Java Spring Injection

Question

Hi,

I have just started using and educating my self of Java spring. I now know that we can inject beans.

But on the look of it it looks like a glorified properties file, am i right in thinking that way ?

Answer 1

No, absolutely not. This couldn't be more wrong.

Spring is about three things:

1. dependency injection (think "factory pattern")
2. aspect oriented programming
3. a framework that handles persistence, remoting, transactions, messaging, etc. better than any plumbing you'll ever write.

If you only see "glorified properties", you've got a very long way to go in your Spring education. Keep reading.

Answer 2

Dependency Injection is just one part of the Spring Framework, which is extremely good at making sure that you structure your code in an efficient way for testing and substituting in different implementations of interfaces.

There are also the various Spring API's which make working with aspects, Databases, JMS, Transactions etc. much easier and allow you to produce robust applications without worrying about all the plumbing code. The template pattern for transactions and JMS make creating J2EE applications much easier.

The Spring Web framework is also excellent for building MVC web applications.

Spring Integration and Batch projects are also extremely useful.