. It has three values, one to tell the configurer to always
override, one to let it never override and one to let it override only if the property cannot be found in the properties file
specified. Please consult the JavaDoc for the PropertiesPlaceHolderConfigurer for more information.

3.8.2. The PropertyOverrideConfigurer

The PropertyOverrideConfigurer, another bean factory post-processor, is similar to the
PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer, but in contrast to 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 factory definition is not aware of being overridden, so it is not immediately obvious when looking at the
XML definition file that the override configurer is being used. In case that there are multiple PropertyOverrideConfigurers that
define different values for the same bean property, the last one will win (due to the overriding mechanism).
Properties file configuration lines are expected to be in the format:
beanName.property=value
An example properties file could look like:
dataSource.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
dataSource.url=jdbc:mysql:mydb
This example file would be usable against a BeanFactory definition which contains a bean in it called dataSource, which has
driver and url properties.

3.9. Registering additional custom PropertyEditors

When setting bean properties as a string value, a BeanFactory ultimately uses standard JavaBeans PropertyEditors to convert
these Strings to the complex type of the property. Spring pre-registers a number of custom PropertyEditors (for example, to
convert a classname expressed as a string into a real Class object). Additionally, Java's standard JavaBeans PropertyEditor
lookup mechanism allows a PropertyEditor for a class to be simply 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.
The more convenient mechanism is to use a special bean factory post-processor called CustomEditorConfigurer.
Although bean factory post-processors can be used semi-manually with BeanFactories, this one has a nested property setup, so it

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is strongly recommended that, as described here, it is used with the ApplicationContext, where it may be deployed in similar
fashion to any other bean, and automatically detected and applied.

3.10. Introduction to the ApplicationContext

While the beans package provides basic functionality for managing and manipulating beans, often in a programmatic way, the
context package adds ApplicationContext, which enhances BeanFactory functionality in a more framework-oriented
style. Many users will use ApplicationContext in a completely declarative fashion, not even having to create it manually, but
instead relying on support classes such as ContextLoader to automatically start an ApplicationContext as part of the normal
startup process of a J2EE web-app. Of course, it is still possible to programmatically create an ApplicationContext.
The basis for the context package is the ApplicationContext interface, located in the
org.springframework.context package. Deriving from the BeanFactory interface, it provides all the functionality of
BeanFactory. To allow working in a more framework-oriented fashion, using layering and hierarchical contexts, the context
package also provides the following:
● MessageSource, providing access to messages in, i18n-style
● Access to resources, such as URLs and files
● Event propagation to beans implementing the ApplicationListener interface
● Loading of multiple (hierarchical) contexts, allowing each to be focused on one particular layer, for example the web
layer of an application
As the ApplicationContext includes all functionality of the BeanFactory, it is generally recommended that it be used over the
BeanFactory, except for a few limited situations such as perhaps in an Applet, where memory consumption might be critical,
and a few extra kilobytes might make a difference. The following sections described functionality which ApplicationContext
adds to basic BeanFactory capabilities.

3.11. Added functionality of the ApplicationContext

As already stated in the previous section, the ApplicationContext has a couple of features that distinguish it from the
BeanFactory. Let us review them one-by-one.

3.11.1. Using the MessageSource

The ApplicationContext interface extends an interface called MessageSource, and therefore provides messaging (i18n or
internationalization) functionality. Together with the NestingMessageSource, capable of resolving hierarchical messages,
these are the basic interfaces Spring provides to do message resolution. Let's quickly review the methods defined there:
● 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 are used as 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 can not be found, a
NoSuchMessageException is thrown.
● String getMessage(MessageSourceResolvable resolvable, Locale locale): all properties used
in the methods above are also wrapped in a class named MessageSourceResolvable, which you can use via this
method.
When an ApplicationContext gets loaded, it automatically searches for a MessageSource bean defined in the context. The bean
has to have the name messageSource. If such a bean is found, all calls to the methods desribed above will be delegated to the
message source that was found. If no message source was found, the ApplicationContext inspects attempts to see if it has a
parent containing a bean with the same name. If so, it uses that bean as the MessageSource. If it can't find any source for

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messages, an empty StaticMessageSource will be instantiated in order to be able to accept calls to the methods defined
above.
Spring currently provides two MessageSource implementations. These are the ResourceBundleMessageSource and
the StaticMessageSource. Both implement NestingMessageSource in order to do nested messaging. The
StaticMessageSource is hardly ever used but provides programmatic ways to add messages to the source. The
ResourceBundleMessageSource is more interesting and is the one we will provides an example for:
<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>
This assumes you have three resource bundles defined on your classpath called format, exceptions and windows. Using
the JDK standard way of resolving messages through ResourceBundles, any request to resolve a message will be handled.
TODO: SHOW AN EXAMPLE

3.11.2. Propagating events

Event handling in the ApplicationContext is provided through the ApplicationEvent class and
ApplicationListener interface. If a bean which implements the ApplicationListener interface is deployed into
the context, every time an ApplicationEvent gets published to the ApplicationContext, that bean will be notified.
Essentially, this is the standard Observer design pattern. Spring provides three standard events:
Table 3.4. Built-in Events
Event Explanation
Event published when the ApplicationContext is initialized or refreshed. Initialized here means
ContextRefreshedEvent that all beans are loaded, singletons are pre-instantiated and the ApplicationContext is ready
for use
Event published when the ApplicationContext is closed, using the close() method on the
ContextClosedEvent
ApplicationContext. Closed here means that singletons are destroyed
A web-specific event telling all beans that a HTTP request has been serviced (i.e. this will be
RequestHandledEvent published after the request has been finished). Note that this event is only applicable for web
applications using Spring's DispatcherServlet

Implementing custom events can be done as well. Simply call the publishEvent() method on the ApplicationContext,
specifying a parameter which is an instance of your custom event class implementing ApplicationEvent. Let's look at an
example. First, the ApplicationContext:
<bean id="emailer" class="example.EmailBean">
<property name="blackList">
<list>
<value>[email protected]</value>
<value>[email protected]</value>
<value>[email protected]</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>

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<bean id="blackListListener" class="example.BlackListNotifier">

<property name="notificationAddress">
<value>[email protected]</value>
</property>
</bean>
and then, the actual beans:
public class EmailBean implements ApplicationContextAware {

/** the blacklist */

private List blackList;

public void setBlackList(List blackList) {

this.blackList = blackList;
}

public void setApplicationContext(ApplicationContext ctx) {

this.ctx = ctx;
}

public void sendEmail(String address, String text) {

if (blackList.contains(address)) {
BlackListEvent evt = new BlackListEvent(address, text);
ctx.publishEvent(evt);
return;
}
// send email
}
}

public class BlackListNotifier implement ApplicationListener {

/** notification address */

private String notificationAddress;

public void setNotificationAddress(String notificationAddress) {

this.notificationAddress = notificationAddress;
}

public void onApplicationEvent(ApplicationEvent evt) {

if (evt instanceof BlackListEvent) {
// notify appropriate person
}
}
}
Of course, this particular example could probably be implemented in better ways (perhaps by using AOP features), but it should
be sufficient to illustrate the basic event mechanism.

3.11.3. Using resources within Spring

Many applications need to access resources. Resources could include files, but also things like web pages or NNTP newsfeeds.
Spring provides a clean and transparent way of accessing resources in a protocol independent way. The ApplicationContext
interface includes a method (getResource(String)) to take care of this.
The Resource class defines a couple of methods that are shared across all Resource implementations:

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Table 3.5. Resource functionality

Method Explanation
getInputStream() Opens an InputStream on the resource and returns it
exists() Checks if the resource exists, returning false if it doesn't
Will return true is multiple streams cannot be opened for this resource. This will be false for some
isOpen()
resources, but file-based resources for instance, cannot be read multiple times concurrently
getDescription() Returns a description of the resource, often the fully qualified file name or the actual URL

A couple of Resource implementations are provided by Spring. They all need a String representing the actual location of the
resource. Based upon that String, Spring will automatically choose the right Resource implementation for you. When asking an
ApplicationContext for a resource first of all Spring will inspect the resource location you're specifying and look for any
prefixes. Depending on the implenentation of the ApplicationContext more or less Resource implementations are available.
Resources can best be configured by using the ResourceEditor and for example the XmlBeanFactory.

3.12. Customized behavior in the ApplicationContext

The BeanFactory already offers a number of mechanisms to control the lifecycle of beans deployed in it (such as marker
interfaces like InitializingBean or DisposableBean, their configuration only equivalents such as the init-method
and destroy-method attributes in an XmlBeanFactory config, and bean post-processors. In an ApplicationContext, all of
these still work, but additional mechanisms are added for customizing behaviour of beans and the container.

3.12.1. ApplicationContextAware marker interface

All marker interfaces available with BeanFactories still work. The ApplicationContext does add one extra marker interface
which beans may implement, org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextAware. A bean which
implements this interface and is deployed into the context will be called back on creation of the bean, using the interface's
setApplicationContext() method, and provided with a reference to the context, which may be stored for later
interaction with the context.

3.12.2. The BeanPostProcessor

Bean post-processors, java classes which implement the
org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanPostProcessor interface, have already been mentioned.
It is worth mentioning again here though, that post-processors are much more convenient to use in ApplicationContexts than in
plain BeanFactories. In an ApplicationContext, any deployed bean which implements the above marker interface is
automatically detected and registerd as a bean post-processor, to be called appropriately at creation time for each bean in the
factory.

3.12.3. The BeanFactoryPostProcessor

Bean factory post-processors, java classes which implement the
org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanFactoryPostProcessor interface, have already been
mentioned. It is worth mentioning again here though, that bean factory post-processors are much more convenient to use in
ApplicationContexts than in plain BeanFactories. In an ApplicationContext, any deployed bean which implements the above
marker interface is automatically detected as a bean factory post-processor, to be called at the appropriate time.

3.12.4. The PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer

The PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer has already been described, as used with a BeanFactory. It is worth mentioning
here though, that it is generally more convenient to use it with an ApplicationContext, since the context will automatically
recognize and apply any bean factory post-processors, such as this one, when they are simply deployed into it like any other
bean. There is no need for a manual step to execute it.

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<!-- property placeholder post-processor -->

<bean id="placeholderConfig"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="location"><value>jdbc.properties</value></property>
</bean>

3.13. Registering additional custom PropertyEditors

As previously mentioned, standard JavaBeans PropertyEditors 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 PropertyEditors to an ApplicationContext.
Consier a user class ExoticType, and another class DependsOnExoticType which needs ExoticType set as a property:
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 a real ExoticType object.:
<bean id="sample" class="example.DependsOnExoticType">
<property name="type"><value>aNameForExoticType</value></property>
</bean>
The PropertyEditor could look similar to this:
// converts string representation to ExoticType object
public class ExoticTypeEditor extends PropertyEditorSupport {

private String format;

public void setFormat(String format) {

this.format = format;
}

public void setAsText(String text) {

if (format != null && format.equals("upperCase")) {
text = text.toUpperCase();
}
ExoticType type = new ExoticType(text);
setValue(type);
}
}
Finally, we use CustomEditorConfigurer to register the new PropertyEditor with the ApplicationContext, which will
then be able to use it as needed.:
<bean id="customEditorConfigurer"

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class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.CustomEditorConfigurer">
<property name="customEditors">
<map>
<entry key="example.ExoticType">
<bean class="example.ExoticTypeEditor">
<property name="format">
<value>upperCase</value>
</property>
</bean>
</entry>
</map>
</property>
</bean>

3.14. Setting a bean property as the result of a method

invocation
It is sometimes necessary to set a property on a bean, as the result of a method call on another bean in the container, or a static
method call on any arbitrary class. Additionally, it is sometimes necessary to call a static or non-static method just to perform
some sort of initialization. For both of these purposes, a helper class called MethodInvokingFactoryBean may be used.
This is a FactoryBean which returns a value which is the result of a static or instance method invocation.
An example (in an XML based BeanFactory definition) of a bean definition which uses this class to call a static factory method:
<bean id="myClass"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean">
<property
name="staticMethod"><value>com.whatever.MyClassFactory.getInstance</value></property>
</bean>
An example of calling a static method then an instance method to get at a Java System property. Somewhat verbose, but it
works.
<bean id="sysProps"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean">
<property name="targetClass"><value>java.lang.System</value></property>
<property name="targetMethod"><value>getProperties</value></property>
</bean>
<bean id="javaVersion"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean">
<property name="targetObject"><ref local="sysProps"/></property>
<property name="targetMethod"><value>getProperty</value></property>
<property name="arguments">
<list>
<value>java.version</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
Note that as it is expected to be used mostly for accessing factory methods, MethodInvokingFactoryBean by default operates in
a singleton fashion. The first request by the container for the factory to produce an object will cause the specified method
invocation, whose return value will cached and returned for the current and subsequent requests. An internal singleton
property of the factory may be set to false, to cause it to invoke the target method each time it is asked for an object.
A static target method may be specified by setting the targetMethod property to a String representing the static method
name, with targetClass specifying the Class that the static method is defined on. Alternatively, a target instance method
may be specified, by setting the targetObject property as the target object, and the targetMethod property as the name

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of the method to call on that target object. Arguments for the method invocation may be specified by setting the args property.

3.15. Creating an ApplicationContext from a web application

As opposed to the BeanFactory, which will often be created programmatically, ApplicationContexts can be created declaratively
using for example a ContextLoader. Of course you can also create ApplicationContexts programmatically using one of the
ApplicationContext implementations. First, let's examine the ContextLoader and its implementations.
The ContextLoader has two implementations: the ContextLoaderListener and the ContextLoaderServlet. They
both have the same functionality but differ in that the listener cannot be used in Servlet 2.2 compatible containers. Since the
Servlet 2.4 specification, listeners are required to initialize after startup of a web application. A lot of 2.3 compatible containers
already implement this feature. It is up to you as to which one you use, but all things being equal you should probably prefer
ContextLoaderListener; for more information on compatibility, have a look at the JavaDoc for the
ContextLoaderServlet.
You can register an ApplicationContext using the ContextLoaderListener as follows:
<context-param>
<param-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>

<!-- OR USE THE CONTEXTLOADERSERVLET INSTEAD OF THE LISTENER

<servlet>
<servlet-name>context</servlet-name>

<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderServlet</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
-->
The listener inspects the contextConfigLocation parameter. If it doesn't exist, it'll use
/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml as a default. When it does exist, it'll separate the String using predefined
delimiters (comma, semi-colon and space) and use the values as locations where application contexts will be searched for. The
ContextLoaderServlet can - as said - be used instead of the ContextLoaderListener. The servlet will use the
contextConfigLocation parameter just as the listener does.

3.16. Glue code and the evil singleton

The majority of the code inside an application is best written in a Dependency Injection (Inversion of Control) style, where that
code is served out of a BeanFactory or ApplicationContext 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, there is sometimes a need for singleton (or quasi-singleton) style access to a BeanFactory or
ApplicationContext. For example, third party code may try to construct new objects directly (Class.forName() style),
without the ability to force it to get these objects out of a BeanFactory. If the object constructed by the third party code is just a
small stub or proxy, which then uses a singleton style access to a BeanFactory/ApplicationContext 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
BeanFactory); thus most code is still unaware of the container or how it is accessed, and remains uncoupled from other code,
with all ensuing benefits. EJBs may also use this stub/proxy approach to delegate to a plain java implementation object, coming
out of a BeanFactory. While the BeanFactory ideally does not have to be a singleton, it may be unrealistic in terms of memory

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 Chapter 3. Beans, BeanFactory and the ApplicationContext

usage or initialization times (when using beans in the BeanFactory such as a Hibernate SessionFactory) for each bean to use its
own, non-singleton BeanFactory.
As another example, in a complex J2EE apps with multiple layers (i.e. various JAR files, EJBs, and WAR files packaged as an
EAR), with each layer having its own ApplicationContext definition (effectively forming a hierarchy), the preferred approach
when there is only one web-app (WAR) in the top hierarchy is to simply create one composite ApplicationContext from the
multiple XML definition files from each layer. All the ApplicationContext variants may be constructed from multiple definition
files in this fashion. However, if there are multiple sibling web-apps at the top of the hierarchy, it is problematic to create an
ApplicationContext for each web-app which consists of mostly identical bean definitions from lower layers, as there may be
issues due to increased memory usage, issues with creating mutliple copies of beans which take a long time to initialize (i.e. a
Hibernate SessionFactory), and possible issues due to side-effects. As an alternative, classes such as
ContextSingletonBeanFactoryLocator or SingletonBeanFactoryLocator may be used to demand load
multiple hierarchical (i.e. one is a parent of another) BeanFactories or ApplicationContexts in an effectively singleton fashion,
which may then be used as the parents of the web-app ApplicationContexts. The result is that bean definitions for lower layers
are loaded only as needed, and loaded only once.

3.16.1. Using SingletonBeanFactoryLocator and

ContextSingletonBeanFactoryLocator
You can see a detailed example of using SingletonBeanFactoryLocator and
ContextSingletonBeanFactoryLocator by viewing their respective JavaDocs.
As mentioned in the chapter on EJBs, the Spring convenience base classes for EJBs normally use a non-singleton
BeanFactoryLocator implementation, which is easily replaced by the use of SingletonBeanFactoryLocator and
ContextSingletonBeanFactoryLocator if there is a need.

[1] See Section 3.3.1, Setting bean properties and collaborators

Prev Up Next
Chapter 2. Background information Home
Chapter 4. PropertyEditors, data
binding, validation and the BeanWrapper

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 Chapter 4. PropertyEditors, data binding, validation and the BeanWrapper

Chapter 4. PropertyEditors, data binding, validation and the BeanWrapper

Prev Next

Chapter 4. PropertyEditors, data binding, validation

and the BeanWrapper
4.1. Introduction
The big question is whether or not validation should be considered business logic. There are pros and cons
for both answers, and Spring offers a design for validation (and data binding) that does not exclude either
one of them. Validation should specifically not be tied to the web tier, should be easily localizable and it
should be possible to plug in any validator available. Considering the above, Spring has come up with a
Validator interface that's both basic and 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 ever have the need to use the BeanWrapper directly. Because this is
reference documentation however, we felt that some explanation might be right. We're explaining the
BeanWrapper in this chapter since if you were going to use it at all, you would probably do that when trying
to bind data to objects, which is strongly related to the BeanWrapper.
Spring uses PropertyEditors all over the place. The concept of a PropertyEditor is part of the JavaBeans
specification. Just as the BeanWrapper, it's best to explain the use of PropertyEditors in this chapter as well,
since it's closely related to the BeanWrapper and the DataBinder.

4.2. Binding data using the DataBinder

The DataBinder builds on top of the BeanWrapper[2].

4.3. Bean manipulation and the BeanWrapper

The org.springframework.beans package adheres to the JavaBeans standard provided by Sun. A
JavaBean is simply a class with a default no-argument constructor, which follows a naming conventions
where a property named prop has a setter setProp(...) and a getter getProp(). For more
information about JavaBeans and the specification, please refer to Sun's website
(java.sun.com/products/javabeans).

One quite important concept of the beans package is the BeanWrapper interface and its corresponding
implementation (BeanWrapperImpl). As quoted from the JavaDoc, the BeanWrapper offers
functionnality to set and get property values (individually or in bulk), get property descriptors and query the

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 Chapter 4. PropertyEditors, data binding, validation and the BeanWrapper

readability and writability of properties. Also, the BeanWrapper offers support for nested properties,
enabling the setting of properties on subproperties to an unlimited depth. Then, the BeanWrapper support the
ability to add standard JavaBeans PropertyChangeListeners and VetoableChangeListeners,
without the need for supporting code in the target class. Last but not least, the BeanWrapper provides support
for the setting of indexed properties. The BeanWrapper usually isn't used by application code directly, but by
the DataBinder and the BeanFactory.
The way the BeanWrapper works is partly indicated by its name: it wraps a bean to perform actions on that
bean, like setting and retrieving properties.

4.3.1. Setting and getting basic and nested properties

Setting and getting properties is done using the setPropertyValue(s) and getPropertyValue(s)
methods that both come with a couple of overloaded variants. They're all described in more detail in the
JavaDoc Spring comes with. What's important to know is that there are a couple of conventions for
indicating properties of an object. A couple of examples:
Table 4.1. Examples of properties
Expression Explanation
Indicates the property name corresponding to the methods getName() or
name
isName() and setName()
Indicates the nested property name of the property account corresponding
account.name e.g. to the methods getAccount().setName() or
getAccount().getName()
Indicates the third element of the indexed property account. Indexed
account[2] properties can be of type array, list or other naturally ordered
collection
Indicates the value of the map entry indexed by the key COMPANYNAME
account[COMPANYNAME]
of the Map property account

Below you'll find some examples of working with the BeanWrapper to get and set properties.
Note: this part is not important to you if you're not planning to work with the BeanWrapper directly. If
you're just using the DataBinder and the BeanFactory and their out-of-the-box implementation, you
should skip ahead to the section about PropertyEditors.
Consider the following two classes:
public class Company {
private String name;
private Employee managingDirector;

public String getName() {

return this.name;
}
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}

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public Employee getManagingDirector() {

return this.managingDirector;
}
public void setManagingDirector(Employee managingDirector) {
this.managingDirector = managingDirector;
}
}
public class Employee {
private float salary;

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
Company c = new Company();
BeanWrapper bwComp = BeanWrapperImpl(c);
// setting the company name...
bwComp.setPropertyValue("name", "Some Company Inc.");
// ... can also be done like this:
PropertyValue v = new PropertyValue("name", "Some Company Inc.");
bwComp.setPropertyValue(v);

// ok, let's create the director and tie it to the company:

Employee jim = new Employee();
BeanWrapper bwJim = BeanWrapperImpl(jim);
bwJim.setPropertyValue("name", "Jim Stravinsky");
bwComp.setPropertyValue("managingDirector", jim);

// retrieving the salary of the managingDirector through the company

Float salary = (Float)bwComp.getPropertyValue("managingDirector.salary");

4.3.2. Built-in PropertyEditors, converting types

Spring heavily uses the concept of PropertyEditors. Sometimes it 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, while we're still able to convert the human readable form back to the original date (or
even better: convert any date entered in a human readable form, back to Date objects). This behavior can be
achieved by registering custom editors, of type java.beans.PropertyEditor. Registering custom
editors on a BeanWrapper gives it the knowledge of how to convert properties to the desired type. Read more
about PropertyEditors in the JavaDoc of the java.beans package provided by Sun.

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 Chapter 4. PropertyEditors, data binding, validation and the BeanWrapper

A couple of examples where property editing is used in Spring

● setting properties on beans is done using PropertyEditors. When mentioning java.lang.String
as the value of a property of some bean you're declaring in XML file, Spring will (if the setter of the
corresponding property has a Class-parameter) use the ClassEditor to try to resolve the parameter
to a Class object
● parsing HTTP request parameters in Spring's MVC framework is done using all kinds of
PropertyEditors that you can manually bind in all subclasses of the CommandController
Spring has a number of built-in PropertyEditors to make life easy. Each of those is listed below and they are
all located in the org.springframework.beans.propertyeditors package:
Table 4.2. Built-in PropertyEditors
Class Explanation
Parses Strings representing classes to actual classes and the other
ClassEditor way around. When a class is not found, an IllegalArgumentException
is thrown
FileEditor Capable of resolving Strings to File-objects
Capable of resolving Strings to Locale-objects and vice versa (the
LocaleEditor String format is [language]_[country]_[variant], which is the same
thing the toString() method of Locale provides
Capable of converting Strings (formatted using the format as defined
PropertiesEditor in the Javadoc for the java.lang.Properties class) to
Properties-objects
Capable of resolving a comma-delimited list of String to a
StringArrayPropertyEditor
String-array and vice versa
Capable of resolving a String representation of a URL to an actual
URLEditor
URL-object

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 PropertyEditors
for Font, Color and all the primitive types.

4.3.3. Other features worth mentioning

Besides the features you've seen in the previous sections there a couple of features that might be interesting
to you, though not worth an entire section.
● determining readability and writability: using the isReadable() and isWritable() methods,
you can determine whether or not a property is readable or writable
● retrieving PropertyDescriptors: using getPropertyDescriptor(String) and
getPropertyDescriptors() you can retrieve objects of type
java.beans.PropertyDescriptor, that might come in handy sometimes

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[2] See the beans chapter for more information

Prev Up Next
Chapter 3. Beans, BeanFactory and the Home
Chapter 5. Spring AOP: Aspect
ApplicationContext Oriented Programming with Spring

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 Chapter 5. Spring AOP: Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring

Chapter 5. Spring AOP: Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring

Prev Next

Chapter 5. Spring AOP: Aspect Oriented Programming with

Spring
5.1. Concepts
Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) complements OOP by providing another way of thinking about program structure. While
OO decomposes applications into a hierarchy of objects, AOP decomposes programs into aspects or concerns. This enables
modularization of concerns such as transaction management that would otherwise cut across multiple objects. (Such concerns are
often termed crosscutting concerns.)
One of the key components of Spring is the AOP framework. While the Spring IoC containers (BeanFactory and
ApplicationContext) do not depend on AOP, meaning you don't need to use AOP if you don't want to, AOP complements Spring
IoC to provide a very capable middleware solution.
AOP is used in Spring:
● To provide declarative enterprise services, especially as a replacement for EJB declarative services. The most important such
service is declarative transaction management, which builds on Spring's transaction abstraction.
● To allow users to implement custom aspects, complementing their use of OOP with AOP.
Thus you can view Spring AOP as either an enabling technology that allows Spring to provide declarative transaction management
without EJB; or use the full power of the Spring AOP framework to implement custom aspects.
If you are interested only in generic declarative services or other pre-packaged declarative middleware services such as pooling,
you don't need to work directly with Spring AOP, and can skip most of this chapter.

5.1.1. AOP concepts

Let us begin by defining some central AOP concepts. 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 for which the implementation might otherwise cut across multiple objects.
Transaction management is a good example of a crosscutting concern in J2EE applications. Aspects are implemented using
Spring as Advisors or interceptors.
● Joinpoint: Point during the execution of a program, such as a method invocation or a particular exception being thrown. In
Spring AOP, a joinpoint is always method invocation. Spring does not use the term joinpoint prominently; joinpoint
information is accessible through methods on the MethodInvocation argument passed to interceptors, and is evaluated
by implementations of the org.springframework.aop.Pointcut interface.
● Advice: Action taken by the AOP framework at a particular joinpoint. Different types of advice include "around," "before"
and "throws" advice. Advice types are discussed below. Many AOP frameworks, including Spring, model an advice as an
interceptor, maintaining a chain of interceptors "around" the joinpoint.
● Pointcut: A set of joinpoints specifying when an advice should fire. An AOP framework must allow developers to specify
pointcuts: for example, using regular expressions.
● Introduction: Adding methods or fields to an advised class. Spring allows you to introduce new interfaces to any advised
object. For example, you could use an introduction to make any object implement an IsModified interface, to simplify
caching.
● Target object: Object containing the joinpoint. Also referred to as advised or proxied object.
● AOP proxy: Object created by the AOP framework, including advice. In Spring, an AOP proxy will be a JDK dynamic proxy
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● Weaving: Assembling aspects to create an advised object. This can be done at compile time (using the AspectJ compiler, for
example), or at runtime. Spring, like other pure Java AOP frameworks, performs weaving at runtime.
Different advice types include:
● Around advice: Advice that surrounds a joinpoint such as a method invocation. This is the most powerful kind of advice.
Around advices will perform custom behaviour before and after the method invocation. They are responsible for choosing
whether to proceed to the joinpoint or to shortcut executing by returning their own return value or throwing an exception.
● Before advice: Advice that executes before a joinpoint, but which does not have the ability to prevent execution flow
proceeding to the joinpoint (unless it throws an exception).
● Throws advice: Advice to be executed if a method throws an exception. Spring provides strongly typed throws advice, so
you can write code that catches the exception (and subclasses) you're interested in, without needing to cast from Throwable
or Exception.
● After returning advice: Advice to be executed after a joinpoint completes normally: for example, if a method returns without
throwing an exception.
Around advice is the most general kind of advice. Most interception-based AOP frameworks, such as Nanning Aspects, provide
only around advice.
As Spring, like AspectJ, provides a full range of advice types, we recommend that you use the least powerful advice type that can
implement the required behaviour. 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 don't
need to invoke the proceed() method on the MethodInvocation used for around advice, and hence can't fail to invoke it.
The pointcut concept is the key to AOP, distinguishing AOP from older technologies offering interception. Pointcuts enable advice
to be targeted independently of the OO hierarchy. For example, an around advice providing declarative transaction management
can be applied to a set of methods spanning multiple objects. Thus pointcuts provide the structural element of AOP.

5.1.2. Spring AOP capabilities and goals

Spring AOP is implemented in pure Java. There is no need for a special compilation process. Spring AOP does not need to control
the class loader hierarchy, and is thus suitable for use in a J2EE web container or application server.
Spring currently supports interception of method invocations. Field interception is not implemented, although support for field
interception could be added without breaking the core Spring AOP APIs.
Field interception arguably violates OO encapsulation. We don't believe it is wise in application development. If you require field
interception, consider using AspectJ.
Spring provides classes to represent pointcuts and different advice types. Spring uses the term advisor for an object representing an
aspect, including both an advice and a pointcut targeting it to specific joinpoints.
Different advice types are MethodInterceptor (from the AOP Alliance interception API); and the advice interfaces defined in
the org.springframework.aop package. All advices must implement the org.aopalliance.aop.Advice tag
interface. Advices supported out the box are MethodInterceptor ; ThrowsAdvice; BeforeAdvice; and
AfterReturningAdvice. We'll discuss advice types in detail below.
Spring implements the AOP Alliance interception interfaces (http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/aopalliance). Around advice must
implement the AOP Alliance org.aopalliance.intercept.MethodInterceptor interface. Implementations of this
interface can run in Spring or any other AOP Alliance compliant implementation. Currently JAC implements the AOP Alliance
interfaces, and Nanning and Dynaop are likely to in early 2004.
Spring's approach to AOP differs from that of most other AOP frameworks. The aim is not to provide the most complete AOP
implementation (although Spring AOP is quite capable); it is rather to provide a close integration between AOP implementation
and Spring IoC to help solve common problems in enterprise applications.
Thus, for example, Spring's AOP functionality is normally used in conjunction with a Spring IoC container. AOP advice is
specified using normal bean definition syntax (although this allows powerful "autoproxying" capabilities); advice and pointcuts are

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themselves managed by Spring IoC: a crucial difference from other AOP implementations. There are some things you can't do
easily or efficiently with Spring AOP, such as advise very fine-grained objects. AspectJ is probably the best choice in such cases.
However, our experience is that Spring AOP provides an excellent solution to most problems in J2EE applications that are
amenable to AOP.
Spring AOP will never strive to compete with AspectJ or AspectWerkz to provide a comprehensive AOP solution. We believe that
both proxy-based frameworks like Spring and full-blown frameworks such as AspectJ are valuable, and that they are
complementary, rather than in competition. Thus a major priority for Spring 1.1 will be seamlessly integrating 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
will not affect the Spring AOP API or the AOP Alliance API; Spring AOP will remain backward-compatible.

5.1.3. AOP Proxies in Spring

Spring defaults to using J2SE dynamic proxies for AOP proxies. This enables any interface or set of interfaces to be proxied.
Spring can also use CGLIB proxies. This is necessary to proxy classes, rather than interfaces. CGLIB is used by default if a
business object doesn't implement an interface. As it's good practice to program to interfaces rather than classes, business objects
normally will implement one or more business interfaces.
It is possible to force the use of CGLIB: we'll discuss this below, and explain why you'd want to do this.
Beyond Spring 1.0, Spring may offer additional types of AOP proxy, including wholly generated classes. This won't affect the
programming model.

5.2. Pointcuts in Spring

Let's look at how Spring handles the crucial pointcut concept.

5.2.1. Concepts
Spring's pointcut model enables pointcut reuse independent of advice types. It's possible to target different advice using the same
pointcut.
The org.springframework.aop.Pointcut interface is the central interface, used to target advices to particular classes
and methods. The complete interface is shown below:
public interface Pointcut {

ClassFilter getClassFilter();

MethodMatcher getMethodMatcher();

}
Splitting the Pointcut interface into two parts allows reuse of class and method matching parts, and fine-grained composition
operations (such as performing a "union" with another method matcher).
The ClassFilter interface is used to restrict the pointcut to a given set of target classes. If the matches() method always
returns true, all target classes will be matched:
public interface ClassFilter {

boolean matches(Class clazz);

}
The MethodMatcher interface is normally more important. The complete interface is shown below:
public interface MethodMatcher {

boolean matches(Method m, Class targetClass);

boolean isRuntime();

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boolean matches(Method m, Class targetClass, Object[] args);

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

5.2.2. Operations on pointcuts

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

5.2.3. 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.

5.2.3.1. Static pointcuts

Static pointcuts are based on method and target class, and cannot take into account the method's arguments. Static pointcuts are
sufficient--and best--for most usages. It's possible for Spring to evaluate a static pointcut only once, when a method is first invoked:
after that, there is no need to evaluate the pointcut again with each method invocation.
Let's consider some static pointcut implementations included with Spring.

5.2.3.1.1. Regular expression pointcuts

One obvious way to specific static pointcuts is regular expressions. Several AOP frameworks besides Spring make this possible.
org.springframework.aop.support.RegexpMethodPointcut is a generic regular expression pointcut, using Perl 5
regular expression syntax.
Using this 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.RegexpMethodPointcut">
<property name="patterns">
<list>
<value>.*get.*</value>
<value>.*absquatulate</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>

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A convenience subclass of RegexpMethodPointcut, RegexpMethodPointcutAdvisor, allows us to reference an
Advice also. (Remember that an Advice can be an interceptor, before advice, throws advice etc.) This simplifies wiring, as the one
bean serves as both pointcut and advisor, as shown below:
<bean id="settersAndAbsquatulateAdvisor"
class="org.springframework.aop.support.RegexpMethodPointcutAdvisor">
<property name="advice">
<ref local="beanNameOfAopAllianceInterceptor"/>
</property>
<property name="patterns">
<list>
<value>.*get.*</value>
<value>.*absquatulate</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
RegexpMethodPointcutAdvisor can be used with any Advice type.
The RegexpMethodPointcut class requires the Jakarta ORO regular expression package.

5.2.3.1.2. 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.

5.2.3.2. 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.

5.2.3.2.1. 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 another pointcut.) A control flow pointcut matches the current call stack. For
example, it might fire if the joinpoint 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] 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; in Java 1.3 more than 10.

5.2.4. Pointcut superclasses

Spring provides useful pointcut superclasses to help you to implement your own pointcuts.
Because static pointcuts are most useful, you'll probably subclass StaticMethodMatcherPointcut, as shown below. This requires
implemented just one abstract method (although it's possible to override other methods to customize behaviour):
class TestStaticPointcut extends StaticMethodMatcherPointcut {

public boolean matches(Method m, Class targetClass) {

// return true if custom criteria match
}
}
There are also superclasses for dynamic pointcuts.

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

5.2.5. Custom pointcuts

Because pointcuts in Spring are Java classes, rather than language features (as in AspectJ) it's possible to declare custom pointcuts,
whether static or dynamic. However, there is no support out of the box for the sophisticated pointcut expressions that can be coded
in AspectJ syntax. However, custom pointcuts in Spring can be arbitrarily complex.
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."

5.3. Advice types in Spring

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

5.3.1. Advice lifecycles

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

5.3.2. Advice types in Spring

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

5.3.2.1. 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 joinpoint; the AOP proxy;
and the arguments to the method. The invoke() method should return the invocation's result: the return value of the joinpoint.
A simple MethodInterceptor implementation looks as follows:
public class DebugInterceptor implements MethodInterceptor {

public Object invoke(MethodInvocation invocation) throws Throwable {

System.out.println("Before: invocation=[" + invocation + "]");
Object rval = invocation.proceed();
System.out.println("Invocation returned");
return rval;
}
}
Note the call to the MethodInvocation's proceed() method. This proceeds down the interceptor chain towards the joinpoint. Most
interceptors will invoke this method, and return its return value. However, a MethodInterceptor, like any around advice, can return

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a different value or throw an exception rather than invoke the proceed method. However, you don't want to do this without good
reason!
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.

5.3.2.2. Before advice

A simpler advice type is a before advice. This does not need a MethodInvocation object, since it will only be called before
entering the method.
The main advantage of a before advice is that there is no need to invoke the proceed() method, and therefore no possibility of
inadvertently failing to proceed down the interceptor chain.
The MethodBeforeAdvice interface is shown below. (Spring's API design would allow for field before advice, although the
usual objects apply to field interception and it's unlikely that Spring will ever implement it).
public interface MethodBeforeAdvice extends BeforeAdvice {

void before(Method m, Object[] args, Object target) throws Throwable;

}
Note the the return type is void. Before advice can insert custom behaviour before the joinpoint 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 methods that return normally:
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;
}
}
Before advice can be used with any pointcut.

5.3.2.3. Throws advice

Throws advice is invoked after the return of the joinpoint if the joinpoint 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 of form
afterThrowing([Method], [args], [target], subclassOfThrowable)
Only the last argument is required. Thus there from one to four arguments, depending on whether the advice method is interested in
the method and arguments. The following are examples of throws advices.
This advice will be 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
}
}

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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 static class ServletThrowsAdviceWithArguments implements ThrowsAdvice {

public void afterThrowing(Method m, Object[] args, Object target,

ServletException ex) {
// Do something will 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 will all arguments
}
}
Throws advice can be used with any pointcut.

5.3.2.4. 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 doesn't change the execution path. If it throws an exception, this will be thrown up the interceptor chain instead of the
return value.
After returning advice can be used with any pointcut.

5.3.2.5. Introduction advice

Spring treats introduction advice as a special kind of interception advice.

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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 InterceptionIntroductionAdvisor, which has the following methods:
public interface InterceptionIntroductionAdvisor extends InterceptionAdvisor {

ClassFilter getClassFilter();

IntroductionInterceptor getIntroductionInterceptor();

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

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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 isn't necessary to override the invoke() method: the DelegatingIntroductionInterceptor
implementation--which calls the delegate method if the method is introduced, otherwise proceeds towards the joinpoint--is usually
sufficient. In the present case, we need to add a check: no setter method can be invoked if in locked mode.
The introduction advisor required is simple. All it needs to do is hold a distinct LockMixin instance, and specify the introduced
interfaces--in this case, just Lockable. A more complex example might take a reference to the introduction interceptor (which
would be defined as a prototype): in this case, there's no configuration relevant for a LockMixin, so we simply create it using
new.
public class LockMixinAdvisor extends DefaultIntroductionAdvisor {

public LockMixinAdvisor() {
super(new LockMixin(), Lockable.class);
}
}
We can apply this advisor very simply: it requires no configuration. (However, it is necessary: It's impossible to use an
IntroductionInterceptor without an IntroductionAdvisor.) As usual with introductions, the advisor must be per-instance,
as it is stateful. We need a different instance of LockMixinAdvisor, and hence LockMixin, for each advised object. The
advisor comprises part of the advised object's state.
We can apply this advisor programmatically, using the Advised.addAdvisor() method, or (the recommended way) in XML
configuration, like any other advisor. All proxy creation choices discussed below, including "auto proxy creators," correctly handle
introductions and stateful mixins.

5.4. Advisors in Spring

In Spring, an Advisor is a modularization of an aspect. Advisors typically incorporate both an advice and a pointcut.
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 create

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interceptor chain.

5.5. Using the ProxyFactoryBean to create AOP proxies

If you're using the Spring IoC container (an ApplicationContext or BeanFactory) for your business objects--and you should
be!--you will want to use one of Spring's AOP FactoryBeans. (Remember that a factory bean introduces a layer of indirection,
enabling it to create objects of a different type).
The basic way to create an AOP proxy in Spring is to use the org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean. This gives
complete control over the pointcuts and advice that will apply, and their ordering. However, there are simpler options that are
preferable if you don't need such control.

5.5.1. Basics
The ProxyFactoryBean, like other Spring FactoryBean implementations, introduces a level of indirection. If you define a
ProxyFactoryBean with name foo, what objects referencing foo see is not the ProxyFactoryBean instance itself, but an
object created by the ProxyFactoryBean's implementation of the getObject() method. This method will create an AOP
proxy wrapping a target object.
One of the most important benefits of using a ProxyFactoryBean or other 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.

5.5.2. JavaBean properties

Like most FactoryBean implementations provided with Spring, ProxyFactoryBean is itself a JavaBean. Its properties are used
to:
● Specify the target you want to proxy
● Specify whether to use CGLIB
Some key properties are inherited from org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyConfig: the superclass for all
AOP proxy factories. These include:
● proxyTargetClass: true if we should proxy the target class, rather than its interfaces. If this is true we need to use
CGLIB.
● optimize: whether to apply aggressive optimization to created proxies. Don't use this setting unless you understand how
the relevant AOP proxy handles optimization. This is currently used only for CGLIB proxies; it has no effect with JDK
dynamic proxies (the default).
● frozen: whether advice changes should be disallowed once the proxy factory has been configured. Default is false.
● exposeProxy: whether the current proxy should be exposed in a ThreadLocal so that it can be accessed by the target. (It's
available via the MethodInvocation without the need for a ThreadLocal.) If a target needs to obtain the proxy and
exposeProxy is 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's intended to allow the addition of new proxy types in Spring
1.1.
Other properties specific to ProxyFactoryBean include:
● proxyInterfaces: array of String interface names. If this isn't supplied, a CGLIB proxy for the target class will be used
● interceptorNames: String array of Advisor, interceptor or other advice names to apply. Ordering is significant. The
names are bean names in the current factory, including bean names from ancestor factories.

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● 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. 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.

5.5.3. Proxying interfaces

Let's look at a simple example of ProxyFactoryBean in action. This example involves:
● A target bean that will be proxied. This is the "personTarget" bean definition in the example below.
● An Advisor and an Interceptor used to provide advice.
●An AOP proxy bean definition specifying the target object (the personTarget bean) and the interfaces to proxy, along with
the advices to apply.
<bean id="personTarget" class="com.mycompany.PersonImpl">
<property name="name"><value>Tony</value></property>
<property name="age"><value>51</value></property>
</bean>

<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 local="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.
You might be wondering why the list doesn't hold bean references. The reason for this is that if the ProxyFactoryBean's singleton
property is set to false, it must be able to return independent proxy instances. If any of the advisors is itself a prototype, an
independent instance would need to be returned, so it's necessary to be able to obtain an instance of the prototype from the factory;
holding a reference isn't sufficient.
The "person" bean definition above can be used in place of a Person implementation, as follows:
Person person = (Person) factory.getBean("person");
Other beans in the same IoC context can express a strongly typed dependency on it, as with an ordinary Java object:
<bean id="personUser" class="com.mycompany.PersonUser">
<property name="person"><ref local="person" /></property>
</bean>
The PersonUser class in this example would expose a property of type Person. As far as it's concerned, the AOP proxy can be

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used transparently in place of a "real" person implementation. However, its class would be a dynamic proxy class. It would be
possible to cast it to the Advised interface (discussed below).
It's possible to conceal the distinction between target and proxy using an anonymous inner bean, as follows. Only the
ProxyFactoryBean definition is different; the advice is included only for completeness:
<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>

<!-- 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 there's only one object of type Person: useful if we want to prevent users of the application context
obtaining a reference to the un-advised object, or need to avoid any ambiguity with Spring IoC autowiring. There's also arguably an
advantage in that the ProxyFactoryBean definition is self-contained. However, there are times when being able to obtain the
un-advised target from the factory might actually be an advantage: for example, in certain test scenarios.

5.5.4. Proxying classes

What if you need to proxy a class, rather than one or more interfaces?
Imagine that in our example above, there was no Person interface: we needed to advise a class called Person that didn't
implement any business interface. In this case, you can configure Spring to use CGLIB proxying, rather than dynamic proxies.
Simply set the proxyTargetClass property on the ProxyFactoryBean above to true. While it's best to program to interfaces,
rather than classes, the ability to advise classes that don't implement interfaces can be useful when working with legacy code. (In
general, Spring isn't prescriptive. While it makes it easy to apply good practices, it avoids forcing a particular approach.)
If you want to you can force the use of CGLIB in any case, even if you do have interfaces.
CGLIB proxying works by generating a subclass of the target class at runtime. Spring configures this generated subclass to
delegate method calls to the original target: the subclass is used to implement the Decorator pattern, weaving in the advice.
CGLIB proxying should generally be transparent to users. However, there are some issues to consider:
● Final methods can't be advised, as they can't be overridden.
● You'll need the CGLIB 2 binaries on your classpath; dynamic proxies are available with the JDK

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There's little performance difference between CGLIB proxying and dynamic proxies. As of Spring 1.0, dynamic proxies are
slightly faster. However, this may change in the future. Performance should not be a decisive consideration in this case.

5.6. Convenient proxy creation

Often we don't need the full power of the ProxyFactoryBean, because we're only interested in one aspect: For example,
transaction management.
There are a number of convenience factories we can use to create AOP proxies when we want to focus on a specific aspect. These
are discussed in other chapters, so we'll just provide a quick survey of some of them here.

5.6.1. TransactionProxyFactoryBean
The jPetStore sample application shipped with Spring shows the use of the TransactionProxyFactoryBean.
The TransactionProxyFactoryBean is a subclass of ProxyConfig, so basic configuration is shared with
ProxyFactoryBean. (See list of ProxyConfig properties above.)
The following example from the jPetStore illustrates how this works. As with a ProxyFactoryBean, there is a target bean
definition. Dependencies should be expressed on the proxied factory bean definition ("petStore" here), rather than the target POJO
("petStoreTarget").
The TransactionProxyFactoryBean requires a target, and information about "transaction attributes," specifying which
methods should be transactional and the required propagation and other settings:
<bean id="petStoreTarget"
class="org.springframework.samples.jpetstore.domain.logic.PetStoreImpl">
<property name="accountDao"><ref bean="accountDao"/></property>
<!-- Other dependencies omitted -->
</bean>

<bean id="petStore"
class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="transactionManager"><ref bean="transactionManager"/></property>
<property name="target"><ref local="petStoreTarget"/></property>
<property name="transactionAttributes">
<props>
<prop key="insert*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
<prop key="update*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
<prop key="*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED,readOnly</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
As with the ProxyFactoryBean, we might choose to use an inner bean to set the value of target property, instead of a
reference to a top-level target bean.
The TransactionProxyFactoryBean automatically creates a transaction advisor, including a pointcut based on the
transaction attributes, so only transactional methods are advised.
The TransactionProxyFactoryBean allows the specification of "pre" and "post" advice, using the preInterceptors and
postInterceptors properties. These take Object arrays of interceptors, other advice or Advisors to place in the interception chain
before or after the transaction interceptor. These can be populated using a <list> element in XML bean definitions, as follows:
<property name="preInterceptors">
<list>
<ref local="authorizationInterceptor"/>
<ref local="notificationBeforeAdvice"/>
</list>
</property>

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<property name="postInterceptors">
<list>
<ref local="myAdvisor"/>
</list>
</property>
These properties could be added to the "petStore" bean definition above. A common usage is to combine transactionality with
declarative security: a similar approach to that offered by EJB.
Because of the use of actual instance references, rather than bean names as in ProxyFactoryBean, pre and post interceptors can
be used only for shared-instance advice. Thus they are not useful for stateful advice: for example, in mixins. This is consistent with
the TransactionProxyFactoryBean's purpose. It provides a simple way of doing common transaction setup. If you need more
complex, customized, AOP, consider using the generic ProxyFactoryBean, or an auto proxy creator (see below).
Especially if we view Spring AOP as, in many cases, a replacement for EJB, we find that most advice is fairly generic and uses a
shared-instance model. Declarative transaction management and security checks are classic examples.
The TransactionProxyFactoryBean depends on a PlatformTransactionManager implementation via its
transactionManager JavaBean property. This allows for pluggable transaction implementation, based on JTA, JDBC or other
strategies. This relates to the Spring transaction abstraction, rather than AOP. We'll discuss the transaction infrastructure in the next
chapter.
If you're interested only in declarative transaction management, the TransactionProxyFactoryBean is a good solution, and simpler
than using a ProxyFactoryBean.

5.6.2. EJB proxies

Other dedicated proxies create proxies for EJBs, enabling the EJB "business methods" interface to be used directly by calling code.
Calling code does not need to perform JNDI lookups or use EJB create methods: A significant improvement in readability and
architectural flexibility.
See the chapter on Spring EJB services in this manual for further information.

5.7. 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" lazy-init="true"

class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="transactionManager"><ref
local="transactionManager"/></ref></property>
<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 to wraps the target of the proxy as an inner bean definition, since the target will never be used on its own
anyways.
<bean id="myService" parent="txProxyTemplate">
<property name="target">
<bean class="org.springframework.samples.MyServiceImpl">
</bean>
</property>

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</bean>
It is of course possible to override properties from the parent template, such as in this case, the transaction propagation settings:
<bean id="mySpecialService" parent="txProxyTemplate">
<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: the parent definition has the lazy-init attribute set to true; this is so that Spring does not try to pre-instantiate it in the context
as its own bean. Springs XMLApplicationConext by default pre-instantiates all singleton beans. The exception to this is if the bean
is marked as lazy-init, or there is no class specified for the bean; the latter makes Spring consider the definition a purely abstract
one, not able to be instantiated itself.

5.8. Creating AOP proxies programmatically with the

ProxyFactory
It's easy to create AOP proxies programmatically using Spring. This enables you to use Spring AOP without dependency on Spring
IoC.
The following listing shows creation of a proxy for a target object, with one interceptor and one advisor. The interfaces
implemented by the target object will automatically be proxied:
ProxyFactory factory = new ProxyFactory(myBusinessInterfaceImpl);
factory.addInterceptor(myMethodInterceptor);
factory.addAdvisor(myAdvisor);
MyBusinessInterface tb = (MyBusinessInterface) factory.getProxy();
The first step is to contruct a 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) allowing you to add other advice types such
as before and throws advice. AdvisedSupport is the superclass of both ProxyFactory and ProxyFactoryBean.
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.

5.9. 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, whatever
other interfaces it implements. This interface includes the following methods:
Advisor[] getAdvisors();

void addAdvice(Advice advice) throws AopConfigException;

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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 introduction).
By default, it's possible to add or remove advisors or interceptors even once a proxy has been created. The only restriction is that
it's impossible to add or remove an introduction advisor, as existing proxies from the factory will not show the interface change.
(You can obtain a new proxy from the factory to avoid this problem.)
A simple example of casting an AOP proxy to the Advised interface and examining and manipulating its advice:
Advised advised = (Advised) myObject;
Advisor[] advisors = advised.getAdvisors();
int oldAdvisorCount = advisors.length;
System.out.println(oldAdvisorCount + " advisors");

// Add an advice like an interceptor without a pointcut

// Will match all proxied methods
// Can use for interceptors, before, after returning or throws advice
advised.addAdvice(new DebugInterceptor());

// Add selective advice using a pointcut

advised.addAdvisor(new DefaultPointcutAdvisor(mySpecialPointcut, myAdvice));

assertEquals("Added two advisors",

oldAdvisorCount + 2, advised.getAdvisors().length);
It's questionable whether it's advisable (no pun intended) to modify advice on a business object in production, although there are
no doubt legitimate usage cases. However, it can be very useful in development: for example, in tests. I have sometimes found it
very useful to be able to add test code in the form of an interceptor or other advice, getting inside a method invocation I want to
test. (For example, the advice can get inside a transaction created for that method: for example, to run SQL to check that a
database was correctly updated, before marking the transaction for roll back.)
Depending on how you created the proxy, you can usually set a frozen flag, in which case the Advised isFrozen() method
will return true, and any attempts to modify advice through addition or removal will result in an AopConfigException. The
ability to freeze the state of an advised object is useful in some cases: For example, to prevent calling code removing a security
interceptor. It may also be used in Spring 1.1 to allow aggressive optimization if runtime advice modification is known not to be
required.

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5.10. Using the "autoproxy" facility

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

5.10.1. Autoproxy bean definitions

The org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy package provides the following standard autoproxy creators.

5.10.1.1. BeanNameAutoProxyCreator

The BeanNameAutoProxyCreator automatically creates AOP proxies for beans with names matching literal values or wildcards.
<bean id="jdkBeanNameProxyCreator"
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 interceptor, to allow correct behaviour
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, and 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.

5.10.1.2. 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 advisor's bean
definition. It offers the same merit of consistent configuration and avoidance of duplication as BeanNameAutoProxyCreator.
Using this mechanism involves:
● Specifying a DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator bean definition
● Specifying any number of Advisors in the same or related contexts. Note that these must be Advisors, not just interceptors or
other advices. This is necessary because there must be a pointcut to evaluate, to check the eligibility of each advice to
candidate bean definitions.
The DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator will automatically evaluate the pointcut contained in each advisor, to see what (if

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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 id="autoProxyCreator"

class="org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy.DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator">
</bean>

<bean id="txAdvisor"
autowire="constructor"

class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor">
<property name="order"><value>1</value></property>
</bean>

<bean id="customAdvisor"
class="com.mycompany.MyAdvisor">
</bean>

<bean id="businessObject1"
class="com.mycompany.BusinessObject1">
<!-- Properties omitted -->
</bean>

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

5.10.1.3. 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 behaviour of the framework
DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator.

5.10.2. Using metadata-driven autoproxying

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.

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This is really a special case of the DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator, but deserves consideration on its own. (The
metadata-aware code is in the pointcuts contained in the advisors, not the AOP framework itself.)
The /attributes directory of the jPetStore sample application shows the use of attribute-driven autoproxying. In this case,
there's no need to use the TransactionProxyFactoryBean. Simply defining transactional attributes on business objects is
sufficient, because of the use of metadata-aware pointcuts. The bean definitions include the following code, in
/WEB-INF/declarativeServices.xml. Note that this is generic, and can be used outside the jPetStore:
<bean id="autoproxy"

class="org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy.DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator">
</bean>

<bean id="transactionAttributeSource"

class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.AttributesTransactionAttributeSource"
autowire="constructor">
</bean>

<bean id="transactionInterceptor"
class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor"
autowire="byType">
</bean>

<bean id="transactionAdvisor"

class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor"
autowire="constructor" >
</bean>

<bean id="attributes"
class="org.springframework.metadata.commons.CommonsAttributes"
/>
The DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator bean definition--called "advisor" in this case, but the name is not significant--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 fragement, 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 TransactionInterceptor defined here depends on a PlatformTransactionManager definition, which is not
included in this generic file (although it could be) because it will be specific to the application's transaction requirements (typically
JTA, as in this example, or Hibernate, JDO or JDBC):
<bean id="transactionManager"
class="org.springframework.transaction.jta.JtaTransactionManager"/>
If you require only declarative transaction management, using these generic XML definitions will result in Spring automatically
proxying all classes or methods with transaction attributes. You won't need to work directly with AOP, and the programming model
is similar to that of .NET ServicedComponents.
This mechanism is extensible. It's possible to do autoproxying based on custom attributes. You need to:
● Define your custom attribute.
● Specify an Advisor with the necessary advice, including a pointcut that is triggered by the presence of the custom attribute
on a class or method. You may be able to use an existing advice, merely implementing a static pointcut that picks up the
custom attribute.

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It's possible for such advisors to be unique to each advised class (for example, mixins): they simply need to be defined as prototype,
rather than singleton, bean definitions. For example, the LockMixin introduction interceptor from the Spring test suite, shown
above. could be used in conjunction with an attribute-driven pointcut to target a mixin, as shown here. We use the generic
DefaultPointcutAdvisor, configured using JavaBean properties:
<bean id="lockMixin"
class="org.springframework.aop.LockMixin"
singleton="false"
/>

<bean id="lockableAdvisor"
class="org.springframework.aop.support.DefaultPointcutAdvisor"
singleton="false"
>
<property name="pointcut">
<ref local="myAttributeAwarePointcut"/>
</property>
<property name="advice">
<ref local="lockMixin"/>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="anyBean" class="anyclass" ...

If the attribute aware pointcut matches any methods in the anyBean or other bean definitions, the mixin will be applied. Note that
both lockMixin and lockableAdvisor definitions are prototypes. The myAttributeAwarePointcut pointcut can be a
singleton definition, as it doesn't hold state for individual advised objects.

5.11. 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 joinpoint. The TargetSource implementation is asked
for a target instance each time the AOP proxy handles a method invocation.
Developers using Spring AOP don't normally need to work directly with TargetSources, but this provides a powerful means of
supporting pooling, hot swappable and other sophisticated targets. For example, a pooling TargetSource can return a different
target instance for each invocation, using a pool to manage instances.
If you do not specify a TargetSource, a default implementation is used that wraps a local object. The same target is returned for
each invocation (as you would expect).
Let's look at the standard target sources provided with Spring, and how you can use them.
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.

5.11.1. Hot swappable target sources

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

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<bean id="initialTarget" class="mycompany.OldTarget">
</bean>

<bean id="swapper"
class="org.springframework.aop.target.HotSwappableTargetSource">
<constructor-arg><ref local="initialTarget"/></constructor-arg>
</bean>

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

5.11.2. Pooling target sources

Using a pooling target source provides a similar programming model to stateless session EJBs, in which a pool of identical
instances is maintained, with method invocations going to free objects in the pool.
A crucial difference between Spring pooling and SLSB pooling is that Spring pooling can be applied to any POJO. As with Spring
in general, this service can be applied in a non-invasive way.
Spring provides out-of-the-box support for Jakarta Commons Pool 1.1, which provides a fairly efficient pooling implementation.
You'll need the commons-pool Jar on your application's classpath to use this feature. It's also possible to subclass
org.springframework.aop.target.AbstractPoolingTargetSource to support any other pooling API.
Sample configuration is shown below:
<bean id="businessObjectTarget" class="com.mycompany.MyBusinessObject"
singleton="false">
... properties omitted
</bean>

<bean id="poolTargetSource"
class="org.springframework.aop.target.CommonsPoolTargetSource">
<property name="targetBeanName"><value>businessObjectTarget</value></property>
<property name="maxSize"><value>25</value></property>
</bean>

<bean id="businessObject"
class="org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean"
>
<property name="targetSource"><ref local="poolTargetSource"/></property>
<property name="interceptorNames"><value>myInterceptor</value></property>
</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 it's properties:
maxSize is the most basic, and always guaranteed to be present.
In this case, "myInterceptor" is the name of an interceptor that would need to be defined in the same IoC context. However, it isn't

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necessary to specify interceptors to use pooling. If you want only pooling, and no other advice, don't set the interceptorNames
property at all.
It's possible to configure Spring so as to be able to cast any pooled object to the
org.springframework.aop.target.PoolingConfig interface, which exposes information about the configuration and
current size of the pool through an introduction. You'll need to define an advisor like this:
<bean id="poolConfigAdvisor"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean">
<property name="targetObject"><ref local="poolTargetSource" /></property>
<property name="targetMethod"><value>getPoolingConfigMixin</value></property>
</bean>
This advisor is obtained by calling a convenience method on the AbstractPoolingTargetSource class, hence the use of
MethodInvokingFactoryBean. This advisor's name ("poolConfigAdvisor" here) must be in the list of interceptors names in the
ProxyFactoryBean exposing the pooled object.
The cast will look as follows:
PoolingConfig conf = (PoolingConfig) beanFactory.getBean("businessObject");
System.out.println("Max pool size is " + conf.getMaxSize());
Pooling stateless service objects is not usually necessary. We don't believe it should be the default choice, as most stateless objects
are naturally threadsafe, and instance pooling is problematic if resources are cached.
Simpler pooling is available using autoproxying. It's possible to set the TargetSources used by any autoproxy creator.

5.11.3. Prototype" target sources

Setting up a "prototype" target source is similar to a pooling TargetSource. In this case, a new instance of the target will be created
on every method invocation. Although the cost of creating a new object isn't high in a modern JVM, the cost of wiring up the new
object (satisfying its IoC dependencies) may be more expensive. Thus you shouldn't use this approach without very good reason.
To do this, you could modify the poolTargetSource definition shown above as follows. (I've also changed the name, for
clarity.)
<bean id="prototypeTargetSource"
class="org.springframework.aop.target.PrototypeTargetSource">
<property name="targetBeanName"><value>businessObjectTarget</value></property>
</bean>
There's only one property: the name of the target bean. Inheritance is used in the TargetSource implementations to ensure
consistent naming. As with the pooling target source, the target bean must be a prototype bean definition.

5.12. 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 interception around advice, before, throws advice and after returning advice, which
are supported out of the box.
The org.springframework.aop.framework.adapter package is an SPI package allowing support for new custom
advice types to be added without changing the core framework. The only constraint on a custom Advice type is that it must
implement the org.aopalliance.aop.Advice tag interface.
Please refer to the org.springframework.aop.framework.adapter package's Javadocs for further information

5.13. Further reading and resources

I recommend the excellent AspectJ in Action by Ramnivas Laddad (Manning, 2003) for an introduction to AOP.
Please refer to the Spring sample applications for further examples of Spring AOP:

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● The JPetStore's default configuration illustrates the use of the TransactionProxyFactoryBean for declarative transaction
management
● The /attributes directory of the JPetStore illustrates the use of attribute-driven declarative transaction management
If you are interested in more advanced capabilities of Spring AOP, take a look at the test suite. The test coverage is over 90%, and
this illustrates advanced features not discussed in this document.

5.14. Roadmap
Spring AOP, like the rest of Spring, is actively developed. The core API is stable. Like the rest of Spring, the AOP framework is
very modular, enabling extension while preserving the fundamental design. Several improvements are planned in the Spring 1.1
timeframe, which will preserve backward compatibility. These include:
● Performance improvements: The creation of AOP proxies is handled by a factory via a Strategy interface. Thus we can
support additional AopProxy types without impacting user code or the core implementation. Significant performance
optimizations for CGLIB proxying are scheduled for the 1.0.3 release, with further optimizations by Spring 1.1 in cases
where advice will not change at runtime. This should produce a significant reduction in the overhead of the AOP framework.
Note, however, that the overhead of the AOP framework is not an issue in normal usage.
● More expressive pointcuts: Spring presently offers an expressive Pointcut interface, but we can add value through adding
more Pointcut implementations. We are looking at an integration with AspectJ that will allow AspectJ pointcut expressions
to be used in Spring configuration files. And if you wish to contribute a useful Pointcut, please do!
The most significant enhancements are likely to concern integration with AspectJ, which will be done in cooperation with the
AspectJ community. We believe that this will provide significant benefits for both Spring and AspectJ users, in the following areas:
● Allowing AspectJ aspects to be configured using Spring IoC. This has the potential to integrate AspectJ aspects into
applications where appropriate, in the same way as Spring aspects are integrated into application IoC contexts.
● Allowing the use of AspectJ pointcut expressions within Spring configuration to target Spring advice. This has significant
benefits over devising our own pointcut expression language; AspectJ is both well thought out and well documented.
Both these integrations should be available in Spring 1.1.

Prev Up Next
Chapter 4. PropertyEditors, data binding, Chapter 6. AspectJ Integration
Home
validation and the BeanWrapper

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 Chapter 6. AspectJ Integration

Chapter 6. AspectJ Integration

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Chapter 6. AspectJ Integration

6.1. Overview
Spring's proxy-based AOP framework is well suited for handling many generic middleware and application-specific
problems. However, there are times when a more powerful AOP solution is required: for example, if we need to add
additional fields to a class, or advise fine-grained objects that aren't created by the Spring IoC container.
We recommend the use of AspectJ in such cases. Accordingly, as of version 1.1, Spring provides a powerful integration
with AspectJ.

6.2. Configuring AspectJ aspects using Spring IoC

The most important part of the Spring/AspectJ integration allows Spring to configure AspectJ aspects using
Dependency Injection. This brings similar benefits to aspects as to objects. For example:
● There is no need for aspects to use ad hoc configuration mechanisms; they can be configured in the same,
consistent, approach used for the entire application.
● Aspects can depend on application objects. For example, a security aspect can depend on a security manager, as
we'll see in an example shortly.
● It's possible to obtain a reference to an aspect through the relevant Spring context. This can allow for dynamic
reconfiguration of the aspect.
AspectJ aspects can expose JavaBean properties for Setter Injection, and even implement Spring lifecycle interfaces
such as BeanFactoryAware.
Note that AspectJ aspects cannot use Constructor Injection or Method Injection. This limitation is due to the fact that
aspects do not have constructors that can be invoked like constructors of objects.

6.2.1. "Singleton" aspects

In most cases, AspectJ aspects are singletons, with one instance per class loader. This single instance is responsible for
advising multiple object instances.
A Spring IoC container cannot instantiate an aspect, as aspects don't have callable constructors. But it can obtain a
reference to an aspect using the static aspectOf() method that AspectJ defines for all aspects, and it can inject
dependencies into that aspect.

6.2.1.1. Example

Consider a security aspect, which depends on a security manager. This aspects applies to all changes in the value of the
balance instance variable in the Account class. (We couldn't do this in the same way using Spring AOP.)
The AspectJ code for the aspect (one of the Spring/AspectJ samples), is shown below. Note that the dependency on the
SecurityManager interface is expressed in a JavaBean property:
public aspect BalanceChangeSecurityAspect {

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private SecurityManager securityManager;

public void setSecurityManager(SecurityManager securityManager) {

this.securityManager = securityManager;
}

private pointcut balanceChanged() :

set(int Account.balance);

before() : balanceChanged() {
this.securityManager.checkAuthorizedToModify();
}
}
We configure this aspect in the same way as an ordinary class. Note that the way in which we set the property reference
is identical. Note that we must use the factory-method attribute to specify that we want the aspect "created" using
the aspectOf() static method. In fact, this is locating, rather than, creating, the aspect, but the Spring container
doesn't care:
<bean id="securityAspect"
class="org.springframework.samples.aspectj.bank.BalanceChangeSecurityAspect"
factory-method="aspectOf"
>
<property name="securityManager">
<ref local="securityManager"/>
</property>
</bean>
We don't need to do anything in Spring configuration to target this aspect. It contains the pointcut information in
AspectJ code that controls where it applies. Thus it can apply even to objects not managed by the Spring IoC container.

6.2.1.2. Ordering issues

to be completed

6.2.2. Non-singleton aspects

** Complete material on pertarget etc.

6.2.3. Gotchas
to be completed
- Singleton issue

6.3. Using AspectJ pointcuts to target Spring advice

In a future release of Spring, we plan to provide the ability for AspectJ pointcut expressions to be used in Spring XML
or other bean definition files, to target Spring advice. This will allow some of the power of the AspectJ pointcut model
to be applied to Spring's proxy-based AOP framework. This will work in pure Java, and will not require the AspectJ
compiler. Only the subset of AspectJ pointcuts relating to method invocation will be usable.
This feature is scheduled for Spring 1.2. It depends on AspectJ enhancements.

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This feature replaces our previous plan to create a pointcut expression language for Spring.

6.4. Spring aspects for AspectJ

In a future release of Spring (probably 1.2), we will package some Spring services, such as the declarative transaction
management service, as AspectJ aspects. This will enable them to be used by AspectJ users without dependence on the
Spring AOP framework--potentially, even without dependence on the Spring IoC container.
This feature is probably of more interest to AspectJ users than Spring users.

Prev Up Next
Chapter 5. Spring AOP: Aspect Oriented Home Chapter 7. Transaction management
Programming with Spring

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Chapter 7. Transaction management

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Chapter 7. Transaction management

7.1. The Spring transaction abstraction
Spring provides a consistent abstraction for transaction management. This abstraction is one of the most important of Spring's
abstractions, and delivers the following benefits:
● Provides a consistent programming model across different transaction APIs such as JTA, JDBC, Hibernate, iBATIS Database
Layer and JDO.
● Provides a simpler, easier to use, API for programmatic transaction management than most of these transaction APIs
● Integrates with the Spring data access abstraction
● Supports Spring declarative transaction management
Traditionally, J2EE developers have had two choices for transaction management: to use global or local transactions. Global
transactions are managed by the application server, using JTA. Local transactions are resource-specific: for example, a transaction
associated with a JDBC connection. This choice had profound implications. Global transactions provide the ability to work with
multiple transactional resources. (It's worth noting that most applications use a single transaction resource) With local transactions, the
application server is not involved in transaction management, and cannot help ensure correctness across multiple resources.
Global transactions have a significant downside. Code needs to use JTA: a cumbersome API to use (partly due to its exception model).
Furthermore, a JTA UserTransaction normally needs to be obtained from JNDI: meaning that we need to use both JNDI and
JTA to use JTA. Obviously all use of global transactions limits the reusability of application code, as JTA is normally only available
in an application server environment.
The preferred way to use global transactions was via EJB CMT (Container Managed Transaction): 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--not all--need to write Java code
to control transactions. The significant downside is that CMT is (obviously) tied to JTA and an application server environment; and
that it's only available if we choose to implement business logic in EJBs, or at least behind a transactional EJB facade. The negatives
around EJB in general are so great that this is not an attractive proposition, when there are alternatives for declarative transaction
management.
Local transactions may be easier to use, but also have significant disadvantages: They cannot work across multiple transactional
resources, and tend to invade the programming model. For example, code that manages transactions using a JDBC connection cannot
run within a global JTA transaction.
Spring resolves these problems. 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. Spring provides
both declarative and programmatic transaction management. Declarative transaction management is preferred by most users, and
recommended in most cases.
With programmatic transaction management developers work with the Spring 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 don't depend on Spring's or any other transaction API.

7.2. Transaction strategies

The key to the Spring transaction abstraction is the notion of a transaction strategy.
This is captured in the org.springframework.transaction.PlatformTransactionManager interface, shown below:
public interface PlatformTransactionManager {

TransactionStatus getTransaction(TransactionDefinition definition)

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throws TransactionException;

void commit(TransactionStatus status) throws TransactionException;

void rollback(TransactionStatus status) throws TransactionException;

}
This is primarily an SPI interface, although it can be used programmatically. Note that in keeping with Spring's philosophy, this is an
interface. Thus it can easily be mocked or stubbed if necessary. Nor is it tied to a lookup strategy such as JNDI:
PlatformTransactionManager implementations are defined like any other object in a Spring IoC container. This benefit alone makes
this a worthwhile abstraction even when working with JTA: transactional code can be tested much more easily than if it directly used
JTA.
In keeping with Spring's philosophy, TransactionException is unchecked. Failures of the transaction infrastructure are almost
invariably fatal. In rare cases where application code can recover from them, the application developer can still choose to catch and
handle TransactionException.
The getTransaction() method returns a TransactionStatus object, depending on a TransactionDefinition
parameter. The returned TransactionStatus might represent a new or existing transaction (if there was a matching transaction in
the current call stack).
As with J2EE transaction contexts, a TransactionStatus is associated with a thread of execution.
The TransactionDefinition interface specifies:
● Transaction isolation: The degree of isolation this transaction has from the work of other transactions. For example, can this
transaction see uncommitted writes from other transactions?
● Transaction propagation: Normally all code executed within a transaction scope will run in that transaction. However, there
are several options specificying behaviour if a transactional method is executed when a transaction context already exists: For
example, simply running in the existing transaction (the most common case); or suspending the existing transaction and creating
a new transaction. Spring offers the transaction propagation options familiar from EJB CMT.
● Transaction timeout: How long this transaction may run before timing out (automatically being rolled back by the underlying
transaction infrastructure).
● Read-only status: A read-only transaction does not modify any data. Read-only transactions can be a useful optimization in
some cases (such as when using Hibernate).
These settings reflect standard concepts. If necessary, please refer to a resource discussing transaction isolation levels and other core
transaction concepts: Understanding such core concepts is essential to using Spring or any other 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 {

boolean isNewTransaction();

void setRollbackOnly();

boolean isRollbackOnly();
}
However Spring transaction management is used, defining the PlatformTransactionManager implementation is essential. In
good Spring fashion, this important definition is made using Inversion of Control.
PlatformTransactionManager implementations normally require knowledge of the environment in which they work: JDBC, JTA,
Hibernate etc.
The following examples from dataAccessContext-local.xml from Spring's jPetStore sample application show how a local
PlatformTransactionManager implementation can be defined. This will work with JDBC.
We must define a JDBC DataSource, and then use the Spring DataSourceTransactionManager, giving it a reference to the DataSource.

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<bean id="dataSource"
class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">
<property
name="driverClassName"><value>${jdbc.driverClassName}</value></property>
<property name="url"><value>${jdbc.url}</value></property>
<property name="username"><value>${jdbc.username}</value></property>
<property name="password"><value>${jdbc.password}</value></property>
</bean>
The PlatformTransactionManager definition will look like this:
<bean id="transactionManager"
class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceTransactionManager">
<property name="dataSource"><ref local="dataSource"/></property>
</bean>
If we use JTA, as in the dataAccessContext-jta.xml file from the same sample application, we need to use a container
DataSource, obtained via JNDI, and a JtaTransactionManager implementation. The JtaTransactionManager doesn't need to know
about the DataSource, or any other specific resources, as it will use the container's global transaction management.
<bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">
<property name="jndiName"><value>jdbc/jpetstore</value></property>
</bean>

<bean id="transactionManager"
class="org.springframework.transaction.jta.JtaTransactionManager"/>
We can use Hibernate local transactions easily, as shown in the following examples from the Spring PetClinic sample application.
In this case, we need to define a Hibernate LocalSessionFactory, which application code will use to obtain Hibernate Sessions.
The DataSource bean definition will be similar to one of the above examples, and is not shown. (If it's a container DataSource it
should be non-transactional as Spring, rather than the container, will manage transactions.)
The "transactionManager" bean in this case is of class HibernateTransactionManager. In the same way as the
DataSourceTransactionManager needs a reference to the DataSource, the HibernateTransactionManager needs a reference to the
session factory.
<bean id="sessionFactory"
class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
<property name="dataSource"><ref local="dataSource"/></property>
<property name="mappingResources">

<value>org/springframework/samples/petclinic/hibernate/petclinic.hbm.xml</value>
</property>
<property name="hibernateProperties">
<props>
<prop key="hibernate.dialect">${hibernate.dialect}</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="transactionManager"
class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate.HibernateTransactionManager">
<property name="sessionFactory"><ref local="sessionFactory"/></property>
</bean>
With Hibernate and JTA transactions we could simply use the JtaTransactionManager as with JDBC or any other resource strategy.
<bean id="transactionManager"
class="org.springframework.transaction.jta.JtaTransactionManager"/>
Note that this is identical to JTA configuration for any resource, as these are global transactions, which can enlist any transactional
resource.

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In all these cases, application code won't need to change at all. We can change how transactions are managed merely by changing
configuration, even if that change means moving from local to global transactions or vice versa.
When not using global transactions, you do need to follow one special coding convention. Fortunately this is very simple. You need to
obtain connection or session resources in a special way, to allow the relevant PlatformTransactionManager implementation to track
connection usage, and apply transaction management as necessary.
For example, if using JDBC, you should not call the getConnection() method on a DataSource, but must use the Spring
org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceUtils class as follows:
Connection conn = DataSourceUtils.getConnection(dataSource);
This has the added advantage that any SQLException will be wrapped in a Spring
CannotGetJdbcConnectionException--one of Spring's hierarchy of unchecked DataAccessExceptions. This gives you more
information than can easily be obtained from the SQLException, and ensures portability across databases: even across different
persistence technologies.
This will work fine without Spring transaction management, so you can use it whether or not you are using Spring for transaction
management.
Of course, once you've used Spring's JDBC support or Hibernate support, you won't want to use DataSourceUtils or the other
helper classes, because you'll be much happier working via 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 happens behind
the scenes and you won't need to write any special code.

7.3. Programmatic transaction management

Spring provides two means of programmatic transaction management:
● Using the TransactionTemplate
● Using a PlatformTransactionManager implementation directly
We generally recommand the first approach.
The second approach is similar to using the JTA UserTransaction API (although exception handling is less cumbersome).

7.3.1. Using the TransactionTemplate

The TransactionTemplate adopts the same approach as other Spring templates such as JdbcTemplate and
HibernateTemplate. It uses a callback approach, to free application code from the working of acquiring and releasing resources.
(No more try/catch/finally.) Like other templates, a TransactionTemplate is threadsafe.
Application code that must execute in a transaction context looks like this. Note that the TransactionCallback can be used to
return a value:
Object result = tt.execute(new TransactionCallback() {
public Object doInTransaction(TransactionStatus status) {
updateOperation1();
return resultOfUpdateOperation2();
}
});
If there's no return value, use a TransactionCallbackWithoutResult like this:
tt.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
TransactionStatus object.

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Application classes wishing to use the TransactionTemplate must have access to a PlatformTransactionManager: usually
exposed as a JavaBean property or as a constructor argument.
It's easy to unit test such classes with a mock or stub PlatformTransactionManager. There's no JNDI lookup or static magic
here: it's a simple interface. As usual, you can use Spring to simplify your unit testing.

7.3.2. Using the PlatformTransactionManager

You can also use the org.springframework.transaction.PlatformTransactionManager directly to manage your
transaction. Simply pass the implementation of the PlatformTransactionManager you're using to your bean via a bean reference. Then,
using the TransactionDefinition and TransactionStatus objects you can initiate transactions, rollback and commit.
DefaultTransactionDefinition def = new DefaultTransactionDefinition()
def.setPropagationBehavior(TransactionDefinition.PROPAGATION_REQUIRED);

TransactionStatus status = transactionManager.getTransaction(def);

try {
// execute your business logic here
} catch (MyException ex) {
transactionManager.rollback(status);
throw ex;
}
transactionManager.commit(status);

7.4. Declarative transaction management

Spring also offers declarative transaction management. This is enabled by Spring AOP.
Most Spring users choose declarative transaction management. It is the option with the least impact on application code, and hence is
most consistent with the ideals of a non-invasive lightweight container.
It may be helpful to begin by considering EJB CMT and explaining the similarities and differences with Spring declarative transaction
management. The basic approach is similar: It's possible to specify transaction behaviour (or lack of it) down to individual methods.
It's possible to make a setRollbackOnly() call within a transaction context if necessary. The differences are:
● Unlike EJB CMT, which is tied to JTA, Spring declarative transaction management works in any environment. It can work with
JDBC, JDO, Hibernate or other transactions under the covers, with configuration changes only.
● Spring enables declarative transaction mangement to be applied to any POJO, not just special classes such as EJBs.
● Spring offers declarative rollback rules: a feature with no EJB equivalent, which we'll discuss below. Rollback can be
controlled declaratively, not merely programmatically.
● Spring gives you an opportunity to customize transactional behaviour, using AOP. For example, if you want to insert custom
behaviour in the case of transaction rollback, you can. You can also add arbitrary advice, along with the transactional advice.
With EJB CMT, you have no way to influence the container's transaction management other than setRollbackOnly().
● Spring 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, don't use this feature lightly. Normally we don't want transactions to
span remote calls.
The concept of rollback rules is important: they enable us to specify which exceptions (and throwables) should cause automatic roll
back. We specify this declaratively, in configuration, not in Java code. So, while we can still call setRollbackOnly() on the
TransactionStatus object to roll the current transaction back programmatically, most often we can specify a rule that
MyApplicationException should always result in roll back. This has the significant advantage that business objects don't need
to depend on the transaction infrastructure. For example, they typically don't need to import any Spring APIs, transaction or other.
While the EJB default behaviour is for the EJB container to automatically roll back the transaction on a system exception (usually a
runtime exception), EJB CMT does not roll back the transaction automatically on an application exception (checked exception other
than java.rmi.RemoteException). While the Spring default behaviour for declarative transaction management follows EJB
convention (roll back is automatic only on unchecked exceptions), it's often useful to customize this.

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On our benchmarks, the performance of Spring declarative transaction management exceeds that of EJB CMT.
The usual way of setting up transactional proxying in Spring is via the TransactionProxyFactoryBean. We need a target object to wrap
in a transactional proxy. The target object is normally a POJO bean definition. When we define the TransactionProxyFactoryBean, we
must supply a reference to the relevant PlatformTransactionManager, and transaction attributes. Transaction attributes contain the
transaction definitions, discussed above. Consider the following sample:
<!-- this example is in verbose form, see note later about concise
for multiple proxies! -->
<!-- the target bean to wrap transactionally -->
<bean id="petStoreTarget">
...
</bean>
<bean id="petStore"
class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="transactionManager"><ref bean="transactionManager"/></property>
<property name="target"><ref bean="petStoreTarget"/></property>
<property name="transactionAttributes">
<props>
<prop key="insert*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED,-MyCheckedException</prop>
<prop key="update*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
<prop key="*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED,readOnly</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
The transactional proxy will implement the interfaces of the target: in this case, the bean with id petStoreTarget. (Using CGLIB it's
possible to transactionaly proxy a target class. Set the proxyTargetClass property to true for this. It will happen automatically if the
target doesn't implement any interfaces. In general, of course, we want to program to interfaces rather than classes.) It's possible (and
usually a good idea) to restrict the transactional proxy to proxying only specific target interfaces, using the proxyInterfaces property.
It's also possible to customize the behaviour of a TransactionProxyFactoryBean via several properties inherited from
org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyConfig, and shared with all AOP proxy factories.
The transactionAttributes here are set using a Properties format defined in the
org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.NameMatchTransactionAttributeSource class. The
mapping from method name, including wildcards, should be fairly intuitive. Note that the value for the insert* mapping contains a
rollback rule. Adding -MyCheckedException here specifies that if the method throws MyCheckedException or any
subclasses, the transaction will automatically be rolled back. Multiple rollback rules can be specified here, comma-separated. A -
prefix forces rollback; a + prefix specifies commit. (This allows commit even on unchecked exceptions, if you really know what
you're doing!)
The TransactionProxyFactoryBean allows you to set "pre" and "post" advice, for additional interception behaviour, using the
"preInterceptors" and "postInterceptors" properties. Any number of pre and post advices can be set, and their type may be Advisor
(in which case they can contain a pointcut), MethodInterceptor or any advice type supported by the current Spring configuration
(such as ThrowsAdvice, AfterReturningtAdvice or BeforeAdvice, which are supported by default.) These advices must
support a shared-instance model. If you need transactional proxying with advanced AOP features such as stateful mixins, it's normally
best to use the generic org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean, rather than the
TransactionProxyFactoryBean convenience proxy creator.
It's also possible to set up autoproxying: that is, to configure the AOP framework so that classes are automatically proxied without
needing individual proxy definitions.
Please see the chapter on AOP for more information and examples.
Note: Using TransactionProxyFactoryBean definitions in the form above can seem overly verbose when many almost identical
transaction proxies need to be created. You will almost always want to take advantage of parent and child bean definitions, along with
inner bean definitions, to significantly reduce the verbosity of your transaction proxy definitions, as described in Section 5.7, Concise
proxy definitions .
You don't need to be an AOP expert--or indeed, to know much at all about AOP--to use Spring's declarative transaction management
effectively. However, if you do want to become a "power user" of Spring AOP, you will find it easy to combine declarative transaction
management with powerful AOP capabilities.

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7.4.1. BeanNameAutoProxyCreator, another declarative approach

TransactionProxyFactoryBean is very useful, and gives you full control when wrapping objects with a transactional proxy.
Used with parent/child bean definitions and inner beans holding the target, it is generally the best choice for transactional wrapping. In
the case that you need to wrap a number of beans in a completely identical fashion (for example, a boilerplate, 'make all methods
transactional', using a BeanFactoryPostProcessor called BeanNameAutoProxyCreator can offer an alternative approach
which can end up being even less verbose for this simplified use case.
To recap, once the ApplicationContext has read its initialization information, it instantiates any beans within it which implement the
BeanPostProcessor interface, and gives them a chance to post-process all other beans in the ApplicationContext. So using this
mechanism, a properly configured BeanNameAutoProxyCreator can be used to postprocess any other beans in the
ApplicationContext (recognizing them by name), and wrap them with a transactional proxy. The actual transaction proxy produced is
essentially identical to that produced by the use of TransactionProxyFactoryBean, so will not be discussed further.
Let us consider a sample configuration:
<!-- Transaction Interceptor set up to do PROPAGATION_REQUIRED on all methods -->
<bean id="matchAllWithPropReq"

class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.MatchAlwaysTransactionAttributeSource">
<property
name="transactionAttribute"><value>PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</value></property>
</bean>
<bean id="matchAllTxInterceptor"
class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor">
<property name="transactionManager"><ref bean="transactionManager"/></property>
<property name="transactionAttributeSource"><ref
bean="matchAllWithPropReq"/></property>
</bean>

<!-- One BeanNameAutoProxyCreator handles all beans where we want all methods to
use
PROPAGATION_REQUIRED -->
<bean id="autoProxyCreator"
class="org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy.BeanNameAutoProxyCreator">
<property name="interceptorNames">
<list>
<idref local="matchAllTxInterceptor"/>
<idref bean="hibInterceptor"/>
</list>
</property>
<property name="beanNames">
<list>
<idref local="core-services-applicationControllerSevice"/>
<idref local="core-services-deviceService"/>
<idref local="core-services-authenticationService"/>
<idref local="core-services-packagingMessageHandler"/>
<idref local="core-services-sendEmail"/>
<idref local="core-services-userService"/>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
Assuming that we already have a TransactionManager instance in our ApplicationContext, the first thing we need to do is create
a TransactionInterceptor instance to use. The TransactionInterceptor decides which methods to intercept based on
a TransactionAttributeSource implementing object passed to it as a property. In this case, we want to handle the very
simple case of matching all methods. This is not necessarilly the most efficient approach, but it's very quick to set up, because we can
use the special pre-defined MatchAlwaysTransactionAttributeSource, which simply matches all methods. If we wanted
to be more specific, we could use other variants such as MethodMapTransactionAttributeSource,

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NameMatchTransactionAttributeSource, or AttributesTransactionAttributeSource.
Now that we have the transaction interceptor, we simply feed it to a BeanNameAutoProxyCreator instance we define, along
with the names of 6 beans in the ApplicationContext that we want to wrap in an identical fashion. As you can see, the net result is
significantly less verbose than it would have been to wrap 6 beans identically with TransactionProxyFactoryBean. Wrapping a 7th
bean would add only one more line of config.
You may notice that we are able to apply multiple interceptors. In this case, we are also applying a HibernateInterceptor we
have previously defined (bean id=hibInterceptor), which will manage Hibernate Sessions for us.
There is one thing to keep in mind, with regards to bean naming, when switching back and forth between the use of
TransactionProxyFactoryBean, and BeanNameAutoProxyCreator. For the former, if the target bean is not defined as
an inner bean, you normally give the target bean you want to wrap an id similar in form to myServiceTarget, and then give the proxy
object an id of myService; then all users of the wrapped object simply refer to the proxy, i.e. myService. (These are just sample naming
conventions, the point is that the target object has a different name than the proxy, and both are available from the
ApplicationContext). However, when using BeanNameAutoProxyCreator, you name the target object something like
myService. Then, when BeanNameAutoProxyCreator postprocesses the target object and create the proxy, it causes the proxy to
be inserted into the Application context under the name of the original bean. From that point on, only the proxy (the wrapped object)
is available from the ApplicationContext. When using TransactionProxyFactoryBean with the target specified as an inner bean, this
naming issue is not a concern, since the inner bean is not normally given a name.

7.5. 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. Using the TransactionTemplate may be a good approach.
On the other hand, if your applications has numerous transactional operations, declarative transaction management is usually
worthwhile. It keeps transaction management out of business logic, and is not difficult to configure in Spring. Using Spring, rather
than EJB CMT, the configuration cost of declarative transaction management is greatly reduced.

7.6. Do you need an application server for transaction

management?
Spring's transaction management capabilities--and especially its declarative transaction management--significantly changes traditional
thinking as to when a J2EE application requires an application server.
In particular, you don't need an application server just to have declarative transactions via EJB. In fact, even if you have an application
server with powerful JTA capabilities, you may well decide that Spring declarative transactions offer more power and a much more
productive programming model than EJB CMT.
You need an application server's JTA capability only if you need to enlist multiple transactional resources. Many applications don't
face this requirement. For example, many high-end applications use a single, highly scalable, database such as Oracle 9i RAC.
Of course you may need other application server capabilities such as JMS and JCA. However, if you need only JTA, you could also
consider an open source JTA add-on such as JOTM. (Spring integrates with JOTM out of the box.) However, as of early 2004,
high-end application servers provide more robust support for XA transactions.
The most important point is that with Spring you can choose when to scale your application up to a full-blown application server.
Gone are the days when the only alternative to using EJB CMT or JTA was to write coding using local transactions such as those on
JDBC connections, and face a hefty rework if you ever needed that code to run within global, container-managed transactions. With
Spring only configuration needs to change: your code doesn't.

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7.7. Common problems

Developers should take care to use the correct PlatformTransactionManager implementation for their requirements.
It's important to understand how the Spring transaction abstraction works with JTA global transactions. Used properly, there is no
conflict here: Spring merely provides a simplifying, portable abstraction.
If you are using global transactions, you must use the Spring
org.springframework.transaction.jta.JtaTransactionManager for all your for all your transactional operations.
Otherwise Spring will attempt to perform local transactions on resources such as container DataSources. Such local transactions don't
make sense, and a good application server will treat them as errors.

Prev Up Next
Chapter 6. AspectJ Integration Home
Chapter 8. Source Level Metadata
Support

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 Chapter 8. Source Level Metadata Support

Chapter 8. Source Level Metadata Support

Prev Next

Chapter 8. Source Level Metadata Support

8.1. Source-level metadata
Source-level metadata is the addition of attributes or annotations to program elements: usually, classes and/or methods.
For example, we might add metadata to a class as follows:
/**
* Normal comments
* @@org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.DefaultTransactionAttribute()
*/
public class PetStoreImpl implements PetStoreFacade, OrderService {
We could add metadata to a method as follows:
/**
* Normal comments
* @@org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.RuleBasedTransactionAttribute ()
* @@org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.RollbackRuleAttribute
(Exception.class)
* @@org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.NoRollbackRuleAttribute
("ServletException")
*/
public void echoException(Exception ex) throws Exception {
....
}
Both these examples use Jakarta Commons Attributes syntax.
Source-level metadata was introduced to the mainstream with the release of Microsoft's .NET platform, which uses source-level attributes to
control transactions, pooling and other behaviour.
The value in this approach has been recognized in the J2EE community. For example, it's much less verbose than the traditional XML
deployment descriptors exclusively used by EJB. While it is desirable to externalize some things from program source code, some important
enterprise settings--notably transaction characteristics--belong in program source. Contrary to the assumptions of the EJB spec, it seldom makes
sense to modify the transactional characteristics of a method.
Although metadata attributes are typically used mainly by framework infrastructure to describe the services application classes require, it should
also be possible for metadata attributes to be queried at runtime. This is a key distinction from solutions such as XDoclet, which primarily view
metadata as a way of generating code such as EJB artefacts.
There are a number of solutions in this space, including:
● JSR-175: the standard Java metadata implementation, available in Java 1.5. But we need a solution now and may always want a facade
● XDoclet: well-established solution, primarily intended for code generation
● Various open source attribute implementations, pending the release of JSR-175, of which Commons Attributes appears to be the most
promising. All these require a special pre- or post-compilation step.

8.2. Spring's metadata support

In keeping with its provision of abstractions over important concepts, Spring provides a facade to metadata implementations, in the form of the
org.springframework.metadata.Attributes interface.
Such a facade adds value for several reasons:
● There is currently no standard metadata solution. Java 1.5 will provide one, but it is still in beta as of Spring 1.0. Furthermore, there will
be a need for metadata support in 1.3 and 1.4 applications for at least two years. Spring aims to provide working solutions now; waiting
for 1.5 is not an option in such an important area.
● Current metadata APIs, such as Commons Attributes (used by Spring 1.0) are hard to test. Spring provides a simple metadata interface that

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is much easier to mock.
● Even when Java 1.5 provides metadata support at language level, there will still be value in providing such an abstraction:
❍ JSR-175 metadata is static. It is associated with a class at compile time, and cannot be changed in a deployed environment. There is
a need for hierarchical metadata, providing the ability to override certain attribute values in deployment--for example, in an XML
file.
❍ JSR-175 metadata is returned through the Java reflection API. This makes it impossible to mock during test time. Spring provides a
simple interface to allow this.
Thus Spring will support JSR-175 before Java 1.5 reaches GA, but will continue to offer an attribute abstraction API.
The Spring Attributes interface looks like this:
public interface Attributes {

Collection getAttributes(Class targetClass);

Collection getAttributes(Class targetClass, Class filter);

Collection getAttributes(Method targetMethod);

Collection getAttributes(Method targetMethod, Class filter);

Collection getAttributes(Field targetField);

Collection getAttributes(Field targetField, Class filter);

}
This is a lowest common denominator interface. JSR-175 offers more capabilities than this, such as attributes on method arguments. As of
Spring 1.0, Spring aims to provide the subset of metadata required to provide effective declarative enterprise services a la EJB or .NET. Beyond
Spring 1.0, it is likely that Spring will provide further metadata methods.
Note that this interface offers Object attributes, like .NET. This distinguishes it from attribute systems such as that of Nanning Aspects and
JBoss 4 (as of DR2), which offer only String attributes. There is a significant advantage in supporting Object attributes. It enables attributes
to participate in class hierarchies and enables attributes to react intelligently to their configuration parameters.
In most attribute providers, attribute classes will be configured via constructor arguments or JavaBean properties. Commons Attributes supports
both.
As with all Spring abstraction APIs, Attributes is an interface. This makes it easy to mock attribute implementations for unit tests.

8.3. Integration with Jakarta Commons Attributes

Presently Spring supports only Jakarta Commons Attributes out of the box, although it is easy to provide implementations of the
org.springframework.metadata.Attributes interface for other metadata providers.
Commons Attributes 2.1 (http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/attributes/) is a capable attributes solution. It supports attribute configuration via
constructor arguments and JavaBean properties, which offers better self-documentation in attribute definitions. (Support for JavaBean properties
was added at the request of the Spring team.)
We've already seen two examples of Commons Attributes attributes definitions. In general, we will need to express:
● The name of the attribute class. This can be an FQN, as shown above. If the relevant attribute class has already been imported, the FQN
isn't required. It's also possible to specify "attribute packages" in attribute compiler configuration.
● Any necessary parameterization, via constructor arguments or JavaBean properties
Bean properties look as follows:
/**
* @@MyAttribute(myBooleanJavaBeanProperty=true)
*/
It's possible to combine constructor arguments and JavaBean properties (as in Spring IoC).
Because, unlike Java 1.5 attributes, Commons Attributes is not integrated with the Java language, it is necessary to run a special attribute
compilation step as part of the build process.

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To run Commons Attributes as part of the build process, you will need to do the following.
1. Copy the necessary library Jars to $ANT_HOME/lib. Four Jars are required, and all are distributed with Spring:
● The Commons Attributes compiler Jar and API Jar
● xjavadoc.jar, from XDoclet
● commons-collections.jar, from Jakarta Commons
2. Import the Commons Attributes ant tasks into your project build script, as follows:
<taskdef resource="org/apache/commons/attributes/anttasks.properties"/>
3. Next, define an attribute compilation task, which will use the Commons Attributes attribute-compiler task to "compile" the attributes in the
source. This process results in the generation of additional sources, to a location specified by the destdir attribute. Here we show the use of a
temporary directory:
<target name="compileAttributes" >

<attribute-compiler
destdir="${commons.attributes.tempdir}"
>
<fileset dir="${src.dir}" includes="**/*.java"/>
</attribute-compiler>

</target>
The compile target that runs Javac over the sources should depend on this attribute compilation task, and must also compile the generated
sources, which we output to our destination temporary directory. If there are syntax errors in your attribute definitions, they will normally be
caught by the attribute compiler. However, if the attribute definitions are syntactically plausible, but specify invalid types or class names, the
compilation of the generated attribute classes may fail. In this case, you can look at the generated classes to establish the cause of the problem.
Commons Attributes also provides Maven support. Please refer to Commons Attributes documentation for further information.
While this attribute compilation process may look complex, in fact it's a one-off cost. Once set up, attribute compilation is incremental, so it
doesn't usually noticeably slow the build process. And once the compilation process is set up, you may find that use of attributes as described in
this chapter can save you a lot of time in other areas.
If you require attribute indexing support (only currently required by Spring for attribute-targeted web controllers, discussed below), you will
need an additional step, which must be performed on a Jar file of your compiled classes. In this, optional, step, Commons Attributes will create
an index of all the attributes defined on your sources, for efficient lookup at runtime. This step looks as follows:
<attribute-indexer jarFile="myCompiledSources.jar">

<classpath refid="master-classpath"/>

</attribute-indexer>
See the /attributes directory of the Spring jPetStore sample application for an example of this build process. You can take the build script it
contains and modify it for your own projects.
If your unit tests depend on attributes, try to express the dependency on the Spring Attributes abstraction, rather than Commons Attributes. Not
only is this more portable--for example, your tests will still work if you switch to Java 1.5 attributes in future--it simplifies testing. Commons
Attributes is a static API, while Spring provides a metadata interface that you can easily mock.

8.4. Metadata and Spring AOP autoproxying

The most important uses of metadata attributes are in conjunction with Spring AOP. This provides a .NET-like programming model, where
declarative services are automatically provided to application objects that declare metadata attributes. Such metadata attributes can be supported
out of the box by the framework, as in the case of declarative transaction management, or can be custom.
There is widely held to be a synergy between AOP and metadata attributes.

8.4.1. Fundamentals
This builds on the Spring AOP autoproxy functionality. Configuration might look like this:
<bean id="autoproxy"

class="org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy.DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator">

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</bean>

<bean id="transactionAttributeSource"

class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.AttributesTransactionAttributeSource"
autowire="constructor">
</bean>

<bean id="transactionInterceptor"
class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor"
autowire="byType">
</bean>

<bean id="transactionAdvisor"

class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor"
autowire="constructor" >
</bean>

<bean id="attributes"
class="org.springframework.metadata.commons.CommonsAttributes"
/>
The basic concepts here should be familiar from the discussion of autoproxying in the AOP chapter.
The most important bean definitions are those named autoproxy and transactionAdvisor. Note that the actual bean names are not important;
what matters is their class.
The autoproxy bean definition of class
org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy.DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator will automatically advise
("autoproxy") all bean instances in the current factory based on matching Advisor implementations. This class knows nothing about attributes,
but relies on Advisors' pointcuts matching. The pointcuts do know about attributes.
Thus we simply need an AOP advisor that will provide declarative transaction management based on attributes.
It's possible to add arbitrary custom Advisor implementations as well, and they will also be evaluated and applied automatically. (You can use
Advisors whose pointcuts match on criteria besides attributes in the same autoproxy configuration, if necessary.)
Finally, the attributes bean is the Commons Attributes Attributes implementation. Replace with another implementation of
org.springframework.metadata.Attributes to source attributes from a different source.

8.4.2. Declarative transaction management

The commonest use of source-level attributes it to provide declarative transaction management a la .NET. Once the bean definitions shown
above are in place, you can define any number of application objects requiring declarative transactions. Only those classes or methods with
transaction attributes will be given transaction advice. You need to do nothing except define the required transaction attributes.
Unlike in .NET, you can specify transaction attributes at either class or method level. Class-level attributes, if specified, will be "inherited" by all
methods. Method attributes will wholly override any class-level attributes.

8.4.3. Pooling
Again, as with .NET, you can enable pooling behaviour via class-level attributes. Spring can apply this behaviour to any POJO. You simply need
to specify a pooling attribute, as follows, in the business object to be pooled:
/**
* @@org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy.target.PoolingAttribute (10)
*
* @author Rod Johnson
*/
public class MyClass {
You'll need the usual autoproxy infrastructure configuration. You then need to specify a pooling TargetSourceCreator, as follows.
Because pooling affects the creation of the target, we can't use a regular advice. Note that pooling will apply even if there are no advisors
applicable to the class, if that class has a pooling attribute.
<bean id="poolingTargetSourceCreator"

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class="org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy.metadata.AttributesPoolingTargetSourceCreator"
autowire="constructor" >
</bean>
The relevant autoproxy bean definition needs to specify a list of "custom target source creators", including the Pooling target source creator. We
could modify the example shown above to include this property as follows:
<bean id="autoproxy"

class="org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy.DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator">
>
<property name="customTargetSourceCreators">
<list>
<ref local="poolingTargetSourceCreator" />
</list>
</property>
</bean>
As with the use of metadata in Spring in general, this is a one-off cost: once setup is out of the way, it's very easy to use pooling for additional
business objects.
It's arguable that the need for pooling is rare, so there's seldom a need to apply pooling to a large number of business objects. Hence this
feature does not appear to be used often.
Please see the Javadoc for the org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy package for more details. It's possible to use a
different pooling implementation than Commons Pool with minimal custom coding.

8.4.4. Custom metadata

We can even go beyond the capabilities of .NET metadata attributes, because of the flexibility of the underlying autoproxying infrastructure.
We can define custom attributes, to provide any kind of declarative behaviour. To do this, you need to:
● Define your custom attribute class
● Define a Spring AOP Advisor with a pointcut that fires on the presence of this custom attribute.
● Add that Advisor as a bean definition to an application context with the generic autoproxy infrastructure in place.
● Add attributes to your POJOs.
There are several potential areas you might want to do this, such as custom declarative security, or possibly caching.
This is a powerful mechanism which can significantly reduce configuration effort in some projects. However, remember that it does rely on AOP
under the covers. The more Advisors you have in play, the more complex your runtime configuration will be.(If you want to see what advice
applies to any object, try casting a reference to org.springframework.aop.framework.Advised. This will enable you to examine the Advisors.)

8.5. Using attributes to minimize MVC web tier configuration

The other main use of Spring metadata as of 1.0 is to provide an option to simplify Spring MVC web configuration.
Spring MVC offers flexible handler mappings: mappings from incoming request to controller (or other handler) instance. Normally handler
mappings are configured in the xxxx-servlet.xml file for the relevant Spring DispatcherServlet.
Holding these mappings in the DispatcherServlet configuration file is normally A Good Thing. It provides maximum flexibility. In particular:
● The controller instance is explicitly managed by Spring IoC, through an XML bean definition
● The mapping is external to the controller, so the same controller instance could be given multiple mappings in the same DispatcherServlet
context or reused in a different configuration.
● Spring MVC is able to support mappings based on any criteria, rather than merely the request URL-to-controller mappings available in
most other frameworks.
However, this does mean that for each controller we typically need both a handler mapping (normally in a handler mapping XML bean
definition) and an XML mapping for the controller itself.
Spring offers a simpler approach based on source-level attributes, which is an attractive option in simpler scenarios.
The approach described in this section is best suited to relatively simple MVC scenarios. It sacrifices some of the power of Spring MVC, such as

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the ability to use the same controller with different mappings, and the ability to base mappings on something other than request URL.
In this approach, controllers are marked with one or more class-level metadata attributes, each specifying one URL they should be mapped to.
The following examples show the approach. In each case, we have a controller that depends on a business object of type Cruncher. As usual, this
dependency will be resolved by Dependency Injection. The Cruncher must be available through a bean definition in the relevant
DispatcherServlet XML file, or a parent context.
We attach an attribute to the controller class specifying the URL that should map to it. We can express the dependency through a JavaBean
property or a constructor argument. This dependency must be resolvable by autowiring: that is, there must be exactly one business object of type
Cruncher available in the context.
/**
* Normal comments here
* @author Rod Johnson
* @@org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.metadata.PathMap("/bar.cgi")
*/
public class BarController extends AbstractController {

private Cruncher cruncher;

public void setCruncher(Cruncher cruncher) {

this.cruncher = cruncher;
}

protected ModelAndView handleRequestInternal(

HttpServletRequest arg0, HttpServletResponse arg1)
throws Exception {
System.out.println("Bar Crunching c and d =" +
cruncher.concatenate("c", "d"));
return new ModelAndView("test");
}

}
For this automapping to work, we need to add the following to the relevant xxxx-servlet.xml file, specifying the attributes handler
mapping. This special handler mapping can handle any number of controllers with attributes as shown above. The bean id
("commonsAttributesHandlerMapping") is not important. The type is what matters:
<bean id="commonsAttributesHandlerMapping"

class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.metadata.CommonsPathMapHandlerMapping"
/>
We do not currently need an Attributes bean definition, as in the above example, because this class works directly with the Commons Attributes
API, not via the Spring metadata abstraction.
We now need no XML configuration for each controller. Controllers are automatically mapped to the specified URL(s). Controllers benefit from
IoC, using Spring's autowiring capability. For example, the dependency expressed in the "cruncher" bean property of the simple controller
shown above is automatically resolved in the current web application context. Both Setter and Constructor Dependency Injection are available,
each with zero configuration.
An example of Constructor Injection, also showing multiple URL paths:
/**
* Normal comments here
* @author Rod Johnson
*
* @@org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.metadata.PathMap("/foo.cgi")
* @@org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.metadata.PathMap("/baz.cgi")
*/
public class FooController extends AbstractController {

private Cruncher cruncher;

public FooController(Cruncher cruncher) {

this.cruncher = cruncher;
}

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protected ModelAndView handleRequestInternal(

HttpServletRequest arg0, HttpServletResponse arg1)
throws Exception {
return new ModelAndView("test");
}

}
This approach has the following benefits:
● Significantly reduced volume of configuration. Each time we add a controller we need add no XML configuration. As with
attribute-driven transaction management, once the basic infrastructure is in place, it is very easy to add more application classes.
● We retain much of the power of Spring IoC to configure controllers.
This approach has the following limitations:
● One-off cost in more complex build process. We need an attribute compilation step and an attribute indexing step. However, once in place,
this should not be an issue.
● Currently Commons Attributes only, although support for other attribute providers may be added in future.
● Only "autowiring by type" dependency injection is supported for such controllers. However, this still leaves them far in advance of Struts
Actions (with no IoC support from the framework) and, arguably, WebWork Actions (with only rudimentary IoC support) where IoC is
concerned.
● Reliance on automagical IoC resolution may be confusing.
Because autowiring by type means there must be exactly one dependency of the specified type, we need to be careful if we use AOP. In the
common case using TransactionProxyFactoryBean, for example, we end up with two implementations of a business interface such as Cruncher:
the original POJO definition, and the transactional AOP proxy. This won't work, as the owning application context can't resolve the type
dependency unambiguously. The solution is to use AOP autoproxying, setting up the autoproxy infrastructure so that there is only one
implementation of Cruncher defined, and that implementation is automatically advised. Thus this approach works well with attribute-targeted
declarative services as described above. As the attributes compilation process must be in place to handle the web controller targeting, this is easy
to set up.
Unlike other metadata functionality, there is currently only a Commons Attributes implementation available:
org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.metadata.CommonsPathMapHandlerMapping. This limitation is due to the fact that not only do we
need attribute compilation, we need attribute indexing: the ability to ask the attributes API for all classes with the PathMap attribute. Indexing is
not currently offered on the org.springframework.metadata.Attributes abstraction interface, although it may be in future. (If you
want to add support for another attributes implementation--which must support indexing--you can easily extend the
AbstractPathMapHandlerMapping superclass of CommonsPathMapHandlerMapping, implementing the two protected abstract
methods to use your preferred attributes API.)
Thus we need two additional steps in the build process: attribute compilation and attribute indexing. Use of the attribute indexer task was shown
above. Note that Commons Attributes presently requires a Jar file as input to indexing.
If you begin with a handler metadata mapping approach, it is possible to switch at any point to a classic Spring XML mapping approach. So you
don't close off this option. For this reason, I find that I often start a web application using metadata mapping.

8.6. Other uses of metadata attributes

Other uses of metadata attributes appear to be growing in popularity. As of March 2004, an attribute-based validation package for Spring is in
development. The one-off setup cost of attribute parsing looks more attractive, when the potential for multiple uses is considered.

8.7. Adding support for additional metadata APIs

Should you wish to provide support for another metadata API it is easy to do so.
Simply implement the org.springframework.metadata.Attributes interface as a facade for your metadata API. You can then
include this object in your bean definitions as shown above.
All framework services that use metadata, such as AOP metadata-driven autoproxying, will then automatically be able to use your new metadata
provider.
We expect to add support for Java 1.5 attributes--probably as an add-on to the Spring core--in Q2 2004.

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Chapter 7. Transaction management Home Chapter 9. DAO support

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Chapter 9. DAO support
Chapter 9. DAO support
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Chapter 9. DAO support

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

9.2. Consistent Exception Hierarchy

Spring provides a convenient translation from technology specific exceptions like SQLException to its own exception hierarchy with the
DataAccessException as the root exception. These exceptions wrap the original exception so there is never any risk that you would lose any information as
to what might have gone wrong.
In addition to JDBC exceptions, Spring can also wrap Hibernate exceptions, converting them from proprietary, checked exceptions, to a set of abstracted runtime
exceptions. The same is true for JDO exceptions. This 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 anywhere you need to. As we mentioned above,
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.
The above is true for the Template versions of the ORM access framework. If you use 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 converts the exceptions to ones that are compatible with 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 uses is outlined in the following graph:

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9.3. Consistent Abstract Classes for DAO Support

To make it easier to work with a variety of data access technologies like JDBC, JDO and Hibernate in a consistent way, Spring provides a set of abstract DAO
classes that you can extend. These abstract classes has methods for setting the data source and any other configuration settings that are specific to the technology
you currently are using.
Dao Support classes:
● JdbcDaoSupport - super class for JDBC data access objects. Requires a DataSource to be set, providing a JdbcTemplate based on it to subclasses.
● HibernateDaoSupport - super class for Hibernate data access objects. Requires a SessionFactory to be set, providing a HibernateTemplate based on it
to subclasses. Can alternatively be initialized directly via a HibernateTemplate, to reuse the latter's settings like SessionFactory, flush mode, exception
translator, etc.
● JdoDaoSupport - super class for JDO data access objects. Requires a PersistenceManagerFactory to be set, providing a JdoTemplate based on it to
subclasses.

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Chapter 10. Data Access using JDBC

Prev Next

Chapter 10. Data Access using JDBC

10.1. Introduction
The JDBC abstraction framework provided by Spring consists of four different packages 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.
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 J2EE
container. The utility class provides static methods to obtain connections from JNDI and to close connections if necessary. It
has support for thread-bound connections, e.g. for use with DataSourceTransactionManager.
Next, the org.springframework.jdbc.object package contains classes that represent RDBMS queries, updates, and
stored procedures as threadsafe, reusable objects. This approach is modelled by JDO, although of course objects returned by
queries are disconnected from the database. This higher level of JDBC abstraction depends on the lower-level abstraction in
the org.springframework.jdbc.core package.
Finally the org.springframework.jdbc.support package is where you find the 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 giving you the option of catching the exceptions that you can recover
from while allowing other exceptions to be propagated to the caller.

10.2. Using the JDBC Core classes to control basic JDBC

processing and error handling
10.2.1. JdbcTemplate
This is the central class in the JDBC core package. It simplifies the use of JDBC since it handles the creation and release of
resources. This helps to avoid common errors like forgetting to always close the connection. It executes the core JDBC
workflow like statement creation and execution, leaving application code to provide SQL and extract results. This class
executes SQL queries, update statements or stored procedure calls, imitating 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.
Code using this class 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 CallableStatementCreateor interface which
creates callable statement. The RowCallbackHandler interface extracts values from each row of a ResultSet.
This class can be used within a service implementation via direct instantiation with a DataSource reference, or get prepared in
an application context and given to services as bean reference. Note: The DataSource should always be configured as a bean in
the application context, in the first case given to the service directly, in the second case to the prepared template. Because this
class is parameterizable by the callback interfaces and the SQLExceptionTranslator interface, it isn't necessary to subclass it.
All SQL issued by this class is logged.

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10.2.2. DataSource
In order to work with data from a database, we need to obtain a connection to the database. The way Spring does this is
through a DataSource. A DataSource is part of the JDBC specification and can be seen as 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 don't need to know any details about how to connect to the database, that is the
responsibility for the administrator that sets up the datasource. You will most likely have to fulfil both roles while you are
developing and testing you code though, but you will not necessarily have to know how the production data source is
configured.
When using Spring's JDBC layer, you can either obtain a data source from JNDI or you can configure your own, using an
implementation that is provided in the Spring distribution. The latter comes in handy for unit testing outside of a web
container. We will use the DriverManagerDataSource implementation for this section but there are several additional
implementations that will be covered later on. The DriverManagerDataSource works the same way that you probably
are used to work when you obtain a JDBC connection. You have to specify the fully qualified class name of the JDBC driver
that you are using so that the DriverManager can load the driver class. Then you have to provide a url that varies between
JDBC drivers. You have to consult the documentation for your driver for the correct value to use here. Finally you must
provide a username and a password that will be used to connect to the database. Here is an example of how to configure a
DriverManagerDataSource:
DriverManagerDataSource dataSource = new DriverManagerDataSource();
dataSource.setDriverClassName( "org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver");
dataSource.setUrl( "jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost:");
dataSource.setUsername( "sa");
dataSource.setPassword( "");

10.2.3. SQLExceptionTranslator
SQLExceptionTranslator is an interface to be implemented by classes that can translate between SQLExceptions and
our data access strategy-agnostic org.springframework.dao.DataAccessException.
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. More precise than SQLState implementation, but vendor specific. The error
code translations are based on codes held in a JavaBean type class named 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 current database are used.
The SQLErrorCodeSQLExceptionTranslator applies the following matching rules:
● Try custom translation implemented by any subclass. Note that this class is concrete and is typically used itself, in which
case this rule doesn't apply.
● Apply error code matching. Error codes are obtained from the SQLErrorCodesFactory by default. This looks up error
codes from the classpath and keys into them from the database name from the database metadata.
● Use the fallback translator. SQLStateSQLExceptionTranslator is the default fallback translator.
SQLErrorCodeSQLExceptionTranslator can be extended the following way:
public class MySQLErrorCodesTransalator extends SQLErrorCodeSQLExceptionTranslator {
protected DataAccessException customTranslate(String task, String sql,
SQLException sqlex) {
if (sqlex.getErrorCode() == -12345)
return new DeadlockLoserDataAccessException(task, sqlex);
return null;

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}
}
In this example the specific error code '-12345' is translated and any other errors are simply left to be translated by the default
translator implementation. To use this custom translator, it is necessary to pass it to the JdbcTemplate using the method
setExceptionTranslator and to use this JdbcTemplate for all of the data access processing where this translator is
needed. Here is an example of how this custom translator can be used:
// create a JdbcTemplate and set data source
JdbcTemplate jt = new JdbcTemplate();
jt.setDataSource(dataSource);
// create a custom translator and set the datasource for the default translation
lookup
MySQLErrorCodesTransalator tr = new MySQLErrorCodesTransalator();
tr.setDataSource(dataSource);
jt.setExceptionTranslator(tr);
// use the JdbcTemplate for this SqlUpdate
SqlUpdate su = new SqlUpdate();
su.setJdbcTemplate(jt);
su.setSql("update orders set shipping_charge = shipping_charge * 1.05");
su.compile();
su.update();
The custom translator is passed a data source because we still want the default translation to look up the error codes in
sql-error-codes.xml.

10.2.4. Executing Statements

To execute an SQL statement, there is very little code needed. All you need is a DataSource and a JdbcTemplate. Once
you have that, you can use a number of convenience methods that are provided with the JdbcTemplate. Here is a short
example showing what you need to include for a minimal but fully functional class that creates a new table.
import javax.sql.DataSource;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate;

public class ExecuteAStatement {

private JdbcTemplate jt;
private DataSource dataSource;

public void doExecute() {

jt = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
jt.execute("create table mytable (id integer, name varchar(100))");
}

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.dataSource = dataSource;
}
}

10.2.5. Running Queries

In addition to the execute methods, there is a large number of query methods. Some of these methods are intended to be used
for queries that return a single value. Maybe you want to retrieve a count or a specific value from one row. If that is the case
then you can use queryForInt,queryForLong or queryForObject. The latter will convert the returned JDBC Type
to the Java class that is passed in as an argument. If the type conversion is invalid, then an
InvalidDataAccessApiUsageException will be thrown. Here is an example that contains two query methods, one
for an int and one that queries for a String.

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import javax.sql.DataSource;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate;

public class RunAQuery {

private JdbcTemplate jt;
private DataSource dataSource;

public int getCount() {

jt = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
int count = jt.queryForInt("select count(*) from mytable");
return count;
}

public String getName() {

jt = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
String name = (String) jt.queryForObject("select name from mytable",
java.lang.String.class);
return name;
}

public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.dataSource = dataSource;
}
}
In addition to the singe results query methods there are several methods that return a List with an entry for each row that the
query returned. The most generic one 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 we add a method to the above example to retrieve a list of all the rows,
it would look like this:
public List getList() {
jt = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
List rows = jt.queryForList("select * from mytable");
return rows;
}
The list returned would look something like this: [{name=Bob, id=1}, {name=Mary, id=2}].

10.2.6. Updating the database

There are also a number of update methods that you can use. I will show an example where we update a column for a certain
primary key. In this example I am using an SQL statement that has place holders for row parameters. Most of the query and
update methods have this functionality. The parameter values are passed in as an array of objects.
import javax.sql.DataSource;

import org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate;

public class ExecuteAnUpdate {

private JdbcTemplate jt;
private DataSource dataSource;

public void setName(int id, String name) {

jt = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource);
jt.update("update mytable set name = ? where id = ?", new Object[] {name, new
Integer(id)});
}

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public void setDataSource(DataSource dataSource) {

this.dataSource = dataSource;
}
}

10.3. Controling how we connect to the database

10.3.1. DataSourceUtils
Helper class that provides static methods to obtain connections from JNDI and close connections if necessary. Has support for
thread-bound connections, e.g. for use with DataSourceTransactionManager.
Note: The getDataSourceFromJndi methods are targeted at applications that do not use a BeanFactory resp. an
ApplicationContext. With the latter, it is preferable to preconfigure your beans or even JdbcTemplate instances in the
factory: JndiObjectFactoryBean can be used to fetch a DataSource from JNDI and give the DataSource bean
reference to other beans. Switching to another DataSource is just a matter of configuration then: You can even replace the
definition of the FactoryBean with a non-JNDI DataSource!

10.3.2. SmartDataSource
Interface to be implemented by classes that can provide a connection to a relational database. Extends the
javax.sql.DataSource interface to allow classes using it to query whether or not the connection should be closed after a
given operation. This can sometimes be useful for efficiency, if we know that we want to reuse a connection.

10.3.3. AbstractDataSource
Abstract base class for Spring's DataSource implementations, taking care of the "uninteresting" glue. This is the class you
would extend if you are writing your own DataSource implementation.

10.3.4. SingleConnectionDataSource
Implementation of SmartDataSource that wraps a single connection which is not closed after use. Obviously, this is not
multi-threading capable.
If client code will call close in the assumption of a pooled connection, like when using persistence tools, set
suppressClose to true. This will return a close-suppressing proxy instead of 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.

10.3.5. DriverManagerDataSource
Implementation of SmartDataSource that configures a plain old JDBC Driver via bean properties, and returns a new
connection every time.
Useful for test or standalone environments outside of a J2EE container, either as a DataSource bean in a respective
ApplicationContext, 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.

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10.3.6. DataSourceTransactionManager
PlatformTransactionManager implementation for single JDBC data sources. Binds a JDBC connection from the specified data
source to the thread, potentially allowing for one thread connection per data source.
Application code is required to retrieve the JDBC connection via DataSourceUtils.getConnection(DataSource)
instead of J2EE's standard DataSource.getConnection. This is recommended anyway, as it throws unchecked
org.springframework.dao exceptions instead of checked SQLException. 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.
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 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. Note that JTA does not support custom isolation levels!

10.4. Modeling JDBC operations as Java objects

The org.springframework.jdbc.object package contains the classes that allow you to access the database in a
more object oriented manner. 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.

10.4.1. SqlQuery
Reusable threadsafe object to represent an SQL query. Subclasses must implement the newResultReader() method to provide
an object that can save the results while iterating over the ResultSet. This class is rarely used directly since the
MappingSqlQuery, that extends this class, provides a much more convenient implementation for mapping rows to Java
classes. Other implementations that extend SqlQuery are MappingSqlQueryWithParameters and
UpdatableSqlQuery.

10.4.2. MappingSqlQuery
MappingSqlQuery is a reusable query in which concrete subclasses must implement the abstract mapRow(ResultSet,
int) method to convert each row of the JDBC ResultSet into an object.
Of all the SqlQuery implementations, this is the one used most often and it is also the one that is the easiest to use.
Here is a brief example of a custom query that maps the data from the customer table to a Java object called Customer.
private class CustomerMappingQuery extends MappingSqlQuery {
public CustomerMappingQuery(DataSource ds) {
super(ds, "SELECT id, name FROM customer WHERE id = ?");
super.declareParameter(new SqlParameter("id", Types.INTEGER));
compile();
}
public Object mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNumber) throws SQLException {
Customer cust = new Customer();
cust.setId((Integer) rs.getObject("id"));
cust.setName(rs.getString("name"));
return cust;
}
}

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We provide a constructor for this customer query that takes the DataSource as the only parameter. In this constructor we
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. Each parameter must be declared using the declareParameter method passing in an
SqlParameter. The SqlParameter takes a name and the JDBC type as defined in java.sql.Types. After all
parameters have been defined we call the compile method so the statement can be prepared and later be executed.
Let's take a look at the code where this custom query is instantiated and executed:
public Customer getCustomer(Integer id) {
CustomerMappingQuery custQry = new CustomerMappingQuery(dataSource);
Object[] parms = new Object[1];
parms[0] = id;
List customers = custQry.execute(parms);
if (customers.size() > 0)
return (Customer) customers.get(0);
else
return null;
}
The method in this example retrieves the customer with the id that is passed in as the only parameter. After creating an
instance of the CustomerMappingQuery class we create an array of objects that will contain all parameters that are passed
in. In this case there is only one parameter and it is passed in as an Integer. Now we are ready to execute the query using
this array of parameters and we get a List that contains a Customer object for each row that was returned for our query. In
this case it will only be one entry if there was a match.

10.4.3. SqlUpdate
RdbmsOperation subclass representing a SQL update. Like a query, an update object is reusable. Like all RdbmsOperation
objects, 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.
This class is concrete. Although it can be subclassed (for example to add a custom update method) 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(Types.NUMERIC));
declareParameter(new SqlParameter(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 run(int id, int rating) {

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Object[] params =
new Object[] {
new Integer(rating),
new Integer(id)};
return update(params);
}
}

10.4.4. StoredProcedure
Superclass for object abstractions of RDBMS stored procedures. This class is abstract and its execute methods are protected,
preventing use other than through a subclass that offers tighter typing.
The inherited sql property is the name of the stored procedure in the RDBMS. Note that JDBC 3.0 introduces named
parameters, although the other features provided by this class are still necessary in JDBC 3.0.
Here is an example of a program that calls a function sysdate() that comes with any Oracle database. To use the stored
procedure functionality you have to create a class that extends StoredProcedure. There are no input parameters, but there
is an output parameter that is declared as a date using the class SqlOutParameter. The execute() method returns a map
with an entry for each declared output parameter using the parameter name as the key.
import java.sql.Types;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.Map;

import javax.sql.DataSource;

import org.springframework.jdbc.core.SqlOutParameter;
import org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.*;
import org.springframework.jdbc.object.StoredProcedure;

public class TestStoredProcedure {

public static void main(String[] args) {

TestStoredProcedure t = new TestStoredProcedure();
t.test();
System.out.println("Done!");
}

void test() {
DriverManagerDataSource ds = new DriverManagerDataSource();
ds.setDriverClassName("oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver");
ds.setUrl("jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521:mydb");
ds.setUsername("scott");
ds.setPassword("tiger");

MyStoredProcedure sproc = new MyStoredProcedure(ds);

Map res = sproc.execute();
printMap(res);
}

private class MyStoredProcedure extends StoredProcedure {

public static final String SQL = "sysdate";

public MyStoredProcedure(DataSource ds) {

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setDataSource(ds);
setFunction(true);
setSql(SQL);
declareParameter(new SqlOutParameter("date", Types.DATE));
compile();
}

public Map execute() {

Map out = execute(new HashMap());
return out;
}

private static void printMap(Map r) {

Iterator i = r.entrySet().iterator();
while (i.hasNext()) {
System.out.println((String) i.next().toString());
}
}
}

10.4.5. SqlFunction
SQL "function" wrapper for a query that returns a single row of results. The default behavior is to return an int, but that can be
overridden by using the methods with an extra return type parameter. This is similar to using the queryForXxx methods of
the JdbcTemplate. The advantage with SqlFunction is that you don't have to create the JdbcTemplate, it is done
behind the scenes.
This class is intended to use to call SQL functions that return a single result using a query like "select user()" or "select sysdate
from dual". It is not intended for calling more complex stored functions or for using a CallableStatement to invoke a
stored procedure or stored function. Use StoredProcedure or SqlCall for this type of processing.
This is a concrete class, which there is normally no need to subclass. Code using this package can create an object of this type,
declaring SQL and parameters, and then invoke the appropriate run method repeatedly to execute the function. Here is an
example of retrieving the count of rows from a table:
public int countRows() {
SqlFunction sf = new SqlFunction(dataSource, "select count(*) from mytable");
sf.compile();
return sf.run();
}

Prev Up Next
Chapter 9. DAO support Chapter 11. Data Access using O/R
Home
Mappers

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 Chapter 11. Data Access using O/R Mappers

Chapter 11. Data Access using O/R Mappers

Prev Next

Chapter 11. Data Access using O/R Mappers

11.1. Introduction
Spring provides integration with Hibernate, JDO, and iBATIS SQL Maps in terms of resource management, DAO
implementation support, and transaction strategies. For Hibernate there is first-class support with lots of IoC convenience
features, addressing many typical Hibernate integration issues. All of these comply with Spring's generic transaction and DAO
exception hierarchies.
Spring's adds significant support when using the O/R mapping layer of your choice to create data-access applications. First of all
you should know that once you started using Spring's support for O/R mapping, you don't have to go all the way. No matter to
what extent, you're invited to review and leverage the Spring approach, before deciding to take the effort and risk of building a
similar infrastructure in-house. Much of the O/R mapping support, no matter what technology you're using may be used in a
library style, as everything is designed as a set of reusable JavaBeans. Usage inside an ApplicationContext or BeanFactory does
provide additional benefits in terms of ease of configuration and deployment; as such, most examples in this section show
configuration inside an ApplicationContext.
Some of the the benefits of using Spring to create your O/R mapping applications include:
● To avoid vendor lock-in, and allow mix-and-match implementation strategies. While Hibernate is powerful, flexible, open
source and free, it still uses a proprietary API. Furthermore one could argue that iBatis is a bit lightweight, although it's
excellent for use in application that don't require complex O/R mapping strategies. Given the choice, it's usually desirable
to implement major application functionality using standard or abstracted APIs, in case you need to switch to another
implementation for reasons of functionality, performance, or any other concerns. For example, Spring's abstraction of
Hibernate Transactions and Exceptions, along with its IoC approach which allows you to easily swap in mapper/DAO
objects implementing data-access functionality, makes it easy to isolate all Hibernate-specific code in one area of your
application, without sacrificing any of the power of Hibernate. Higher level service code dealing with the DAOs has no
need to know anything about their implementation. This approach has the additional benefit of making it easy to
intentionally implement data-access with a mix-and-match approach (i.e. some data-access performed using Hibernate, and
some using JDBC, others using iBatis) in a non-intrusive fashion, potentially providing great benefits in terms of
continuing to use legacy code or leveraging the strength of each technology.
● Ease of testing. Spring's inversion of control approach makes it easy to swap the implementations and locations of
Hibernate session factories, datasources, transaction managers, and mapper object implementations (if needed). This makes
it much easier to isolate and test each piece of persistence-related code in isolation.
● General resource management. Spring application contexts can handle the location and configuration of Hibernate
SessionFactories, JDBC datasources, iBatis SQLMaps configuration objects, and other related resources. This makes these
values easy to manage and change. Spring offers efficient, easy and safe handling of Hibernate Sessions. Related code
using Hibernate generally needs to use the same Hibernate Session object for efficiency and proper transaction handling.
Spring makes it easy to transparently create and bind a session to the current thread, using either a declarative, AOP method
interceptor approach, or by using an explicit, template wrapper class at the Java code level. Thus Spring solves many of the
usage issues that repeatedly arise on the Hibernate forums.
● Exception wrapping. Spring can wrap exceptions from you O/R mapping tool of choice, converting them from proprietary,
checked exceptions, to a set of abstracted runtime exceptions. This 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 anywhere you need to. 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.
● Integrated transaction management. Spring allows you to wrap your O/R mapping code with either a declarative, AOP
style method interceptor, or an explicit 'template' wrapper class at the Java code level. In either case, transaction semantics

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are handled for you, and proper transaction handling (rollback, etc.) in case of exceptions is taken care of. As discussed
below, you also get the benefit of being able to use and swap various transaction managers, without your Hibernate related
code being affected. As an added benefit, JDBC-related code can fully integrate transactionally with the code you use to do
O/R mapping. This is useful for handling functionality not implemented in, for example, Hibernate or iBatis.

11.2. Hibernate
11.2.1. Resource Management
Typical business applications are often cluttered with repetitive resource management code. Many projects try to invent their own
solutions for this issue, sometimes sacrificing proper handling of failures for programming convenience. Spring advocates
strikingly simple solutions for proper resource handling: Inversion of control via templating, i.e. infrastructure classes with
callback interfaces, or applying AOP interceptors. The infrastructure cares for proper resource handling, and for 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
cares for connection handling, and for proper conversion of SQLException to the DataAccessException hierarchy,
including translation of database-specific SQL error codes to meaningful exception classes. It supports both JTA and JDBC
transactions, via respective Spring transaction managers. Spring also offers Hibernate and JDO support, consisting of a
HibernateTemplate / JdoTemplate analogous to JdbcTemplate, a HibernateInterceptor /
JdoInterceptor, and a Hibernate / JDO transaction manager. The major goal is to allow for clear application layering, with
any data access and transaction technology, and for loose coupling of application objects. No more business object 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
Spring's application context concept, providing XML-based configuration and cross-referencing of plain JavaBean instances that
don't need to be Spring-aware. In a typical Spring app, many important objects are JavaBeans: data access templates, data access
objects (that use the templates), transaction managers, business objects (that use the data access objects and transaction
managers), web view resolvers, web controllers (that use the business objects), etc.

11.2.2. Resource Definitions in an Application Context

To avoid tying application objects to hard-coded resource lookups, Spring allows you to define resources like a JDBC DataSource
or a Hibernate SessionFactory as beans in an application context. Application objects that need to access resources just receive
references to such pre-defined instances via bean references (the DAO definition in the next section illustrates this). 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.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">

<property name="jndiName">
<value>java:comp/env/jdbc/myds</value>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="mySessionFactory"
class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
<property name="mappingResources">
<list>
<value>product.hbm.xml</value>
</list>
</property>
<property name="hibernateProperties">
<props>
<prop
key="hibernate.dialect">net.sf.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect</prop>

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</props>
</property>
<property name="dataSource">
<ref bean="myDataSource"/>
</property>
</bean>

...

</beans>
Note that switching from a JNDI-located DataSource to a locally defined one like a Jakarta Commons DBCP
BasicDataSource is just a matter of configuration:
<bean id="myDataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource"
destroy-method="close">
<property name="driverClassName">
<value>org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver</value>
</property>
<property name="url">
<value>jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost:9001</value>
</property>
<property name="username">
<value>sa</value>
</property>
<property name="password">
<value></value>
</property>
</bean>
You can also use a JNDI-located SessionFactory, but that's typically not necessary outside an EJB context (see the
"container resources vs local resources" section for a discussion).

11.2.3. Inversion of Control: Template and Callback

The basic programming model for templating looks as follows, for methods that can be part of any custom data access object or
business object. 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 application
context - via a simple setSessionFactory bean property setter. The following snippets show a DAO definition in a Spring
application context, referencing the above defined SessionFactory, and an example for a DAO method implementation.
<beans>

<bean id="myProductDao" class="product.ProductDaoImpl">

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

...

</beans>
public class ProductDaoImpl implements ProductDao {

private SessionFactory sessionFactory;

public void setSessionFactory(SessionFactory sessionFactory) {

this.sessionFactory = sessionFactory;

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}

public List loadProductsByCategory(final String category) {

HibernateTemplate hibernateTemplate =
new HibernateTemplate(this.sessionFactory);

return (List) hibernateTemplate.execute(

new HibernateCallback() {
public Object doInHibernate(Session session) throws
HibernateException {
List result = session.find(
"from test.Product product where product.category=?",
category, Hibernate.STRING);
// do some further stuff with the result list
return result;
}
}
);
}
}
A callback implementation can effectively be used for any Hibernate data access. HibernateTemplate will ensure that
Sessions 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 List loadProductsByCategory(String category) {

return getHibernateTemplate().find(
"from test.Product product where product.category=?", category,
Hibernate.STRING);
}
}

11.2.4. Applying an AOP Interceptor Instead of a Template

An alternative to using a HibernateTemplate is Spring's AOP HibernateInterceptor, replacing the callback
implementation with straight Hibernate code within a delegating try/catch block, and a respective interceptor configuration in the
application context. The following snippets show respective DAO, interceptor, and proxy definitions in a Spring application
context, and an example for a DAO method implementation.
<beans>

...

<bean id="myHibernateInterceptor"
class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate.HibernateInterceptor">
<property name="sessionFactory">
<ref bean="mySessionFactory"/>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="myProductDaoTarget" class="product.ProductDaoImpl">

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

<bean id="myProductDao"
class="org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="proxyInterfaces">
<value>product.ProductDao</value>
</property>
<property name="interceptorNames">
<list>
<value>myHibernateInterceptor</value>
<value>myProductDaoTarget</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>

...

</beans>
public class ProductDaoImpl extends HibernateDaoSupport implements ProductDao {

public List loadProductsByCategory(final String category) throws MyException {

Session session = SessionFactoryUtils.getSession(getSessionFactory(), false);
try {
List result = session.find(
"from test.Product product where product.category=?",
category, Hibernate.STRING);
if (result == null) {
throw new MyException("invalid search result");
}
return result;
}
catch (HibernateException ex) {
throw SessionFactoryUtils.convertHibernateAccessException(ex);
}
}
}
This method will only work with a HibernateInterceptor for it, caring for opening a thread-bound Session before and
closing it after the method call. The "false" flag on getSession makes sure that the Session must already exist; otherwise
SessionFactoryUtils would create a new one if none was found. If there is already a SessionHolder bound to the
thread, e.g. by a HibernateTransactionManager transaction, SessionFactoryUtils automatically takes part in it in
any case. HibernateTemplate uses SessionFactoryUtils internally - it's all the same infrastructure. The major
advantage of HibernateInterceptor is that it allows any checked application exception to be thrown within the data access
code, while HibernateTemplate is restricted to unchecked exceptions within the callback. Note that one can offen defer the
respective checks and throwing of application exceptions to after the callback, though. The interceptor's major drawback is that it
requires special setup in the context. HibernateTemplate's convenience methods offers simpler means for many scenarios.

11.2.5. Programmatic Transaction Demarcation

On top of such lower-level data access services, transactions can be demarcated in a higher level of the application, spanning any
number of operations. There are no restrictions on the implementation of the surrounding business object here too, it just needs a
Spring PlatformTransactionManager. Again, the latter can come from anywhere, but preferably as bean reference via a
setTransactionManager method - just like the productDAO should be set via a setProductDao method. The

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following snippets show a transaction manager and a business object definition in a Spring application context, and an example
for a business method implementation.
<beans>

...

<bean id="myTransactionManager"
class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate.HibernateTransactionManager">
<property name="sessionFactory">
<ref bean="mySessionFactory"/>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="myProductService" class="product.ProductServiceImpl">

<property name="transactionManager">
<ref bean="myTransactionManager"/>
</property>
<property name="productDao">
<ref bean="myProductDao"/>
</property>
</bean>

</beans>
public class ProductServiceImpl implements ProductService {

private PlatformTransactionManager transactionManager;

private ProductDao productDao;

public void setTransactionManager(PlatformTransactionManager transactionManager)

{
this.transactionManager = transactionManager;
}

public void setProductDao(ProductDao productDao) {

this.productDao = productDao;
}

public void increasePriceOfAllProductsInCategory(final String category) {

TransactionTemplate transactionTemplate = new
TransactionTemplate(this.transactionManager);

transactionTemplate.setPropagationBehavior(TransactionDefinition.PROPAGATION_REQUIRED);
transactionTemplate.execute(
new TransactionCallbackWithoutResult() {
public void doInTransactionWithoutResult(TransactionStatus status) {
List productsToChange =
productDAO.loadProductsByCategory(category);
...
}
}
);
}
}

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11.2.6. Declarative Transaction Demarcation

Alternatively, one can use Spring's AOP TransactionInterceptor, replacing the transaction demarcation code with an interceptor
configuration in the application context. This allows you to keep business objects free of repetitive transaction demarcation code
in each business method. Furthermore, transaction semantics like propagation behavior and isolation level can be changed in a
configuration file and do not affect the business object implementations.
<beans>

...

<bean id="myTransactionManager"
class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate.HibernateTransactionManager">
<property name="sessionFactory">
<ref bean="mySessionFactory"/>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="myTransactionInterceptor"
class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor">
<property name="transactionManager">
<ref bean="myTransactionManager"/>
</property>
<property name="transactionAttributeSource">
<value>
product.ProductService.increasePrice*=PROPAGATION_REQUIRED
product.ProductService.someOtherBusinessMethod=PROPAGATION_MANDATORY
</value>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="myProductServiceTarget" class="product.ProductServiceImpl">

<property name="productDao">
<ref bean="myProductDao"/>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="myProductService"
class="org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="proxyInterfaces">
<value>product.ProductService</value>
</property>
<property name="interceptorNames">
<list>
<value>myTransactionInterceptor</value>
<value>myProductServiceTarget</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>

</beans>
public class ProductServiceImpl implements ProductService {

private ProductDao productDao;

public void setProductDao(ProductDao productDao) {

this.productDao = productDao;

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public void increasePriceOfAllProductsInCategory(final String category) {

List productsToChange = this.productDAO.loadProductsByCategory(category);
...
}

...

}
As with HibernateInterceptor, TransactionInterceptor allows any checked application exception to be thrown
with the callback code, while TransactionTemplate is restricted to unchecked exceptions within the callback.
TransactionTemplate will trigger a rollback in case of an unchecked application exception, or if the transaction has been
marked rollback-only by the application (via TransactionStatus). TransactionInterceptor behaves the same way
by default but allows configurable rollback policies per method. A convenient alternative way of setting up declarative
transactions is TransactionProxyFactoryBean, particularly if there are no other AOP interceptors involved.
TransactionProxyFactoryBean combines the proxy definition itself with transaction configuration for a particular target
bean. This reduces the configuration effort to one target bean plus one proxy bean. Furthermore, you do not need to specify which
interfaces or classes the transactional methods are defined in.
<beans>

...

<bean id="myTransactionManager"
class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate.HibernateTransactionManager">
<property name="sessionFactory">
<ref bean="mySessionFactory"/>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="myProductServiceTarget" class="product.ProductServiceImpl">

<property name="productDao">
<ref bean="myProductDao"/>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="myProductService"

class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="transactionManager">
<ref bean="myTransactionManager"/>
</property>
<property name="target">
<ref bean="myProductServiceTarget"/>
</property>
<property name="transactionAttributes">
<props>
<prop key="increasePrice*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
<prop key="someOtherBusinessMethod">PROPAGATION_MANDATORY</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>

</beans>

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11.2.7. 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 could even use a custom PlatformTransactionManager
implementation. So switching from native Hibernate transaction management to JTA, i.e. when facing distributed transaction
requirements for certain deployments of your application, is just a matter of configuration. Simply replace the Hibernate
transaction manager with Spring's JTA transaction implementation. Both transaction demarcation and data access code will work
without changes, as 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 of your DAOs then gets one specific SessionFactory reference passed into its
respective bean property. If all underlying JDBC data sources are transactional container ones, a business object can demarcate
transactions across any number of DAOs and any number of session factories without special regard, as long as it is using
JtaTransactionManager as the strategy.
<beans>

<bean id="myDataSource1" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">

<property name="jndiName">
<value>java:comp/env/jdbc/myds1</value>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="myDataSource2" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">

<property name="jndiName">
<value>java:comp/env/jdbc/myds2</value>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="mySessionFactory1"
class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
<property name="mappingResources">
<list>
<value>product.hbm.xml</value>
</list>
</property>
<property name="hibernateProperties">
<props>
<prop
key="hibernate.dialect">net.sf.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect</prop>
</props>
</property>
<property name="dataSource">
<ref bean="myDataSource1"/>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="mySessionFactory2"
class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
<property name="mappingResources">
<list>
<value>inventory.hbm.xml</value>
</list>
</property>
<property name="hibernateProperties">
<props>

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<prop
key="hibernate.dialect">net.sf.hibernate.dialect.OracleDialect</prop>
</props>
</property>
<property name="dataSource">
<ref bean="myDataSource2"/>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="myTransactionManager"
class="org.springframework.transaction.jta.JtaTransactionManager"/>

<bean id="myProductDao" class="product.ProductDaoImpl">

<property name="sessionFactory">
<ref bean="mySessionFactory1"/>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="myInventoryDao" class="product.InventoryDaoImpl">

<property name="sessionFactory">
<ref bean="mySessionFactory2"/>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="myProductServiceTarget" class="product.ProductServiceImpl">

<property name="productDao">
<ref bean="myProductDao"/>
</property>
<property name="inventoryDao">
<ref bean="myInventoryDao"/>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="myProductService"

class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="transactionManager">
<ref bean="myTransactionManager"/>
</property>
<property name="target">
<ref bean="myProductServiceTarget"/>
</property>
<property name="transactionAttributes">
<props>
<prop key="increasePrice*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
<prop key="someOtherBusinessMethod">PROPAGATION_MANDATORY</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>

</beans>
Both HibernateTransactionManager and JtaTransactionManager allow for proper JVM-level cache handling
with Hibernate - without container-specific transaction manager lookup or JCA connector (as long as not using EJB to initiate
transactions). Additionally, HibernateTransactionManager can export the JDBC Connection used by Hibernate to plain
JDBC access code. This allows for high level transaction demarcation with mixed Hibernate/JDBC data access completely
without JTA, as long as just accessing one database!

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Note, for an alternative approach to using TransactionProxyFactoryBean to declaratively demarcate transactions, please
see Section 7.4.1, BeanNameAutoProxyCreator, another declarative approach .

11.2.8. Container Resources versus Local Resources

Spring's resource management allows for simple switching between a JNDI SessionFactory and a local one, same for a JNDI
DataSource, without having to change a single line of application code. Whether to keep the resource definitions in the container
or locally within the application, is mainly a matter of the transaction strategy being used. Compared to a Spring-defined local
SessionFactory, a manually registered JNDI SessionFactory does not provide any benefits. If registered via Hibernate's JCA
connector, there is the added value of transparently taking part in JTA transactions, especially within EJBs. An important benefit
of Spring's transaction support is that it isn't bound to a container at all. Configured to any other strategy than JTA, it will work in
a standalone or test environment too. Especially for the typical case of single-database transactions, this is a very lightweight and
powerful alternative to JTA. When using local EJB Stateless Session Beans to drive transactions, you depend both on an EJB
container and JTA - even if you just access a single database anyway, and just use SLSBs for declarative transactions via CMT.
The alternative of using JTA programmatically requires a J2EE environment too. JTA does not just involve container
dependencies in terms of JTA itself and of JNDI DataSources. For non-Spring JTA-driven Hibernate transactions, you have to use
the Hibernate JCA connector, or extra Hibernate transaction code with JTATransaction being configured, for proper JVM-level
caching. Spring-driven transactions can work with a locally defined Hibernate SessionFactory nicely, just like with a local JDBC
DataSource - if accessing a single database, of course. Therefore you just have to fall back to Spring's JTA transaction strategy
when actually facing distributed transaction requirements. Note that a JCA connector needs container-specific deployment steps,
and obviously JCA support in the first place. This is far more hassle than deploying a simple web app with local resource
definitions and Spring-driven transactions. And you often need the Enterprise Edition of your container, as e.g. WebLogic
Express does not provide JCA. A Spring app with local resources and transactions spanning one single database will work in any
J2EE web container (without JTA, JCA, or EJB) - like Tomcat, Resin, or even plain Jetty. Additionally, such a middle tier can be
reused in desktop applications or test suites easily. All things considered: If you do not use EJB, stick with local SessionFactory
setup and Spring's HibernateTransactionManager or JtaTransactionManager. You will get all benefits including
proper transactional JVM-level caching and distributed transactions, without any container deployment hassle. JNDI registration
of a Hibernate SessionFactory via the JCA connector only adds value for use within EJBs.

11.2.9. Samples
The Petclinic sample in the Spring distribution offers alternative DAO implementations and application context configurations for
Hibernate, JDBC, and Apache OJB. Petclinic can therefore serve as working sample app that illustrates the use of Hibernate in a
Spring web app. It also leverages declarative transaction demarcation with different transaction strategies.

11.3. JDO
ToDo

11.4. iBATIS
Through the org.springframework.orm.ibatis package, Spring supports iBATIS SqlMaps 1.3.x and 2.0. The iBATIS
support much resembles Hibernate support in that it supports the same template style programming and just as with Hibernate,
iBatis support works with Spring's exception hierarchy and let's you enjoy the all IoC features Spring has.

11.4.1. Overview and differences between 1.3.x and 2.0

Spring supports both iBATIS SqlMaps 1.3 and 2.0. First let's have a look at the differences between the two.
Table 11.1. iBATIS SqlMaps supporting classes for 1.3 and 2.0
Feature 1.3.x 2.0
Creation of SqlMap SqlMapFactoryBean SqlMapClientFactoryBean
Template-style helper class SqlMapTemplate SqlMapClientTemplate

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Callback to use MappedStatement SqlMapCallback SqlMapClientCallback

Super class for DAOs SqlMapDaoSupport SqlMapClientDaoSupport

11.4.2. Setting up the SqlMap

Using iBATIS SqlMaps involves creating SqlMap configuration files containing statements and result maps. Spring takes care of
loading those using the SqlMapFactoryBean or SqlMapClientFactoryBean where the latter is to be used in
combination with SqlMaps 2.0.

public class Account {

private String name;
private String email;

public String getName() {

return this.name;
}

public void setName(String name) {

this.name = name;
}

public String getEmail() {

return this.email;
}

public void setEmail(String email) {

this.email = email;
}
}
Suppose we would want to map this class. We'd have to create the following SqlMap. Using the query, we can later on retrieve
users through their email addresses. Account.xml:

<sql-map name="Account">
<result-map name="result" class="examples.Account">
<property name="name" column="NAME" columnIndex="1"/>
<property name="email" column="EMAIL" columnIndex="2"/>
</result-map>

<mapped-statement name="getAccountByEmail" result-map="result">

select
ACCOUNT.NAME,
ACCOUNT.EMAIL
from ACCOUNT
where ACCOUNT.EMAIL = #value#
</mapped-statement>

<mapped-statement name="insertAccount">
insert into ACCOUNT (NAME, EMAIL) values (#name#, #email#)
</mapped-statement>
</sql-map>
After having defined the Sql Map, we have to create a configuration file for iBATIS (sqlmap-config.xml):

<sql-map-config>

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<sql-map resource="example/Account.xml"/>

</sql-map-config>
iBATIS loads resources from the classpath so be sure to add the Account.xml file to the classpath somewhere.
Using Spring, we can now very easily set up the SqlMap, using the SqlMapFactoryBean:

<bean id="sqlMap" class="org.springframework.orm.ibatis.SqlMapFactoryBean">

<property
name="configLocation"><value>WEB-INF/sqlmap-config.xml</value></property>
</bean>

11.4.3. Using SqlMapDaoSupport

The SqlMapDaoSupport class offers a supporting class similar to the HibernateDaoSupport and the
JdbcDaoSupport types. Let's implement a DAO:

public class SqlMapAccountDao extends SqlMapDaoSupport implements AccountDao {

public Account getAccount(String email) throws DataAccessException {

Account acc = new Account();
acc.setEmail();
return
(Account)getSqlMapTemplate().executeQueryForObject("getAccountByEmail", email);
}

public void insertAccount(Account account) throws DataAccessException {

getSqlMapTemplate().executeUpdate("insertAccount", account);
}
}
As you can see, we're using the SqlMapTemplate to execute the query. Spring has initialized the SqlMap for us using the
SqlMapFactoryBean and when setting up the SqlMapAccountDao as follows, you're all set to go:

<!-- for more information about using datasource, have a look at the JDBC chapter -->
<bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource"
destroy-method="close">
<property
name="driverClassName"><value>${jdbc.driverClassName}</value></property>
<property name="url"><value>${jdbc.url}</value></property>
<property name="username"><value>${jdbc.username}</value></property>
<property name="password"><value>${jdbc.password}</value></property>
</bean>

<bean id="accountDao" class="example.SqlMapAccountDao">

<property name="dataSource"><ref local="dataSource"/></property>
<property name="sqlMap"><ref local="sqlMap"/></property>
</bean>

11.4.4. Transaction management

It's pretty easy to add declarative transaction management to applications using iBATIS. Basically the only thing you need to do
is adding a transaction manager to you application context and declaratively set your transaction boundaries using for example the
TransactionProxyFactoryBean. More on this can be found in Chapter 7, Transaction management

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TODO elaborate!

Prev Up Next
Chapter 10. Data Access using JDBC Home Chapter 12. Web framework

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 Chapter 12. Web framework

Chapter 12. Web framework

Prev Next

Chapter 12. Web framework

12.1. Introduction to the web framework
Spring's web framework is designed around a DispatcherServlet that dispatches requests to handlers, with configurable handler
mappings, view resolution, locale and theme resolution as well support for upload files. The default handler is a very simple
Controller interface, just offering a ModelAndView handleRequest(request,response) method. This can already
be used for application controllers, but you will prefer the included implementation hierarchy, consisting of for example
AbstractController, AbstractCommandController and SimpleFormController. Application controllers
will typically be subclasses of those. Note that you can choose an appropriate base class: If you don't have a form, you don't
need a FormController. This is a major difference to Struts.
You can take any object as command or form object: There's no need to implement an interface or derive from a base class.
Spring's data binding is highly flexible, e.g. it treats type mismatches as validation errors that can be evaluated by the
application, not as system errors. So you don't need to duplicate your business objects' properties as Strings in your form
objects, just to be able to handle invalid submissions, or to convert the Strings properly. Instead, it's often preferable to bind
directly to your business objects. This is another major difference to Struts which is built around required base classes like
Action and ActionForm - for every type of action.
Compared to WebWork, Spring has more differentiated object roles: It supports the notion of a Controller, an optional
command or form object, and a model that gets passed to the view. The model will normally include the command or form
object but also arbitrary reference data. Instead, a WebWork Action combines all those roles into one single object. WebWork
does allow you to use existing business objects as part of your form, but just by making them bean properties of the respective
Action class. Finally, the same Action instance that handles the request gets used for evaluation and form population in the
view. Thus, reference data needs to be modelled as bean properties of the Action too. These are arguably too many roles in one
object.
Regarding views: Spring's view resolution is extremely flexible. A Controller implementation can even write a view directly to
the response, returning null as ModelAndView. In the normal case, a ModelAndView instance consists of a view name and a
model Map, containing bean names and corresponding objects (like a command or form, reference data, etc). View name
resolution is highly configurable, either via bean names, via a properties file, or via your own ViewResolver implementation.
The abstract model Map allows for complete abstraction of the view technology, without any hassle: Be it JSP, Velocity, or
anything else - every renderer can be integrated directly. The model Map simply gets transformed into an appropriate format,
like JSP request attributes or a Velocity template model.

12.1.1. Pluggability of MVC implementation

Many teams will try to leverage their investments in terms of know-how and tools, both for existing projects and for new ones.
Concretely, there are not only a large number of books and tools for Struts but also a lot of developers that have experience
with it. Thus, if you can live with Struts's architectural flaws, it can still be a viable choice for the web layer. The same applies
to WebWork and other web frameworks.
If you don't want to use Spring's web MVC but intend to leverage other solutions that Spring offers, you can integrate the web
framework of your choice with Spring easily. Simply start up a Spring root application context via its ContextLoaderListener,
and access it via its ServletContext attribute (or Spring's respective helper method) from within a Struts or WebWork action.
Note that there aren't any "plugins" involved, therefore no dedicated integration: From the view of the web layer, you'll simply
use Spring as a library, with the root application context instance as entry point.
All your registered beans and all of Spring's services can be at your fingertips even without Spring's web MVC. Spring doesn't
compete with Struts or WebWork in this usage, it just addresses the many areas that the pure web frameworks don't, from bean
configuration to data access and transaction handling. So you are able to enrich your application with a Spring middle tier

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and/or data access tier, even if you just want to use e.g. the transaction abstraction with JDBC or Hibernate.

12.1.2. Features of Spring MVC

If just focusing on the web support, some of the Spring's unique features are:
● Clear separation of roles: controller vs validator vs command object vs form object vs model object, DispatcherServlet
vs handler mapping vs view resolver, etc.
● Powerful and straightforward configuration of both framework and application classes as JavaBeans, including easy
in-between referencing via an application context, e.g. from web controllers to business objects and validators.
● Adaptability, non-intrusiveness: Use whatever Controller subclass you need (plain, command, form, wizard, multi
action, or a custom one) for a given scenario instead of deriving from Action/ActionForm for everything.
● Reusable business code, no need for duplication: You can use existing business objects as command or form objects
instead of mirroring them in special ActionForm subclasses.
● Customizable binding and validation: type mismatches as application-level validation errors that keep the offending
value, localized date and number binding, etc instead of String-only form objects with manual parsing and conversion to
business objects.
● Customizable handler mapping, customizable view resolution: flexible model transfer via name/value Map, handler
mapping and view resolution strategies from simple to sophisticated instead of one single way.
● Customizable locale and theme resolution, support for JSPs with and without Spring tag library, support for JSTL,
support for Velocity without the need for extra bridges, etc.
● Simple but powerful tag library that avoids HTML generation at any cost, allowing for maximum flexibility in terms of
markup code.

12.2. The DispatcherServlet

Spring's web framework is - like many other web frameworks - a request driven web framework, designed around a servlet that
dispatches requests to controllers and offers other functionality facilitating the development of webapplications. Spring's
DispatcherServlet however, does more than just that. It is completely integrated with the Spring ApplicationContext
and allows you to use every other feature Spring has.
Servlets are declared in the web.xml of your webapplication, so is the DispatcherServlet. Requests that you want the
DispatcherServlet to handle, will have to be mapped, using a url-mapping in the same web.xml file.
<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>*.form</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
</web-app>
In the example above, all requests ending with .form will be handled by the DispatcherServlet. Then, the DispatcherServlet
needs to be configured. As illustrated in Section 3.10, Introduction to the ApplicationContext , ApplicationContexts in Spring
can be scoped. In the web framework, each DispatcherServlet has its own WebApplicationContext, which contains the
DispatcherServlet configuration beans. The default BeanFactory used by the DispatcherServlet is the XmlBeanFactory and

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the DispatcherServlet will on initialization look for a file named [servlet-name]-servlet.xml in the WEB-INF
directory of your web application. The default values used by the DispatcherServlet can be modified by using the servlet
initialization parameters (see below for more information).
The WebApplicationContext is just an ordinary ApplicationContext that has some extra features necessary for
webapplications. It differs from a normal ApplicationContext in that it is capable of resolving themes (see Section 12.7, Using
themes ), and that is knows to which servlet it is associated (by having a link to the ServletContext). The
WebApplicationContext is bound in the ServletContext, and using RequestContextUtils you can always lookup the
WebApplicationContext in case you need it.
The Spring DispatcherServlet has a couple of special beans it uses, in order to be able to process requests and render the
appropriate views. Those beans are included in the Spring framework and (optionally) have to be configured in the
WebApplicationContext, just as any other bean would have to be configured. Each of those beans, is described in more detail
below. Right now, we'll just mention them, just to let you know they exist and to enable us to go on talking about the
DispatcherServlet. For most of the beans, defaults are provided so you don't have to worry about those.
Table 12.1. Special beans in the WebApplicationContext
Expression Explanation
(Section 12.4, Handler mappings ) a list of pre- and postprocessors and controllers that will be
handler mapping(s)
executed if they match certain criteria (for instance a matching URL specified with the controller)
(Section 12.3, Controllers ) the beans providing the actual functionality (or at least, access to the
controller(s)
functionality) as part of the MVC triad
(Section 12.5, Views and resolving them ) capable of resolving view names and needed by the
view resolver
DispatcherServlet to resolves those views with
(Section 12.6, Using locales ) capable of resolves the locale a client is using, in order to be able to
locale resolver
offer internationalized views
(Section 12.7, Using themes ) capable of resolving themes your webapplication can use e.g. to
theme resolver
offer personalized layouts
(Section 12.8, Spring's multipart (fileupload) support ) offers functionality to process file uploads
multipart resolver
from HTML forms
(Section 12.9, Handling exceptions ) offers functionality to map exceptions to views or implement
handlerexception resolver
other more complex exception handling code

When a DispatcherServlet is setup for use and a request comes in for that specific DispatcherServlet it starts processing it. The
list below describes the complete process a request goes through if a DispatcherServlet is supposed to handle it:
1. The WebApplicationContext is searched for and bound in the request as an attribute in order for controller and other
elements in the chain of process to use it. It is bound by default under the key
DispatcherServlet.WEB_APPLICATION_CONTEXT_ATTRIBUTE
2. The locale resolver is bound to the request to let elements in the chain resolve the locale to use when processing the
request (rendering the view, preparing data, etcetera). If you don't use the resolver, it won't affect anything, so if you
don't need locale resolving, just don't bother
3. The theme resolver is bound to the request to let e.g. views determine which theme to use (if you don't needs themes,
don't bother, the resolver is just bound and does not affect anything if you don't use it)
4. If a multipart resolver is specified, the request is inspected for multiparts and if so, it is wrapped in a
MultipartHttpServletRequest for further processing by other elements in the chain (more information about
multipart handling is provided below)
5. An appropriate handler is searched for. If a handler is found, it execution chain associated to the handler (preprocessors,
postprocessors, controllers) will be executed in order to prepare a model

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6. If a model is returned, the view is rendered, using the view resolver that has been configured with the
WebApplicationContext. If no model was returned (which could be the result of a pre- or postprocessor intercepting the
request because of for instance security reasons), no view is rendered as well, since the request could already have been
fulfilled
Exceptions that might be thrown during processing of the request get picked up by any of the handlerexception resolvers that
are declared in the WebApplicationContext. Using those exception resolvers you can define custom behavior in case such
exceptions get thrown.
The Spring DispatcherServlet also has support for returning the last-modification-date, as specified by the Servlet API. The
process of determining the last modification date for a specific request, is simple. The DispatcherServlet will first of all lookup
an appropriate handler mapping and test if the handler that matched implements the interface LastModified and if so, the
value the of long getLastModified(request) is returned to the client.
You can customize Spring's DispatcherServlet by adding context parameters in the web.xml file or servlet init parameters.
The possibilities are listed below.
Table 12.2. DispatcherServlet initialization parameters
Parameter Explanation
Class that implements WebApplicationContext, which will be used to instantiate the
contextClass context used by this servlet. If this parameter isn't specified, the
XmlWebApplicationContext will be used
String which is passed to the context instance (specified by contextClass) to indicate
where context(s) can be found. The String is potentially split up into multiple strings (using a
contextConfigLocation
comma as a delimiter) to support multiple contexts (in case of multiple context locations, of
beans that are defined twice, the latest takes precedence)
the namespace of the WebApplicationContext. Defaults to
namespace
[server-name]-servlet

12.3. Controllers
The notion of controller is part of the MVC design pattern. Controllers define application behavior, or at least provide users
with access to the application behavior. Controllers interpret user input and transform the user input into a sensible model
which will be represented to the user by the view. Spring has implemented the notion of a controller in a very abstract way
enabling a wide variety of different kinds of controllers to be created. Spring contains formcontroller, commandcontroller,
controllers that execute wizard-style logic and more.
Spring's basis for the controller architecture is the org.springframework.mvc.Controller interface, which is listed
below.
public interface Controller {

/**
* Process the request and return a ModelAndView object which the
DispatcherServlet
* will render.
*/
ModelAndView handleRequest(
HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response)
throws Exception;
}
As you can see, the Controller interface just states one single method that should be capable of handling a request and return an
appropriate model and view. Those three concepts are the basis for the Spring MVC implemente; ModelAndView and

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Controller. While the Controller interface is quite abstract, Spring offers a lot of controllers that already contain a lot of
functionality you might need. The controller interface just define the most commons functionality offered by every controller:
the functionality of handling a request and returning a model and a view.

12.3.1. AbstractController and WebContentGenerator

Of course, just a controller interface isn't enough. To provide a basic infrastructure, all of Spring's Controllers inherit from
AbstractController, a class offering caching support and for instance the setting of the mimetype.
Table 12.3. Features offered by the AbstractController
Feature Explanation
indicates what methods this controller should accept. Usually this is set to both GET and POST,
but you can modify this to reflect the method you want to support. If a request is received with a
supportedMethods
method that is not supported by the controller, the client will be informed of this (using a
ServletException))
indicates whether or not this controller requires a session to do its work. This feature is offered to
requiresSession all controllers. If a session is not present when such a controller receives a request, the user is
informed using a ServletException
use this if you want handling by this controller to be synchronized on the user's session. To be
synchronizeSession more specific, extending controller will override the handleRequestInternal method,
which will be synchronized if you specify this variable
when you want a controller to generate caching directive in the HTTP response, specify a positive
cacheSeconds
integer here. By default it is set to -1 so no caching directives will be included
tweaking of your controllers specifying the HTTP 1.0 compatible "Expires" header. By default
useExpiresHeader
it's set to true, so you won't have to touch it
tweaking of your controllers specifying the HTTP 1.1 compatible "Cache-Control" header. By
useCacheHeader
default this is set to true so you won't really have to touch it

the last two properties are actually part of the WebContentGenerator which is the superclass of
AbstractController but to keeps things clear...
When using the AbstractController as a baseclass for your controllers (which is not recommended since there are a lot of other
controller that might already do the job for your) you only have to override the
handleRequestInternal(HttpServletRequest, HttpServletResponse)-method and implement your
logic code and return a ModelAndView object there. A short example consisting of a class and a declaration in the
webapplicationcontext.
package samples;

public class SampleController extends AbstractController {

public ModelAndView handleRequestInternal(

HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response)
throws Exception {
ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView("foo", new HashMap());
}
}
<bean id="sampleController" class="samples.SampleController">
<property name="cacheSeconds"><value>120</value</property>
</bean>
The class above and the declaration in the webapplicationcontext is all you need to do besides setting up a handler mapping
(see Section 12.4, Handler mappings ) to get this very simple controller working. This controller will generates caching

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directives telling the client to cache things for 2 minutes before rechecking. This controller furthermore returns an hard-coded
view (hmm, not so nice), named index (see Section 12.5, Views and resolving them for more information about views).

12.3.2. Other simple controllers

Besides the AbstractController - which you could of course extend, although a more concrete controller might offer you more
functionality - there are a couple of other simple controllers that might ease the pain of developing simple MVC applications.
The ParameterizableViewController basically is the same as the one in the example above, except for the fact that
you can specify its view name that it'll be returning in the webapplicationcontext (ahhh, no need to hard-code the viewname).
The FileNameViewController inspects the URL and retrieves the filename of the file request (the filename of
http://www.springframework.org/index.html is index) and uses that as a viewname. Nothing more to it.

12.3.3. The MultiActionController

Spring offers a multi-action controller with which you aggregate multiple actions into one controller, grouping functionality
together. The multi-action controller lives in a separate package - org.springframework.web.mvc.multiaction -
and is capable of mapping requests to method names and then invoking the right method name. Using the multi-action
controller is especially handy when you're having a lot of commons functionality in one controller, but want to have multiple
entry points to the controller to tweak behavior for instance.
Table 12.4. Features offered by the MultiActionController
Feature Explanation
there's two usage-scenarios for the MultiActionController. Either you subclass the
MultiActionController and specify the methods that will be resolved by the
MethodNameResolver on the subclass (in case you don't need this configuration parameter), or
delegate
you define a delegate oject, on which methods resolved by the Resolver will be invoked. If you
choose to enter this scenario, you will have to define the delegate using this configuration
parameter as a collaborator
somehow, the MultiActionController will need to resolve the method it has to invoke, based on
methodNameResolver the request that came in. You can define a resolver that is capable of doing that using this
configuration parameter

Methods defined for a multi-action controller will need to conform to the following signature:
// actionName can be replaced by any methodname
ModelAndView actionName(HttpServletRequest, HttpServletResponse);
Method overloading is not allowed since it'll confuse the MultiActionController. Furthermore, you can define exception
handlers capable of handling exception that will be thrown form a method you specify. Exception handler methods need to
return a ModelAndView object, just as any other action method and will need to conform to the following signature:
// anyMeaningfulName can be replaced by any methodname
ModelAndView anyMeaningfulName(HttpServletRequest, HttpServletResponse,
ExceptionClass);
The ExceptionClass can be any exception, as long as it's a subclass of java.lang.Exception or
java.lang.RuntimeException.
The MethodNameResolver is supposed to resolve method names based on the request coming in. There are three resolver
to your disposal, but of course you can implement more of them yourself if you want.
● ParameterMethodNameResolver - capable of resolving a request parameter and using that as the method name
(http://www.sf.net/index.view?testParam=testIt will result in a method
testIt(HttpServletRequest, HttpServletResponse) being called). Use the paramName
configuration parameter to tweak the parameter that's inspected)
● InternalPathMethodNameResolver - retrieves the filename from the path and uses that as the method name

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(http://www.sf.net/testing.view will result in a method testing(HttpServletRequest,

HttpServletResponse) being called)
● PropertiesMethodNameResolver - uses a user-defined properties object with request URLs mapped to
methodnames. When the properties contain /index/welcome.html=doIt and a request to
/index/welcome.html comes in, the doIt(HttpServletRequest, HttpServletResponse) method is
called. This method name resolver works with the PathMatcher (see Section 12.10.1, A little story about the
pathmatcher ) so if the properties contained /**/welcom?.html it would also have worked!

A couple of examples. First of all one showing the ParameterMethodNameResolver and the delegate property, which
will accept requests to urls with the parameter method included and set to retrieveIndex:
<bean id="paramResolver" class="org....mvc.multiaction.ParameterMethodNameResolver">
<property name="paramName"><value>method</value></property>
</bean>

<bean id="paramMultiController" class="org....mvc.multiaction.MultiActionController">

<property name="methodNameResolver"><ref bean="paramResolver"/></property>
<property name="delegate"><ref bean="sampleDelegate"/>
</bean>

<bean id="sampleDelegate" class="samples.SampleDelegate"/>

## together with

public class SampleDelegate {

public ModelAndView retrieveIndex(

HttpServletRequest req,
HttpServletResponse resp) {

rerurn new ModelAndView("index", "date", new

Long(System.currentTimeMillis()));
}
}
When using the delegates shown above, we could also use the PropertiesMethodNameRseolver to match a couple of
URLs to the method we defined:
<bean id="propsResolver" class="org....mvc.multiaction.PropertiesMethodNameResolver">
<property name="mappings">
<props>
<prop key="/index/welcome.html">retrieveIndex</prop>
<prop key="/**/notwelcome.html">retrieveIndex</prop>
<prop key="/*/user?.html">retrieveIndex</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="paramMultiController" class="org....mvc.multiaction.MultiActionController">

<property name="methodNameResolver"><ref bean="propsResolver"/></property>
<property name="delegate"><ref bean="sampleDelegate"/>
</bean>

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12.3.4. CommandControllers
Spring's CommandControllers are a fundamental part of the Spring MVC package. Command controllers provide a way to
interact with dataobjects and dynamically bind parameters from the HttpServletRequest to the dataobject you're
specifying. This compares to Struts's actionforms, where in Spring, you don't have to implement any interface of superclasses
to do databinding. First, let's examine what command controllers available, just to get clear picture 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're specifying. 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 dataobject 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 dataobject you're retrieving in the controller. After a user has filled the form, the
AbstractFormController binds the fields, validates and hands the object back to you - the controller - to take appropriate
action. Supported features are invalid form submission (resubmission), validation, and the right workflow a form always
has. What views you tie to your AbstractFormController you decide yourself. Use this controller if you need forms, but
don't want to specify what views you're going to show the user in the applicationcontext
● SimpleFormController - an even more concrete FormCotnroller that helps you creating a form with
corresponding data object even more. The SimpleFormController let's you specify a command object, a viewname for
the form, a viewname for page you want to show the user when formsubmission has succeeded, and more
● AbstractWizardFormController - as the class name suggests, this is an abstract class--your WizardController
should extend it. This means you have to implement both the validatePage(), processFinish as well as
processCancel methods.
Probably you also want to write a contractor, which should at the very least call setPages() and
setCommandName(). The former takes as its argument an array of type String. This array is the list of views which
comprise your wizard. The latter takes as its argument a String, which will be used to refer to your Command object
from within your views.
As with any instance of AbstractFormController, you are required to use a Command object - a JavaBean which will be
populated with the data from your forms. You can do this in one of two ways: either call setCommandClass() from
the constructor with the class of your command object, or implement the formBackingObject() method.
AbstractWizardFormController has a number of concrete methods that you may wish to override. Of these, the ones you
are likely to find most useful are: referenceData which you can use to pass model data to your view in the form of
a Map; getTargetPage if your wizard needs to change page order or omit pages dynamically; and
onBindAndValidate if you want to override the built-in binding and validation workflow.
Finally, it is worth pointing out the setAllowDirtyBack and setAllowDirtyForward, which you can call
from getTargetPage to allow users to move backwards and forwards in the wizard even if validation fails for the
current page.
For a full list of methods, see the JavaDoc for AbstractWizardFormController. There is an implemented example of this
wizard in the jPetStore included in the Spring distribution:
org.springframework.samples.jpetstore.web.spring.OrderFormController.java

12.4. Handler mappings

Using a handler mapping you can map incoming web requests to appropriate handlers. There are some handler mapping you
can use, for example the SimpleUrlHandlerMapping or the BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping, but let's first examine
the general concept of a HandlerMapping.
The functionality a basic HandlerMapping provides is the delivering of a HandlerExecutionChain, first of all
containing one handler that matched the incoming request. The second (but optional) element a handler execution chain will

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contain is a list of handler interceptor that should be applied to the request. When a request comes in, the
DispatcherServlet will hand it over to the handler mapping to let it inspect the request and come up with an appropriate
HandlerExecutionChain. When done, the DispatcherServlet will execute the handler and interceptors in the chain (if any).
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-in in custom
HandlerMappings. Think of a custom handler mapping that chooses a handler not only based on the URL of the request
coming in, but also on a specific state of the session associated with the request.
Let's examine the handler mappings that Spring provides.

12.4.1. BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping
A very simple, but very powerful handlermapping is the BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping, which maps incoming HTTP
requests to names of beans, defined in the webapplicationcontext. Let's say we want to enable a user to insert an account and
we've already provided an appropriate FormController (see Section 12.3.4, CommandControllers for more information on
Command- and FormControllers) and a JSP view (or Velocity template) that renders the form. When using the
BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping, we could map the HTTP request with URL
http://samples.com/editaccount.form to the appropriate FormController as follows:
<beans>
<bean id="handlerMapping"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping"/>

<bean name="/editaccount.form"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.SimpleFormController">
<property name="formView"><value>account</value></property>
<property name="successView"><value>account-created</value></property>
<property name="commandName"><value>Account</value></property>
<property name="commandClass"><value>samples.Account</value></property>
</bean>
<beans>
All incoming requests for the URL /editaccount.form will now be handled by the FormController in the source listing
above. Of course we have to define a servlet-mapping in web.xml as well, to let through all the requests ending with .form.
<web-app>
...
<servlet>
<servlet-name>sample</servlet-name>

<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

<!-- Maps the sample dispatcher to /*.form -->

<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>sample</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>*.form</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
...
</web-app>
NOTE: if you want to use the BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping, you don't necessarily have to define it in the
webapplicationcontext (as indicated above). By default, if no handler mapping can be found in the context, the
DispatcherServlet creates a BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping for you!

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12.4.2. SimpleUrlHandlerMapping
Another - and much more powerful handlermapping - is the SimpleUrlHandlerMapping. This mapping is configurable
in the applicationcontext and has Ant-style pathmatching capabilities (see Section 12.10.1, A little story about the pathmatcher
). A couple of example will probably makes thing clear enough:
<web-app>
...
<servlet>
<servlet-name>sample</servlet-name>

<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

<!-- Maps the sample dispatcher to /*.form -->

<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>sample</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>*.form</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>sample</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>*.html</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
...
</web-app>
Allows all requests ending with .html and .form to be handled by the sample dispatcherservlet.
<beans>
<bean id="handlerMapping"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping">
<property name="mappings">
<props>
<prop key="/*/account.form">editAccountFormController</prop>
<prop key="/*/editaccount.form">editAccountFormController</prop>
<prop key="/ex/view*.html">someViewController</prop>
<prop key="/**/help.html">helpController</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="someViewController"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.UrlFilenameViewController"/>

<bean id="editAccountFormController"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.SimpleFormController">
<property name="formView"><value>account</value></property>
<property name="successView"><value>account-created</value></property>
<property name="commandName"><value>Account</value></property>
<property name="commandClass"><value>samples.Account</value></property>
</bean>
<beans>
This handlermapping first of all reroutes all requests in all directories for a file named help.html to the
someViewController, which is a UrlFilenameViewController (more about that can be found in Section 12.3, Controllers
). Also, all requests for a resource beginning with view, ending with .html, in the directory ex, will be rerouted to that

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specific controller. Furthermore, two mappings have been defined that will match with the
editAccountFormController.

12.4.3. Adding HandlerInterceptors

The handler mapping also has a notion of handler interceptors, that can be extremely useful when you want to apply specific
functionality to all requests, for example the checking for a principal or something alike.
Interceptors located in the handler mapping must implement HandlerInterceptor from the
org.springframework.web.servlet-package. This interface defines three methods, one that will be called before the
actual handler will be executed, one that will be called after the handler is executed, and one that is called after the complete
request has finished. Those three methods should provide you with enough flexibility to do all kinds of pre- and
post-processing.
The preHandle method has a boolean return value. Using this value, you can tweak the behavior of the execution chain.
When returning true, the handler execution chain will continue, when returning false, the DispatcherServlet assumes the
interceptor itself has taken care of requests (and for instance rendered an appropriate view) and does not continue with
executing the other interceptors and the actual handler in the execution chain.
The following example provides an interceptor that intercepts all requests and reroutes the user to a specific page if the time is
not between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.
<beans>
<bean id="handlerMapping"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping">
<property name="interceptors">
<list>
<ref bean="officeHoursInterceptor"/>
</list>
</property>
<property name="mappings">
<props>
<prop key="/*.form">editAccountFormController</prop>
<prop key="/*.view">editAccountFormController</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="officeHoursInterceptor"
class="samples.TimeBasedAccessInterceptor">
<property name="openingTime"><value>9</value></property>
<property name="closingTime"><value>18</value></property>
</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(

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HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response,
Object handler)
throws Exception {
Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
int hour = cal.get(HOUR_OF_DAY);
if (openingTime <= hour < closingTime) {
return true;
} else {
response.sendRedirect("http://host.com/outsideOfficeHours.html");
return false;
}
}
}
Any request coming in, will be intercepted by the TimeBasedAccessInterceptor, and if the current time is outside
office hours, the user will be redirect to a static html file, saying for instance he can only access the website during office
hours.
As you can see, Spring has an adapter to make it easy for you to extend the HandlerInterceptor.

12.5. Views and resolving them

No MVC framework for web applications is without a way to address views. Spring provides view resolvers, which enable you
to render models in a browser without tying yourself to a specific view technology. Out-of-the-box, Spring enables you to use
Java Server Pages, Velocity templates and XSLT views, for example. Chapter 13, Integrating view technologies has details of
integrating various view technologies.
The two classes which are important to the way Spring handles views are the ViewResolver and the View. The View
interface addresses the preparation of the request and hands the request over to one of the view technologies. The
ViewResolver provides a mapping between view names and actual views.

12.5.1. ViewResolvers
As discussed before, all controllers in the SpringWeb framework, return a ModelAndView instance. Views in Spring are
addressed by a view name and are resolved by a viewresolver. Spring comes with quite a few view resolvers. We'll list most of
them and then provide a couple of examples.
Table 12.5. View resolvers
ViewResolver Description
Abstract view resolver taking care of caching views. Lots of views need
AbstractCachingViewResolver preparation before they can be used, extending from this viewresolver
enables caching of views
Implementation of ViewResolver that accepts a config file written in
XmlViewResolver
XML to the same DTD as Spring's bean factories
Implementation of ViewResolver that uses bean definitions in a
ResourceBundleViewResolver ResourceBundle, specified by the bundle basename. The bundle is
typically defined in a properties file, located in the classpath
Simple implementation of ViewResolver that allows for direct resolution
of symbolic view names to URLs, without an explicit mapping definition.
UrlBasedViewResolver This is appropriate if your symbolic names match the names of your view
resources in a straightforward manner, without the need for arbitrary
mappings

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Convenience subclass of UrlBasedViewResolver that supports

InternalResourceView (i.e. Servlets and JSPs), and subclasses like
InternalResourceViewResolver JstlView and TilesView. The view class for all views generated by this
resolver can be specified via setViewClass. See UrlBasedViewResolver's
javadocs for details
Convenience subclass of UrlBasedViewResolver that supports
VelocityViewResolver / FreeMarkerViewResolver VelocityView (i.e. Velocity templates) or FreeMarkerView respectively
and custom subclasses of them

As an example, when using JSP for a view technology you can use the the UrlBasedViewResolver. This view resolver
translates view names to a URL and hands the request over the RequestDispatcher to render the view.
<bean id="viewResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.UrlBasedViewResolver">
<property name="prefix"><value>/WEB-INF/jsp/</value></property>
<property name="suffix"><value>.jsp</value></property>
</bean>
When returning test as a viewname, this view resolver will hand the request over to the RequestDispatcher that'll send the
request to /WEB-INF/jsp/test.jsp.
When mixing different view technologies in a webapplications, you can use the ResourceBundleViewResolver:
<bean id="viewResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.ResourceBundleViewResolver">
<property name="basename"><value>views</value></property>
<property name="defaultParentView"><value>parentView</value></property>
</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. As you can see, you can identify a parent view, from which all view in the properties file
sort of extend. This way you can specify a default view class for instance.
A note on caching: subclasses of AbstractCachingViewResolver cache view instances they've resolved. This greatly
improves performance when using certain view technology. It's possible to turn off the cache, by setting the cache property
to false. Furthermore, if you have the requirement to be able to refresh a certain view at runtime (for example when a Velocity
template has been modified), you can use the removeFromCache(String viewName, Locale loc) method.

12.6. Using locales

Most parts of Spring's architecture support internationalization, just as the Spring web framework does. SpringWEB enables
you to automatically resolve messages using the client's locale. This is done with LocaleResolver objects.
When a request comes in, the DispatcherServlet looks for a locale resolver and if it finds one it tries to use it and set the locale.
Using the RequestContext.getLocale() method, you can always retrieve the locale that was resolved by the locale
resolver.
Besides the automatic locale resolution, you can also attach an interceptor to the handlermapping (see Section 12.4.3, Adding
HandlerInterceptors for more info on that), to change the locale under specific circumstances, based on a parameter occurring
in the request for example.
Locale resolvers and interceptors are all 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.

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12.6.1. AcceptHeaderLocaleResolver
This locale resolver inspects the accept-language header in the request that was sent by the browser of the client. Usually
this header field contains the locale of the client's operating system.

12.6.2. CookieLocaleResolver
This locale resolver inspects a Cookie that might exist on the client, to see if there's a locale specified. If so, it uses that specific
locale. Using the properties of this locale resolver, you can specify the name of the cookie, as well as the maximum age.
<bean id="localeResolver">
<property name="cookieName"><value>clientlanguage</value></property>
<!-- in seconds. If set to -1, the cookie is not persisted (deleted when browser
shuts down) -->
<property name="cookieMaxAge"><value>100000</value></property>
</bean>
This is an example of defining a CookieLocaleResolver.
Table 12.6. Special beans in the WebApplicationContext
Property Default Description
cookieName classname + LOCALE The name of the cookie
The maximum time a cookie will stay persistent on the client. If -1 is specified, the
cookieMaxAge Integer.MAX_INT cookie will not be persisted, at least, only until the client shuts down his or her
browser
Using this parameter, you can limit the visibility of the cookie to a certain part of
cookiePath / your site. When cookiePath is specified, the cookie will only be visible to that path,
and the paths below

12.6.3. SessionLocaleResolver
The SessionLocaleResolver allows you to retrieve locales from the session that might be associated to the user's
request.

12.6.4. LocaleChangeInterceptor
You can build in changing of locales using the LocaleChangeInterceptor. This interceptor needs to be added to one of
the handler mappings (see Section 12.4, Handler mappings ) and it will detect a parameter in the request and change the locale
(it calls setLocale() on the LocaleResolver that also exists in the context).
<bean id="localeChangeInterceptor"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.LocaleChangeInterceptor">
<property name="paramName"><value>siteLanguage</value></property>
</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 local="localeChangeInterceptor"/>
</list>
</property>

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<property name="mappings">
<props>
<prop key="/**/*.view">someController</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
All calls to all *.view resources containing a parameter named siteLanguage will now change the locale. So a call to
http://www.sf.net/home.view?siteLanguage=nl will change the site language to Dutch.

12.7. Using themes

Dummy paragraph

12.8. Spring's multipart (fileupload) support

12.8.1. Introduction
Spring has built-in multipart support to handle fileuploads in webapplications. The design for the multipart support is done
with pluggable MultipartResovler objects, defined in the org.springframework.web.multipart package.
Out of the box, Spring provides MultipartResolver for use with Commons FileUpload
(http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/fileupload) and COS FileUpload (http://www.servlets.com/cos). How uploading files is
supported will be described in the rest of this chapter.
By default, no multipart handling will be done by Spring, as some developers will want to handle multiparts themselves. You'll
have to enable it yourself by adding a multipartresolver to the webapplication's context. After you've done that, each request
will be inspected for a multipart that it might contain. If no such multipart is found, the request will continue as expected.
However, if a multipart is found in the request, the MultipartResolver that has been declared in your context will resolve. After
that, the multipart attribute in your request will be treated as any other attributes.

12.8.2. Using the MultipartResolver

The following example shows how to use the CommonsMultipartResolver:
<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</value>
</property>
</bean>
This is an example using the CosMultipartResolver:
<bean id="multipartResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.multipart.cos.CosMultipartResolver">

<!-- one of the properties available; the maximum file size in bytes -->
<property name="maxUploadSize">
<value>100000</value>
</property>
</bean>
Of course you need to stick the appropriate jars in your classpath for the multipartresolver to work. In the case of the
CommonsMultipartResolver, you need to use commons-fileupload.jar, while in the case of the CosMultipartResolver,

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use cos.jar.
Now that you have seen how to set Spring up to handle multipart requests, let's talk about how to actually use it. When the
Spring DispatcherServlet detects a Multipart request, it activates the resolver that has been declared in your context and hands
over the request. What it basically does is wrap the current HttpServletRequest into a
MultipartHttpServletRequest that has support for multiparts. Using the MultipartHttpServletRequest you can get
information about the multiparts contained by this request and actually get the multiparts themselves in your controllers.

12.8.3. Handling a fileupload in a form

After the MultipartResolver has finished doing its job, the request will be processed like any other. To use it, you create a form
with an upload field, then let Spring bind the file on your form. Just as with any other property that's not automagically
convertible to a String or primitive type, to be able to put binary data in your beans you have to register a custom editor with
the ServletRequestDatabinder. There are a couple of editors available for handling files and setting the results on a
bean. There's a StringMultipartEditor capable of converting files to Strings (using a user-defined character set) and
there's a ByteArrayMultipartEditor which converts files to byte arrays. They function just as the
CustomDateEditor does.
So, to be able to upload files using a form in a website, declare the resolver, a url mapping to a controller that will process the
bean, and the controller itself.
<beans>

...

<bean id="multipartResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.multipart.commons.CommonsMultipartResolver"/>

<bean id="urlMapping"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping">
<property name="mappings">
<props>
<prop key="/upload.form">fileUploadController</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="fileUploadController" class="examples.FileUploadController">

<property
name="commandClass"><value>examples.FileUploadBean</value></property>
<property name="formView"><value>fileuploadform</value></property>
<property name="successView"><value>confirmation</value></property>
</bean>

</beans>
After that, create the controller and the actual bean holding the file property
// snippet from FileUploadController
public class FileUploadController extends SimpleFormController {

protected ModelAndView onSubmit(

HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response,
Object command,
BindException errors)
throws ServletException, IOException {

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// 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
}

// well, let's do nothing with the bean for now and return:
return super.onSubmit(request, response, command, errors);
}

protected void initBinder(

HttpServletRequest request,
ServletRequestDataBinder binder)
throws ServletException {
// to actually be able to convert Multipart instance to byte[]
// we have to register a custom editor (in this case the
// ByteArrayMultipartEditor
binder.registerCustomEditor(byte[].class, new
ByteArrayMultipartFileEditor());
// now Spring knows how to handle multipart object and convert them
}

// snippet from FileUploadBean

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 typed 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
these examples, 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, etcetera).
But we're still not finished. To actually let the user upload something, we have to create a form:
<html>
<head>
<title>Upload a file please</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Please upload a file</h1>
<form method="post" action="upload.form" enctype="multipart/form-data">
<input type="file" name="file"/>
<input type="submit"/>

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</form>
</body>
</html>
As you can see, we've created a field named after the property of the bean that holds the byte[]. Furthermore we've added the
encoding attribute which is necessary to let the browser know how to encode the multipart fields (dont' forget this!). Right now
everything should work.

12.9. Handling exceptions

Spring provides HandlerExceptionResolvers to ease the pain of unexpected exceptions occuring while your request is
being handled by a controller which matched the request. HandlerExceptionResolvers somewhat resemble the
exception-mappings you can define in the webapplication descriptor web.xml. However, they provide a more flexible to
handle exceptions. about what handler was executing when the exception was thrown. Furthermore, a programmatic way of
handling exception gives you many more options for how to respond appropriately before the request is forwarded to another
URL (the same end result as when using the servlet specific exception mappings).
Besides implementing the HandlerExceptionResolver, which is only a matter of implementing the
resolveException(Exception, Handler) method and returning a ModelAndView, you may also use the
SimpleMappingExceptionResolver. This resolver 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's
also possible to implement more fine grained mappings of exception from different handlers.

12.10. Commonly used utilities

12.10.1. A little story about the pathmatcher
ToDo

Prev Up Next
Chapter 11. Data Access using O/R Chapter 13. Integrating view
Home
Mappers technologies

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 Chapter 13. Integrating view technologies
Chapter 13. Integrating view technologies
Prev Next

Chapter 13. Integrating view technologies

13.1. Introduction
One of the areas in which Spring excels is in the separation of view technologies from the rest of the MVC framework. For example, deciding to use
Velocity or XSLT in place of an existing JSP is primarily a matter of configuration. This chapter covers the major view technologies that work with
Spring and touches briefly on how to add new ones. This chapter assumes you are already familiar with Section 12.5, Views and resolving them
which covers the basics of how views in general are coupled to the MVC framework.

13.2. JSP & JSTL

Spring provides a couple of out-of-the-box solutions for JSP and JSTL views. Using JSP or JSTL is done using a normal viewresolver defined in the
WebApplicationContext. Furthermore, of course you need to write some JSPs that will actually render the view. This part describes some of the
additional features Spring provides to facilitate JSP development.

13.2.1. View resolvers

Just as with any other view technology you're integrating with Spring, for JSPs you'll need a view resolver that will resolve your views. The most
commonly used view resolvers when developing with JSPs are the InternalResourceViewResolver and the
ResourceBundleViewResolver. Both are declared in the WebApplicationContext:
# The ResourceBundleViewResolver:
<bean id="viewResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.ResourceBundleViewResolver">
<property name="basename"><value>views</value></property>
</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</value></property>
<property name="prefix"><value>/WEB-INF/jsp/</value></property>
<property name="suffix"><value>.jsp</value></property>
</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 a directory under the WEB-INF directory, so there can be no direct access by clients.

13.2.2. 'Plain-old' JSPs versus JSTL

When using 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.

13.2.3. Additional tags facilitating development

Spring provides data binding of request parameters to command objects as described in earlier chapters. To facilitate the development of JSP pages in
combination with those data binding features, Spring provides a few tags that make things even easier. All Spring tags have html escaping features to
enable or disable escaping of characters.
The tag library descriptor (TLD) is included in the spring.jar as well in the distribution itself. More information about the individual tags can be
found online: http://www.springframework.org/docs/taglib/index.html.

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13.3. Tiles
It is possible to integrate Tiles - just as any other view technology - in webapplications using Spring. The following describes in a broad way how to
do this.

13.3.1. Dependencies
To be able to use Tiles you have to have a couple of additional dependencies included in your project. The following is the list of dependencies you
need.
● struts version 1.1
● commons-beanutils
● commons-digester
● commons-logging
● commons-lang
The dependencies are all available in the Spring distribution.

13.3.2. How to integrate Tiles

To be able to use Tiles, you have to configure it using files containing definitions (for basic information on definitions and other Tiles concepts, please
have a look at http://jakarta.apache.org/struts). In Spring this is done using the TilesConfigurer. Have a look at the following piece of example
ApplicationContext configuration:
<bean id="tilesConfigurer"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles.TilesConfigurer">
<property name="factoryClass">
<value>org.apache.struts.tiles.xmlDefinition.I18nFactorySet</value>
</property>
<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 definitionsfactory defined by the factoryClass-property is initialized. After that has been
done, the tiles includes in the definition files can be used as views within your Spring webapplication. 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
InternalResourceViewResolver and the ResourceBundleViewResolver.

13.3.2.1. InternalResourceViewResolver

The InternalResourceViewResolver instantiates the given viewClass for each view it has to resolve.
<bean id="viewResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<property name="requestContextAttribute"><value>requestContext</value></property>
<property name="viewClass">
<value>org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles.TilesView</value>
</property>
</bean>

13.3.2.2. 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</value></property>

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</bean>
...
welcomeView.class=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles.TilesView
welcomeView.url=welcome (<b>this is the name of a definition</b>)

vetsView.class=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles.TilesView
vetsView.url=vetsView (<b>again, this is the name of a definition</b>)

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 mix view using different view technologies.

13.4. Velocity & FreeMarker

Velocity and FreeMarker are two templating languages that can both be used as view technologies within SpringMVC 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.

13.4.1. 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 needs also to be available for Velocity. Typically they are included in the WEB-INF/lib folder
where they are guaranteed to be found by a J2EE server and added to the classpath for your application. It is of course assumed that you already have
the spring.jar in your WEB-INF/lib folder too! The latest stable velocity, freemarker and commons collections jars are supplied with the
Spring framework and can be copied from the relevant /lib/ sub-directories. If you make use of Spring's dateToolAttribute or numberToolAttribute
in your Velocity views, you will also need to include the velocity-tools-generic-1.x.jar

13.4.2. Context configuration

A suitable configuration is initialized by adding the relevant configurer bean definition to your *-servlet.xml as shown below:
<!--
This bean sets up the Velocity environment for us based on a root path for
templates.
Optionally, a properties file can be specified for more control over the Velocity
environment, but the defaults are pretty sane for file based template loading.
-->
<bean
id="velocityConfig"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.velocity.VelocityConfigurer">
<property name="resourceLoaderPath"><value>/WEB-INF/velocity/</value></property>
</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</value></property>
<property name="prefix"><value></value></property>
<property name="suffix"><value>.vm</value></property>
</bean>
<!-- freemarker config -->
<bean
id="freemarkerConfig"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.freemarker.FreeMarkerConfigurer">
<property name="templateLoaderPath"><value>/WEB-INF/freemarker/</value></property>
</bean>

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<!--
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</value></property>
<property name="prefix"><value></value></property>
<property name="suffix"><value>.ftl</value></property>
</bean>
NB: For non web-apps add a VelocityConfigurationFactoryBean or a FreeMarkerConfigurationFactoryBean to your
application context definition file.

13.4.3. Creating templates

Your templates need to be stored in the directory specified by the *Configurer bean shown above in Section 13.4.2, Context configuration This
document does not cover details of creating templates for the two languages - please see their relevant websites for information. If you use the view
resolvers highlighted, then the logical view names relate to the template file names in similar fashion to InternalResourceViewResolver for
JSP's. So if your controller returns a ModelAndView object containing a view name of "welcome" then the resolvers will look for the
/WEB-INF/freemarker/welcome.ftl or /WEB-INF/velocity/welcome.vm template as appropriate.

13.4.4. Advanced configuration

The basic configurations highlighted above will be suitable for most application requirements, however additional configuration options are available
for when unusual or advanced requirements dictate.

13.4.4.1. 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.
<bean
id="velocityConfig"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.velocity.VelocityConfigurer">
<property name="configLocation">
<value>/WEB-INF/velocity.properties</value>
</property>
</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.

13.4.4.2. 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

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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/</value></property>
<property name="freemarkerVariables">
<map>
<entry key="xml_escape"><ref local="fmXmlEscape"/></entry>
</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.

13.4.5. Bind support and form handling

Spring provides a tag library for use in JSP's that contains (amongst other things) a <spring:bind> tag. This tag primarily enables forms to display
values from form backing objects and to show the results of failed validations from a Validator in the web or business tier. From version 1.1,
Spring now has support for the same functionality in both Velocity and FreeMarker, with additional convenience macros for generating form input
elements themselves.

13.4.5.1. the bind macros

A standard set of macros are maintained within the spring.jar file for both languages, so they are always available to a suitably configured
application. However they can only be used if your view sets the bean property exposeSpringMacroHelpers to true . The same property can
be set on VelocityViewResolver or FreeMarkerViewResolver too if you happen to be using it, in which case all of your views will
inherit the value from it. Note that this property is not required for any aspect of HTML form handling except where you wish to take advantage of
the Spring macros. Below is an example of a view.properties file showing correct configuration of such a view for either language;
personFormV.class=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.velocity.VelocityView
personFormV.url=personForm.vm
personFormV.exposeSpringMacroHelpers=true
personFormF.class=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.freemarker.FreeMarkerView
personFormF.url=personForm.ftl
personFormF.exposeSpringMacroHelpers=true
Some of the macros defined in the Spring libraries are considered internal (private) but no such scoping exists in the macro definitions making all
macros visible to calling code and user templates. The following sections concentrate only on the macros you need to be directly calling from within
your templates. If you wish to view the macro code directly, the files are called spring.vm / spring.ftl and are in the packages
org.springframework.web.servlet.view.velocity or org.springframework.web.servlet.view.freemarker
respectively.

13.4.5.2. simple binding

In your html forms (vm / ftl templates) that act as the 'formView' for a Spring form controller, you can use code similar to the following to bind to field
values and display error messages for each input field in similar fashion to the JSP equivalent. Note that the name of the command object is
"command" by default, but can be overridden in your MVC configuration by setting the 'commandName' bean property on your form controller.
Example code is shown below for the personFormV and personFormF views configured earlier;
<!-- velocity macros are automatically available -->
<html>
...
<form action="" method="POST">
Name:
#springBind( "command.name" )
<input type="text"
name="${status.expression}"
value="$!status.value" /><br>
#foreach($error in $status.errorMessages) <b>$error</b> <br> #end
<br>
...
<input type="submit" value="submit"/>
</form>
...
</html>

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<!-- 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 "command.name" />
<input type="text"
name="${spring.status.expression}"
value="${spring.status.value?default("")}" /><br>
<#list spring.status.errorMessages as error> <b>${error}</b> <br> </#list>
<br>
...
<input type="submit" value="submit"/>
</form>
...
</html>
#springBind / <@spring.bind> requires a 'path' argument which consists of the name of your command object (it will be 'command' unless
you changed it in your FormController properties) followed by a period and the name of the field on the command object you wish to bind to. Nested
fields can be used too such as "command.address.street". The bind macro assumes the default HTML escaping behaviour 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.

13.4.5.3. form input generation macros

Additional convenience macros for both languages simplify both binding and form generation (including validation error display). It is never necessary
to use these macros to generate form input fields, and they can be mixed and matched with simple HTML or calls direct to the spring bind macros
highlighted previously.
The following table of available macros show the VTL and FTL definitions and the parameter list that each takes.
Table 13.1. table of macro definitions
macro VTL definition FTL definition
formInput (standard input
<@spring.formInput path,
field for gathering user #springFormInput($path $attributes)
attributes/>
input)
formTextarea (large text
<@spring.formTextarea path,
field for gathering long, #springFormTextarea($path $attributes)
attributes/>
freeform text input)
formSingleSelect (drop
down box of options #springFormSingleSelect( $path $options <@spring.formSingleSelect path,
allowing a single required $attributes) options, attributes/>
value to be selected)
formMultiSelect (a list box
#springFormMultiSelect($path $options <@spring.formMultiSelect path,
of options allowing the user
$attributes) options, attributes/>
to select 0 or more values)
formRadioButtons (a set of
radio buttons allowing a #springFormRadioButtons($path $options <@spring.formRadioButtons path,
single selection to be made $separator $attributes) options separator, attributes/>
from the available choices)
formCheckboxes (a set of
#springFormCheckboxes($path $options <@spring.formCheckboxes path,
checkboxes allowing 0 or
$separator $attributes) options, separator, attributes/>
more values to be selected)
showErrors (simplify
#springShowErrors($separator <@spring.showErrors separator,
display of validation errors
$classOrStyle) classOrStyle/>
for the bound field)

The parameters to any of the above macros have consistent meanings:

● path: the name of the field to bind to (ie "command.name")

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● 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 behaviour. 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.

13.4.5.3.1. Input Fields

<!-- the Name field example from above using form macros in VTL -->
...
Name:
#springFormInput("command.name" "")<br>
#showErrors("<br>" "")<br>
The formInput macro takes the path parameter (command.name) and an additional attributes parameter which is empty in the example above. The
macro, along with all other form generation macros, performs an implicit spring bind on the path parameter. The binding remains valid until a new
bind occurs so the showErrors macro doesn't need to pass the path parameter again - it simply operates on whichever field a bind was last created for.
The showErrors macro takes a separator parameter (the characters that will be used to separate multiple errors on a given field) and also accepts a
second parameter, this time a class name or style attribute. Note that FreeMarker is able to specify default values for the attributes parameter, unlike
Velocity, and the two macro calls above could be expressed as follows in FTL:
<@spring.formInput "command.name"/>
<@spring.showErrors "<br>"/>
Output is shown below of the form fragment generating the name field, and displying a validation error after the form was submitted with no value in
the field. Validation occurs through Spring's Validation framework.
The generated HTML looks like this:
Name:
<input type="text" name="name" value=""
>
<br>
<b>required</b>
<br>
<br>
The formTextarea macro works the same way as the formInput macro and accepts the same parameter list. Commonly, the second parameter
(attributes) will be used to pass style information or rows and cols attributes for the textarea.

13.4.5.3.2. 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'.

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...
Town:
<@spring.formRadioButtons "command.address.town", cityMap, "" /><br><br>
This renders a line of radio buttons, one for each value in cityMap using the separator "". No additional attributes are supplied (the last parameter to
the macro is missing). The cityMap uses the same String for each key-value pair in the map. The map's keys are what the form actually submits as
POSTed request parameters, map values are the labels that the user sees. In the example above, given a list of three well known cities and a default
value in the form backing object, the HTML would be
Town:
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="London"

>
London
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="Paris"
checked="checked"
>
Paris
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="New York"

>
New York
If your application expects to handle cities by internal codes for example, the map of codes would be created with suitable keys like the example
below.
protected Map referenceData(HttpServletRequest request) throws Exception {
Map cityMap = new LinkedHashMap();
cityMap.put("LDN", "London");
cityMap.put("PRS", "Paris");
cityMap.put("NYC", "New York");

Map m = new HashMap();

m.put("cityMap", cityMap);
return m;
}
The code would now produce output where the radio values are the relevant codes but the user still sees the more user friendly city names.
Town:
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="LDN"

>
London
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="PRS"
checked="checked"
>
Paris
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="NYC"

>
New York

13.4.5.4. overriding HTML escaping and making tags XHTML compliant

Default usage of the form macros above will result in HTML tags that are HTML 4.01 compliant and that use the default value for HTML escaping
defined in your web.xml as used by Spring's bind support. In order to make the tags XHTML compliant or to override the default HTML escaping
value, you can specify two variables in your template (or in your model where they will be visible to your templates). The advantage of specifying
them in the templates is that they can be changed to different values later in the template processing to provide different behaviour 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.

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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 -->

13.5. XSLT
XSLT is a transformation language for XML and is popular as a view technology within web applications. XSLT can be a good choice as a view
technology if your application naturally deals with XML, or if your model can easily be converted to XML. The following section shows how to
produce an XML document as model data and have it transformed with XSLT in a Spring application.

13.5.1. My First Words

This example is a trivial Spring application that creates a list of words in the Controller and adds them to the model map. The map is returned along
with the view name of our XSLT view. See Section 12.3, Controllers for details of Spring Controllers. The XSLT view will turn the list of words
into a simple XML document ready for transformation.

13.5.1.1. Bean definitions

Configuration is standard for a simple Spring application. The dispatcher servlet config file contains a reference to a ViewResolver, URL mappings
and a single controller bean..
<bean id="homeController"class="xslt.HomeController"/>
..that implements our word generation 'logic'.

13.5.1.2. Standard MVC controller code

The controller logic is encapsulated in a subclass of AbstractController, with the handler method being defined like so..
protected ModelAndView handleRequestInternal(
HttpServletRequest req,
HttpServletResponse resp)
throws Exception {

Map map = new HashMap();

List wordList = new ArrayList();

wordList.add("hello");
wordList.add("world");

map.put("wordList", wordList);

return new ModelAndView("home", map);

}
So far we've done nothing that's XSLT specific. The model data has been created in the same way as you would for any other Spring MVC application.
Depending on the configuration of the application now, that list of words could be rendered by JSP/JSTL by having them added as request attributes,
or they could be handled by Velocity by adding the object to the VelocityContext. In order to have XSLT render them, they of course have to be
converted into an XML document somehow. There are software packages available that will automatically 'domify' an object graph, but within Spring,
you have complete flexibility to create the DOM from your model in any way you choose. This prevents the transformation of XML playing too great
a part in the structure of your model data which is a danger when using tools to manage the domification process.

13.5.1.3. Convert the model data to XML

In order to create a DOM document from our list of words or any other model data, we subclass
org.springframework.web.servlet.view.xslt.AbstractXsltView. In doing so, we must implement the abstract method
createDomNode(). The first parameter passed to this method is our model Map. Here's the complete listing of the HomePage class in our trivial
word application - it uses JDOM to build the XML document before converting it to the required W3C Node, but this is simply because I find JDOM
(and Dom4J) easier API's to handle than the W3C API.

package xslt;

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// imports omitted for brevity

public class HomePage extends AbstractXsltView {

protected Node createDomNode(

Map model, String rootName, HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse res
) throws Exception {

org.jdom.Document doc = new org.jdom.Document();

Element root = new Element(rootName);
doc.setRootElement(root);

List words = (List) model.get("wordList");

for (Iterator it = words.iterator(); it.hasNext();) {
String nextWord = (String) it.next();
Element e = new Element("word");
e.setText(nextWord);
root.addContent(e);
}

// convert JDOM doc to a W3C Node and return

return new DOMOutputter().output( doc );
}

13.5.1.3.1. Adding stylesheet parameters

A series of parameter name/value pairs can optionally be defined by your subclass which will be added to the transformation object. The parameter
names must match those defined in your XSLT template declared with <xsl:param name="myParam">defaultValue</xsl:param> To
specify the parameters, override the method getParameters() from AbstractXsltView and return a Map of the name/value pairs. If your
parameters need to derive information from the current request, you can (from version 1.1) override the
getParameters(HttpServletRequest request) method instead.

13.5.1.3.2. Formatting dates and currency

Unlike JSTL and Velocity, XSLT has relatively poor support for locale based currency and date formatting. In recognition of the fact, Spring provides
a helper class that you can use from within your createDomNode() methods to get such support. See the javadocs for
org.springframework.web.servlet.view.xslt.FormatHelper

13.5.1.4. Defining the view properties

The views.properties file (or equivalent xml definition if you're using an XML based view resolver as we did in the Velocity examples above) looks
like this for the one-view application that is 'My First Words'..
home.class=xslt.HomePage
home.stylesheetLocation=/WEB-INF/xsl/home.xslt
home.root=words
Here, you can see how the view is tied in with the HomePage class just written which handles the model domification in the first property '.class'. The
stylesheetLocation property obviously points to the XSLT file which will handle the XML transformation into HTML for us and the final property
'.root' is the name that will be used as the root of the XML document. This gets passed to the HomePage class above in the second parameter to the
createDomNode method.

13.5.1.5. Document transformation

Finally, we have the XSLT code used for transforming the above document. As highlighted in the views.properties file, it is called home.xslt and it
lives in the war file under WEB-INF/xsl.
<?xml version="1.0"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:output method="text/html" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>

<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<head><title>Hello!</title></head>

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<body>

<h1>My First Words</h1>

<xsl:for-each select="wordList/word">
<xsl:value-of select="."/><br />
</xsl:for-each>

</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

13.5.2. Summary
A summary of the files discussed and their location in the WAR file is shown in the simplified WAR structure below.
ProjectRoot
|
+- WebContent
|
+- WEB-INF
|
+- classes
| |
| +- xslt
| | |
| | +- HomePageController.class
| | +- HomePage.class
| |
| +- views.properties
|
+- lib
| |
| +- spring.jar
|
+- xsl
| |
| +- home.xslt
|
+- frontcontroller-servlet.xml
You will also need to ensure that an XML parser and an XSLT engine are available on the classpath. JDK 1.4 provides them by default, and most
J2EE containers will also make them available by default, but it's a possible source of errors to be aware of.

13.6. Document views (PDF/Excel)

13.6.1. Introduction
Returning an HTML page isn't always the best way for the user to view the model output, and Spring makes it simple to generate a PDF document or
an Excel spreadsheet dynamically from the model data. The document is the view and will be streamed from the server with the correct content type to
(hopefully) enable the client PC to run their spreadsheet or PDF viewer application in response.
In order to use Excel views, you need to add the 'poi' library to your classpath, and for PDF generation, the iText.jar. Both are included in the main
Spring distribution.

13.6.2. Configuration and setup

Document based views are handled in an almost identical fashion to XSLT views, and the following sections build upon the previous one by
demonstrating how the same controller used in the XSLT example is invoked to render the same model as both a PDF document and an Excel
spreadsheet (which can also be viewed or manipulated in Open Office).

13.6.2.1. Document view definitions

Firstly, let's amend the views.properties file (or xml equivalent) and add a simple view definition for both document types. The entire file now looks
like this with the XSLT view shown from earlier..

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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 to add your model data to, specify the location as the 'url' property in the view definition

13.6.2.2. Controller code

The controller code we'll use remains exactly the same from the XSLT example earlier other than to change the name of the view to use. Of course,
you could be clever and have this selected based on a URL parameter or some other logic - proof that Spring really is very good at decoupling the
views from the controllers!

13.6.2.3. Subclassing for Excel views

Exactly as we did for the XSLT example, we'll subclass suitable abstract classes in order to implement custom behaviour in generating our output
documents. For Excel, this involves writing a subclass of
org.springframework.web.servlet.view.document.AbstractExcelView and implementing the buildExcelDocument
Here's the complete listing for our Excel view which displays the word list from the model map in consecutive rows of the first column of a new
spreadsheet..
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));

}
}
}
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 automagically when you request the same page as before.

13.6.2.4. 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

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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 a 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.

13.7. Tapestry
Tapestry is a powerful, component-oriented web application framework from Apache's Jakarta project (http://jakarta.apache.org/tapestry). While
Spring has its own powerful web ui layer, there are a number of unique advantages to building a J2EE application using a combination of Tapestry for
the web ui, and the Spring container for the lower layers. This document attempts to detail a few best practices for combining these two frameworks. It
is expected that you are relatively familiar with both Tapestry and Spring Framework basics, so they will not be explained here. General introductory
documentation for both Tapestry and Spring Framework are available on their respective web sites.

13.7.1. Architecture
A typical layered J2EE application built with Tapestry and Spring will consist of a top UI layer built with Tapestry, and a number of lower layers,
hosted out of one or more Spring Application Contexts.
● User Interface Layer:
- concerned with the user interface
- contains some application logic
- provided by Tapestry
- aside from providing UI via Tapestry, code in this layer does its work via objects which implement interfaces from the Service Layer. The
actual objects which implement these service layer interfaces are obtained from a Spring Application Context.
● Service Layer:
- application specific 'service' code
- works with domain objects, and uses the Mapper API to get those domain objects into and out of some sort of repository (database)
- hosted in one or more Spring contexts
- code in this layer manipulates objects in the domain model, in an application specific fashion. It does its work via other code in this layer, and
via the Mapper API. An object in this layer is given the specific mapper implementations it needs to work with, via the Spring context.
- since code in this layer is hosted in the Spring context, it may be transactionally wrapped by the Spring context, as opposed to managing its
own transactions
● Domain Model:
- domain specific object hierarchy, which deals with data and logic specific to this domain
- although the domain object hierarchy is built with the idea that it is persisted somehow and makes some general concessions to this (for
example, bidirectional relationships), it generally has no knowledge of other layers. As such, it may be tested in isolation, and used with

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different mapping implementations for production vs. testing.
- these objects may be standalone, or used in conjunction with a Spring application context to take advantage of some of the benefits of the
context, e.g., isolation, inversion of control, different strategy implementations, etc.
● Data Source Layer:
- Mapper API (also called Data Access Objects): an API used to persist the domain model to a repository of some sort (generally a DB, but
could be the filesystem, memeory, etc.)
- Mapper API implementations: one or more specific implementations of the Mapper API, for example, a Hibernate-specific mapper, a
JDO-specific mapper, JDBC-specific mapper, or a memory mapper.
- mapper implementations live in one or more Spring Application Contexts. A service layer object is given the mapper objects it needs to work
with via the context.
● Database, filesystem, or other repositories:
- objects in the domain model are stored into one or more repositories via one or more mapper implementations
- a repository may be very simpe (e.g. filesystem), or may have its own representation of the data from the domain model (i.e. a schema in a db).
It does not know about other layers howerver.

13.7.2. Implementation
The only real question (which needs to be addressed by this document), is how Tapestry pages get access to service implementations, which are simply
beans defined in an instance of the Spring Application Context.

13.7.2.1. Sample application context

Assume we have the following simple Application Context definition, in xml form:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC "-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN"
"http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd">

<beans>

<!-- ========================= GENERAL DEFINITIONS ========================= -->

<!-- ========================= PERSISTENCE DEFINITIONS =========================

-->

<!-- the DataSource -->

<bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">
<property name="jndiName"><value>java:DefaultDS</value></property>
<property name="resourceRef"><value>false</value></property>
</bean>

<!-- define a Hibernate Session factory via a Spring LocalSessionFactoryBean -->

<bean id="hibSessionFactory"
class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
<property name="dataSource"><ref bean="dataSource"/></property>
</bean>

<!--
- Defines a transaction manager for usage in business or data access objects.
- No special treatment by the context, just a bean instance available as
reference
- for business objects that want to handle transactions, e.g. via
TransactionTemplate.
-->
<bean id="transactionManager"
class="org.springframework.transaction.jta.JtaTransactionManager">
</bean>

<bean id="mapper"
class="com.whatever.dataaccess.mapper.hibernate.MapperImpl">
<property name="sessionFactory"><ref bean="hibSessionFactory"/></property>

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</bean>

<!-- ========================= BUSINESS DEFINITIONS ========================= -->

<!-- AuthenticationService, including tx interceptor -->

<bean id="authenticationServiceTarget"
class="com.whatever.services.service.user.AuthenticationServiceImpl">
<property name="mapper"><ref bean="mapper"/></property>
</bean>
<bean id="authenticationService"

class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="transactionManager"><ref
bean="transactionManager"/></property>
<property name="target"><ref bean="authenticationServiceTarget"/></property>
<property name="proxyInterfacesOnly"><value>true</value></property>
<property name="transactionAttributes">
<props>
<prop key="*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>

<!-- UserService, including tx interceptor -->

<bean id="userServiceTarget"
class="com.whatever.services.service.user.UserServiceImpl">
<property name="mapper"><ref bean="mapper"/></property>
</bean>
<bean id="userService"

class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="transactionManager"><ref
bean="transactionManager"/></property>
<property name="target"><ref bean="userServiceTarget"/></property>
<property name="proxyInterfacesOnly"><value>true</value></property>
<property name="transactionAttributes">
<props>
<prop key="*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>

</beans>
Inside the Tapestry application, we need to load this application context, and allow Tapestry pages to get the authenticationService and userService
beans, which implement the AuthenticationService and UserService interfaces, respectively.

13.7.2.2. Obtaining beans in Tapestry pages

At this point, the application context is available to a web application by calling Spring's static utility function
WebApplicationContextUtils.getApplicationContext(servletContext), where servletContext is the standard
ServletContext from the J2EE Servlet specification. As such, one simple mechanism for a page to get an instance of the UserService, for
example, would be with code such as:
WebApplicationContext appContext =
WebApplicationContextUtils.getApplicationContext(
getRequestCycle().getRequestContext().getServlet().getServletContext());
UserService userService = (UserService) appContext.getBean("userService");
... some code which uses UserService
This mechanism does work. It can be made a lot less verbose by encapsulating most of the functionality in a method in the base class for the page or
component. However, in some respects it goes against the Inversion of Control approach which Spring encourages, which is being used in other layers
of this app, in that ideally you would like the page to not have to ask the context for a specific bean by name, and in fact, the page would ideally not
know about the context at all.
Luckily, there is a mechanism to allow this. We rely upon the fact that Tapestry already has a mechanism to declaratively add properties to a page, and
it is in fact the preferred approach to manage all properties on a page in this declarative fashion, so that Tapestry can properly manage their lifecycle as

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part of the page and component lifecycle.

13.7.2.3. Exposing the application context to Tapestry

First we need to make the ApplicationContext available to the Tapestry page or Component without having to have the ServletContext;
this is because at the stage in the page's/component's lifecycle when we need to access the ApplicationContext, the ServletContext won't
be easily available to the page, so we can't use WebApplicationContextUtils.getApplicationContext(servletContext)
directly. One way is by defining a custom version of the Tapestry IEngine which exposes this for us:
package com.whatever.web.xportal;
...
import ...
...
public class MyEngine extends org.apache.tapestry.engine.BaseEngine {

public static final String APPLICATION_CONTEXT_KEY = "appContext";

/**
* @see
org.apache.tapestry.engine.AbstractEngine#setupForRequest(org.apache.tapestry.request.RequestContext)
*/
protected void setupForRequest(RequestContext context) {
super.setupForRequest(context);

// insert ApplicationContext in global, if not there

Map global = (Map) getGlobal();
ApplicationContext ac = (ApplicationContext)
global.get(APPLICATION_CONTEXT_KEY);
if (ac == null) {
ac = WebApplicationContextUtils.getWebApplicationContext(
context.getServlet().getServletContext()
);
global.put(APPLICATION_CONTEXT_KEY, ac);
}
}
}
This engine class places the Spring Application Context as an attribute called "appContext" in this Tapestry app's 'Global' object. Make sure to register
the fact that this special IEngine instance should be used for this Tapestry application, with an entry in the Tapestry application definition file. For
example:
file: xportal.application:

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

<!DOCTYPE application PUBLIC
"-//Apache Software Foundation//Tapestry Specification 3.0//EN"
"http://jakarta.apache.org/tapestry/dtd/Tapestry_3_0.dtd">
<application
name="Whatever xPortal"
engine-class="com.whatever.web.xportal.MyEngine">
</application>

13.7.2.4. Component definition files

Now in our page or component definition file (*.page or *.jwc), we simply add property-specification elements to grab the beans we need out of the
ApplicationContext, and create page or component properties for them. For example:
<property-specification name="userService"
type="com.whatever.services.service.user.UserService">
global.appContext.getBean("userService")
</property-specification>
<property-specification name="authenticationService"

type="com.whatever.services.service.user.AuthenticationService">
global.appContext.getBean("authenticationService")
</property-specification>
The OGNL expression inside the property-specification specifies the initial value for the property, as a bean obtained from the context. The entire page
definition might look like this:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE page-specification PUBLIC
"-//Apache Software Foundation//Tapestry Specification 3.0//EN"
"http://jakarta.apache.org/tapestry/dtd/Tapestry_3_0.dtd">

<page-specification class="com.whatever.web.xportal.pages.Login">

<property-specification name="username" type="java.lang.String"/>

<property-specification name="password" type="java.lang.String"/>
<property-specification name="error" type="java.lang.String"/>
<property-specification name="callback"
type="org.apache.tapestry.callback.ICallback" persistent="yes"/>
<property-specification name="userService"
type="com.whatever.services.service.user.UserService">
global.appContext.getBean("userService")
</property-specification>
<property-specification name="authenticationService"

type="com.whatever.services.service.user.AuthenticationService">
global.appContext.getBean("authenticationService")
</property-specification>

<bean name="delegate" class="com.whatever.web.xportal.PortalValidationDelegate"/>

<bean name="validator" class="org.apache.tapestry.valid.StringValidator"

lifecycle="page">
<set-property name="required" expression="true"/>
<set-property name="clientScriptingEnabled" expression="true"/>
</bean>

<component id="inputUsername" type="ValidField">

<static-binding name="displayName" value="Username"/>
<binding name="value" expression="username"/>
<binding name="validator" expression="beans.validator"/>
</component>

<component id="inputPassword" type="ValidField">

<binding name="value" expression="password"/>
<binding name="validator" expression="beans.validator"/>
<static-binding name="displayName" value="Password"/>
<binding name="hidden" expression="true"/>
</component>

</page-specification>

13.7.2.5. Adding abstract accessors

Now in the Java class definition for the page or component itself, all we need to do is add an abstract getter method for the properties we have defined,
to access them. When the page or component is actually loaded by Tapestry, it performs runtime code instrumentation on the classfile to add the
properties which have been defined, and hook up the abstract getter methods to the newly created fields. For example:
// our UserService implementation; will come from page definition
public abstract UserService getUserService();
// our AuthenticationService implementation; will come from page definition
public abstract AuthenticationService getAuthenticationService();
For completeness, the entire Java class, for a login page in this example, might look like this:
package com.whatever.web.xportal.pages;

/**
* Allows the user to login, by providing username and password.
* After succesfully logging in, a cookie is placed on the client browser
* that provides the default username for future logins (the cookie
* persists for a week).
*/
public abstract class Login extends BasePage implements ErrorProperty,

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PageRenderListener {

/** the key under which the authenticated user object is stored in the visit as
*/
public static final String USER_KEY = "user";

/**
* The name of a cookie to store on the user's machine that will identify
* them next time they log in.
**/
private static final String COOKIE_NAME = Login.class.getName() + ".username";
private final static int ONE_WEEK = 7 * 24 * 60 * 60;

// --- attributes

public abstract String getUsername();

public abstract void setUsername(String username);

public abstract String getPassword();

public abstract void setPassword(String password);

public abstract ICallback getCallback();

public abstract void setCallback(ICallback value);

public abstract UserService getUserService();

public abstract AuthenticationService getAuthenticationService();

// --- methods

protected IValidationDelegate getValidationDelegate() {

return (IValidationDelegate) getBeans().getBean("delegate");
}

protected void setErrorField(String componentId, String message) {

IFormComponent field = (IFormComponent) getComponent(componentId);
IValidationDelegate delegate = getValidationDelegate();
delegate.setFormComponent(field);
delegate.record(new ValidatorException(message));
}

/**
* Attempts to login.
*
* <p>If the user name is not known, or the password is invalid, then an error
* message is displayed.
*
**/
public void attemptLogin(IRequestCycle cycle) {

String password = getPassword();

// Do a little extra work to clear out the password.

setPassword(null);
IValidationDelegate delegate = getValidationDelegate();

delegate.setFormComponent((IFormComponent) getComponent("inputPassword"));
delegate.recordFieldInputValue(null);

// An error, from a validation field, may already have occured.

if (delegate.getHasErrors())
return;

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try {
User user = getAuthenticationService().login(getUsername(),
getPassword());
loginUser(user, cycle);
}
catch (FailedLoginException ex) {
this.setError("Login failed: " + ex.getMessage());
return;
}
}

/**
* Sets up the {@link User} as the logged in user, creates
* a cookie for their username (for subsequent logins),
* and redirects to the appropriate page, or
* a specified page).
*
**/
public void loginUser(User user, IRequestCycle cycle) {

String username = user.getUsername();

// Get the visit object; this will likely force the

// creation of the visit object and an HttpSession.

Map visit = (Map) getVisit();

visit.put(USER_KEY, user);

// After logging in, go to the MyLibrary page, unless otherwise

// specified.

ICallback callback = getCallback();

if (callback == null)
cycle.activate("Home");
else
callback.performCallback(cycle);

// I've found that failing to set a maximum age and a path means that
// the browser (IE 5.0 anyway) quietly drops the cookie.

IEngine engine = getEngine();

Cookie cookie = new Cookie(COOKIE_NAME, username);
cookie.setPath(engine.getServletPath());
cookie.setMaxAge(ONE_WEEK);

// Record the user's username in a cookie

cycle.getRequestContext().addCookie(cookie);

engine.forgetPage(getPageName());
}

public void pageBeginRender(PageEvent event) {

if (getUsername() == null)

setUsername(getRequestCycle().getRequestContext().getCookieValue(COOKIE_NAME));
}
}

13.7.3. Summary
In this example, we've managed to allow service beans defined in the Spring ApplicationContext to be provided to the page in a declarative
fashion. The page class does not know where the service implementations are coming from, and in fact it is easy to slip in another implementation, for
example, during testing. This inversion of control is one of the prime goals and benefits of the Spring Framework, and we have managed to extend it

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all the way up the J2EE stack in this Tapestry application.

Prev Up Next
Chapter 12. Web framework Home Chapter 14. JMS

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 Chapter 14. JMS

Chapter 14. JMS

Prev Next

Chapter 14. JMS

14.1. Introduction
Spring provides a JMS abstraction framework that simplifies the use of the JMS API and shields the user
from differences between the JMS 1.0.2 and 1.1 APIs.
JMS can be roughly divided into two areas of functionality, production and consumption of messages. In a
J2EE environment, the ability to consume messages asynchronously is provided for by message-driven beans
while in a standalone application this is provided for by the creation of MessageListeners or
ConnectionConsumers. The functionality in JmsTemplate is focused on producing messages. Future releases
of Spring will address asynchronous message consumption in a standalone environment.
The package org.springframework.jms.core provides the core functionality for using JMS. It
contains JMS template classes that simplifies the use of the JMS by handling the creation and release of
resources, much like the JdbcTemplate does for JDBC. The design principal common to Spring template
classes is to provide helper methods to perform common operations and for more sophisticated usage,
delegate the essence of the processing task to user implemented callback interfaces. The JMS template
follows the same design. The classes offer various convenience methods for the sending of messages,
consuming a message synchronously, and exposing the JMS session and message producer to the user.
The package org.springframework.jms.support provides JMSException translation
functionality. The translation converts the checked JMSException hierarchy to a mirrored hierarchy of
unchecked exceptions. If there are any provider specific subclasses of the checked javax.jms.JMSException,
this exception is wrapped in the unchecked UncategorizedJmsException. The package
org.springframework.jms.support.converter provides a MessageConverter abstraction to
convert between Java objects and JMS messages. The package
org.springframework.jms.support.destination provides various strategies for managing
JMS destinations, such as providing a service locator for destinations stored in JNDI.
Finally, the package org.springframework.jms.connection provides an implementation of the
ConnectionFactory suitable for use in standalone applications. It also contains an implementation of Spring's
PlatformTransactionManager for JMS. This allows for integration of JMS as a transactional
resource into Spring's transaction management mechanisms.

14.2. 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. Consequentially, a client
application was domain specific in the 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

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 Chapter 14. JMS

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.
The JMS 1.1 specification was released in April 2002 and incorporated as part of J2EE 1.4 in November
2003. As a result, most application servers that are currently in use are only required to support JMS 1.0.2.

14.3. JmsTemplate
Two implementations of the JmsTemplate are provided. The class JmsTemplate uses the JMS 1.1 API
and the subclass JmsTemplate102 uses the JMS 1.0.2 API.
Code that uses the JmsTemplate only needs to implement callback interfaces giving them a clearly defined
contract. The MessageCreator callback interface creates a message given a Session provided by the
calling code in JmsTemplate. In order to allow for more complex usage of the JMS API, the callback
SessionCallback provides the user with the JMS session and the callback ProducerCallback
exposes a Session and MessageProducer pair.
The JMS API exposes two types of send methods, one that takes delivery mode, priority, and time-to-live as
quality of service (QOS) parameters and one that takes no QOS parameters which uses default values. Since
there are many send methods in JmsTemplate, the setting of the QOS parameters have been exposed as bean
properties to avoid duplication in the number of send methods. Similarly, the timeout value for synchronous
receive calls is set using the property setReceiveTimeout.
Some JMS providers allow the setting of default QOS values administratively through the configuration of
the ConnectionFactory. This has the effect that a call to MessageProducer's send method
send(Destination destination, Message message) will use QOS different default values
than those specified in the JMS specification. Therefore, in order to provide consistent management of QOS
values, the JmsTemplate must be specifically enabled to use its own QOS values by setting the boolean
property isExplicitQosEnabled to true.

14.3.1. ConnectionFactory
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 the JMS interfaces so that they can
participate in declarative transaction management and perform pooling of connections and session. In order
to use this implementation, J2EE 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.
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

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standard ConnectionFactory that would typically comes from JNDI.

14.3.2. 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 6. The JmsTransactionManager binds a Connection/Session pair from the
specified ConnectionFactory to the thread. However, in a J2EE environment the ConnectionFactory will pool
connections and sessions, so the instances that are bound to the thread depend on the pooling behavior. In a
standalone environment, using Spring's SingleConnectionFactory will result in a using a single JMS
Connection and each transaction having its own Session. The JmsTemplate can also be used with the
JtaTransactionManager and an XA-capable JMS ConnectionFactory for performing distributed
transactions.
Reusing code across a managed and unmanaged transactional environment can be confusing when using
JMS API to create a Session from a Connection. This is because the JMS API only has only one factory
method to create a Session and it requires values for the transaction and acknowledgement modes. In a
managed environment, setting these values in the responsibility of the environments transactional
infrastructure, so these values are ignored by the vendor's wrapper to the JMS Connection. When using the
JmsTemplate in an unmanaged environment you can specify these values though the use of the properties
SessionTransacted and SessionAcknowledgeMode. When using a
PlatformTransactionManager with JmsTemplate, the template will always be given a
transactional JMS Session.

14.3.3. Destination Management

Destinations, like ConnectionFactories, are JMS administered objects that can be stored and retrieved in
JNDI. When configuring a Spring application context one can use the JNDI factory class
JndiObjectFactoryBean to perform dependency injection on your object's references to JMS
destinations. However, often this strategy is cumbersome if there are a large number of destinations in the
application or if there are advanced destination management features unique to the JMS provider. Examples
of such advanced destination management would be the creation of dynamic destinations or support for a
hierarchical namespace of destinations. The JmsTemplate delegates the resolution of a destination name to a
JMS destination object to an implementation of the interface DestinationResolver.
DynamicDestinationResolver is the default implementation used by JmsTemplate and
accommodates resolving dynamic destinations. A JndiDestinationResolver is also provided that
acts as a service locator for destinations contained in JNDI and optionally falls back to the behavior
contained in DynamicDestinationResolver.
Quite often the destinations used in a JMS application are only known at runtime and therefore can not 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 are not part of the JMS specification,
most vendors have provided this functionality. Dynamic destinations are created with a name defined by the
user which differentiates them from temporary destinations and are often not registered in JNDI. The API
used to create dynamic destinations varies from provider to provider since the properties associated with the
destination are vendor specific. However, a simple implementation choice that is sometimes made by
vendors is to disregard the warnings in the JMS specification and to use the TopicSession method

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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. In the 1.0.2 implementation the value of this property determines if the
JmsTemplate's send operations will send a message to a Queue or to a Topic. This flag has no effect on send
operations for the 1.1 implementation. However, in both implementations, this property determines the
behavior of resolving dynamic destination via implementations of DestinationResolver.
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.

14.4. Using the JmsTemplate

To get started using the JmsTemplate you need to select either the JMS 1.0.2 implementation
JmsTemplate102 or the JMS 1.1 implementation JmsTemplate. Check your JMS provider to
determine what version is supported.

14.4.1. Sending a message

The JmsTemplate contains many convenience methods to send a message. There are send methods that
specify the destination using a javax.jms.Destination object and those that specify the destination
using a string for use in a JNDI lookup. The send method that takes no destination argument uses the default
destination. Here is an example that sends a message to a queue using the 1.0.2 implementation.
import javax.jms.ConnectionFactory;
import javax.jms.JMSException;
import javax.jms.Message;
import javax.jms.Queue;
import javax.jms.Session;

import org.springframework.jms.core.JmsTemplate;
import org.springframework.jms.core.JmsTemplate102;
import org.springframework.jms.core.MessageCreator;

public class JmsQueueSender {

private JmsTemplate jt;

private ConnectionFactory connFactory;

private Queue queue;

public void simpleSend() {

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jt = new JmsTemplate102(connFactory, false);

jt.send(queue, new MessageCreator() {
public Message createMessage(Session session) throws JMSException {
return session.createTextMessage("hello queue world");
}
});
}

public void setConnectionFactory(ConnectionFactory cf) {

connFactory = cf;
}

public void setQueue(Queue q) {

queue = q;
}

This example uses the MessageCreator callback to create a text message from the supplied Session
object and the JmsTemplate is constructed by passing a reference to a ConnectionFactory and a boolean
specifying the messaging domain. A zero argument constructor and a setConnectionFactory/Queue method
are also provided and can be used for constructing the instance using a BeanFactory. The method simpleSend
modified to send to a topic instead of a queue is shown below

public void simpleSend() {

jt = new JmsTemplate102(connFactory, true);
jt.send(topic, new MessageCreator() {
public Message createMessage(Session session) throws JMSException {
return session.createTextMessage("hello topic world");
}
});
}

When configuring the 1.0.2 in an application context it is important to remember setting the value of the
boolean property PubSubDomain property in order to indicate if you want to send to Queues or Topics.
The method send(String destinationName, MessageCreator c) lets you send to 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.

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14.4.2. Synchronous Receiving

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.

14.4.3. Using Message Converters

In order to facilitate the sending of domain model objects the JmsTemplate has various send methods that
take a Java object as an argument for a message's data content. The overloaded methods
convertAndSend and receiveAndConvert in JmsTemplate delegate the conversion process to an
instance of the MessageConverter interface. This interface defines a simple contract to convert between
Java objects and JMS messages. The default implementation, SimpleMessageConverter supports
conversion between String and TextMessage, byte[] and BytesMesssage, and
java.util.Map and MapMessage. By using the converter, you your application code can focus on the
business object that is being sent or received via JMS and not bother 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 implementations choices you might implement yourself are
Converters that bust an existing XML marshalling packages, such as JAXB, Castor, XMLBeans, or
XStream, to create a TextMessage representing the object.
To accommodate the setting of a message's properties, headers, and body that can not be generically
encapsulated inside a converter class, the interface MessagePostProcessor gives you access to the
message after it has been converted, but before it is sent. The example below shows how to modify a
message header and a property after a java.util.Map is converted to a message.

public void sendWithConversion() {

Map m = new HashMap();
m.put("Name", "Mark");
m.put("Age", new Integer(35));
jt.convertAndSend("testQueue", m, 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

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MapMessage={
Header={
... standard headers ...
CorrelationID={123-00001}
}
Properties={
AccountID={Integer:1234}
}
Fields={
Name={String:Mark}
Age={Integer:35}
}
}

14.4.4. 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 respectfully. The
execute() methods on JmsTemplate execute these callback methods.

Prev Up Next
Chapter 13. Integrating view Chapter 15. Accessing and
Home
technologies implementing EJBs

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Chapter 15. Accessing and implementing EJBs

Prev Next

Chapter 15. Accessing and implementing EJBs

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 java object) variants, without the client code client code having to be changed.
In this chapter, we look at how Spring can help you access and implement EJBs. Spring provides particular value when
accessing stateless session beans (SLSBs), so we'll begin by discussing this.

15.1. Accessing EJBs

15.1.1. Concepts
To invoke a method on a local or remote stateless session bean, client code must normally perform a JNDI lookup to obtain
the (local or remote) EJB Home object, then use a 'create' method call on that object to obtain the actual (local or remote)
EJB object. One or more methods are then invoked on the EJB.
To avoid repeated low-level code, many EJB applications use the Service Locator and Business Delegate patterns. These
are better than spraying JNDI lookups throughout client code, but their usual implementations have significant
disadvantages. For example:
● Typically code using EJBs depends on Service Locator or Business Delegate singletons, making it hard to test
● In the case of the Service Locator pattern used without a Business Delegate, application code still ends up having to
invoke the create() method on an EJB home, and deal with the resulting exceptions. Thus it remains tied to the EJB
API and the complexity of the EJB programming model.
● Implementing the Business Delegate pattern typically results in significant code duplication, where we have to write
numerous methods that simply call the same method on the EJB.
The Spring approach is to allow the creation and use of proxy objects, normally configured inside a Spring
ApplicationContext or BeanFactory, 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 youre adding real value.

15.1.2. Accessing local SLSBs

Assume that we have a web controller that needs to use a local EJB. Well follow best practice and use the EJB Business
Methods Interface pattern, so that the EJBs local interface extends a non EJB-specific business methods interface. Lets call
this business methods interface MyComponent.
public interface MyComponent {
...
}
(One of the main reasons to 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

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for us to switch to a POJO (plain 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 a bean 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 ApplicationContext or BeanFactory, we can in the same context configure a
LocalStatelessSessionProxyFactoryBean instance, which will be 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>myComponent</value></property>
<property
name="businessInterface"><value>com.mycom.MyComponent</value></property>
</bean>

<bean id="myController" class = "com.mycom.myController">

<property name="myComponent"><ref bean="myComponent"/></property>
</bean>
Theres a lot of magic 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 create() method on the local EJB and invokes the corresponding
business method on the EJB.
The myController bean definition sets the myController property of the controller class to this proxy.
This EJB access mechanism delivers huge simplification of application code: The web tier code (or other EJB client code)
has no dependence on the use of EJB. If we want to replace this EJB reference with a POJO or a mock object or other test
stub, we could simply change the myComponent bean definition without changing a line of Java code Additonally, 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 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 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 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 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.

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15.1.3. Accessing remote SLSBs

Accessing remote EJBs is essentially identical to accessing local EJBs, except that the
SimpleRemoteStatelessSessionProxyFactoryBean is used. Of course, with or without Spring, remote
invocation semantics apply; a call to a method on an object in another VM in another computer does sometimes have to be
treated differently in terms of usage scenarios and failure handling.
Spring's EJB client support adds one more advantage over the non-Spring approach. Normally it is problematic for EJB
client code to be easily switched back and forth between calling EJBs locally or remotely. This is because the remote
interface methods must declare that they throw RemoteException, and client code must deal with this, while the local
interface methods don't. Client code written for local EJBs which needs to be moved to remote EJBs typically has to be
modified to add handling for the remote exceptions, and client code written for remote EJBs which needs to be moved to
local EJBs, can either stay the same but do a lot of unnecessary handling of remote exceptions, or needs to be modified to
remove that code. With the Spring remote EJB proxy, you can instead not declare any thrown RemoteException in
your Business Method Interface and implementing EJB code, have a remote interface which is identical except that it does
throw RemoteException, and rely on the proxy to dynamically treat the two interfaces as if they were the same. That is,
client code does not have to deal with the checked RemoteException class. Any actual RemoteException that is
thrown during the EJB invocation will be rethrown 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.

15.2. Using Spring convenience EJB implementation classes

Spring also provides convenience classes to help you implement EJBs. These are designed to encourage the good practTo
ice of putting business logic behind EJBs in POJOs, leaving EJBs responsible for transaction demarcation and (optionally)
remoting.
To implement a Stateless or Stateful session bean, or Message Driven bean, you derive your implementation class from
AbstractStatelessSessionBean, AbstractStatefulSessionBean, and
AbstractMessageDrivenBean/AbstractJmsMessageDrivenBean, respectively.
Consider an example Stateless Session bean which actually delgates the implementation to a plain java service object. We
have the business interface:
public interface MyComponent {
public void myMethod(...);
...
}
We have the plain java implementation object:
public class MyComponentImpl implements MyComponent {
public String myMethod(...) {
...
}
...
}
And finally the Stateless Session Bean itself:
public class MyComponentEJB implements extends AbstractStatelessSessionBean
implements MyComponent {

MyComponent _myComp;

/**

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* Obtain our POJO service object from the BeanFactory/ApplicationContext

* @see
org.springframework.ejb.support.AbstractStatelessSessionBean#onEjbCreate()
*/
protected void onEjbCreate() throws CreateException {
_myComp = (MyComponent) getBeanFactory().getBean(
ServicesConstants.CONTEXT_MYCOMP_ID);
}

// for business method, delegate to POJO service impl.

public String myMethod(...) {
return _myComp.myMethod(...);
}
...
}
The Spring EJB support base classes will by default create and load a BeanFactory (or in this case, its ApplicationContext
subclass) as part of their lifecycle, which is then available to the EJB (for example, as used in the code above to obtain the
POJO service object). The loading is done via a strategy object which is a subclass of BeanFactoryLocator. The
actual implementation of BeanFactoryLocator used by default is ContextJndiBeanFactoryLocator, which
creates the ApplicationContext from a resource locations specified as a JNDI environment variable (in the case of the EJB
classes, at java:comp/env/ejb/BeanFactoryPath). If there is a need to change the
BeanFactory/ApplicationContext loading strategy, the default BeanFactoryLocator implementation used may be
overriden by calling the setBeanFactoryLocator() method, either in setSessionContext(), or in the actual
constructor of the EJB. Please see the JavaDocs for more details.
As described in the JavaDocs, Stateful Session beans expecting to be passivated and reactivated as part of their lifecycle,
and which use a non-serializable BeanFactory/ApplicationContext instance (which is the normal case) will have to
manually call unloadBeanFactory() and loadBeanFactory from ejbPassivate and ejbActivate,
respectively, to unload and reload the BeanFactory on passivation and activation, since it can not be saved by the EJB
container.
The default usage of ContextJndiBeanFactoryLocator to load an ApplicationContext for the use of the EJB is
adequate for some situations. However, it is problematic when the ApplicationContext is loading a number of beans, or the
initializaiton of those beans is time consuming or memory intensive (such as a Hibernate SessionFactory initialization, for
example), since every EJB will have their own copy. In this case, the user may want to override the defualt
ContextJndiBeanFactoryLocator usage and use another BeanFactoryLocator variant, such as
ContextSingletonBeanFactoryLocatore, which can load and use a shared BeanFactory or ApplicationContext
to be used by multiple EJBs or other clients. Doing this is relatively simple, by adding code similar to this to the EJB:
/**
* Override default BeanFactoryLocator implementation
*
* @see javax.ejb.SessionBean#setSessionContext(javax.ejb.SessionContext)
*/
public void setSessionContext(SessionContext sessionContext) {
super.setSessionContext(sessionContext);
setBeanFactoryLocator(ContextSingletonBeanFactoryLocator.getInstance());
setBeanFactoryLocatorKey(ServicesConstants.PRIMARY_CONTEXT_ID);
}
Please see the respective JavaDocs for BeanFactoryLocator and ContextSingletonBeanFactoryLocatore
for more information on their usage.

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 Chapter 15. Accessing and implementing EJBs

Chapter 14. JMS Home

Chapter 16. Remoting and web services
using Spring

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 Chapter 16. Remoting and web services using Spring

Chapter 16. Remoting and web services using Spring

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Chapter 16. Remoting and web services using Spring

16.1. 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 four
remoting technologies:
● Remote Method Invocation (RMI). Through the use of the RmiProxyFactoryBean and the
RmiServiceExporter Spring supports both traditional RMI (with java.rmi.Remote interfaces and
java.rmi.RemoteException) and transparent remoting via RMI invokers (with any Java interface).
● Spring's HTTP invoker. Spring provides a special remoting strategy which allows for Java serialization via HTTP,
supporting any Java interface (just like the RMI invoker). The corresponding support classes are
HttpInvokerProxyFactoryBean and HttpInvokerServiceExporter.
● Hessian. By using the HessianProxyFactoryBean and the HessianServiceExporter you can transparently
expose your services using the lightweight binary HTTP-based protocol provided by Caucho.
● Burlap. Burlap is Caucho's XML-based alternative for Hessian. Spring provides support classes such as
BurlapProxyFactoryBean and BurlapServiceExporter.
● JAX RPC (TODO).
While discussing the remoting capabilities of Spring, we'll use the following domain model and corresponding services:

// Account domain object

public class Account implements Serializable{
private String name;

public String getName();

public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
}

// Account service
public interface AccountService {

public void insertAccount(Account acc);

public List getAccounts(String name);

}

// ... and corresponding implement doing nothing at the moment

public class AccountServiceImpl implements AccountService {

public void insertAccount(Account acc) {

// do something

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 Chapter 16. Remoting and web services using Spring

public List getAccounts(String name) {

// do something
}
}

We will start exposing the service to a remote client by using RMI and talk a bit about the drawbacks of using RMI. We'll then
continue to show an example for Hessian.

16.2. Exposing services using RMI

Using Spring's support for RMI, you can transparently expose your services through the RMI infrastructure. After having this
set up, you basically have a configuration similar to remote EJBs, except for the fact that there is no standard support for
security context propagation or remote transaction propagation. Spring does provide hooks for such additional invocation
context when using the RMI invoker, so you can for example plug in security frameworks or custom security credentials here.

16.2.1. Exporting the service using the RmiServiceExporter

Using the RmiServiceExporter, we can expose the interface of our AccountServer 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 BeanFactory:

<bean id="accountService" class="example.AccountServiceImpl">

<!-- any additional properties, maybe a DAO? -->
</bean>

Next we'll 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</value></property>
<property name="service"><ref bean="accountService"/></property>
<property
name="serviceInterface"><value>example.AccountService</value></property>
<!-- defaults to 1099 -->
<property name="registryPort"><value>1199</value></property>
</bean>

As you can see, we're overriding the port for the RMI registry. Often, your application server also maintains an RMI registry
and it is wise to not interfere with that one. Furthermore, the service name is used to bind the service under. So right now, the
service will be bound at rmi://HOST:1199/AccountService. We'll use the URL later on to link in the service at the
client side.
Note: We've left out one property, i.e. the servicePort property, which is 0 by default. This means an anonymous port will
be used to communicate with the service. You can specify a different port if you like.

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16.2.2. Linking in the service at the client

Our client is a simple object using the AccountService to manage accounts:

public class SimpleObject {

private AccountService accountService;
public void setAccountService(AccountService accountService) {
this.accountService = accountService;
}
}

To link in the service on the client, we'll create a separate bean factory, containing the simple object and the service linking
configuration bits:

<bean class="example.SimpleObject">
<property name="accountService"><ref bean="accountService"/></bean>
</bean>

<bean id="accountService"
class="org.springframework.remoting.rmi.RmiProxyFactoryBean">
<property
name="serviceUrl"><value>rmi://HOST:1199/AccountService</value></property>
<property
name="serviceInterface"><value>example.AccountService</value></property>
</bean>

That's all we need to do to support the remote account service on the client. Spring will transparently create an invoker and
remotely enable the account service through the RmiServiceExporter. At the client we're linking it in using the
RmiProxyFactoryBean.

16.3. Using Hessian or Burlap to remotely call services via

HTTP
Hessian offers a binary HTTP-based remoting protocol. It's created by Caucho and more information about Hessian itself can
be found at http://www.caucho.com.

16.3.1. Wiring up the DispatcherServlet for Hessian

Hessian communicates via HTTP and does so using a custom servlet. Using Spring's DispatcherServlet principles, you can
easily wire up such a servlet exposing your services. First we'll have to create a new servlet in your application (this an excerpt
from web.xml):

<servlet>
<servlet-name>remote</servlet-name>

<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

You're probably familiar with Spring's DispatcherServlet principles and if so, you know that know you'll have to create an
application context named remote-servlet.xml (after the name of your servlet) in the WEB-INF directory. The

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application context will be used in the next section.

16.3.2. Exposing your beans by using the HessianServiceExporter

In the newly created application context called remote-servlet.xml we'll 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 bean="accountService"/></property>
<property name="serviceInterface">
<value>example.AccountService</value>
</property>
</bean>

Now we're ready to link in the service at the client. No handler mapping is specified mapping requests (urls) onto services and
that's why the BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping will be used, hence the service will be exported at the URL
http://HOST:8080/AccountService.

16.3.3. Linking in the service on the client

Using the HessianProxyFactoryBean we can link in the service at the client. The same principles apply as with the
RMI example. We'll create a separate bean factory or application context and mention the following beans where the
SimpleObject is using the AccountService to manage accounts:

<bean class="example.SimpleObject">
<property name="accountService"><ref bean="accountService"/></property>
</bean>

<bean id="accountService"
class="org.springframework.remoting.caucho.HessianProxyFactoryBean">
<property
name="serviceUrl"><value>http://remotehost:8080/AccountService</value></property>
<property
name="ServiceInterface"><value>example.AccountService</value></property>
</bean>

That's all there is to it.

16.3.4. Using Burlap

We won't discuss Burlap, the XML-based equivalent of Hessian, in detail here, since it is configured and set up in exactly the
same way as the Hessian variant explained above. Just replace the word Hessian with Burlap and you're all set to go.

16.3.5. Applying HTTP basic authentication to a service exposed through Hessian

or Burlap
One of the advantages of Hessian and Burlap is that we can easily apply HTTP basic authentication, because both protocols are
HTTP-based. Your normal HTTP server security mechanism can easily be applied through using the web.xml security

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 Chapter 16. Remoting and web services using Spring

features, for example. Usually, you don't use per-user security credentials here, but rather shared credentials defined at the
Hessian/BurlapProxyFactoryBean level (similar to a JDBC DataSource).

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping">
<property name="interceptors">
<list>
<ref bean="authorizationInterceptor"/>
</list>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="authorizationInterceptor"

class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.UserRoleAuthorizationInterceptor">
<property name="authorizedRoles">
<list>
<value>administrator</value>
<value>operator</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>

This an example where we explicitly mention the BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping and set an interceptor allowing only
administrators and operators to call the beans mentioned in this application context.
Note: Of course, this example doesn't show a flexible kind of security infrastructure. For more options as far as security is
concerned, have a look at the Acegi Security System for Spring, to be found at http://acegisecurity.sourceforge.net.

16.4. Exposing services using HTTP invokers

As opposed to Burlap and Hessian, which are both lightweight protocols using their own slim serialization mechanisms, Spring
Http invokers use the standard Java serialization mechanism to expose services through HTTP. This has a huge advantage if
your arguments and return types are complex types that cannot be serialized using the serialization mechanisms Hessian and
Burlap use (refer to the next section for more considerations when choosing a remoting technology).
Under the hood, Spring uses either the standard facilities provided by J2SE to perform HTTP calls or Commons HttpClient.
Use the latter if you need more advanced and easy-to-use functionality. Refer to jakarta.apache.org/commons/httpclient for
more info.

16.4.1. Exposing the service object

Setting up the HTTP invoker infrastructure for a service objects much resembles the way you would do using Hessian or
Burlap. Just as Hessian support provides the HessianServiceExporter, Spring Http invoker support provides the
so-called org.springframework.remoting.httpinvoker.HttpInvokerServiceExporter. To expose the
AccountService (mentioned above), the following configuration needs to be in place:

<bean name="/AccountService"
class="org.sprfr.remoting.httpinvoker.HttpInvokerServiceExporter">
<property name="service"><ref bean="accountService"/></property>
<property name="serviceInterface">
<value>example.AccountService</value>
</property>
</bean>

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16.4.2. Linking in the service at the client

Again, linking in the service from the client much resembles the way you would do it when using Hessian or Burlap. Using a
proxy, Spring will be able to translate your calls to HTTP POST requests to the URL pointing to the exported service.

<bean id="httpInvokerProxy"
class="org.sprfr.remoting.httpinvoker.HttpInvokerProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="serviceUrl">
<value>http://remotehost:8080/AccountService</value>
</property>
<property name="serviceInterface">
<value>example.AccountService</value>
</property>
</bean>
As mentioned before, you can choose what HTTP client you want to use. By default, the HttpInvokerProxy uses the J2SE
HTTP functionality, but you can also use the Commons HttpClient by setting the httpInvokerRequestExecutor
property:

<property name="httpInvokerRequestExecutor">
<bean
class="org.springframework.remoting.httpinvoker.CommonsHttpInvokerRequestExecutor"/>
</property>

16.5. Considerations when choosing a technology

Each and every technology presented here has its drawbacks. You should carefully consider you needs, the services your
exposing and the objects you'll be sending over the wire when choosing a technology.
When using RMI, it's not possible to access the objects through the HTTP protocol, unless you're tunneling the RMI traffic.
RMI is a fairly heavy-weight protocol in that it support 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.
Spring's HTTP invoker is a good choice if you need HTTP-based remoting but also rely on Java serialization. It shares the
basic infrastructure with RMI invokers, just using HTTP as transport. Note that HTTP invokers are not only limited to
Java-to-Java remoting but also to Spring on both the client and server side. (The latter also applies to Spring's RMI invoker for
non-RMI interfaces.)
Hessian and/or Burlap might provide significant value when operating in a heterogenous environment, because they explicitly
allow for non-Java clients. However, non-Java support is still limited. Known problems include the serialization of Hibernate
objects in combination with lazily initializing collections. If you have such a data model, consider using RMI or HTTP
invokers instead of Hessian.
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.

Prev Up Next
Chapter 15. Accessing and implementing Chapter 17. Sending Email with Spring
Home
EJBs mail abstraction layer

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 Chapter 17. Sending Email with Spring mail abstraction layer

Chapter 17. Sending Email with Spring mail abstraction layer

Prev Next

Chapter 17. Sending Email with Spring mail abstraction layer

17.1. Introduction
Spring provides a higher level of abstraction for sending electronic mail which shields the user from the specifics of underlying
mailing system and is responsible for a low level resource handling on behalf of the client.

17.2. Spring mail abstraction structure

The main package of Spring mail abstraction layer is org.springframework.mail package. It contains central interface
for sending emails called MailSender and the value object which encapsulates properties of a simple mail such as from, to,
cc, subject, text called SimpleMailMessage. This package also conatins a hierarchy of checked exceptions which provide
a higher level of abstraction over the lower level mail system expetions with the root exception being
MailException.Please refer to JavaDocs for more information on mail exception hierarchy.
Spring also provides a subinterface of MailSender for specialized JavaMail features such as MIME messages, namely
org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSender It also provides a callback interface for praparation of
JavaMail MIME messages, namely org.springframework.mail.javamail.MimeMessagePreparator
MailSender:
public interface MailSender {

/**
* Send the given simple mail message.
* @param simpleMessage message to send
* @throws MailException in case of message, authentication, or send errors
*/
public void send(SimpleMailMessage simpleMessage) throws MailException;

/**
* Send the given array of simple mail messages in batch.
* @param simpleMessages messages to send
* @throws MailException in case of message, authentication, or send errors
*/
public void send(SimpleMailMessage[] simpleMessages) throws MailException;

}
JavaMailSender:
public interface JavaMailSender extends MailSender {

/**
* Create a new JavaMail MimeMessage for the underlying JavaMail Session
* of this sender. Needs to be called to create MimeMessage instances
* that can be prepared by the client and passed to send(MimeMessage).
* @return the new MimeMessage instance
* @see #send(MimeMessage)
* @see #send(MimeMessage[])
*/

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 Chapter 17. Sending Email with Spring mail abstraction layer

public MimeMessage createMimeMessage();

/**
* Send the given JavaMail MIME message.
* The message needs to have been created with createMimeMessage.
* @param mimeMessage message to send
* @throws MailException in case of message, authentication, or send errors
* @see #createMimeMessage
*/
public void send(MimeMessage mimeMessage) throws MailException;

/**
* Send the given array of JavaMail MIME messages in batch.
* The messages need to have been created with createMimeMessage.
* @param mimeMessages messages to send
* @throws MailException in case of message, authentication, or send errors
* @see #createMimeMessage
*/
public void send(MimeMessage[] mimeMessages) throws MailException;

/**
* Send the JavaMail MIME message prepared by the given MimeMessagePreparator.
* Alternative way to prepare MimeMessage instances, instead of createMimeMessage
* and send(MimeMessage) calls. Takes care of proper exception conversion.
* @param mimeMessagePreparator the preparator to use
* @throws MailException in case of message, authentication, or send errors
*/
public void send(MimeMessagePreparator mimeMessagePreparator) throws
MailException;

/**
* Send the JavaMail MIME messages prepared by the given MimeMessagePreparators.
* Alternative way to prepare MimeMessage instances, instead of createMimeMessage
* and send(MimeMessage[]) calls. Takes care of proper exception conversion.
* @param mimeMessagePreparators the preparator to use
* @throws MailException in case of message, authentication, or send errors
*/
public void send(MimeMessagePreparator[] mimeMessagePreparators) throws
MailException;

}
MimeMessagePreparator:
public interface MimeMessagePreparator {

/**
* Prepare the given new MimeMessage instance.
* @param mimeMessage the message to prepare
* @throws MessagingException passing any exceptions thrown by MimeMessage
* methods through for automatic conversion to the MailException hierarchy
*/
void prepare(MimeMessage mimeMessage) throws MessagingException;

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 Chapter 17. Sending Email with Spring mail abstraction layer

17.3. Using Spring mail abstraction

Let's assume there is a businness interface called OrderManager
public interface OrderManager {

void placeOrder(Order order);

}
and there is a use case that says that an email message with order number would need to be generated and sent to a customer
placing that order. So for this purpose we want to use MailSender and SimpleMailMessage
Please note that as usual, we work with interfaces in the business code and let Spring IoC container take care of wiring of all
the collaborators for us.
Here is the implementation of OrderManager
import org.springframework.mail.MailException;
import org.springframework.mail.MailSender;
import org.springframework.mail.SimpleMailMessage;

public class OrderManagerImpl implements OrderManager {

private MailSender mailSender;

private SimpleMailMessage message;

public void setMailSender(MailSender mailSender) {

this.mailSender = mailSender;
}

public void setMessage(SimpleMailMessage message) {

this.message = message;
}

public void placeOrder(Order order) {

//... * Do the businness calculations....

//... * Call the collaborators to persist the order

//Create a threadsafe "sandbox" of the message

SimpleMailMessage msg = new SimpleMailMessage(this.message);
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{
mailSender.send(msg);
}
catch(MailException ex) {
//log it and go on
System.err.println(ex.getMessage());
}
}
}

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 Chapter 17. Sending Email with Spring mail abstraction layer

Here is what the bean definitions for the code above would look like:
<bean id="mailSender"
class="org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSenderImpl">
<property name="host"><value>mail.mycompany.com</value></property>
</bean>

<bean id="mailMessage"
class="org.springframework.mail.SimpleMailMessage">
<property name="from"><value>[email protected]</value></property>
<property name="subject"><value>Your order</value></property>
</bean>

<bean id="orderManager"
class="com.mycompany.businessapp.support.OrderManagerImpl">
<property name="mailSender"><ref bean="mailSender"/></property>
<property name="message"><ref bean="mailMessage"/></property>
</bean>
Here is the implementation of OrderManager using MimeMessagePreparator callback interface. Please note that the
mailSender property is of type JavaMailSender in this case in order to be able to use JavaMail MimeMessage:
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 OrderManagerImpl implements OrderManager {

private JavaMailSender mailSender;

public void setMailSender(JavaMailSender mailSender) {

this.mailSender = mailSender;
}

public void placeOrder(final Order order) {

//... * Do the businness calculations....

//... * Call the collaborators to persist the order

MimeMessagePreparator preparator = new MimeMessagePreparator() {

public void prepare(MimeMessage mimeMessage) throws MessagingException {
mimeMessage.setRecipient(Message.RecipientType.TO,
new InternetAddress(order.getCustomer().getEmailAddress()));
mimeMessage.setFrom(new InternetAddress("[email protected]"));
mimeMessage.setText(
"Dear "
+ order.getCustomer().getFirstName()
+ order.getCustomer().getLastName()
+ ", thank you for placing order. Your order number is "
+ order.getOrderNumber());

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 Chapter 17. Sending Email with Spring mail abstraction layer

}
};
try{
mailSender.send(preparator);
}
catch(MailException ex) {
//log it and go on
System.err.println(ex.getMessage());
}
}
}
If you want to use JavaMail MimeMessage to the full power, the MimeMessagePreparator is available at your fingertips.
Please note that the mail code is a crosscutting concern and is a perfect candidate for refactoring into a custom SpringAOP
advice, which then could easily be applied to OrderManager target. Please see the AOP chapter.

17.3.1. Pluggable MailSender implementations

Spring comes with two MailSender implementations out of the box - the JavaMail implementation and the implementation on
top of Jason Hunter's MailMessage class that's included in http://servlets.com/cos (com.oreilly.servlet). Please refer to
JavaDocs for more information.

17.4. Using the JavaMail MimeMessageHelper

One of the components that comes in pretty handy when dealing with JavaMail messages is the
org.springframework.mail.javamail.MimeMessageHelper. It prevents you from having to use the nasty APIs
the the javax.mail.internet classes. A couple of possible scenarios:

17.4.1. Creating a simple MimeMessage and sending it

Using the MimeMessageHelper it's pretty easy to setup and send a MimeMessage:

// of course you would setup the mail sender using

// DI in any real-world cases
JavaMailSenderImpl sender = new JavaMailSenderImpl();
sender.setHost("mail.host.com");

MimeMessage message = sender.createMimeMesage();

MimeMessageHelper helper = new MimeMessageHelper(message);
message.setTo("[email protected]");
message.setText("Thank you for ordering!");

sender.send(message);

17.4.2. Sending attachments and inline resources

Email allow for attachments, but also for inline resources in multipart messages. Inline resources could for example be images
or stylesheet you want to use in your message, but don't want displayed as attachment. The following 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");

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MimeMessage message = sender.createMimeMesage();

// use the true flag to indicate you need a multipart message

MimeMessageHelper helper = new MimeMessageHelper(message, true);
message.setTo("[email protected]");

// 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);

// if you would need to include the file as an attachment, use

// addAttachment() methods on the MimeMessageHelper

sender.send(message);

Inline resources are added to the mime message using the Content-ID specified as you've seen just now (identifier1234
in this case). The order in which you're adding the text and the resource are VERY important. First add the resource and after
that the text. If you're doing it the other way around, it won't work!

Prev Up Next
Chapter 16. Remoting and web services Chapter 18. Scheduling jobs using
Home
using Spring Quartz or Timer

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 Chapter 18. Scheduling jobs using Quartz or Timer

Chapter 18. Scheduling jobs using Quartz or Timer

Prev Next

Chapter 18. Scheduling jobs using Quartz or Timer

18.1. Introduction
Spring features integration classes for scheduling support. Currently, Spring supports the Timer, built in in the JDK since 1.3
and the Quartz Scheduler (http://www.quartzscheduler.org). Both schedulers are set up using a FactoryBean with optional
references to Timers respectively Triggers. Furthermore, a convenience class for both the Quartz Scheduler and the Timer is
available that allows you to invoke a method an a target object you can specify yourself (analogous to normal
MethodInvokingFactoryBeans

18.2. Using the OpenSymphony Quartz Scheduler

Quartz uses Triggers, Jobs and JobDetail ro realize scheduling of all kinds of jobs. For the basic concepts behind
Quartz, have a look at http://www.opensymphony.com/quartz. For convenience purposes, Spring offers a couple of classes that
simplify usage of Quartz within Spring-based applications.

18.2.1. Using the JobDetailBean

JobDetail objects contain all information needed to run a job. Spring provides a so-called JobDetailBean that makes
the JobDetail more of an actual with sensible defaults. Let's have a look at an example:

<bean name="exampleJob" class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.JobDetailBean">

<property name="jobClass">
<value>example.ExampleJob</value>
</property>
<property name="jobDataAsMap">
<map>
<entry key="timeout"><value>5</value></entry>
</map>
</property>
</bean>

The job detail bean has all information it needs to run the job (ExampleJob). The timeout is specified as the job data map. The
job data map is available through the JobExecutionContext (passed to you at execution time), but the JobDetailBean also
maps the properties from the job data map to properties of the actual job. So in this case, if the ExampleJob contains a property
named timeout, the JobDetailBean will automatically apply it:

package example;

public class ExampleJob extends QuartzJobBean {

private int timeout;

/**
* Setter called after the ExampleJob is instantiated
* with the value from the JobDetailBean (5)
*/

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 Chapter 18. Scheduling jobs using Quartz or Timer

public void setTimeout(int timeout) {

this.timeout = timeout;
}

protected void executeInternal(JobExecutionContext ctx)

throws JobExecutionException {

// do the actual work

}
}

All additional settings from the job detail bean are by the way available to you as well.
Note: Using the name and group properties, you can modify in which group the job runs and using what name. By default
the name of the job equals the bean name of the job detail bean (in the example above this is exampleJob).

18.2.2. Using the MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean

Often times, you just need to invoke a method on a specific object. Using the
MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean you can do exactly this:

<bean id="methodInvokingJobDetail"
class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean">
<property name="targetObject"><ref bean="exampleBusinessObject"/></property>
<property name="targetMethod"><value>doIt</value></property>
</bean>
The above example will result in the doIt being called on the exampleBusinessObject (see below):

public class BusinessObject {

// properties and collaborators

public void doIt() {

// do the actual work
}
}

<bean id="exampleBusinessObject" class="examples.ExampleBusinessObject"/>

Using the MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean you don't need to create 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 eachother. 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 objects
implement the Stateful interface, this won't happen. The second job will not start before the first one has finished. To make
jobs resulting from the MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBEan non-concurrent set the concurrent flag to false.

<bean id="methodInvokingJobDetail"
class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.MethodInvokingJobDetailFactoryBean">
<property name="targetObject"><ref bean="exampleBusinessObject"/></property>
<property name="targetMethod"><value>doIt</value></property>

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 Chapter 18. Scheduling jobs using Quartz or Timer

</bean>

Note: By default, jobs will run in a concurrent fashion.

18.2.3. Wiring up jobs using triggers and the SchedulerFactoryBean

We've created job details, jobs and we've reviewed the convenience bean that allows to you 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. Spring offers two subclassed triggers, the
CronTriggerBean and the SimpleTriggerBean.
Triggers need to be scheduled. Spring offers a SchedulerFactoryBean exposing properties to set te triggers. The
SchedulerFactoryBean schedules the actual triggers.
A couple of examples:

<bean id="simpleTrigger"
class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.SimpleTriggerBean">
<property name="jobDetail">
<!-- see the example of method invoking job above -->
<ref bean="methodInvokingJobDetail"/>
</property>
<property name="startDelay">
<!-- 10 seconds -->
<value>10000</value>
</property>
<property name="repeatInterval">
<!-- repeat every 50 seconds -->
<value>50000</value>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="cronTrigger" class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.CronTriggerBean">

<property name="jobDetail">
<ref bean="exampleJob"/>
</property>
<property name="cronExpression">
<!-- run every morning at 6 am -->
<value>0 6 * * 1</value>
</property>
</bean>

Ok, now we've set up two triggers, one running every 50 seconds with a starting delay of 10 seconds and one every morning at
6. To finalize everything we need to set up the SchedulerFactoryBean:

<bean class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.SchedulerFactoryBean">
<property name="triggers">
<list>
<ref local="cronTrigger"/>
<ref local="simpleTrigger"/>
</list>
</property>
</bean>

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 Chapter 18. Scheduling jobs using Quartz or Timer

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, etcetera. Have a look at the JavaDOC
(http://www.springframework.org/docs/api/org/springframework/scheduling/quartz/SchedulerFactoryBean.html) for more
information.

18.3. Using JDK Timer support

The other way to schedule jobs is using the JDK Timer objects. More information about Timers themselves can be found at
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/essential/threads/timer.html. The concepts discussed above also apply to the Timer
support. You can create custom timers or use the timer that invokes methods. Wiring timers has to be done using the
TimerFactoryBean.

18.3.1. Creating custom timers

Using the TimerTask you can create customer timer tasks, similar to Quartz jobs:

public class CheckEmailAddresses extends TimerTask {

private List emailAddresses;

public void setEmailAddresses(List emailAddresses) {

this.emailAddresses = emailAddresses;
}

public void run() {

// iterate over all email addresses and archive them

}
}

Wiring it up is simple:

<bean id="checkEmail" class="examples.CheckEmailAddress">

<property name="emailAddresses">
<list>
<value>[email protected]</value>
<value>[email protected]</value>
<value>[email protected]</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>

<bean id="scheduledTask"
class="org.springframework.scheduling.timer.ScheduledTimerTask">
<!-- wait 10 seconds before starting repeated execution -->
<property name="delay">
<value>10000</value>
</property>
<!-- run every 50 seconds -->
<property name="period">
<value>50000</value>
</property>

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 Chapter 18. Scheduling jobs using Quartz or Timer

<property name="timerTask">
<ref local="checkEmail"/>
</property>
</bean>

18.3.2. Using the MethodInvokingTimerTaskFactoryBean

Just as the Quartz support, the Timer support also features a component that allows you to periodically invoke a method:

<bean id="methodInvokingTask"
class="org.springframework.scheduling.timer.MethodInvokingTimerTaskFactoryBean">
<property name="targetObject"><ref bean="exampleBusinessObject"/></property>
<property name="targetMethod"><value>doIt</value></property>
</bean>
The above example will result in the doIt being called on the exampleBusinessObject (see below):

public class BusinessObject {

// properties and collaborators

public void doIt() {

// do the actual work
}
}

Changing the reference of the above example in which the ScheduledTimerTask is mentioned to the
methodInvokingTask will result in this task to be executed.

18.3.3. Wrapping up: setting up the tasks using the TimerFactoryBean

The TimerFactoryBean is similar to the QuartzSchedulerFactoryBean in that is serves the same purpose: setting up the actual
scheduling. The TimerFactoryBean sets up an actual Timer and schedules the tasks it has references to. You can specify
whether or not daemon threads should be used.

<bean id="timerFactory"
class="org.springframework.scheduling.timer.TimerFactoryBean">
<property name="scheduledTimerTasks">
<list>
<!-- see the example above -->
<ref local="scheduledTask"/>
</list>
</property>
</bean>

That's all!

Prev Up Next
Chapter 17. Sending Email with Spring Appendix A. Spring's beans.dtd
Home
mail abstraction layer

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 Appendix A. Spring's beans.dtd

Appendix A. Spring's beans.dtd

Prev

Appendix A. Spring's beans.dtd

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

<!--
Spring XML Beans DTD
Authors: Rod Johnson, Juergen Hoeller, Alef Arendsen, Colin Sampaleanu

This defines a simple and consistent way of creating a namespace

of JavaBeans objects, configured by a Spring BeanFactory, read by
a DefaultXmlBeanDefinitionReader.

This document type is used by most Spring functionality, including

web application contexts, which are based on bean factories.

Each "bean" element in this document defines a JavaBean.

Typically the bean class is specified, along with JavaBean properties
and/or constructor arguments.

Bean instances can be "singletons" (shared instances) or "prototypes"

(independent instances). Further scopes are supposed to be built on top
of the core BeanFactory infrastructure and are therefore not part of it.

References among beans are supported, i.e. setting a JavaBean property

or a constructor argument to refer to another bean in the same factory
(or an ancestor factory).

As alternative to bean references, "inner bean definitions" can be used.

Singleton flags of such inner bean definitions are effectively ignored:
Inner beans are typically anonymous prototypes.

There is also support for lists, sets, maps, and java.util.Properties

as bean property types respectively constructor argument types.

As the format is simple, a DTD is sufficient, and there's no need

for a schema at this point.

XML documents that conform to this DTD should declare the following doctype:

<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC "-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN"

"http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd">

$Id: dtd.xml,v 1.7 2004/10/05 08:37:54 jhoeller Exp $

-->

<!--
The document root. A document can contain bean definitions only,
imports only, or a mixture of both (typically with imports first).
-->

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 Appendix A. Spring's beans.dtd

<!ELEMENT beans (
description?,
import*,
bean*
)>

<!--
Default values for all bean definitions. Can be overridden at
the "bean" level. See those attribute definitions for details.
-->
<!ATTLIST beans default-lazy-init (true | false) "false">
<!ATTLIST beans default-dependency-check (none | objects | simple | all) "none">
<!ATTLIST beans default-autowire (no | byName | byType | constructor | autodetect)
"no">

<!--
Element containing informative text describing the purpose of the enclosing
element. Always optional.
Used primarily for user documentation of XML bean definition documents.
-->
<!ELEMENT description (#PCDATA)>

<!--
Specifies an XML bean definition resource to import.
-->
<!ELEMENT import EMPTY>

<!--
The relative resource location of the XML bean definition file to import,
for example "myImport.xml" or "includes/myImport.xml" or "../myImport.xml".
-->
<!ATTLIST import resource CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!--
Defines a single named bean.
-->
<!ELEMENT bean (
description?,
(constructor-arg | property)*,
(lookup-method)*,
(replaced-method)*
)>

<!--
Beans can be identified by an id, to enable reference checking.

There are constraints on a valid XML id: if you want to reference your bean
in Java code using a name that's illegal as an XML id, use the optional
"name" attribute. If neither is given, the bean class name is used as id
(with an appended counter like "#2" if there is already a bean with that
name).
-->
<!ATTLIST bean id ID #IMPLIED>

<!--

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 Appendix A. Spring's beans.dtd

Optional. Can be used to create one or more aliases illegal in an id.

Multiple aliases can be separated by any number of spaces or commas.
-->
<!ATTLIST bean name CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!--
Each bean definition must specify the fully qualified name of the class,
except if it pure serves as parent for child bean definitions.
-->
<!ATTLIST bean class CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!--
Optionally specify a parent bean definition.

Will use the bean class of the parent if none specified, but can
also override it. In the latter case, the child bean class must be
compatible with the parent, i.e. accept the parent's property values
and constructor argument values, if any.

A child bean definition will inherit constructor argument values,

property values and method overrides from the parent, with the option
to add new values. If init method, destroy method, factory bean and/or
factory
method are specified, they will override the corresponding parent settings.

The remaining settings will <i>always</i> be taken from the child definition:
depends on, autowire mode, dependency check, singleton, lazy init.
-->
<!ATTLIST bean parent CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!--
Is this bean "abstract", i.e. not meant to be instantiated itself but
rather just serving as parent for concrete child bean definitions.
Default is false. Specify true to tell the bean factory to not try to
instantiate that particular bean in any case.
-->
<!ATTLIST bean abstract (true | false) "false">

<!--
Is this bean a "singleton" (one shared instance, which will
be returned by all calls to getBean() with the id),
or a "prototype" (independent instance resulting from each call to
getBean(). Default is singleton.

Singletons are most commonly used, and are ideal for multi-threaded
service objects.
-->
<!ATTLIST bean singleton (true | false) "true">

<!--
If this bean should be lazily initialized.
If false, it will get instantiated on startup by bean factories
that perform eager initialization of singletons.
-->
<!ATTLIST bean lazy-init (true | false | default) "default">

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 Appendix A. Spring's beans.dtd

<!--
Optional attribute controlling whether to "autowire" bean properties.
This is an automagical process in which bean references don't need to be
coded
explicitly in the XML bean definition file, but Spring works out
dependencies.

There are 5 modes:

1. "no"
The traditional Spring default. No automagical wiring. Bean references
must be defined in the XML file via the <ref> element. We recommend this
in most cases as it makes documentation more explicit.

2. "byName"
Autowiring by property name. If a bean of class Cat exposes a dog property,
Spring will try to set this to the value of the bean "dog" in the current
factory.

3. "byType"
Autowiring if there is exactly one bean of the property type in the bean
factory.
If there is more than one, a fatal error is raised, and you can't use byType
autowiring for that bean. If there is none, nothing special happens - use
dependency-check="objects" to raise an error in that case.

4. "constructor"
Analogous to "byType" for constructor arguments. If there isn't exactly one
bean
of the constructor argument type in the bean factory, a fatal error is
raised.

5. "autodetect"
Chooses "constructor" or "byType" through introspection of the bean class.
If a default constructor is found, "byType" gets applied.

The latter two are similar to PicoContainer and make bean factories simple to
configure for small namespaces, but doesn't work as well as standard Spring
behaviour for bigger applications.

Note that explicit dependencies, i.e. "property" and "constructor-arg"

elements,
always override autowiring. Autowire behaviour can be combined with
dependency
checking, which will be performed after all autowiring has been completed.
-->
<!ATTLIST bean autowire (no | byName | byType | constructor | autodetect | default)
"default">

<!--
Optional attribute controlling whether to check whether all this
beans dependencies, expressed in its properties, are satisfied.
Default is no dependency checking.

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 Appendix A. Spring's beans.dtd

"simple" type dependency checking includes primitives and String

"object" includes collaborators (other beans in the factory)
"all" includes both types of dependency checking
-->
<!ATTLIST bean dependency-check (none | objects | simple | all | default) "default">

<!--
The names of the beans that this bean depends on being initialized.
The bean factory will guarantee that these beans get initialized before.

Note that dependencies are normally expressed through bean properties or

constructor arguments. This property should just be necessary for other kinds
of dependencies like statics (*ugh*) or database preparation on startup.
-->
<!ATTLIST bean depends-on CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!--
Optional attribute for the name of the custom initialization method
to invoke after setting bean properties. The method must have no arguments,
but may throw any exception.
-->
<!ATTLIST bean init-method CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!--
Optional attribute for the name of the custom destroy method to invoke
on bean factory shutdown. The method must have no arguments,
but may throw any exception. Note: Only invoked on singleton beans!
-->
<!ATTLIST bean destroy-method CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!--
Optional attribute specifying the name of a factory method to use to
create this object. Use constructor-arg elements to specify arguments
to the factory method, if it takes arguments. Autowiring does not apply
to factory methods.

If the "class" attribute is present, the factory method will be a static

method on the class specified by the "class" attribute on this bean
definition. Often this will be the same class as that of the constructed
object - for example, when the factory method is used as an alternative
to a constructor. However, it may be on a different class. In that case,
the created object will *not* be of the class specified in the "class"
attribute. This is analogous to FactoryBean behavior.

If the "factory-bean" attribute is present, the "class" attribute is not

used, and the factory method will be an instance method on the object
returned from a getBean call with the specified bean name. The factory
bean may be defined as a singleton or a prototype.

The factory method can have any number of arguments. Autowiring is not
supported. Use indexed constructor-arg elements in conjunction with the
factory-method attribute.

Setter Injection can be used in conjunction with a factory method.

Method Injection cannot, as the factory method returns an instance,

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 Appendix A. Spring's beans.dtd

which will be used when the container creates the bean.

-->
<!ATTLIST bean factory-method CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!--
Alternative to class attribute for factory-method usage.
If this is specified, no class attribute should be used.
This should be set to the name of a bean in the current or
ancestor factories that contains the relevant factory method.
This allows the factory itself to be configured using Dependency
Injection, and an instance (rather than static) method to be used.
-->
<!ATTLIST bean factory-bean CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!--
Bean definitions can specify zero or more constructor arguments.
This is an alternative to "autowire constructor".
Arguments correspond to either a specific index of the constructor argument
list or are supposed to be matched generically by type.
Note: A single generic argument value will just be used once, rather than
potentially matched multiple times (as of Spring 1.1).
constructor-arg elements are also used in conjunction with the factory-method
element to construct beans using static or instance factory methods.
-->
<!ELEMENT constructor-arg (
description?,
(bean | ref | idref | list | set | map | props | value | null)
)>

<!--
The constructor-arg tag can have an optional index attribute,
to specify the exact index in the constructor argument list. Only needed
to avoid ambiguities, e.g. in case of 2 arguments of the same type.

NOTE: it is highly recommended to use the index attribute, in Spring up

to and including 1.1. The constructor matcher is extremely greedy in
matching args without an index, to the point of duplicating supplied args
to fill in unspecified constructor args, if they are compatible (i.e. one
single String arg will match a constructor with two String args, etc.).
The matcher should be less agressive in a future version.
-->
<!ATTLIST constructor-arg index CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!--
The constructor-arg tag can have an optional type attribute,
to specify the exact type of the constructor argument. Only needed
to avoid ambiguities, e.g. in case of 2 single argument constructors
that can both be converted from a String.
-->
<!ATTLIST constructor-arg type CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!--
Bean definitions can have zero or more properties.
Property elements correspond to JavaBean setter methods exposed
by the bean classes. Spring supports primitives, references to other

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 Appendix A. Spring's beans.dtd

beans in the same or related factories, lists, maps and properties.

-->
<!ELEMENT property (
description?,
(bean | ref | idref | list | set | map | props | value | null)
)>

<!--
The property name attribute is the name of the JavaBean property.
This follows JavaBean conventions: a name of "age" would correspond
to setAge()/optional getAge() methods.
-->
<!ATTLIST property name CDATA #REQUIRED>

<!--
A lookup method causes the IoC container to override the given method and
return
the bean with the name given in the bean attribute. This is a form of Method
Injection.
It's particularly useful as an alternative to implementing the
BeanFactoryAware
interface, in order to be able to make getBean() calls for non-singleton
instances
at runtime. In this case, Method Injection is a less invasive alternative.
-->
<!ELEMENT lookup-method EMPTY>

<!--
Name of a lookup method. This method should take no arguments.
-->
<!ATTLIST lookup-method name CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!--
Similar to the lookup method mechanism, the replaced-method element is used
to control
IoC container method overriding: Method Injection. This mechanism allows the
overriding
of a method with arbitrary code.
-->
<!ELEMENT replaced-method (
(arg-type)*
)>

<!--
Name of the method whose implementation should be replaced by the IoC
container.
If this method is not overloaded, there's no need to use arg-type
subelements.
If this method is overloaded, arg-type subelements must be used for all
override definitions for the method.
-->
<!ATTLIST replaced-method name CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!--
Bean name of an implementation of the MethodReplacer interface

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 Appendix A. Spring's beans.dtd

in the current or ancestor factories. This may be a singleton or prototype

bean. If it's a prototype, a new instance will be used for each method
replacement.
Singleton usage is the norm.
-->
<!ATTLIST replaced-method replacer CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!--
Subelement of replaced-method identifying an argument for a replaced method
in the event of method overloading.
-->
<!ELEMENT arg-type (#PCDATA)>

<!--
Specification of the type of an overloaded method argument as a String.
For convenience, this may be a substring of the FQN. E.g. all the
following would match "java.lang.String":
- java.lang.String
- String
- Str

As the number of arguments will be checked also, this convenience can often
be used to save typing.
-->
<!ATTLIST arg-type match CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!--
Name of the bean in the current or ancestor factories that the lookup method
should resolve to. Often this bean will be a prototype, in which case the
lookup method will return a distinct instance on every invocation. This
is useful for single-threaded objects.
-->
<!ATTLIST lookup-method bean CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!--
Defines a reference to another bean in this factory or an external
factory (parent or included factory).
-->
<!ELEMENT ref EMPTY>

<!--
References must specify a name of the target bean.
The "bean" attribute can reference any name from any bean in the context,
to be checked at runtime.
Local references, using the "local" attribute, have to use bean ids;
they can be checked by this DTD, thus should be preferred for references
within the same bean factory XML file.
-->
<!ATTLIST ref bean CDATA #IMPLIED>
<!ATTLIST ref local IDREF #IMPLIED>
<!ATTLIST ref parent CDATA #IMPLIED>

<!--
Defines a string property value, which must also be the id of another
bean in this factory or an external factory (parent or included factory).

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 Appendix A. Spring's beans.dtd

While a regular 'value' element could instead be used for the same effect,
using idref in this case allows validation of local bean ids by the xml
parser, and name completion by helper tools.
-->
<!ELEMENT idref EMPTY>

<!--
ID refs must specify a name of the target bean.
The "bean" attribute can reference any name from any bean in the context,
potentially to be checked at runtime by bean factory implementations.
Local references, using the "local" attribute, have to use bean ids;
they can be checked by this DTD, thus should be preferred for references
within the same bean factory XML file.
-->
<!ATTLIST idref bean CDATA #IMPLIED>
<!ATTLIST idref local IDREF #IMPLIED>

<!--
A list can contain multiple inner bean, ref, collection, or value elements.
Java lists are untyped, pending generics support in Java 1.5,
although references will be strongly typed.
A list can also map to an array type. The necessary conversion
is automatically performed by the BeanFactory.
-->
<!ELEMENT list (
(bean | ref | idref | list | set | map | props | value | null)*
)>

<!--
A set can contain multiple inner bean, ref, collection, or value elements.
Java sets are untyped, pending generics support in Java 1.5,
although references will be strongly typed.
-->
<!ELEMENT set (
(bean | ref | idref | list | set | map | props | value | null)*
)>

<!--
A Spring map is a mapping from a string key to object.
Maps may be empty.
-->
<!ELEMENT map (
(entry)*
)>

<!--
A map entry can be an inner bean, ref, collection, or value.
The name of the property is given by the "key" attribute.
-->
<!ELEMENT entry (
(bean | ref | idref | list | set | map | props | value | null)
)>

<!--
Each map element must specify its key.

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 Appendix A. Spring's beans.dtd

-->
<!ATTLIST entry key CDATA #REQUIRED>

<!--
Props elements differ from map elements in that values must be strings.
Props may be empty.
-->
<!ELEMENT props (
(prop)*
)>

<!--
Element content is the string value of the property.
Note that whitespace is trimmed off to avoid unwanted whitespace
caused by typical XML formatting.
-->
<!ELEMENT prop (#PCDATA)>

<!--
Each property element must specify its key.
-->
<!ATTLIST prop key CDATA #REQUIRED>

<!--
Contains a string representation of a property value.
The property may be a string, or may be converted to the
required type using the JavaBeans PropertyEditor
machinery. This makes it possible for application developers
to write custom PropertyEditor implementations that can
convert strings to objects.

Note that this is recommended for simple objects only.

Configure more complex objects by populating JavaBean
properties with references to other beans.
-->
<!ELEMENT value (#PCDATA)>

<!--
Denotes a Java null value. Necessary because an empty "value" tag
will resolve to an empty String, which will not be resolved to a
null value unless a special PropertyEditor does so.
-->
<!ELEMENT null (#PCDATA)>

Prev Up
Chapter 18. Scheduling jobs using
Home
Quartz or Timer

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