An Introduction to the

Spring Framework

Rob Lambert
Schawk, Inc.

About Me

Lead developer at Schawk, Inc. for a DAM/Workflow

solution called PaRTS
Ive been working with web technologies since 1995,
Java developer since 1998
Spring Framework user since mid-2003
My articles and ramblings:
http://www.zabada.com/technology/
(I just started this site in April 2005, its growing, but not a ton of stuff
there yet)

What is the Spring Framework?

What is the Spring Framework?

Spring is a Lightweight Application

Framework
Where Struts, WebWork and others can be
considered Web frameworks, Spring
addresses all tiers of an application
Spring provides the plumbing so that you
dont have to!

Spring Framework History

Started 2002/2003 by Rod Johnson

and Juergen Holler
Started as a framework developed
around Rod Johnsons book Expert
One-on-One J2EE Design and
Development
Spring 1.0 Released March 2004
2004/2005 Spring is emerging as a
leading full-stack Java/J2EE
application framework

Spring == J2EE Application Server?

Spring is NOT a J2EE application server

Spring can integrate nicely with J2EE
application servers (or any Java
environment)
Spring can, in many cases, elegantly replace
services traditionally provided by J2EE
application servers

Lessons Learned from Struts

Before Struts, everyone wrote their own front

controllers (or YIKES! put their controller logic in JSP)
After Struts, the custom front controllers could be
thrown out

Developers focus on solving business problems

Productivity Gain!

But with Struts (and most of the other web

frameworks) you still have to write your own
business delegates or service layers

Spring Can Help!

Spring brings a consistent structure to your entire

application
Spring provides a consistent way to glue your whole
application together
Spring provides elegant integration points with
standard and defacto-standard interfaces: Hibernate,
JDO, TopLink, EJB, RMI, JNDI, JMS, Web Services,
Struts, etc.
Just as Struts did on the web tier, we can realize
huge productivity gains by not having to write the
common integration points across your application

The Spring Framework Mission

Statement
From springframework.org

The authors of Spring believe that:

J2EE should be easier to use
It's best to program to interfaces, rather than classes. Spring reduces
the complexity cost of using interfaces to zero.
JavaBeans offer a great way of configuring applications.
OO design is more important than any implementation technology,
such as J2EE.
Checked exceptions are overused in Java. A framework shouldn't
force you to catch exceptions you're unlikely to be able to recover
from.
Testability is essential, and a framework such as Spring should help
make your code easier to test.

Spring Framework Mission Statement

(continued)
The authors of Spring aim that:
Spring should be a pleasure to use
Your application code should not depend on Spring
APIs
Spring should not compete with good existing
solutions, but should foster integration. (For
example, JDO and Hibernate are great O/R mapping
solutions. We don't need to develop another one.)

Spring Overview
from springframework.org

Note: Spring distribution comes as one big jar file and alternatively as a series of smaller
jars broken out along the above lines (so you can include only what you need)

Spring is Non-Invasive
What does that mean?
You are not forced to import or extend any Spring
APIs
An invasive API takes over your code.
Anti-patterns:

EJB forces you to use JNDI

Struts forces you to extend Action

Invasive frameworks are inherently difficult to test.

You have to stub the runtime that is supplied by the
application server

But really, what IS Spring?

At its core, Spring provides:
An Inversion of Control Container

An AOP Framework

Also known as Dependency Injection (Fowlers term)

Spring provides a proxy-based AOP framework
You can alternatively integrate with AspectJ or AspectWerkz

A Service Abstraction Layer

Consistent integration with various standard and 3rd party APIs

These together enable you to write powerful, scalable

applications using POJOs.

Seriously though, what IS Spring?

Spring at its core, is a framework for

wiring up your entire application

BeanFactories are the heart of Spring

BeanFactories

A BeanFactory is typically configured in an

XML file with the root element: <beans>
The XML contains one or more <bean>
elements

id (or name) attribute to identify the bean

class attribute to specify the fully qualified class

BeanFactories
By default, beans are treated as singletons
Can also be prototypes
Here is an example:
The beans fully

The beans ID

qualified classname

<beans>
<bean id=widgetService
class=com.zabada.base.WidgetService>
<property name=poolSize>
<!-property value here-->
</property>
</bean>
Maps to a setPoolSize() call
</beans>

Property Values for BeanFactories

Strings and Numbers

<property name=size><value>42</value></property>
<property name=name><value>Jim</value></property>

Arrays and Collections

<property name=hobbies>
<list>
<value>Basket Weaving</value>
<value>Break Dancing</value>
</list>
</property>

Property Values for BeanFactories

(continued)
The real magic comes in when you can set
a property on a bean that refers to another
bean in the configuration:
<bean name=widgetService class=com.zabada.base.WidgetServiceImpl>
<property name=widgetDAO>
<ref bean=myWidgetDAO/>
</property>
</bean>

This is the basic concept

of Inversion of Control

calls
setWidgetDAO(myWidgetDAO)
where myWidgetDAO is another
bean defined in the configuration

Dependency Injection
(Inversion of Control)
Complicated sounding terms for a fairly
simple concept
The Hollywood Principle: Dont call
me, Ill call you
Dependencies used from within a bean
arent asked for outwardly, but are
injected into the bean by the container

Dependency Injection
(Inversion of Control)

Eliminates lookup code from within your

application
Allows for pluggablity and hot swapping
Promotes good OO design
Enables reuse of existing code
Makes your application extremely testable

A Very Special BeanFactory:

the ApplicationContext

An ApplicationContext is a BeanFactory,
but adds framework features such as:

i18n messages
Event notifications

This is what you will probably most often use

in your Spring applications

AOP (Aspect-Oriented Programming)

AOP decomposes a system into concerns, instead of

objects.
Deals with "aspects" that cross-cut across the code
and can be difficult or impossible to modularize with
OOP
The most common example given is logging

Code for doing logging typically must be scattered all over a

system
With AOP, you can declare, for example, that a system
should write a log record at the beginning and end of all
method invocations.

AOP (Aspect-Oriented Programming)

AOP enables the delivery of services to POJOs
Spring provides pre-packaged AOP services:

Declarative Transaction Management

Security
Logging

You can write custom AOP services for:

Auditing
Caching
Custom security

Service Abstraction Layers

Spring provides abstraction for:
Transaction Management

Data Access

JTA, JDBC, others

JDBC, Hibernate, JDO, TopLink, iBatis

Email
Remoting

EJB, Web Services, RMI, Hessian/Burlap

Service Abstraction Layers

Benefits:
No implicit contracts with JNDI, etc.
Insulates you from the underlying APIs
Greater reusability
Spring abstractions always consist of interfaces
This makes testing simpler
For data access, Spring uses a generic transaction
infrastructure and DAO exception hierarchy that is
common across all supported platforms

Spring on the Web Tier

Spring integrates nicely with Struts,

WebWork, JSF, Tapestry, Velocity and other
web frameworks
Spring also provides its own web framework,
Spring Web MVC

Spring on the Web Tier Spring MVC

The Spring MVC Framework offers a simple

interface based infrastructure for handing
web MVC architectures
Spring MVC components are treated as firstclass Spring beans

Other Spring beans can easily be injected into

Spring MVC components
Spring MVC components are easy to test

Spring MVC Key Interfaces

Controller (org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.Controller)

View (org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.View)

Must implement ModelAndView handleRequest(request,response)

This is the base controller interface, comparable to the notion of a Struts
Action.

Must implement void render( model, request, response)

This is the MVC view for a web interaction. Implementations are
responsible for rendering content, and exposing the model.

Model

To complete the MVC trio, note that the model is typically handled as a
java.util.Map which is returned with the view
the values of the model are available, for example in a JSP, using a
<jsp:useBean/> where the id corresponds to the key value in the Map

Spring on the Web Tier: Integration

with Other Frameworks

Spring integrates nicely with other web

frameworks with two methodologies:

Look up Spring beans within Controllers/Actions via the

convenience static method:
WebApplicationContextUtils.getWebApplicationContext(
servletContext).getBean(beanName)

Configure the Controllers/Actions for the web framework in

a Spring BeanFactory and then use Spring provided proxies
in the actual web framework configuration

When available, this methodology is preferred

This approach lets you design your Controllers/Actions with
dependency injection and makes your Controller/Actions more
testable

My Spring Recipes
My Spring recipes and examples:
http://www.zabada.com/technology/Wiki.jsp?page=SpringRecipes

Trivial, but hopefully useful examples of Getting Things Done

with the Spring Framework
Based around an entity (Widget) and a DAO interface
(WidgetDAO) with different WidgetDAO implementations and
various view technologies

On to the examples
( See http://www.zabada.com/technology/Wiki.jsp?page=SpringRecipes )

Spring Related Tools and Add-Ons

ACEGI Security - comprehensive security services for the Spring

Framework
Spring IDE - graphical user interface for the configuration files used by
the Spring Framework
Spring BeanDoc - tool that facilitates documentation and graphing of
Spring bean factories and application context files
XDoclet Spring Tags - support for generating Spring XML config files
from annotations in Java classes (you could also use JDK1.5
annotations to achieve this)
Spring Web Flow - for web applications with demanding page flow
requirements
AppFuse Not really a tool or add-on, but AppFuse is Matt Raible's
project to jumpstart your Java web projects. It uses Spring at it's core
and studying it is a great way to learn about Spring.
Spring Framework .NET Spring Clone for the Dark Side

Spring Framework / Spring Related

References

The Official Spring Reference Manual

http://www.springframework.org/docs/reference/
Introduction to Spring by Rod Johnson
http://www.theserverside.com/articles/article.tss?l=SpringFramework
Spring in Action by Craig Walls and Ryan Breidenbach
Pro Spring by Rob Harrop and Jan Machacek
J2EE Without EJB by Rod Johnson and Juergen Holler
Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development by Rod Johnson
Spring Developers Notebook by Bruce Tate and Justin Gehtland
Better, Faster, Lighter Java by Bruce Tate and Justin Gehtland
Spring Live by Matt Raible
Professional Java Development with the Spring Framework
by many of the core Spring developers: Coming in July 2005

Wrap Up

Questions/Comments?

Feedback is appreciated!
Email me: roblambert@zabada.com

Were Hiring For A Few Positions

Senior Java Developer

Mid-level Java Developer
Spring/Hibernate and other relevant Java technologies
Let me know if youre interested: rlambert@schawk.com

Credits

Thanks to the Spring Framework Team. See

springframework.org

Much of the content in this presentation was

inspired by presentations by Rod Johnson
and Craig Walls