Blog Xebia France

Spring web-werkstatt.amaier.de the big cleaning of the spring

One year after the exit of version 2.5, the first milestone of Spring web-werkstatt.amaier.de should soon come into the world. The official release is planned for the first quarter 2009. We throw therefore a new series of articles devoted to Spring web-werkstatt.amaier.de. In this first article, we introduce you some details of restructurings announced by J rgen H ller (the most active developer since the creation of Spring, co-founder of interface 21) during different conferences.

Actuality in full swing, you will indeed have noted the new update of the policy of service performed by SpringSource yesterday evening encouraging the open-source community to migrate to new versions of its framework. So, in publication of Spring web-werkstatt.amaier.de RC1, no more graffiti will be performed on the branch 2.5.x.

Restructuring of Spring Core

Exit JDK 1.4

The first one of novelties is not functional, but purely technical. Spring decided to drop JDK 1.4 once and for all. The overhaul of Spring Core will depend therefore henceforth on functionality of JDK 5.

This decision is indeed going to shock some, but you should not forget that JDK 5 went out to him there more than 3 years and that he is supported by all servers of applications of the market since a very long time ago. Besides, this overhaul coincides with the announcement of Sun of the passage of JDK 1.4 in End Of Service Life (EOSL) at the end of the month.

In fact, nothing of really amazing: Spring prepares the ground since his version 2.5, main novelties of which leant on notions introduced by JDK 5. Some modules have already depended on this one. This general implementation to Spring Core is logical continuation. Even if it means going for a course of treatment in a spa of youth, so much using technical advances.

Spring cleaning

Spring uses this overhaul to get rid of all what was before declared deprecated. This choice is not easy for everybody: let us not forget that Sun drags in his JDK some methods deprecated for several years which are not ready to be withdrawn. Rod Johnson besides made appeals in this sense to clean JavaSE and JavaEE.

The complete list of interfaces, classes and methods deprecated is available on the Javadoc de Spring 2.5, where one gives information to the destinies of these different elements. Will be abolished for example in Spring web-werkstatt.amaier.de:

• AbstractPathMapHandlerMapping, CommonsPathMapHandlerMapping, PathMap, replaced by annotations allowing to mapper requests.
• ServerSessionMessageListenerContainer, SimpleServerSessionFactory, to the advantage of beans DefaultMessageListenerContainer and JmsMessageEndpointManager.

On the other hand, this blow of ended broom, Spring also uses this overhaul to depreciate some cases of use and a little archaic technologies.

Will be probably made deprecated:

• Integration with the hierarchy of class of JUNIT 3.8
• The hierarchy of class of the inspectors of SPRING MVC, replaced by annotations @Controller
• And probably some classes linked in HibernateTemplate and JPATemplate

On top of that, some functionality will be extracted from Spring Core and put in modules legacy.

These modules will be available, at the need, separately:

• Integration with the IPA - INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET no more with a lot of sense in an environment Popular dance 5.
• The specific IPA - INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABETS TopLink

To conclude on this first part, by this big household, Spring intends to give a blow of young person in the middle of his framework. However many and important these changes are, if everything takes place as planned, the users will not probably realise this restructuring. Spring announces us, compared with Spring 2.5, a model of identical programming and a practically complete r trocompatibilit .

Addition of functionality

To finish, here are someone new functionality waited for Spring web-werkstatt.amaier.de:

• Spring EL at all levels: it will be possible to you to use Expression Language in any Spring's module. It will allow you for example to define properties stocks of which will be fixed to the runtime during the creation of the bean. EL will be as well usable from the files of shape as by the different annotations @Value(#{anotherBean.anotherProperty})
• Support of REST via SPRING MVC: this functionality should be available from the first milestone of Spring web-werkstatt.amaier.de. She will be once again also accompanied type of views JSON, XML or ATOM, reminding us of the fact that rivals () make some frameworks. As we announced it in a recent review of the papers, we hope that Spring web-werkstatt.amaier.de supports the entirety of JSR-311: Popular dance IPA - INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET for newly ended RESTFUL WEB SERVICE.
• Support of Portlets 2.0: the first tests and developments obviously began by using the container Pluto. The support of this allows to hope for the appearance of functionality very waited in the world of Portlets, such as the request of resources and communication inter Portlets via events
• Validation of the model via annotations: since Spring 2.5 the ancient model of validation parried a bit outdated. For his version web-werkstatt.amaier.de, Spring offers us to see again all that with the arrival of new annotations. It is possible to hope for a compatibility with , subject was strongly influenced by JBOSS. One also waits for a strong integration with SPRING MVC and Spring JS.
• A new scope: dialogue. Gift in Spring WebFlow, this new scope will be made available in Spring Core specific IPA - INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET will be based on one to open and to end programmatiquement dialogues. A dialogue can compare itself with a sub-session specific for a process. With this new scope, the user will be able to link objects on which the life will depend on a group defined with actions. When this process will end, objects linked to this one will be abolished.

Developments not being ended yet and not being available sources, this list is not either exhaustive, or final or official. We will not miss to publish supplementary articles on these different subjects when we will know about it more.