Spring Inversion of Control Containers

Spring Container is the most important module in Spring Framework. It manages the files that are included in your application and their objects. These objects are called Java Beans.

Spring Container uses:

– Metadata: a XML configuration file, Java annotations, or Java code

– POJO Classes: Java classes

to make your application.

There are two Spring Containers:

– BeanFactory (an org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanFactory interface) – simpler. light-weight applications, mobile, the most important implementation is XmlBeanFactory class

– ApplicationContext (an org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextinterface interface) – more complicated, enterprise-oriented, heavy-weight applications, not-mobile, generally recommended to use, the most important implementation are FileSystemXmlApplicationContext, ClassPathXmlApplicationContext, and WebXmlApplicationContext

BeanFactory container is included in ApplicationContext container.