I am wondering if the following is possible. For testing purposes, I wish for different mock classes to be declared in the application context for different tests. These are acceptance tests, using the Jersey REST client. Is there a way to dynamically declare a bean at runtime? Does Spring have an API to allow changes to the application context after the context has been loaded?
The common way to have different beans in the application context is using profiles. You can read about profiles in the following spring source posts:
http://blog.springsource.org/2011/02/14/spring-3-1-m1-introducing-profile
http://blog.springsource.org/2011/06/21/spring-3-1-m2-testing-with-configuration-classes-and-profiles/
About your first question, you can declare beans at runtime via BeanDefinitionRegistry.registerBeanDefinition() method, for example:
BeanDefinitionBuilder builder = BeanDefinitionBuilder.rootBeanDefinition(SomeClass.class);
builder.addPropertyReference("propertyName", "someBean"); // add dependency to other bean
builder.addPropertyValue("propertyName", someValue); // set property value
DefaultListableBeanFactory factory = (DefaultListableBeanFactory) context.getBeanFactory();
factory.registerBeanDefinition("beanName", builder.getBeanDefinition());
Is possible also to register a singleton bean instance (already configured) with
context.getBeanFactory().registerSingleton(beanName, singletonObject)
Finally, Spring don't provides a clear way to change a bean after refreshing the context, but the most common approachs are:
close and refresh again (obiously)
Use a proxy and swap the targetSource at runtime: see Replace spring bean in one context with mock version from another context (for an example).
Related
I'm new to Spring and a little confused about how it works. I get that I can use the application context to instantiate beans and have them populated. However, is the idea that I should be able to just write Bean b = new Bean() and then have Spring to somehow automagically populate that Bean?
I'm experimenting with Spring in a web application, and as far as I can see I need to inject the ApplicationContext into, say, the servlets to be able to instantiate other beans (services, daos etc.) from there. It's a bit cumbersome, but probably works.
However, is Spring meant to be able to hook into any object instantiation which happens on classes defined as beans in applicationContext.xml?
Spring is an Inversion of Control container. A bean is an object whose life cycle is managed by Spring. If you want Spring to populate an object, it needs to go through Spring, ie. it needs to be bean.
is Spring meant to be able to hook into any object instantiation
which happens on classes defined as beans in applicationContext.xml?
Spring doesn't hook into anything. You configure your beans and the relationships between them with Spring and Spring handles creating the instances and linking them up.
For domain objects, Spring provides a solution via the #Configurable annotation: http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/4.0.0.RELEASE/spring-framework-reference/htmlsingle/#aop-atconfigurable
It requires compile- or load-time-weaving and, thus, introduces some additional complexity but having the convenience of using the standard new Bean() syntax plus Spring's autowiring is worth it in my opinion.
Alternatively, you could define your domain objects as beans with prototype scope and use some factory to create them using the Spring ApplicationContext.getBean() method. With a scope of prototype a new instance will be returned every time and since you go through the ApplicationContext, Spring will do all the dependency injection magic as usual.
As for services and other beans with singleton scope, you would typically NOT retrieve them by first injecting the ApplicationContext and using it but instead you would inject them via either a constructor, setter or annotation-based strategy. The documentation covers that in detail: http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/4.0.0.RELEASE/spring-framework-reference/htmlsingle/#beans-factory-collaborators
Could someone give an overview or a summary of what the purpose of beans in a Spring framework context?
I understand the standard Java bean (no arg constructor, getters/setters, often serialized), but the Spring bean purpose seems to be different.
Is it a way of implementing the Singleton design pattern (one instance, for like factory classes) in a simple, reusable fashion?
I've mainly used Spring with annotations, but I feel I need to grasp this in order to understand Spring.
Thanks!
Beans are objects that form the backbone of the application.
A bean is simply an object that is instantiated, assembled and otherwise managed by a Spring IoC container; other than that, there is nothing special about a bean.It is in all other respects one of probably many objects in your application.
Spring beans are defined in a spring configuration file or by using annotations, instantiated by the Spring container, and then injected into your application.
Spring beans will not be singleton design pattern until you explicitly make them to be.The singleton design pattern and the spring scope 'singleton' are different things.You can define different bean scopes depending on your requirements.
The scopes could be :
singleton – Return a single bean instance per Spring IoC container
prototype – Return a new bean instance each time when requested
request – Return a single bean instance per HTTP request.
session – Return a single bean instance per HTTP session.
globalSession – Return a single bean instance per global HTTP
session.
The default scope is singleton.
I understand the standard Java bean (no arg constructor,
getters/setters, often serialized), but the Spring bean purpose seems
to be different.
You mean always serialized. Why do you think the purpose seems different?
In the end, you write classes. A lot of time these are POJOs, Plain Old Java Objects. Sometimes you implement an interface or extend a class, but its all just classes.
Beans are just classes. Don't overcomplicate it.
Now Spring might take your beans (classes) and manage them for you via any of a number of policies (prototype, singleton) but that doesn't change what a bean is, it speaks to how Spring manages the bean.
To understand best, you should get familiar with dependency injection. In a few words dependency injection allows you to use objects, or services without explicitly creating them (of course, it gives other benefits, but let's focus on the question). This is achieved by maintaining a dependency container that is - roughly said - a collection of beans.
A bean is a service/component you use in your application. Unlike the EJB, with Spring the bean is not constrained to constructor arguments or specific annotations (especially if you use xml contexts). You register a bean with a container (by defining a context), and when you require it, the container will provide you with an instance of that bean. In order to create the bean, the container examines its class and constructors, and uses any other registered beans within that context, to call the appropriate constructor or property setter.
You can configure a bean to be a singleton - this is not a singleton as in the design pattern term. Singleton beans are created once within the container, and the same instance is used whenever the bean is requested from that container. You can also use the prototype scope to force the container to create a new instance each time.
In XML file in spring we have two bean with different id but same class. They have the same properties offcourse. Now I have InitializingBean interface and in afterPropertySet() I am just printing the value of properties.
Its printing the values two times for me?
According Spring Documentation:
afterPropertySet()
Invoked by a BeanFactory after it has set all bean properties supplied (and satisfied BeanFactoryAware and ApplicationContextAware).
So the short answer on your question is: yes
Spring doesn't manipulate classes or object. Spring manipulates Bean Entity. It is the simplest object manipulated by Spring IOC. Bean has additional behaivior rules introduced by Spring.
If you create two beans for example with Singleton scope and not Lazy initializated Spring creates two instances of your class.
Probably you are calling this Class also invoking a Test or by launching a Integration test like this . check the breakpoints , if you are using SpringRunner, try to mock the component
Normally it is said that when you create your own scope, and Autowire a scoped object in your class,
It will inject the proxy object, and proxy object will call the method on the target bean.
So this means spring stores a list of object, and based on proxy's call it will give us the desired
object. Am i right? please explain
I don't know where that is said. Spring does not create proxies for scoped beans by default (you have to ask for it, e.g. with ). Once a proxy is created it is no different with a scoped bean than any other - the application context is a map from bean name to bean instance, and some of the beans are proxies.
How does Spring know when to call 'destory' method on a session/request scoped bean (in other words, how does it detect that the concerned bean is going out of scope)?
I read somewhere that it uses request/session listeners to be notified of these events. But these listners need to be defined in web.xml, and there's no mention of defining such listeners in Spring literature. So how does this work?
The org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet does it. It uses own code, e.g. the org.springframework.web.context.request.RequestAttributes#registerDestructionCallback callback list functionality to register all these scoped beans.
and there's no mention of defining such listeners in Spring literature
Oh, there is:
To support the scoping of beans at the request, session, and global session levels (web-scoped beans), some minor initial configuration is required before you define your beans.[...]
If you use a Servlet 2.4+ web container, [...] you need to add the following javax.servlet.ServletRequestListener to the declarations in your web applications web.xml file[...]
From: 4.5.4.1 Initial web configuration.
Also note that Spring does not call destroy on prototype-scoped beans.
You can implement the interface DisposableBean and InitializingBean for session scoped bean.
The org.springframework.beans.factory.InitializingBean interface allows a bean to perform initialization work after all necessary properties on the bean have been set by the container. The InitializingBean interface specifies a single method afterPropertiesSet().
Implementing the org.springframework.beans.factory.DisposableBean interface allows a bean to get a callback when the container containing it is destroyed. The DisposableBean interface specifies a single method destroy().
Read more about it here: http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/html/beans.html#beans-factory-nature