There seems to be a fair amount of missing or hidden XML in this article. If you look at the HTML source, you'll see where some XML has not been properly escaped.

Matt, You are right. Someone must have edited this recently, because the XML was showing up properly before. I just sent a mail to the editor. Thanks, Mark

Hi Matt, Mark The XML has been fixed now. Best Diana

I am really looking forward to using these new features, great job guys. By the way Mark, your sudden and unexplained use of the p: namespace might freak people out. In your explanation of the lifecycle annotations you declare the datasource using the p: namespace trick from http://blog.interface21.com/main/2006/11/25/xml-syntax-sugar-in-spring-20/ Unfortunately, many people probably aren't aware of this feature and it isn't actually mentioned in the article.

This is great -- I always liked the annotation-driven style of Guice but didn't want to abandon Spring just for that. Hooray for less XML!

Ray, Thanks for pointing out that blog for the 'p' namespace. Hopefully that will serve as a 'footnote' now for anyone who may be confused by its usage. Those examples are taken directly from the PetClinic application by the way. Thanks, Mark

I have to admit, I'm content to use XML for wiring, myself -- although perhaps when I try the annotations, I'll discover more advantages than I expect. I seem to be in the minority here. That said, I was more impressed by the features here than I expected to be, so next time I start some Spring config., I might give this a try. Sorry about the XML; that might have been my fault, I changed some metadata after the initial publishing, and there are some quirks in the publishing process that Diana's better at handling. ;) I'm looking forward to the next two parts of the article.

Geoffrey

The goal of Spring is to be the ultimate component model. That component model can be configured in different ways. There is no perfect one size fits all approach to configuration. Different contributions are merged together by the container. Certainly, annotations have an important place. However, my experience in practice (long predating my creation of Spring) has been that you need to externalize significant parts of your configuration from Java code. The annotation support in Spring 2.5 is very slick and definitely makes Spring a better product. You can mix and match annotation-driven and XML (and other) configuration so that you can use the appropriate solution for each problem. I'm proud that each version of Spring has made applications easier to build. I recently presented on Configuring the Spring Container at QCon San Francisco, discussing alternative configuration options and best practices. The slides are available as PDF.

The annotation @Resource is a little confusing in the context of spring. As I saw it I first thought it will be used for ressources and not for beans. Like that: @Ressource("file:out/example.txt") public void setOutput(Ressource ressource) {...}

Jorg I agree that @Resource is a poor name for the annotation, but we didn't choose it... Rgds Rod

as now i can turn everything into a FactoryBeanImpl. @Bonkers(Retention.FORALLTIME) afterPropertiesSet()

Great Job, keep it up Thanks

Good Artical...

Of course...Great

Good material. But where can I find the 2nd part and 3rd part of this series. Thanks.

Not to mention how it's never mentioned how to actually create an instance of the object that is injected by Spring. We see the annotated class, and the configuration XML, but no idea how to construct an instance of the annotated class. Does it appear as if by magic? Is it just me, but why are there no examples of this. Everything is just assumed to originate as some implicit class of the Spring framework, like a controller or some such. I'd like to use this uber-magic of Spring, but how do I create instances of my own 'controller-type' classes automagically injected by Spring. Is this a state secret perhaps? Sorry, just frustrated by the lack of examples, clearly.

Agreed...this would be very useful.

Darryl Pentz writes:

I had the same question the first time I read this article (too quickly). The answer lies in the "Auto-Detection of Spring Components". The key "magic" is this tag: which causes Spring to automatically go hunting through your JARs looking for specially-annotated classes. When it finds them, it auto-constructs instances and adds them to your application context. The net effect is a purely annotation-driven (zero XML) way to add and configure individual beans.

Mark, great work, are parts 2 and 3 available yet?

Hey Greg, Did you hear anything about the 2nd and 3rd parts yet?

"While all Spring-managed objects are treated as singleton instances by default, it is sometimes necessary to specify an alternate "scope" for an object. " I believe with the @PostConstruct @PreDestroy, the default should change to "request" or "prototype", not singleton any more... otherwise it is very possibly not thread-safe.... And is there any plan to support more lifecycle/AOP like annoations? like @PreInvoke @PostInvoke....