Using the Java Platform, you can create a large number of applications of different types with the Spring framework. There are extensive levels of infrastructure support available with the spring framework. Spring also has POJO for developers, which is – the Plain Old Java Objects Mechanism for developers to create a Java Platform Standard Edition programming model with partial and full JAVA EE (Enterprise Edition).
You can create even more complex and large-scaled applications by integrating the technologies mentioned below.
- POJO: Plain Old Java Objects
- DI: Dependency Injection, and
- AOP: Aspect Oriented Programming
Here are some of the Spring framework features that allow Spring developers to perform multiple functions:
- Developers can create a Java method that runs in a database transaction without any help from transaction APIs.
- It can help developers build a local Java method that would define a remote procedure without remote API’s help.
- The developers can also create a management operation Java method without any help from JMX APIs.
- For a message handler, without JMS API, developers can create a local Java method.
The framework is also lightweight and it can provide the best mechanism for other frameworks such as Tapestry, EJB, JSF, Hibernate, Struts, Etc. Spring helps in solving real-time technical issues. There are multiple modules in Spring, including AOP, DAO, IOC, WEB MVC, Context, ORM, and more.
If you want to create secure, robust, scalable business web applications, Spring is the framework for you. It can be considered as a cluster of sub-frameworks like Spring ORM, Spring MVC, Spring Web Flow, etc. Apart from Java, Groovy and Kotlin are also sustained by Spring.
Spring offers a base to control other Spring-based projects including:
- Spring Boot
- Spring Cloud
- Spring GraphQL
Let’s understand the framework and its advantages in detail.
The Advantages of Spring Framework in Java
Here are some of the Spring framework pros you should know about:
Availability of Templates
There are many pre-defined templates available with the Spring framework. For JDBC, JPA, and Hibernate, developers will find a plethora of templates to explore. For Spring developers, it will save them from defining complex code. In the JDBC template, you would not be needed to write the logic for a statement, a transaction, creating a connection, or exception handling. This would save a lot of time for developers.
Dependency Injection
One can loosely couple Spring applications with dependency injection mechanisms of Spring.
Simplified Testing
Once again, with the dependency injection mechanism, it becomes extremely easy to test the whole application using spring frameworks. On the other hand, Struts or EJB applications would require a server to execute the application.
Easy Implementation
Spring framework is easy to implement, and Spring developers do not need to inherit certain classes and implementations for interfaces because of POJO, the Plain Old Java Object.
Faster Development
Spring is an easy-to-integrate framework because of the dependency injection. Dependency injection also makes for a convenient EE-based Java application development.
Strong Abstraction Capabilities
For Java Enterprise Edition-based specifications like JMS, JDBC, JTA, and JPA, spring supports strong abstraction capabilities.
A Well-organized Framework
If a developer wants to develop applications with widespread frameworks including Struts, the web MVC framework of Spring presents a great option.
Suitable API Delivery
Spring framework can translate technology-specific anomalies into uncontrolled and uniform exceptions, thrown by JDO, Hibernate, and JDBC.
Lightweight Framework
Spring is a lightweight framework if we compare it to EJB containers. This helps developers create and deploy applications on computers that have limited CPU resources and memory.
Transaction Management
Spring offers an interface to help scale down the local transactions such as the ones that use a single database, and it can also go on a scale of a global transaction such as JTA.
Spring Core
Now let’s talk about some of the Spring features and how they can help a Spring Developer.
DI (Dependency Injection)
Dependency Injection can be called the heart of the framework. The Spring concept can be defined by the Inversion of Control or IOC. DI offers to create dependent objects outside of class. It also provides those created objects to the class in various ways. If a developer is defining the parameters to the constructor with post-construction using setter methods, this can be utilized.
To summarize, this is an association between classes. If class X is dependent on class Y, that can create problems including the failure of the system. In short, avoid these dependencies. When you hire a spring developer for a project, this makes code easier to reuse and test.
If developing a complex Java App, application classes should be independent of Java classes. It improves the reusability of the class. It also allows developers to test them independently during unit testing. Hence, DI enables classes to be there at the same time, and still be independent.
Aspect-oriented programming support
AOP provides better modularity to the cross-cutting challenges. Here are some of the functions one can use in the applications according to real-time challenges:
- Authentication
- Transaction Management
- Logging
- Caching
AOP comes with built-in Object-oriented programming features that you can use to denote the structure of your program. Whereas OOP is established in classes.
For AOP, the primary unit of modularity (cross-cutting) is a factor. AOP allows developers to create declarative enterprise services and other custom aspects. Since the IoC container is independent of AOP and offers custom-enabled-based capabilities, the logic can be written based on the programming method. Spring IOC with AOP ensures robust middleware capabilities.
Data Access Framework
When creating applications, database communication problems are one of the most common ones faced by developers. With Spring’s database communication strategy of immediate support delivery for frameworks in Java, JDBC, Hibernate, and JPA, this gets sorted.
It also suggests resource wrapping, resource management, and exception handling for all data access frameworks that are supported. This helps development revolution streamlining.
Transaction Management
For nested or global transactions, JAVA transactions API – Spring Transaction Management Framework, is not restricted. It presents an abstractions mechanism for Java, that can help users to
- Work with all: local, international, and nested transactions
- Savepoints
- Simplify transaction management across the application
With messaging and caching, the Spring data access framework combines the transaction management framework instantly. Because of that, developers can build a feature-rich transaction system that does not have to rely on JTA and EJB.
Spring MVC Framework
Utilizing the popular MVC pattern, developers can develop applications with Spring. This request-based framework allows developers to create custom MVC implementations to serve their needs efficiently. The DospatcherServlet class is the core component of Spring MVC and it manages the user requests and delivers them to the controller. The controller can process the request, create the model, and then deliver data via a restricted view to the end-user.
Spring Web Service
This component of Spring supplies a streamlined way to build and manage web services endpoints in an application. The layered approach of this element can be controlled using XML. Spring developers can also use it to deliver mapping for web requests to some specific objects.
Spring Test Frameworks
The controller can deliver data through the restricted view to the user after processing their request and creating the model for that. The components available with Spring are:
- TestContext framework
- Mock objects
- Spring MVC Test
Core Container
The essential modules of the Spring framework are loaded with features. Here’s the list:
- Spring Core: controls features like an inversion of control (IoC) and dependency injection (DI)
- Spring Beans: delivers BeanFactory, a factory pattern execution
- Spring Context: Spring Context is a medium to access restricted objects and produces core and beans. Its core part is ApplicationContext, and the Spring context provides support for third-party interactions like template engines, caching, and mailing.
Spring Expression: To control and query the object graph at the time of execution with Spring Expression Language.
Data Integration
Data integration consists of modules that can be used to manage transactions and data access by the developers.
- Spring JMS: This Java Messaging Service constructs and consumes messages that incorporate the messaging module.
- Spring OXM: Object/XML mapping implementations including XStream and JAXB are supported by this layer.
- Spring ORM: This essential integration layer helps object-relational mapping APIs like JDO Hibernate, JPA, etc.
- JDBC: A developer does not have to separate JDBC coding while using the database because of the abstraction layer.
- Spring TX: This offers declarative and programmatic transaction management with POJOs’ unique interfaces.
Conclusion
With all its features, Spring turns out to be one of the most useful frameworks around. For a professional developer coming from .net and JAVA, cloud specialization, testing, and application architecture, this information will surely help. For a project, when hiring a spring developer, it is important to know the knowledge, tools & technologies they use, so that they can customize their development according to the project needs.
