What is IOC (or Dependency Injection)?

Answers:

The basic concept of the Inversion of Control pattern (also known as dependency
injection) is that you do not create your objects but describe how they should be created.
You don't directly connect your components and services together in code but describe
which services are needed by which components in a configuration file. A container (in
the case of the Spring framework, the IOC container) is then responsible for hooking it all
up.

i.e., Applying IoC, objects are given their dependencies at creation time by some external
entity that coordinates each object in the system. That is, dependencies are injected into
objects. So, IoC means an inversion of responsibility with regard to how an object obtains
references to collaborating objects.

What is Spring ?
Answers:

Spring is an open source framework created to address the complexity of enterprise

application development. One of the chief advantages of the Spring framework is its
layered architecture, which allows you to be selective about which of its components you
use while also providing a cohesive framework for J2EE application development.

What is the typical Bean life cycle in Spring Bean Factory Container ?

Answers:

Bean life cycle in Spring Bean Factory Container is as follows:

The spring container finds the bean?s definition from the XML file and
instantiates the bean.
*

Using the dependency injection, spring populates all of the properties

as specified in the bean definition
*

If the bean implements the BeanNameAware interface, the factory calls

setBeanName() passing the bean?s ID.
*

If the bean implements the BeanFactoryAware interface, the factory

calls setBeanFactory(), passing an instance of itself.
*
 If there are any BeanPostProcessors associated with the bean, their
post- ProcessBeforeInitialization() methods will be called.
*

If an init-method is specified for the bean, it will be called.

*

Finally, if there are any BeanPostProcessors associated with the bean,

their postProcessAfterInitialization() methods will be called.
What are the different types of IOC (dependency injection) ?
Answers:

There are three types of dependency injection:

* Constructor Injection (e.g. Pico container, Spring etc): Dependencies are provided as
constructor parameters.
* Setter Injection (e.g. Spring): Dependencies are assigned through JavaBeans properties
(ex: setter methods).
* Interface Injection (e.g. Avalon): Injection is done through an interface.

Note: Spring supports only Constructor and Setter Injection

What are the benefits of IOC (Dependency Injection)?

Answers:

Benefits of IOC (Dependency Injection) are as follows:

Minimizes the amount of code in your application. With IOC containers you do not care
about how services are created and how you get references to the ones you need. You can
also easily add additional services by adding a new constructor or a setter method with
little or no extra configuration.
*

Make your application more testable by not requiring any singletons or JNDI lookup
mechanisms in your unit test cases. IOC containers make unit testing and switching
implementations very easy by manually allowing you to inject your own objects into the
object under test.
*

Loose coupling is promoted with minimal effort and least intrusive mechanism. The
factory design pattern is more intrusive because components or services need to be
requested explicitly whereas in IOC the dependency is injected into requesting piece of
code. Also some containers promote the design to interfaces not to implementations
design concept by encouraging managed objects to implement a well-defined service
interface of your own.
*

IOC containers support eager instantiation and lazy loading of services. Containers also
provide support for instantiation of managed objects, cyclical dependencies, life cycles
management, and dependency resolution between managed objects etc.

What are the advantages of Spring framework?

Answers:

The advantages of Spring are as follows:

* Spring has layered architecture. Use what you need and leave you don't need now.
* Spring Enables POJO Programming. There is no behind the scene magic here. POJO
programming enables continuous integration and testability.
* Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control Simplifies JDBC
* Open source and no vendor lock-in.

What are features of Spring ?

Answers:

#
Lightweight:

spring is lightweight when it comes to size and transparency. The basic version of spring
framework is around 1MB. And the processing overhead is also very negligible.
#
Inversion of control (IOC):

Loose coupling is achieved in spring using the technique Inversion of Control. The
objects give their dependencies instead of creating or looking for dependent objects.
#
Aspect oriented (AOP):

Spring supports Aspect oriented programming and enables cohesive development by

separating application business logic from system services.
#
Container:

Spring contains and manages the life cycle and configuration of application objects.
#
MVC Framework:

Spring comes with MVC web application framework, built on core Spring functionality.
This framework is highly configurable via strategy interfaces, and accommodates
multiple view technologies like JSP, Velocity, Tiles, iText, and POI. But other
frameworks can be easily used instead of Spring MVC Framework.
#
Transaction Management:

Spring framework provides a generic abstraction layer for transaction management. This
allowing the developer to add the pluggable transaction managers, and making it easy to
demarcate transactions without dealing with low-level issues. Spring's transaction support
is not tied to J2EE environments and it can be also used in container less environments.
#
JDBC Exception Handling:

The JDBC abstraction layer of the Spring offers a meaningful exception hierarchy, which
simplifies the error handling strategy. Integration with Hibernate, JDO, and iBATIS:
Spring provides best Integration services with Hibernate, JDO and iBATIS

How many modules are there in Spring? What are they?

Answers:

Spring comprises of seven modules. They are..

*
The core container:
The core container provides the essential functionality of the Spring framework. A
primary component of the core container is the BeanFactory, an implementation of the
Factory pattern. The BeanFactory applies the Inversion of Control (IOC) pattern to
separate an application's configuration and dependency specification from the actual
application code.

*
Spring context:
The Spring context is a configuration file that provides context information to the Spring
framework. The Spring context includes enterprise services such as JNDI, EJB, e-mail,
internalization, validation, and scheduling functionality.

*
Spring AOP:
The Spring AOP module integrates aspect-oriented programming functionality directly
into the Spring framework, through its configuration management feature. As a result you
can easily AOP-enable any object managed by the Spring framework. The Spring AOP
module provides transaction management services for objects in any Spring-based
application. With Spring AOP you can incorporate declarative transaction management
into your applications without relying on EJB components.

*
Spring DAO:
The Spring JDBC DAO abstraction layer offers a meaningful exception hierarchy for
managing the exception handling and error messages thrown by different database
vendors. The exception hierarchy simplifies error handling and greatly reduces the
amount of exception code you need to write, such as opening and closing connections.
Spring DAO's JDBC-oriented exceptions comply to its generic DAO exception hierarchy.

*
Spring ORM:
The Spring framework plugs into several ORM frameworks to provide its Object
Relational tool, including JDO, Hibernate, and iBatis SQL Maps. All of these comply to
Spring's generic transaction and DAO exception hierarchies.

*
Spring Web module:
The Web context module builds on top of the application context module, providing
contexts for Web-based applications. As a result, the Spring framework supports
integration with Jakarta Struts. The Web module also eases the tasks of handling multi-
part requests and binding request parameters to domain objects.

*
Spring MVC framework:
The Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework is a full-featured MVC implementation
for building Web applications. The MVC framework is highly configurable via strategy
interfaces and accommodates numerous view technologies including JSP, Velocity, Tiles,
iText, and POI.

What are the types of Dependency Injection Spring supports?

Answers:

*
Setter Injection:
Setter-based DI is realized by calling setter methods on your beans after invoking a no-
argument constructor or no-argument static factory method to instantiate your bean.

*
Constructor Injection:
Constructor-based DI is realized by invoking a constructor with a number of arguments,
each representing a collaborator.

What is Bean Factory ?

Answers:

A BeanFactory is like a factory class that contains a collection of beans. The BeanFactory
holds Bean Definitions of multiple beans within itself and then instantiates the bean
whenever asked for by clients.

* BeanFactory is able to create associations between collaborating objects as they are

instantiated. This removes the burden of configuration from bean itself and the beans
client.
* BeanFactory also takes part in the life cycle of a bean, making calls to custom
initialization and destruction methods.