I am following below article and repository pattern.
http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/getting-started-with-ef-using-mvc/implementing-the-repository-and-unit-of-work-patterns-in-an-asp-net-mvc-application
I am confused at one point, optional contructor defined in controller.
public StudentController(IStudentRepository studentRepository)
{
this.studentRepository = studentRepository;
}
Even if, I remove that - code works well. what is use of this constructor. As we are assing new context object in main default constructor.
The optional ctor doesn't create a new context, while the optional one does. The context is set in the StudentRepository's ctor.
This constructor allows you to pass in a different implementation of the studentRepository. Note that it accepts an interface, not a concrete implementation of the repository. This can be useful for unit testing where you can pass in a fake repository that does not need to access a database. You can also use this constructor with dependency injection.
Related
My question is simple. Which approach is more efficient?
method 1:
#Autowired
private CustomerRepository customerRepo;
method 2:
private final CustomerRepository custormerRepo;
public StudentService(CustomerRepository customerRepo) {
this.customerRepo = customerRepo;
}
As I see the DI in the method2 is more recent. But I wanted to ask you which one should I use?
TL;DR: Method 2 is much more flexible.
Method 1 is an example of field injection and method 2 is an example of constructor injection.
Field injection has some drawbacks that constructor injection avoids. Here are some advantages of constructor injection:
Immutability:
You can't do this is plain Java:
#Autowired
private final CustomerRepository customerRepo;
// No constructor that sets "customerRepo".
So, Spring offers constructor injection:
private final CustomerRepository customerRepo;
#Autowired
public StudentService(final CustomerRepository customerRepo) {
this.customerRepo = customerRepo;
}
Immutability is sometimes preferred. One reason is that it helps with thread-safety. Another is security.
Personally, I follow the rule, "if it can be final, it should be final."
Testing:
You won't need reflection to set the dependencies. Yes, many mocking frameworks handle this for you, but with constructor injection, you have the option to call new on the constructor.
Nasty NullPointerExceptions:
An object is created by calling its constructor, right? We usually want our arguments to be non-null at the time they are passed in. With constructor injection, the Spring IoC container makes sure that all the arguments passed in the constructor are available before passing them into the constructor.
use constructor injection, Spring also recommends it
In your main code, you should use method 2 as field injection (method 1) is not recommended. (see here for reasons)
In your test code, it's okay to use method 1.
I suggest you suggest something better. By using the Lombok library's #RequiredArgConstructor you are thus avoiding the boilerplate code. and if you wonder why #Autowired not reccomended , because of when you want to write unit testing in your application and there will be problem , where if you use #Autowired.
In addition to what the other answers have said about immutability, another benefit of constructor injection is to be able to avoid NPE is the field is not initialized. Using autowired, from a test, you’d create the class and then must remember to set the field. Using constructor injection, you can’t not initialize the field. This is more prominent in Kotlin where autowired fields are declared as lateinit var and throw a runtime exception if used before initialized. But a constructor argument can be declared as not null type which prevents you from even explicitly passing null.
In a Spring Boot Web Application layout, I have defined a Service Interface named ApplicationUserService. An implementation called ApplicationUserServiceImpl implements all the methods present in ApplicationUserService.
Now, I have a Controller called ApplicationUserController that calls all the methods of ApplicationUserServiceImpl under different #GetMapping annotations.
As suggested by my instructor, I have defined a Dependency Injection as follows:
public class ApplicationUserController {
private final ApplicationUserService applicationUserService; //This variable will work as an object now.
public ApplicationUserController(ApplicationUserService applicationUserService) {
this.applicationUserService = applicationUserService;
}
#GetMapping
//REST OF THE CODE
}
I am new to Spring Boot and I tried understanding Dependency Injection in plain English and I understood how it works. I understood that the basic idea is to separate the dependency from the usage. But I am totally confused about how this works in my case.
My Questions:
Here ApplicationUserService is an Interface and it's implementation has various methods defined. In the code above, applicationUserService now has access to every method from ApplicationUserServiceImpl. How did that happen?
I want to know how the Object creation works here.
Could you tell me the difference between not using DI and using DI in this case?
Answers
The interface layer is used for abstraction of the code it will be really helpfull when you want to provide different implementations for it. When you create a instance you are simply creating a ApplicationUserServiceImpl and assigning it into a reference variable of ApplicationUserService this concept is called upcasting. Even though you have created the object of child class/implementation class you can only access the property or methods defined in parent class/interface class. Please refer this for more info
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62599259/purpose-of-service-interface-class-in-spring-boot#:~:text=There%20are%20various%20reasons%20why,you%20can%20create%20test%20stubs.
in this example when a applicationusercontroller object is created. The spring engine(or ioc container) will create a object of ApplicationUserServiceImpl (since there is a single implementation of the interface ) and returns to controller object as a constructor orgument which you assign to the refrence variable also refer the concept called IOC(Invertion of control)
as explained in the previous answer the spring will take care of object creation (object lifecycle)rather than you explsitly doing it. it will make the objects loosely coupled. In this the controll of creating the instances is with spring .
The non DI way of doing this is
private ApplicationUserService applicationUserService = new ApplicationUserServiceImpl()
Hope I have answered your questions
this analogy may make you understand better consider an example, wherein you have the ability to cook. According to the IoC principle(principal which is the basis of DI), you can invert the control, so instead of you cooking food, you can just directly order from outside, wherein you receive food at your doorstep. Thus the process of food delivered to you at your doorstep is called the Inversion of Control.
You do not have to cook yourself, instead, you can order the food and let a delivery executive, deliver the food for you. In this way, you do not have to take care of the additional responsibilities and just focus on the main work.
Now, that you know the principle behind Dependency Injection, let me take you through the types of Dependency Injection
This is the code that I have:
#Component
#Configuration
#PropertySource("application.properties")
public class Program {
#Value("${app.title}")
private String appTitle;
public Program() {
System.out.println(appTitle);
}
}
The application.properties has
app.title=The Program
The output is null insteaf of The Program.
So, what am I missing? I have tried several examples; none worked.
Since appTitle is an autowired field, it is not set until after the object is initially constructed. This is why the value is still null in your example. The bean construction process in this scenario is as follows:
The Program constructor is called, creating a new Program instance
The appTitle field is set on the newly constructed bean to ${app.title}
The ideal fix for this depends on your goals. If you truly need the value within the constructor, you can pass it in as an autowired constructor parameter. The value will then be available within the constructor:
#Component
#Configuration
#PropertySource("application.properties")
public class Program {
public Program(#Value("${app.title}") appTitle) {
System.out.println(appTitle);
}
}
If you don't need it in the constructor itself, but need it for the proper initialization of the bean, you could alternatively use the #javax.annotation.PostConstruct annotation to make use of it after the object's construction but before it is made available for use elsewhere:
#Component
#Configuration
#PropertySource("application.properties")
public class Program {
#Value("${app.title}")
private String appTitle;
#PostConstruct
public void printAppTitle() {
System.out.println(appTitle);
}
}
Finally, if you don't need the value at construction time, but need it during the life of the bean, what you have will work; it just won't be available within the body of the constructor itself:
#Component
#Configuration
#PropertySource("application.properties")
public class Program {
#Value("${app.title}")
private String appTitle;
}
Nothing wrong, just don't do it in a constructor...
Other answers on this question are written assuming the goal is creating a Spring-managed bean that uses the given property in its creation. However, based on your comments in another answer, it looks like the question you want answered is how to access an externalized property (one provided by #Value) within a no-argument constructor. This is based on your expectation that a Java inversion of control (IoC) container such as Spring should allow accessing externalized properties (and presumably other dependencies) within a no-argument constructor. That being the case, this answer will address the specific question of accessing the property within a no-argument constructor.
While there are certainly ways this goal could be achieved, none of them would be idiomatic usage of the Spring framework. As you discovered, autowired fields (i.e. fields initialized using setter injection) cannot be accessed within the constructor.
There are two parts to explaining why this is. First, why does it work the way it does, programmatically? Second, why was it designed the way it was?
The setter-based dependency injection section of the Spring docs addresses the first question:
Setter-based DI is accomplished by the container calling setter methods on your beans after invoking a no-argument constructor or a no-argument static factory method to instantiate your bean.
In this case, it means that first the object is created using the no-argument constructor. Second, once the object is constructed, the appTitle is initialized on the constructed bean. Since the field isn't initialized until after the object is constructed, it will have its default value of null within the constructor.
The second question is why Spring is designed this way, rather than somehow having access to the property within the constructor. The constructor-based or setter-based DI? sidebar within the Spring documentation makes it clear that constructor arguments are in fact the idiomatic approach when dealing with mandatory dependencies in general.
Since you can mix constructor-based and setter-based DI, it is a good rule of thumb to use constructors for mandatory dependencies and setter methods or configuration methods for optional dependencies. [...]
The Spring team generally advocates constructor injection, as it lets you implement application components as immutable objects and ensures that required dependencies are not null. Furthermore, constructor-injected components are always returned to the client (calling) code in a fully initialized state. [...]
Setter injection should primarily only be used for optional dependencies that can be assigned reasonable default values within the class. [...]
A property needed to construct the object certainly would be categorized as a mandatory dependency. Therefore, idiomatic Spring usage would be to pass in this required value in the constructor.
So in summary, trying to access an application property within a no-argument constructor is not supported by the Spring framework, and in fact runs contrary to the recommended use of the framework.
If I use Spring, which of these two methods is more correct.
Can I use the new() operator even if I use dipendency injection?.Can I mix both?
I would like to have some clarification on these concepts.
Thanks
First method:
#RequestMapping(method=RequestMethod.GET)
public String create(Model model){
model.addAttribute(new User());
return "index";
}
Second Method:
#Autowired
User user;
#RequestMapping(method=RequestMethod.GET)
public String create(Model model){
model.addAttribute(user);
return "index";
}
By using dependency injection does not mean that the use of new operator is automatically prohibited throughout your code. It's just different approaches applied to different requirements.
A web application in spring is composed of a number of collaborating beans that are instantiated by the framework and (unless overriding the default scope) are singletons. This means that they must not preserve any state since they are shared across all requests (threads). In other words if you autowire the User object (or any other model attribute), it is created on application context initialization and the same instance is given to any user request. This also means that if a request modifies the object, other requests will see the modification as well. Needless to say this is erroneous behavior in multithreaded applications because your User object (or other model attribute) belongs to the request, so it must have the very narrow scope of a method invocation, or session at most.
You can also have spring create beans with different scopes for you, but for a simple scenario of a model attribute initialization, the new operator is sufficient. See the following documentation if interested in bean scopes : Bean scopes
So in your use case, the second method is totally wrong.
But you can also delegate the creation of your model attributes to spring if they are used as command objects (i.e. if you want to bind request parameters to them). Just add it in the method signature (with or without the modelattribute annotation).
So you may also write the above code as
#RequestMapping(method=RequestMethod.GET)
public String create(#ModelAttribute User user){
return "index";
}
see also : Supported method argument types
If you want your beans to be "managed" by Spring (for e.g. to use with Dependency Injection or PropertySources or any other Spring-related functionality), then you do NOT create new objects on your own. You declare them (via XML or JavaConfig) and let Spring create and manage them.
If the beans don't need to be "managed" by Spring, you can create a new instance using new operator.
In your case, is this particular object - User - used anywhere else in code? Is it being injected into any other Spring bean? Or is any other Spring bean being injected in User? How about any other Spring-based functionality?
If the answer to all these questions is "No", then you can use the first method (create a new object and return it). As soon as the create() method execution is complete, the User object created there would go out of scope and will be marked for GC. The User object created in this method will eventually be GC-ed.
Things can be injected in two ways in a Spring MVC applications. And yes, you can you can mix injection and creation if doing right.
Components like the controller in your example are singletons managed by the application context. If you inject anything to them it is global, not per request or session! So a user is not the right thing to inject, a user directory can be. Be aware of this as you are writing a multithreaded application!
Request related things can be injected to the method like the used locale, the request, the user principal may be injected as parameters, see a full list at Spring MVC Documentation.
But if you create a model attribute you may use new() to create it from scratch. I will not be filled by spring but to be used by your view to display data created by the controller. When created in the request mapped method that is ok.
Is there a way to use Spring lookup method inject with parameters? For example, I want to be able to instantiate prototype-scoped beans while passing them arbitrary parameters via constructor.
It looks like this vital feature was finally added in Spring 4.1.0.RC2. I have tested it and it seems to work.
It was added as part of JIRA ticket SPR-7431 ("Passing lookup-method arguments to created bean constructor"):
<lookup-method/> should allow specifying any number of parameters. These parameters should be passed directly to the constructor of the newly created bean.
For more info on how the feature was finally added, this blog post was written by the guy who opened the JIRA ticket.
You can inject them via field/setter injection. (Note that constructor injection is frowned upon by spring, although it's supported)
in short, no. Spring does support something called "method injection" but it's different than you're thinking. Spring also supports constructor injection, but then you're not calling the constructor yourself, Spring is, and wiring it itself.
Instead, you can use reflection to instantiate the class and pass arbitrary parameters yourself:
Class<MyObject> clazz = MyObject.class; // this can be looked up or stored in a field, etc.
MyObject myObject = clazz.getConstructor(String.class, int.class)
.newInstance("arbitrary parameter", 42);