Spring ques

1.  What is IOC (or Dependency Injection)? 

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. 

2. What are the different types of IOC (dependency injection) ? 

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

3. What are the benefits of IOC (Dependency Injection)?

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.

 4. What is Spring ?

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.

Spring is a light weight dependency injection and aspect oriendted container and framework"

loose coupling

spring takes responsibily of crating a object and managing the wiring between the object,

where as a frame work it solve problem in solving some complixity of using jdbc , jmax etc.

5. What are the advantages of Spring framework?

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.

6. What are features of Spring ?

• 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

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

       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.

8. What are the types of Dependency Injection Spring supports?>

• 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.

9. What is Bean Factory ?

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.

10. What is Application Context?

A bean factory is fine to simple applications, but to take advantage of the full power of the Spring framework, you may want to move up to Springs more advanced container, the application context. On the surface, an application context is same as a bean factory. Both load bean definitions, wire beans together, and dispense beans upon request. But it also provides:

• A means for resolving text messages, including support for internationalization.
• A generic way to load file resources.
• Events to beans that are registered as listeners.

11. What is the difference between Bean Factory and Application Context ?  

On the surface, an application context is same as a bean factory. But application context offers much more..

• Application contexts provide a means for resolving text messages, including support for i18n of those messages.
• Application contexts provide a generic way to load file resources, such as images.
• Application contexts can publish events to beans that are registered as listeners.
• Certain operations on the container or beans in the container, which have to be handled in a programmatic fashion with a bean factory, can be handled declaratively in an application context.
• ResourceLoader support: Spring’s Resource interface us a flexible generic abstraction for handling low-level resources. An application context itself is a ResourceLoader, Hence provides an application with access to deployment-specific Resource instances.
• MessageSource support: The application context implements MessageSource, an interface used to obtain localized messages, with the actual implementation being pluggable

12. What are the common implementations of the Application Context ?

   The three commonly used implementation of 'Application Context' are

• ClassPathXmlApplicationContext : It Loads context definition from an XML file located in the classpath, treating context definitions as classpath resources. The application context is loaded from the application's classpath by using the code .

ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("bean.xml");

• FileSystemXmlApplicationContext : It loads context definition from an XML file in the filesystem. The application context is loaded from the file system by using the code .

ApplicationContext context = new FileSystemXmlApplicationContext("bean.xml");

• XmlWebApplicationContext : It loads context definition from an XML file contained within a web application.

13. How is a typical spring implementation look like ?

   For a typical Spring Application we need the following files:

• An interface that defines the functions.
• An Implementation that contains properties, its setter and getter methods, functions etc.,
• Spring AOP (Aspect Oriented Programming)
• A XML file called Spring configuration file.
• Client program that uses the function.

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

   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.

15. What do you mean by Bean wiring ?

The act of creating associations between application components (beans) within the Spring container is reffered to as Bean wiring.

16. What do you mean by Auto Wiring?

   The Spring container is able to autowire relationships between collaborating beans. This means that it is possible to automatically let Spring resolve collaborators (other beans) for your bean by inspecting the contents of the BeanFactory. The autowiring functionality has five modes.

• no
• byName
• byType
• constructor
• autodirect

17. What is DelegatingVariableResolver?

       Spring provides a custom JavaServer Faces VariableResolver implementation that extends the standard Java Server Faces managed beans mechanism which lets you use JSF and Spring together. This variable resolver is called as DelegatingVariableResolver

18. How to integrate  Java Server Faces (JSF) with Spring?

   JSF and Spring do share some of the same features, most noticeably in the area of IOC services. By declaring JSF managed-beans in the faces-config.xml configuration file, you allow the FacesServlet to instantiate that bean at startup. Your JSF pages have access to these beans and all of their properties.We can integrate JSF and Spring in two ways:

• DelegatingVariableResolver: Spring comes with a JSF variable resolver that lets you use JSF and Spring together.

   "http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd">

  

     

         org.springframework.web.jsf.DelegatingVariableResolver

     

  

The DelegatingVariableResolver will first delegate value lookups to the default resolver of the underlying JSF implementation, and then to Spring's 'business context' WebApplicationContext. This allows one to easily inject dependencies into one's JSF-managed beans.

• FacesContextUtils:custom VariableResolver works well when mapping one's properties to beans in faces-config.xml, but at times one may need to grab a bean explicitly. The FacesContextUtils class makes this easy. It is similar to WebApplicationContextUtils, except that it takes a FacesContext parameter rather than a ServletContext parameter.

ApplicationContext ctx = FacesContextUtils.getWebApplicationContext(FacesContext.getCurrentInstance());

19. What is  Java Server Faces (JSF) - Spring integration mechanism?

Spring provides a custom JavaServer Faces VariableResolver implementation that extends the standard JavaServer Faces managed beans mechanism. When asked to resolve a variable name, the following algorithm is performed:

• Does a bean with the specified name already exist in some scope (request, session, application)? If so, return it
• Is there a standard JavaServer Faces managed bean definition for this variable name? If so, invoke it in the usual way, and return the bean that was created.
• Is there configuration information for this variable name in the Spring WebApplicationContext for this application? If so, use it to create and configure an instance, and return that instance to the caller.
• If there is no managed bean or Spring definition for this variable name, return null instead.
• BeanFactory also takes part in the life cycle of a bean, making calls to custom initialization and destruction methods.

As a result of this algorithm, you can transparently use either JavaServer Faces or Spring facilities to create beans on demand.

20. What is Significance of JSF- Spring integration ?

Spring - JSF integration is useful when an event handler wishes to explicitly invoke the bean factory to create beans on demand, such as a bean that encapsulates the business logic to be performed when a submit button is pressed.

21. How to integrate your Struts application with Spring?  

To integrate your Struts application with Spring, we have two options:

• Configure Spring to manage your Actions as beans, using the ContextLoaderPlugin, and set their dependencies in a Spring context file.
• Subclass Spring's ActionSupport classes and grab your Spring-managed beans explicitly using a getWebApplicationContext() method.

25. What are Bean scopes in Spring Framework ?

   The Spring Framework supports exactly five scopes (of which three are available only if you are using a web-aware ApplicationContext). The scopes supported are listed below:

Scope	Description
singleton	Scopes a single bean definition to a single object instance per Spring IoC container.
prototype	Scopes a single bean definition to any number of object instances.
request	Scopes a single bean definition to the lifecycle of a single HTTP request; that is each and every HTTP request will have its own instance of a bean created off the back of a single bean definition. Only valid in the context of a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.
session	Scopes a single bean definition to the lifecycle of a HTTP Session. Only valid in the context of a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.
global session	Scopes a single bean definition to the lifecycle of a global HTTP Session. Typically only valid when used in a portlet context. Only valid in the context of a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.

26. What is AOP?

   Aspect-oriented programming, or AOP, is a programming technique that allows programmers to modularize crosscutting concerns, or behavior that cuts across the typical divisions of responsibility, such as logging and transaction management. The core construct of AOP is the aspect, which encapsulates behaviors affecting multiple classes into reusable modules.

27. How the AOP used in Spring?

   AOP is used in the Spring Framework: To provide declarative enterprise services, especially as a replacement for EJB declarative services. The most important such service is declarative transaction management, which builds on the Spring Framework's transaction abstraction.To allow users to implement custom aspects, complementing their use of OOP with AOP. 

28. What do you mean by Aspect ?

   A modularization of a concern that cuts across multiple objects. Transaction management is a good example of a crosscutting concern in J2EE applications. In Spring AOP, aspects are implemented using regular classes (the schema-based approach) or regular classes annotated with the @Aspect annotation (@AspectJ style).

29. What do you mean by JointPoint?

A point during the execution of a program, such as the execution of a method or the handling of an exception. In Spring AOP, a join point always represents a method execution.

30. What do you mean by Advice?

Action taken by an aspect at a particular join point. Different types of advice include "around," "before" and "after" advice. Many AOP frameworks, including Spring, model an advice as an interceptor, maintaining a chain of interceptors "around" the join point.

31. What are the types of Advice?

Types of advice:

• Before advice: Advice that executes before a join point, but which does not have the ability to prevent execution flow proceeding to the join point (unless it throws an exception).
• After returning advice: Advice to be executed after a join point completes normally: for example, if a method returns without throwing an exception.
• After throwing advice: Advice to be executed if a method exits by throwing an exception.
• After (finally) advice: Advice to be executed regardless of the means by which a join point exits (normal or exceptional return).
• Around advice: Advice that surrounds a join point such as a method invocation. This is the most powerful kind of advice. Around advice can perform custom behavior before and after the method invocation. It is also responsible for choosing whether to proceed to the join point or to shortcut the advised method execution by returning its own return value or throwing an exception

32. What are the types of the transaction management Spring supports ?

   Spring Framework supports:

• Programmatic transaction management.
• Declarative transaction management.

33. What are the benefits of the Spring Framework transaction management ?

   The Spring Framework provides a consistent abstraction for transaction management that delivers the following benefits:

• Provides a consistent programming model across different transaction APIs such as JTA, JDBC, Hibernate, JPA, and JDO.
• Supports declarative transaction management.
• Provides a simpler API for programmatic transaction management than a number of complex transaction APIs such as JTA.
• Integrates very well with Spring's various data access abstractions.

34.  Why most users of the Spring Framework choose declarative transaction management ?

   Most users of the Spring Framework choose declarative transaction management because it is the option with the least impact on application code, and hence is most consistent with the ideals of a non-invasive lightweight container.

35. Explain the similarities and differences between EJB CMT and the Spring Framework's declarative transaction
       management ?

   The basic approach is similar: it is possible to specify transaction behavior (or lack of it) down to individual method level. It is
    possible to make a setRollbackOnly() call within a transaction context if necessary. The differences are:

• Unlike EJB CMT, which is tied to JTA, the Spring Framework's declarative transaction management works in any environment. It can work with JDBC, JDO, Hibernate or other transactions under the covers, with configuration changes only.
• The Spring Framework enables declarative transaction management to be applied to any class, not merely special classes such as EJBs.
• The Spring Framework offers declarative rollback rules: this is a feature with no EJB equivalent. Both programmatic and declarative support for rollback rules is provided.
• The Spring Framework gives you an opportunity to customize transactional behavior, using AOP. With EJB CMT, you have no way to influence the container's transaction management other than setRollbackOnly().
• The Spring Framework does not support propagation of transaction contexts across remote calls, as do high-end application servers.

37. When to use programmatic and declarative transaction management ?

   Programmatic transaction management is usually a good idea only if you have a small number of transactional operations. 
On the other hand, if your application has numerous transactional operations, declarative transaction management is usually worthwhile. It keeps transaction management out of business logic, and is not difficult to configure. 

38. Explain about the Spring DAO support ?

The Data Access Object (DAO) support in Spring is aimed at making it easy to work with data access technologies like JDBC, Hibernate or JDO in a consistent way. This allows one to switch between the persistence technologies fairly easily and it also allows one to code without worrying about catching exceptions that are specific to each technology.

39. What are the exceptions thrown by the Spring DAO classes ?

Spring DAO classes throw exceptions which are subclasses ofDataAccessException(org.springframework.dao.DataAccessException).Spring provides a convenient translation from technology-specific exceptions like SQLExceptionto its own exception class hierarchy with the DataAccessException as the root exception. These exceptions wrap the original exception.

40. What is SQLExceptionTranslator ?

SQLExceptionTranslator, is an interface to be implemented by classes that can translate between SQLExceptions and Spring's own data-access-strategy-agnosticorg.springframework.dao.DataAccessException.

41. What is Spring's JdbcTemplate ?

Spring's JdbcTemplate is central class to interact with a database through JDBC. JdbcTemplate provides many convenience methods for doing things such as converting database data into primitives or objects, executing prepared and callable statements, and providing custom database error handling. 

JdbcTemplate template = new JdbcTemplate(myDataSource);

42. What is PreparedStatementCreator ?

   PreparedStatementCreator:

• Is one of the most common used interfaces for writing data to database.
• Has one method – createPreparedStatement(Connection)
• Responsible for creating a PreparedStatement.
• Does not need to handle SQLExceptions.

43. What is SQLProvider ?

   SQLProvider:

• Has one method – getSql()
• Typically implemented by PreparedStatementCreator implementers.

• Useful for debugging.

44. What is RowCallbackHandler ?

   The RowCallbackHandler interface extracts values from each row of a ResultSet.

• Has one method – processRow(ResultSet)
• Called for each row in ResultSet.
• Typically stateful.

45. What are the differences between EJB and Spring ?

   Spring and EJB feature comparison.

Feature	EJB	Spring
Transaction management	Must use a JTA transaction manager. Supports transactions that span remote method calls.	Supports multiple transaction environments through itsPlatformTransactionManager interface, including JTA, Hibernate, JDO, and JDBC. Does not natively support distributed transactions—it must be used with a JTA transaction manager.
Declarative transaction support	Can define transactions declaratively through the deployment descriptor. Can define transaction behavior per method or per class by using the wildcard character *. Cannot declaratively define rollback behavior—this must be done programmatically.	Can define transactions declaratively through the Spring configuration file or through class metadata. Can define which methods to apply transaction behavior explicitly or by using regular expressions. Can declaratively define rollback behavior per method and per exception type.
Persistence	Supports programmatic bean-managed persistence and declarative container managed persistence.	Provides a framework for integrating with several persistence technologies, including JDBC, Hibernate, JDO, and iBATIS.
Declarative security	Supports declarative security through users and roles. The management and implementation of users and roles is container specific. Declarative security is configured in the deployment descriptor.	No security implementation out-of-the box. Acegi, an open source security framework built on top of Spring, provides declarative security through the Spring configuration file or class metadata.
Distributed computing	Provides container-managed remote method calls.	Provides proxying for remote calls via RMI, JAX-RPC, and web services.

1) What is Spring Framework?

Spring is a lightweight inversion of control and aspect-oriented container framework. Spring Framework’s contribution towards java community is immense and spring community is the largest and most innovative community by size. They have numerous projects under their portfolio and have their own spring dmServer for running spring applications. This community is acquired by VMWare, a leading cloud compting company for enabling the java application in the cloud by using spring stacks. If you are looking to read more about the spring framework and its products, please read in their official site Spring Source.

2) Explain Spring?

·         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.

·         Framework : Spring provides most of the intra functionality leaving rest of the coding to the developer.

3) What are the different modules in Spring framework?

·         The Core container module

·         Application context module

·         AOP module (Aspect Oriented Programming)

·         JDBC abstraction and DAO module

·         O/R mapping integration module (Object/Relational)

·         Web module

·         MVC framework module

4) What is the structure of Spring framework?

5) What is the Core container module?

This module is provides the fundamental functionality of the spring framework. In this module BeanFactory is the heart of any spring-based application. The entire framework was built on the top of this module. This module makes the Spring container.

6) What is Application context module?

The Application context module makes spring a framework. This module extends the concept of BeanFactory, providing support for internationalization (I18N) messages, application lifecycle events, and validation. This module also supplies many enterprise services such JNDI access, EJB integration, remoting, and scheduling. It also provides support to other framework.

7) What is AOP module?

The AOP module is used for developing aspects for our Spring-enabled application. Much of the support has been provided by the AOP Alliance in order to ensure the interoperability between Spring and other AOP frameworks. This module also introduces metadata programming to Spring. Using Spring’s metadata support, we will be able to add annotations to our source code that instruct Spring on where and how to apply aspects.

8)What is JDBC abstraction and DAO module?

Using this module we can keep up the database code clean and simple, and prevent problems that result from a failure to close database resources. A new layer of meaningful exceptions on top of the error messages given by several database servers is bought in this module. In addition, this module uses Spring’s AOP module to provide transaction management services for objects in a Spring application.

9) What are object/relational mapping integration module?

Spring also supports for using of an object/relational mapping (ORM) tool over straight JDBC by providing the ORM module. Spring provide support to tie into several popularORM frameworks, including Hibernate, JDO, and iBATIS SQL Maps. Spring’s transaction management supports each of these ORM frameworks as well as JDBC.

10) What is web module?

This module is built on the application context module, providing a context that is appropriate for web-based applications. This module also contains support for several web-oriented tasks such as transparently handling multipart requests for file uploads and programmatic binding of request parameters to your business objects. It also contains integration support with Jakarta Struts.

11) What is web module?

Spring comes with a full-featured MVC framework for building web applications. Although Spring can easily be integrated with other MVC frameworks, such as Struts, Spring’s MVC framework uses IoC to provide for a clean separation of controller logic from business objects. It also allows you to decoratively bind request parameters to your business objects. It also can take advantage of any of Spring’s other services, such as I18N messaging and validation.

12) What is a BeanFactory?

A BeanFactory is an implementation of the factory pattern that applies Inversion of Control to separate the application’s configuration and dependencies from the actual application code.

13) What is AOP Alliance?

AOP Alliance is an open-source project whose goal is to promote adoption of AOP and interoperability among different AOP implementations by defining a common set of interfaces and components.

14) What is Spring configuration file?

Spring configuration file is an XML file. This file contains the classes information and describes how these classes are configured and introduced to each other.

15) What does a simple spring application contain?

These applications are like any Java application. They are made up of several classes, each performing a specific purpose within the application. But these classes are configured and introduced to each other through an XML file. This XML file describes how to configure the classes, known as the Spring configuration file.

16) What is XMLBeanFactory?

BeanFactory has many implementations in Spring. But one of the most useful one isorg.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanFactory, which loads its beans based on the definitions contained in an XML file. To create an XmlBeanFactory, pass a java.io.InputStream to the constructor. The InputStream will provide the XML to the factory. For example, the following code snippet uses a java.io.FileInputStream to provide a bean definition XML file to XmlBeanFactory.

1 2	BeanFactory factory = new XmlBeanFactory(        new FileInputStream("beans.xml"));

To retrieve the bean from a BeanFactory, call the getBean() method by passing the name of the bean you want to retrieve.

1	MyBean myBean = (MyBean) factory.getBean("myBean");

17) What are important ApplicationContext implementations in spring framework?

·         ClassPathXmlApplicationContext – This context loads a context definition from an XML file located in the class path, treating context definition files as class path resources.

·         FileSystemXmlApplicationContext – This context loads a context definition from an XML file in the filesystem.

·         XmlWebApplicationContext – This context loads the context definitions from an XML file contained within a web application.

18) Explain Bean lifecycle in Spring framework?

1.     The spring container finds the bean’s definition from the XML file and instantiates the bean.

2.     Using the dependency injection, spring populates all of the properties as specified in the bean definition.

3.     If the bean implements the BeanNameAware interface, the factory callssetBeanName() passing the bean’s ID.

4.     If the bean implements the BeanFactoryAware interface, the factory callssetBeanFactory(), passing an instance of itself.

5.     If there are any BeanPostProcessors associated with the bean, their post- ProcessBeforeInitialization() methods will be called.

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

7.     Finally, if there are any BeanPostProcessors associated with the bean, theirpostProcessAfterInitialization() methods will be called.

19) What is bean wiring?

Combining together beans within the Spring container is known as bean wiring or wiring. When wiring beans, you should tell the container what beans are needed and how the container should use dependency injection to tie them together.

20) How do add a bean in spring application?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

encoding="UTF-8"?>                "http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd">     class="com.act.Foo"/>          class="com.act.Bar"/

In the bean tag the id attribute specifies the bean name and the class attribute specifies the fully qualified class name.

21) What are singleton beans and how can you create prototype beans?

Beans defined in spring framework are singleton beans. There is an attribute in bean tag named ‘singleton’ if specified true then bean becomes singleton and if set to false then the bean becomes a prototype bean. By default it is set to true. So, all the beans in spring framework are by default singleton beans.

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class="com.act.Foo"       singleton="false"/>

22) What are the important beans lifecycle methods?

There are two important bean lifecycle methods. The first one is setup which is called when the bean is loaded in to the container. The second method is the teardown method which is called when the bean is unloaded from the container.

23) How can you override beans default lifecycle methods?

The bean tag has two more important attributes with which you can define your own custom initialization and destroy methods. Here I have shown a small demonstration. Two new methods fooSetup and fooTeardown are to be added to your Foo class.

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class="com.act.Foo"      init-method="fooSetup" destroy="fooTeardown"/>

24) What are Inner Beans?

When wiring beans, if a bean element is embedded to a property tag directly, then that bean is said to the Inner Bean. The drawback of this bean is that it cannot be reused anywhere else.

25) What are the different types of bean injections?

There are two types of bean injections.

1.     By setter

2.     By constructor

26) What is Auto wiring?

You can wire the beans as you wish. But spring framework also does this work for you. It can auto wire the related beans together. All you have to do is just set the autowire attribute of bean tag to an autowire type.

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class="com.act.Foo" Autowire="autowire type"/>

27) What are different types of Autowire types?

There are four different types by which autowiring can be done.

o    byName

o    byType

o    constructor

o    autodetect

28) What are the different types of events related to Listeners?

There are a lot of events related to ApplicationContext of spring framework. All the events are subclasses of org.springframework.context.Application-Event. They are

·         ContextClosedEvent – This is fired when the context is closed.

·         ContextRefreshedEvent – This is fired when the context is initialized or refreshed.

·         RequestHandledEvent – This is fired when the web context handles any request.

29) What is an Aspect?

An aspect is the cross-cutting functionality that you are implementing. It is the aspect of your application you are modularizing. An example of an aspect is logging. Logging is something that is required throughout an application. However, because applications tend to be broken down into layers based on functionality, reusing a logging module through inheritance does not make sense. However, you can create a logging aspect and apply it throughout your application using AOP.

30) What is a Jointpoint?

A joinpoint is a point in the execution of the application where an aspect can be plugged in. This point could be a method being called, an exception being thrown, or even a field being modified. These are the points where your aspect’s code can be inserted into the normal flow of your application to add new behavior.

31) What is an Advice?

Advice is the implementation of an aspect. It is something like telling your application of a new behavior. Generally, and advice is inserted into an application at joinpoints.

32) What is a Pointcut?

A pointcut is something that defines at what joinpoints an advice should be applied. Advices can be applied at any joinpoint that is supported by the AOP framework. These Pointcuts allow you to specify where the advice can be applied.

33) What is an Introduction in AOP?

An introduction allows the user to add new methods or attributes to an existing class. This can then be introduced to an existing class without having to change the structure of the class, but give them the new behavior and state.

34) What is a Target?

A target is the class that is being advised. The class can be a third party class or your own class to which you want to add your own custom behavior. By using the concepts of AOP, the target class is free to center on its major concern, unaware to any advice that is being applied.

35) What is a Proxy?

A proxy is an object that is created after applying advice to a target object. When you think of client objects the target object and the proxy object are the same.

36) What is meant by Weaving?

The process of applying aspects to a target object to create a new proxy object is called as Weaving. The aspects are woven into the target object at the specified joinpoints.

37) What are the different points where weaving can be applied?

·         Compile Time

·         Classload Time

·         Runtime

38) What are the different advice types in spring?

o    Around : Intercepts the calls to the target method

o    Before : This is called before the target method is invoked

o    After : This is called after the target method is returned

o    Throws : This is called when the target method throws and exception

·         Around : org.aopalliance.intercept.MethodInterceptor

·         Before : org.springframework.aop.BeforeAdvice

·         After : org.springframework.aop.AfterReturningAdvice

·         Throws : org.springframework.aop.ThrowsAdvice

39) What are the different types of AutoProxying?

·         BeanNameAutoProxyCreator

·         DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator

·         Metadata autoproxying

40) What is the Exception class related to all the exceptions that are thrown in spring applications?

1 2	DataAccessException -    org.springframework.dao.DataAccessException

41) What kind of exceptions those spring DAO classes throw?

The spring’s DAO class does not throw any technology related exceptions such as SQLException. They throw exceptions which are subclasses of DataAccessException.

42) What is DataAccessException?

DataAccessException is a RuntimeException. This is an Unchecked Exception. The user is not forced to handle these kinds of exceptions.

43) How can you configure a bean to get DataSource from JNDI?

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class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">            java:comp/env/jdbc/myDatasource

44) How can you create a DataSource connection pool?

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class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource">                    ${db.driver}                             ${db.url}                             ${db.username}                              ${db.password}

45) How JDBC can be used more efficiently in spring framework?

JDBC can be used more efficiently with the help of a template class provided by spring framework called as JdbcTemplate.

46) How JdbcTemplate can be used?

With use of Spring JDBC framework the burden of resource management and error handling is reduced a lot. So it leaves developers to write the statements and queries to get the data to and from the database.

1	JdbcTemplate template = new JdbcTemplate(myDataSource);

A simple DAO class looks like this.

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public class StudentDaoJdbc implements StudentDao {     private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;     public void setJdbcTemplate(JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate) {        this.jdbcTemplate = jdbcTemplate;     } more.. }

The configuration is shown below.

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class="org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate">                                                 class="StudentDaoJdbc">                                                  class="CourseDaoJdbc">

47) How do you write data to backend in spring using JdbcTemplate?

The JdbcTemplate uses several of these callbacks when writing data to the database. The usefulness you will find in each of these interfaces will vary. There are two simple interfaces. One is PreparedStatementCreator and the other interface isBatchPreparedStatementSetter.

48) Explain about PreparedStatementCreator?

PreparedStatementCreator is one of the most common used interfaces for writing data to database. The interface has one method createPreparedStatement().

1 2	PreparedStatement createPreparedStatement (Connection conn) throws SQLException;

When this interface is implemented, we should create and return a PreparedStatement from the Connection argument, and the exception handling is automatically taken care off. When this interface is implemented, another interface SqlProvider is also implemented which has a method called getSql() which is used to provide sql strings to JdbcTemplate.

49) Explain about BatchPreparedStatementSetter?

If the user what to update more than one row at a shot then he can go forBatchPreparedStatementSetter. This interface provides two methods

1 2	setValues(PreparedStatement ps, int i) throws SQLException; int getBatchSize();

The getBatchSize() tells the JdbcTemplate class how many statements to create. And this also determines how many times setValues() will be called.

50) Explain about RowCallbackHandler and why it is used?

In order to navigate through the records we generally go for ResultSet. But spring provides an interface that handles this entire burden and leaves the user to decide what to do with each row. The interface provided by spring is RowCallbackHandler. There is a method processRow() which needs to be implemented so that it is applicable for each and everyrow.

1	void processRow(java.sql.ResultSet rs);

Question1: What is IOC or inversion of control?

Ans: This question is first step towards spring and mostly interviewer starts from this question. As the name implies inversion of control means now we have inverted the control of creating the object from our own using new operator to container or framework

Now it’s the responsibility of container to create object as required.

We maintain one xml file where we configure our components, services, all the classes and their property. We just need to mention which service is needed by which component and container will create the object for us. This concept is known as dependency injection because all object dependency (resources) is injected into it by framework.

Example:

   
        

    

In this example CreateNewStockAccont class contain getter and setter for newBid and container will instantiate newBid and set the value automatically when it is used.

Question 2: Explain Bean-LifeCycle.

Ans: Spring framework is based on IOC so we call it as IOC container also So Beans reside inside the IOC container beans are nothing but Plain old java object (POJO).

Following steps explain their lifecycle inside container.

1. Container will look the bean definition inside configuration file (eg.bean.xml).

2 using reflection container will create the object and if any property is defined inside the bean definition then it will also be set.

3. If the bean implements the BeanNameAware interface, the factory calls setBeanName() passing the bean’s ID.
4. If the bean implements the BeanFactoryAware interface, the factory calls setBeanFactory(), passing an instance of itself.
5. If there are any BeanPostProcessors associated with the bean, their post- ProcessBeforeInitialization () methods will be called before the properties for the Bean are set.

6. If an init-method is specified for the bean, it will be called.
7. If the Bean class implements the DisposableBean interface, then the method destroy() will be called when the Application no longer needs the bean reference.

8. If the Bean definition in the Configuration file contains a 'destroy-method' attribute, then the corresponding method definition in the Bean class will be called.

Question 3: what is Bean Factory, have you used XMLBean factory?

Ans: BeanFactory is factory Pattern which is based on IoC. it is used to make a clear separation between application configuration and dependency from actual code.

XmlBeanFactory is one of the implementation of bean Factory which we have used in our project.

org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanFactory is used to create bean instance defined in our xml file.

BeanFactory factory = new XmlBeanFactory(new FileInputStream("beans.xml"));

Or

ClassPathResource resorce = new ClassPathResource("beans.xml"); 
XmlBeanFactory factory = new XmlBeanFactory(resorce);

Question 4: what are the difference between BeanFactory and ApplicationContext in spring?

Ans: This one is very popular spring interview question and often asks in entry level interview. ApplicationContext is preferred way of using spring because of functionality provided by it and interviewer wanted to check whether you are familiar with it or not.

ApplicationContext.	BeanFactory
Here we can have more than one config files possible	In this only one config file or .xml file
Application contexts can publish events to beans that are registered as listeners	Doesn’t support.
Support internationalization (I18N) messages	It’s not
Support application lifecycle events, and validation.	Doesn’t support.
Support  many enterprise services such JNDI access, EJB integration, remoting	Doesn’t support.

Question 5: What are different modules in spring?

Ans: spring have seven core modules

1.      The Core container module

2.      Application context module

3.      AOP module (Aspect Oriented Programming)

4.      JDBC abstraction and DAO module

5.      O/R mapping integration module (Object/Relational)

6.      Web module

7.      MVC framework module

Question 6: What is difference between singleton and prototype bean?

Ans: This is another popular spring interview questions and an important concept to understand. Basically a bean has scopes which defines their existence on the application

Singleton: means single bean definition to a single object instance per Spring IoC container.
Prototype: means a single bean definition to any number of object instances.

Whatever beans we defined in spring framework are singleton beans. There is an attribute in bean tag named ‘singleton’ if specified true then bean becomes singleton and if set to false then the bean becomes a prototype bean. By default it is set to true. So, all the beans in spring framework are by default singleton beans.

   singleton=”false”> 
         
    

Question 7: What type of transaction Management spring support?

Ans: This spring interview questions is little difficult as compared to previous questions just because transaction management is a complex concept and not every developer familiar with it. Transaction management is critical in any applications that will interact with the database. The application has to ensure that the data is consistent and the integrity of the data is maintained.  Two type of transaction management is supported by spring

1. Programmatic transaction mgt.

2. Declarative transaction mgt.

Question 8: What is AOP?

Ans: The core construct of AOP is the aspect, which encapsulates behaviors affecting multiple classes into reusable modules.

AOP is a programming technique that allows developer to modularize crosscutting concerns,  that cuts across the typical divisions of responsibility, such as logging and transaction management. Spring AOP, aspects are implemented using regular classes or regular classes annotated with the @Aspect annotation

Question 9: Explain Advice?

Ans: It’s an implementation of aspect; advice is inserted into an application at join points. Different types of advice include “around,” “before” and “after” advice

Question 10: What is joint Point and point cut?

Ans: This is not really a spring interview questions I would say an AOP one. AOP is another popular programming concept which complements OOPS. Join point is an opportunity within code for which we can apply an aspect. In Spring AOP, a join point always represents a method execution.

Pointcut: a predicate that matches join points. A point cut is something that defines at what joinpoints an advice should be applied

Architectural benefits of Spring

Before we get down to specifics, let's look at some of the benefits Spring can bring to a project:

·         Spring can effectively organize your middle tier objects, whether or not you choose to use EJB. Spring takes care of plumbing that would be left up to you if you use only Struts or other frameworks geared to particular J2EE APIs. And while it is perhaps most valuable in the middle tier, Spring's configuration management services can be used in any architectural layer, in whatever runtime environment.

·         Spring can eliminate the proliferation of Singletons seen on many projects. In my experience, this is a major problem, reducing testability and object orientation.

·         Spring can eliminate the need to use a variety of custom properties file formats, by handling configuration in a consistent way throughout applications and projects. Ever wondered what magic property keys or system properties a particular class looks for, and had to read the Javadoc or even source code? With Spring you simply look at the class's JavaBean properties or constructor arguments. The use of Inversion of Control andDependency Injection (discussed below) helps achieve this simplification.

·         Spring can facilitate good programming practice by reducing the cost of programming to interfaces, rather than classes, almost to zero.

·         Spring is designed so that applications built with it depend on as few of its APIs as possible. Most business objects in Spring applications have no dependency on Spring.

·         Applications built using Spring are very easy to unit test.

·         Spring can make the use of EJB an implementation choice, rather than the determinant of application architecture. You can choose to implement business interfaces as POJOs or local EJBs without affecting calling code.

·         Spring helps you solve many problems without using EJB. Spring can provide an alternative to EJB that's appropriate for many applications. For example, Spring can use AOP to deliver declarative transaction management without using an EJB container; even without a JTA implementation, if you only need to work with a single database.

·         Spring provides a consistent framework for data access, whether using JDBC or an O/R mapping product such as TopLink, Hibernate or a JDO implementation.

·         Spring provides a consistent, simple programming model in many areas, making it an ideal architectural "glue." You can see this consistency in the Spring approach to JDBC, JMS, JavaMail, JNDI and many other important APIs.

Spring is essentially a technology dedicated to enabling you to build applications using POJOs. This desirable goal requires a sophisticated framework, which conceals much complexity from the developer.

Thus Spring really can enable you to implement the simplest possible solution to your problems. And that's worth a lot