preface

The Spring framework was created with the goal of simplifying the development of Java EE applications.

My goal is not to lay out the SpringAPI in detail for the reader, but rather to show the Spring framework to JavaEE developers through real-world example code.

The real power of Spring is its ability to make enterprise application development much easier. Because most of Spring is about providing enterprise-level services, there are a lot of Spring and EJB comparisons included here.

Spring entered the Java development landscape a decade ago with the goal of simplifying enterprise-level Java development. It challenged the heavyweight development models of the time by using a simpler and lighter model based on plain old Java objects.

Now, many years later, with numerous releases of Spring, we can see that Spring has had a huge impact on enterprise application development. It has been the de facto standard for countless Java projects, and Spring has had an impact on the evolution of some of the specifications and frameworks it was meant to replace. There is no doubt that the EJB specification would look very different today if Spring had not challenged previous versions of the enterprise Javabeans (EJB) specification.

But Spring itself continues to evolve and improve, making difficult development tasks easier and bringing innovative features to Java developers. In the area that Spring originally challenged, Spring has grown by leaps and bounds to cover all aspects of Java application development.

The paper

The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 covers the core of the Spring framework. Part 2 builds on this by showing you how to use Spring to build Web applications. Part 3 moves away from the front end and shows you how to use Spring on the back end of your application. Part 4 describes how to use Spring to integrate with other applications and services.

In Part 1, you’ll learn about the Spring container, dependency Injection (DI), and Aspect-oriented Programming (AOP), which are at the heart of the Spring framework. This gives the reader a good understanding of the fundamentals of Spring, which will be used throughout the chapters of this book.

Chapter 1 Outlines some basic examples of Spring, including DI and AOP. You’ll also learn about the larger Spring ecosystem as a whole.

Chapter 2 covers DI in more detail, showing how the various components (beans) in an application fit together. This includes XML-based assembly, Java-based assembly, and auto-assembly.

Chapter 3 introduces several advanced assembly techniques that you may not use very often, but if you do, this chapter will show you how to make the most of the Spring container.

Chapter 4 shows you how to use Spring’s AOP to decouple objects from the crosscutting concerns that serve them. This chapter also provides the foundation for subsequent chapters in which you will use AOP to provide declarative services such as transactions, security and caching.