Part 1. Core Spring

Spring does a lot of things. But when you break it down to its core parts, Spring’s primary features are dependency injection (DI) and aspect-oriented programming (AOP). Starting in chapter 1, “Springing into action,” I’ll give you a quick overview of DI and AOP in Spring and see how they can help you decouple application objects.

In chapter 2, “Wiring beans,” we’ll dive deeper into how to use Spring’s XML-based configuration to keep application objects loosely coupled with dependency injection. You’ll learn how to define application objects and then wire them with their dependencies.

XML isn’t the only way that Spring can be configured. Picking up where the previous chapter left off, chapter 3, “Minimizing XML configuration in Spring,” explores some new features in Spring that make it possible to wire application objects with minimal or (in some cases, no) XML.

Chapter 4, “Aspect-oriented Spring,” explores how to use Spring’s AOP features to decouple systemwide services (such as security and auditing) from the objects they service. This chapter sets the stage for chapters 6 and 9, where you’ll learn how to use Spring AOP to provide declarative transaction and security.