3.1. Introduction to the Spring IoC container and beans .............................................27
3.2. Container overview ..........................................................................................27
Configuration metadata ...................................................................................28
Instantiating a container ..................................................................................30
Composing XML-based configuration metadata .......................................31
Using the container .........................................................................................32
3.3. Bean overview .................................................................................................32
Naming beans .................................................................................................34
Aliasing a bean outside the bean definition ...............................................34
Instantiating beans ..........................................................................................35
Instantiation with a constructor ................................................................36
Instantiation with a static factory method .................................................36
Instantiation using an instance factory method ..........................................37
3.4. Dependencies ...................................................................................................38
Dependency injection ......................................................................................38
Constructor-based dependency injection ...................................................39
Setter-based dependency injection ...........................................................40
Dependency resolution process ................................................................41
Examples of dependency injection ...........................................................43
Dependencies and configuration in detail .........................................................45
Straight values (primitives, Strings, and so on) .........................................45
References to other beans (collaborators) .................................................46
Inner beans .............................................................................................47
Collections .............................................................................................48
Null and empty string values ...................................................................50
XML shortcut with the p-namespace ........................................................51
Compound property names ......................................................................52
Using depends-on ...........................................................................................52
Lazy-initialized beans .....................................................................................53
Autowiring collaborators .................................................................................53
Limitations and disadvantages of autowiring ............................................55
Excluding a bean from autowiring ...........................................................56
Checking for dependencies ..............................................................................56
Method injection ............................................................................................57
Lookup method injection .........................................................................58
Arbitrary method replacement .................................................................59
3.5. Bean scopes .....................................................................................................60
The singleton scope ........................................................................................61
The prototype scope ........................................................................................62
Singleton beans with prototype-bean dependencies ...........................................63
Request, session, and global session scopes ......................................................64
Initial web configuration .........................................................................64
Request scope .........................................................................................65
Session scope .........................................................................................65
Global session scope ...............................................................................65
Spring Framework
3.0 Reference Documentation iii
