I am reading the 《Spring in Action》, and it says "singleton beans in Spring often don't maintain state because they're usually shared among multiple threads", but in my opinion, a bean in Spring is a POJO, so how can it not maintain state?
I am reading the 《Spring in Action》, and it says "singleton beans in
Spring often don't maintain state because they're usually shared among
multiple threads", but in my opinion, a bean in Spring is a POJO, so
how can it not maintain state?
Yes, it's better for a Spring/Singleton to not have a state (of course it can uses other Spring/Singletons [also them without a state]) so you can call its methods from different threads without worring about they could messed up its state (it doesn't have one :-)).
Let's think about a calculator that stores its intermediate results inside an internal stack, what can happen if two threads try to calculate something at the same time?
A Spring/Singleton is annotated (and if it's not it's just like it would be) and lives inside the spring context , it's not a POJO.
If you want to have a Spring/Bean with a state you have to use the scope "prototype", with this kind of scope every time you get a bean you will get a difference instance.
Sorry for the bad english
The book is implying that the state of a bean may not be trustworthy at a given point in time due to manipulation of its state by another thread. If multiple threads are accessing the same instance of a bean you cannot be sure of what state changes have occurred on the bean prior to using it. Since Spring uses Singletons by default there is only one instance of a bean. If multiple threads hit the bean at the same time there could be issues with the state of the bean.
So your correct that the beans will maintain state, however the state may be unreliable due to modifications from other threads.
In a typical web application, you have multiple threads (one per request) and all the requests are using the same beans. In a typical layered application, they will uses a Controller which uses then a Service which uses then a Repository. All of these beans should be singletons without any state. Otherwise you will have bugs due to concurrency (e.g. one thread modifies data in a singleton while another thread do the same).
I think that your misunderstanding comes from saying that bean in Spring are POJO. Most of Spring beans are stateless beans which I would not describe as POJO.
A Spring bean is considered a POJO in the sense that it does not need to adhere to special requirements (implement certain interfaces, extend particular class, be specific in some way, etc.) to be used with Spring.
Depending on the requirements a Spring bean might need to maintain, and operate on, its state.
It also depends on the requirements to consider if the Spring bean should be a singleton or not.
If a singleton Spring bean is maintaining its own state, proper safeguards must be taken to ensure correct concurrent access/modification.
Confusion comes from a general pattern used in enterprise applications where Spring beans are used to implement bulk of the system logic, and support operations.
In these scenarios, generally its a good practice to not have any state in the Spring bean itself, and just be an extension of the Value Object/Data Transfer Object that contain actual state.
Since these Spring beans are not going to maintain their own state, they are almost always created as singletons.
SomeClass, SomeOtherClass and Situation are all POJO in below code.
SomeClass and SomeOtherClass are Spring beans but Situation is not, which is a DTO.
class SomeClass {
private int x; // not restricted
public void handleSituation(Situation s) {
// may or may not use/modify SomeClass state represented by 'x'
// one approach is to provide all required information through parameters
}
}
class SomeOtherClass {
#Autowired
private SomeClass sc;
public void process() {
// gets called from another object
Situation z = new Situation();
sc.handleSituation(z);
// other processing
}
}
<!-- default scope = singleton -->
<bean id="someClassBean" class="SomeClass"/>
<bean id="someOtherClassBean" class="SomeOtherClass">
<property name="someClass" ref="someClassBean"/>
</bean>
This is a slight variation from pure OOP in which above would be coded similar to following.
class SomeOtherClass {
public void process() {
// gets called from another object
Situation z = new Situation();
z.handle();
// other processing
}
}
Related
I am wondering what is the current best practice as to the use of factory pattern within the context of Spring framework in using dependency injection. My wonder arises about whether the factory pattern is still relevant nowadays in light of the use of Spring dependency injection. I did some searching and see some past discussion (Dependency Injection vs Factory Pattern) but seem there is different view.
I see in some real life project in using a Map to hold all the beans and rely on autowiring to create those beans. When the bean is needed, it get it via the map using the key.
public abstract class Service {
//some methods
}
#Component
public class serviceA extends Service {
//implementation
}
#Component
public class serviceB extends Service {
//implementation
}
Map<String, Service> services;
But I see there is some difference among the two approaches.
Using the above method, all beans are created on application start up and the creation of object is handled by the framework. It also implies there is only one bean for each type.
While for factory pattern, the factory class creates the object on request. And it can create a new object for each request.
I think a deeper question may be, when Spring framework is used in a project, should it be strived to not create any object inside a class, which means the factory pattern ( or any creational design patterns?) should not be used, as Spring is supposed to be the central handler of the objects dependency ?
The answer to this question can be really deep and broad, I'll try to provide some points that hopefully will help.
First off, spring stores its beans (singletons) in the ApplicationContext. Essentially this is the map you're talking about. In a nutshell, it allows getting the bean by name, type, etc.
ApplicationContext, while being a really important concept, is not the whole Spring, in fact Spring framework allows much more flexibility:
You say, using a map implies that all the beans will be created at the beginning of the application and there is one instance of the bean.
Spring has a concept of Lazy beans, basically supporting a concept of beans being actually created only when they're required for the first time, so Spring supports the "delayed" beans initialization
Spring also allows more than one instance of a bean per type. So this map is more "advanced". For example you can create more than one implementation of the interface and use declare both as beans. As long as you provide enough information about what bean should be injected to the class that might use them (for example with a help of qualifiers suppored in spring), you're good to go. In addition, there are features in spring IoC container that allow injecting all registered implementations of an interface into a list:
interface Foo {}
#Component
class FooImpl1 implements Foo {}
#Component
class FooImpl2 implements Foo {}
class Client {
#Autowired
List<Foo> allFoos;
}
Now you say:
While for factory pattern, the factory class creates the object on request. And it can create a new object for each request.
Actually Spring can create objects per request. Not all beans have to be singletons, in general spring has a concept of scopes for this purposes.
For example, scope prototype means that Spring will create a bean upon each usage. In particular one interesting usage that spring supports in variety of ways is Injecting prototype bean into singleton. Some solutions use exactly like a factory (read about annotation #Lookup others rely on auto-generated proxy in runtime (like javax.inject.Provider). Prototype scope beans are not held in the application context, so here again spring goes beyond a simple map abstraction.
Last feature that you haven't mentioned is that sometimes even for singletons the initialization can be a little bit more complicated then calling a constructor with Parameters. Spring can address that by using Java Configurations:
#Configuration
public class MyConfig {
public SomeComplicatedObject foo(#Value("...") config, Bar bar) {
SomeComplicatedObject obj = new SomeComplicatedObject() // lets pretend this object is from some thirdparty, it only has no-op constructor, and you can't place spring annotations on it (basically you can't change it):
obj.setConfig(config);
obj.setBar(bar);
return obj;
}
}
The method foo here initializes the object SomeComplicatedObject and returns it. This can be used instead of factories to integrate "legacy" code (well, java configurations go way beyond this, but its out of scope for this question).
So bottom line, you Spring as an IoC container can provide many different ways to deal with object creation, in particular it can do everything that factory design pattern offers.
Now, I would like to also refer to your last sentense:
I think a deeper question may be, when Spring framework is used in a project, should it be strived to not create any object inside a class, which means the factory pattern ( or any creational design patterns?) should not be used, as Spring is supposed to be the central handler of the objects dependency ?
Indeed you don't have to use Factory Pattern when using Spring, since (as I hopefully have convinced you) provides everything that factory can do and more.
Also I agree that spring is supposed to be the central handler of the objects dependency (unless there are also parts of the application which are written in a different manner so you have to support both :) )
I don't think we should avoid using "new" altogether, not everything should/can be a bean, but I do see (from my subjective experience, so this is arguable) that you use it much less leaving the creation of most of the objects to Spring.
Should we avoid a usage of any creation design pattern? I don't think so, sometimes you can opt for implementing "builder" design pattern for example, its also a creational pattern but spring doesn't provide a similar abstraction.
I think if your project uses Spring framework you should use it. Although it depends on your project design e.g. You may use creational patterns along side with Spring IoC. e.g when you have abstraction layers not framework dependant (agnostic code)
interface ServiceFactory {
Service create(String type);
}
#Component
class SpringServiceFactory implements ServiceFactory {
#Autowired private ApplicationContext context;
Service create(String type) {
return context.getBean(type)
}
}
I use Factory pattern as well when I refactor legacy not unit testable code which also uses Spring Framework in order to implement unit tests.
// legacy service impossible to mock
class LegacyApiClient implements Closeable {...}
#Component
class LegacyApiClientFactory {
LegacyApiClient create(String endpoint) {
return new LegacyApiClient(endpoint);
}
}
#Component
class OtherService {
private final String endpoint
private final LegacyApiClientFactory factory;
OtherService(#Value("${post.endpoint}") String endpoint,
LegacyApiClientFactory factory) {...}
void doCall {
try (LegacyApiClient client = factory.create(endpoint)) {
client.postSomething();
}
}
}
....
// a random unit test
LegacyApiClient client = mock(LegacyApiClient.class)
LegacyApiClientFactory factory = mock(LegacyApiClientFactory.class)
OtherService service = new OtherService("http://scxsc", factory);
when(factory.create(any())).thenReturn(client)
service.doCall()
....
I have a need of conditionally creating one of three possible implementations of a service depending upon the environment detected by a Spring application at runtime. If Service A is available, then I want to create a concrete implementation class that uses Service A as a dependency. If Service A is not available, then I want to create an implementation using Service B as a dependency. And so-on.
Classes which depend on the implementation will Autowire the Interface and not care what the underlying Service was that got selected for the particular environment.
My first stab at this was to implement multiple #Bean methods which either return a bean or null, depending on whether the Service is available, and to then have a separate #Configuration class which #Autowire(required=false) the two possible services, conditionally creating the implementation depending on which of the #Autowired fields was not-null.
The problem here is that when required=false, Spring doesn't appear to care whether it waits around for candidates to be constructed; that is to say, the class which tries to pick the implementation might be constructed before one or both of the required=false Beans gets constructed, thus ensuring that one or both might always be null, regardless of whether it may manage to initialize correctly.
It kind of feels like I'm going against the grain at this point, so I'm looking for advice on the "right" way to do this sort of thing, where a whole set of beans might get switched out based on the availability of some outside service or environment.
Profiles don't look like the right answer, because I won't know until after my Service beans try to initialize which implementation I want to choose; I certainly won't know it at the time I create the context.
#Order doesn't achieve the goal either. Nor does #Conditional and testing on the existence of the bean (because it still might not be constructed yet). Same problem with FactoryBean- it does no good to check for the existence of beans that might not have been constructed at the time the FactoryBean is asked to create an instance.
What I really need to do is create a Bean based on the availability of other beans, but only AFTER those beans have at least had a chance to try to initialize.
Spring Profiles is your friend. You can set the current profile by way of environmental variable, command-line argument, and other methods. You can annotate a Spring-managed component so that it's created for a certain profile.
Spring Profiles from the Spring Documentation
Well in this case it turned out to be a tangential mistake that influenced the whole wrong behavior.
To give some background, my first, naive (but workable) approach looked like this:
#Autowired(required=false)
#Qualifier(RedisConfig.HISTORY)
private RLocalCachedMap<String, History> redisHistoryMap;
#Autowired(required=false)
#Qualifier(HazelcastConfig.HISTORY)
private IMap<String, History> hazelcastHistoryMap;
// RequestHistory is an interface
#Bean
public RequestHistory requestHistory() {
if (redisHistoryMap != null) {
return new RedisClusteredHistory(redisHistoryMap);
} else if (hazelcastHistoryMap != null) {
return new HazelcastClusteredHistory(hazelcastHistoryMap);
} else {
return new LocalRequestHistory(); // dumb hashmap
}
}
In other #Configuration classes, if the beans that get #Autowired here aren't available (due to missing configuration, exceptions during initialization, etc), the #Bean methods that create them return null.
The observed behavior was that this #Bean method was getting called after the RLocalCachedMap<> #Bean method got called, but before Spring attempted to create the IMap<> by calling its #Bean method. I had incorrectly thought that this had something to do with required=false but in fact that had nothing to do with it.
What actually happened was I accidentally used the same constant for both #Bean names (and consequently #Qualifiers), so presumably Spring couldn't tell the difference when it was calculating its dependency graph for this #Configuration class... because the two #Autowired beans appeared to be the same thing (because they had the same name).
(There's a secondary reason for using #Qualifier in this case, which I won't go into here, but suffice it to say it's possible to have many maps of the same type.)
Once I qualified the names better, the code did exactly what I wanted it to, albeit in a way that's somewhat inelegant/ugly.
At some point I'll go back and see if it looks more elegant / less ugly and works just as well to use #Conditional and #Primary instead of the if/else foulness.
The lesson here is that if you explicitly name beans, make absolutely sure your names are unique across your application, even if you plan to swap things around like this.
I went through some blogs and spring docs about the Spring singleton scope along with almost all spring singleton and DAO related question in stackoverflow.
I still do not have clear understanding of how the same object is injected to all the class which depend on it. I have learnt that the DAO needs to be stateless.
If the following DAO (sample dao having instance variable mainly to clear confusion) class is defined with default singleton scope and the same object is injected everytime, then there might be scenarios where department is null and therefore it won't set anything for department value instead use whatever the previous object value was.
public class UserDAO{
int userId;
Spring userDepartment;
// getter setter methods for userId and userDepartment
public boolean addUserToUserDetailsTable(int uId,
String name, String address, String department){
// set userId
userId = uId;
if(department!=null)
userDepartment = department;
// write code to add user to user table
// TO DO
// save user department data
addUserToUserDepartmentTable(userId, userDepartment);
}
public void addUserToUserDepartmentTable(int uId,
String department){
/* Code to save department data */
}
}
So if instead of using DI, if I manually call the DAO using new operator this problem won't be there.
new UserDAO().addUserToUserDetailsTable(id, "abc", null);
the above confusion generates following questions
how is spring creating and injecting singelton beans, is it really one and only one object which gets injected to all calling classes. If this is true then how the previous object values from above DAO class is reset.
won't the instance variable hold their values here userId, userDepartment if the same object is called from multiple class ?? Does stateless means the class cannot have instance variable.
does spring internally uses new object() to inject the beans.
or it creates an object of DAO class and makes multiple clones of the object, which i think is not possible because the DAO class is not implementing clonnable.
Please help me clearing the above confusion.
how is spring creating and injecting singelton beans, is it really one and only one object which gets injected to all calling classes.
Yes, it's injecting a single instance, always the same, of the DAO class. That's the definition of singleton: a single instance is created.
If this is true then how the previous object values from above DAO class is reset.
It's not reset.
won't the instance variable hold their values here userId, userDepartment if the same object is called from multiple class ??
Yes, the unique instance will hold the userId and department, since these are fields of the instance. You might run into problems trying to read and write these values, though, since they constitute shared mutable state, which is accessed concurrently from multiple threads without any synchronization.
Does stateless means the class cannot have instance variable.
In the strict sense, yes. But a DAO doesn't need to be stateless. It needs to be thread-safe, since the same instance is accessed from multiple threads concurrently. The best way to achieve that is to avoid having any state (so no instance variable). But this is hard to achieve for a DAO, which normally needs to have access to an injected DataSource, of JdbcTemplate, or EntityManager, or whatever. Since, however, these instance variables are normally injected by Spring during startup, before the DAO starts being used by multiple threads, and never written to during the lifetime of the application, that is thread-safe. Your code, however, has state, and the state is modified during the lifetime of the application, which makes it not safe.
does spring internally uses new object() to inject the beans.
It depends how the DAO bean is declared. It can be declared using JavaConfig, using a #Bean method calling the constructor. Most of the time, reflection is used to call the constructor. So there is no new MyDAO() in the code anywhere, but the constructor is still called (only once since it's a singleton), because that's the only way to create an instance of an object from scratch.
or it creates an object of DAO class and makes multiple clones of the object, which i think is not possible because the DAO class is not implementing clonnable.
That wouldn't be a singleton if it did that.
Singleton scope beans in Spring means one instance per container and the bean has to be stateless or else you will run into issues in cases of multi-threaded scenarios.
how is spring creating and injecting singelton beans, is it really
one and only one object which gets injected to all calling classes.
Spring creates once instance at startup and passes the same reference to all the calling objects which has requested for the same via Dependency injection.
If this is true then how the previous object values from above DAO
class is reset.
If your bean is stateless there would be no value held by the object, as most of the variable would be method local and not tied to the Instance object (DAO class in this case). However in your case since you have member variable tied to a class
all the classes which acquire this DAO bean would see the same value set to the member variable and this data will be be corrupted and is not recommended.
won't the instance variable hold their values here userId,
userDepartment if the same object is called from multiple class ??
Does stateless means the class cannot have instance variable.
Yes this the exact definition of bean being stateless. As explained above.
does spring internally uses new object() to inject the beans. or it
creates an object of DAO class and makes multiple clones of the
object, which i think is not possible because the DAO class is not
implementing clonnable.
If you have not defined the bean scope, by default spring would assume it is Singleton. The understanding of singleton scope and singleton pattern is different. Spring mimics singleton pattern by providing only instance but this does not stop you from creating new instance (using say new operator).
Your Singleton is not stateless. Userid and Department define the 'state'.
Spring creates one instance using reflection 'newInstance' or a producer function in your configuration.
This one instance is then provided to all objects requesting the DAO.
Your considerations are all valid but not resolved by spring: Since your DAO has a state, it is not properly implemented and results are undefined.
Answer to question 1: It is not reset. Spring won't handle state for you!
Basically (Q2) you are on a dangerous path if you use instance variables in stateless beans. The instance vars need to be stateless themselves, like other DAO singletons.
UPDATE: I want to elaborate on this. The singleton can have a state, but the state is shared between all users of the DAO. This does not strictly require your DAO to be thread safe: If you do not use threads, there is no concurrent use - but the state of a singleton is a shared state: All users of the singleton have the same. If you have two functions like so:
#Component
public class A {
#Autowired
DaoObject singleton;
#Autowired
B another;
public void aFunctionA() {
singleton.userId = "Foo";
System.out.printf("UserId: %s%n", singleton.userId); // prints Foo
another.aFunctionB();
System.out.printf("UserId: %s%n", singleton.userId); // prints Serviceuser
}
}
#Service
public class B {
#Autowired
DaoObject singleton;
public void aFunctionB() {
singleton.userId = "Serviceuser";
}
}
The state of the singleton singleton is shared between all users of the class. If one class changes the state, all other users have to cope with that.
If you are using threads, this adds extra complexity on stateful singletons, as your modifications to state must be thread safe.
It is common practice to keep a singleton immutable after initialization.
On your 4th question: Spring will not clone a Singleton, as described above.
I knew stateful beans maintain conversational session between different instance method call,but stateless will not.My question,assume I have a stateless bean implementation like below
import javax.ejb.Stateful;
import javax.ejb.Stateless;
import com.tata.ejb3.data.HelloEJBInterface;
#Stateless
public class ValueEJB implements ValueEJBInterface{
private int value;
#Override
public int getValue() {
return this.value;
}
#Override
public void setValue(int value) {
this.value = value;
}
}
I have my bean client(A servlet) which initiates bean invocation as below
#EJB(mappedName="E/ValueEJB /remote")
ValueEJBInterface value;
....
value.setValue(250);
System.out.println(value.getValue());//This statement prints the value 250
....
According to my understanding as my bean is stateless bean it should not displayed with value 250.
private int value; is an instant variable,if one stateless method set its value , the value will be expired on method exit.But here, I am able to get the value '250' even via my second method call. Is it a violation of stateless concept? Am I lacking something?
Difference between Stateful v Stateless bean behavior when calling different methods.
STATEFUL: When calling different methods on a Stateful Bean, different bean instances are created.
((MyStatefulBeanRemote) ctx.lookup("ejb/MyStatefulBean")).doingStatefulThing();
((MyStatefulBeanRemote) ctx.lookup("ejb/MyStatefulBean")).doingNothingStatefulThing();
***Output: Note the creation of separate objects.***
INFO: Calling doingStatefulThing...com.myeclipseide.ejb3.stateful.**MyStatefulBean#2fe395**
INFO: Calling doingNothingStatefulThing...com.myeclipseide.ejb3.stateful.**MyStatefulBean#81cfcb**
STATELESS: When calling different methods on a Stateless Bean, the beans are pooled, hence no new instances of the bean are created.
((MyStatelessBeanRemote) ctx.lookup("ejb/MyStatelessBean")).doSomething();
((MyStatelessBeanRemote) ctx.lookup("ejb/MyStatelessBean")).doNothing();
***Output: Note the reuse of he bean object.***
INFO: Doing something ...com.myeclipseide.ejb3.stateless.**MyBean#213b61**
INFO: Doing Nothing ...com.myeclipseide.ejb3.stateless.**MyBean#213b61**
Interesting question and basically you are totally right. I did some research and the general advice is to: "Expect your bean to forget everything after each method call ..." (page 81). Furthermore, according to that resource, the algorithm responsible for maintaining the state of Stateless Session Beans is container / vendor specific. So the container may choose to destroy, recreate or clear the instance after method execution.
You could create a multi threaded test and see how it behaves with multpile clients.
There is no violation of any concept. Its because the same instance of bean is picked by the container from the pool to serve other request.
Stateless beans are pooled & therefore they have performance benefit over statefull beans, also their main purpose is processing without holding any state.
Sensitive or user specific data shouldn't be stored in instance variables of stateless beans. They should be used extensively to process data without any consideration of state.
Can refer here for their life-cycle events handled by the container.
If I am using spring frame work in my application does creating an object like this Test test = new Test() a bad way for creating an instance? Should I always use the bean config to get the objects/bean that I need? If yes, does that means I should have all the object/bean definition in spring applicationContext xml file?
If you want your object to be managed by Spring (this means that dependencies are injected, among other things) you have to use the ApplicationContext.
Calling Test test = new Test() isn't illegal, or even bad practice. It just means that Spring will have no awareness of this object, and it won't bother autowiring it's dependencies, or doing anything else that you'd expect Spring to do.
You don't necessarily need to use the applicationContext.xml file for ALL of your bean declarations. Many people favor annotations, which allow you to declare beans outside of the applicationContext.xml file.
It's worth nothing that Spring-managed beans are by default singletons (think of Servlets). If you want stateful beans that are Spring aware, you could use an ObjectFactoryCreatingFactoryBean to do something like this:
#Autowired
private ObjectFactory myWidgetFactory;
public void doStuff() {
Widget w = myWidgetFactory.getObject();
}
You can read more about this behaviour here:
http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.0.x/api/org/springframework/beans/factory/config/ObjectFactoryCreatingFactoryBean.html
For me there's a big difference between objects that represent components of my application -- services, controllers, DAOs, utilities, etc. -- and objects that represent entities within my application -- Person, Order, Invoice, Account, etc. The former type of objects should absolutely be managed by Spring and injected. The latter type are typically created on the fly by the application, and that frequently will involve calling new. This is not a problem.
Test test = new Test() a bad way for
creating an instance?
Yes it is bad practice.
Should I always use the bean config
to get the objects/bean that I need?
Yes, if you are using Spring for dependency injection.
If yes, does that means I should have
all the object/bean definition in
spring applicationContext xml file?
Always! You could use Annotations too.