Spring Framework is a lightweight framework which supports various frameworks such as Struts, Hibernate, EJB & JSF etc. It was developed by Rod Johnson in 2003 which makes the easy development of Java application. The Spring framework comprises various modules such as IOC, ORM, MVC etc.Spring is the most powerful app development framework for Java Programming. Spring Framework is used by millions of peoples worldwide to create high performing, easily testable, and reusable code.Spring framework makes J2EE application development easier and delivers good programming practices by enabling a POJO-based programming model. Spring Framework 5.0 is the major release of the Spring Framework project which is lead first Spring Framework 5.0 on July 28, 2016.
Top 7 New Features and Enhancements in Spring Framework 5.0
- Spring Web MVC
- Reactive Programming Model
- Spring Web Flux
- JDK 8+ and Java EE 7+ Baseline
- Spring Core Container
- Testing improvements
- Functional Programming With Kotlin 1.1
1. Spring Web MVC
It provides full Servlet signature support in Spring Filter implementations with servlet PushBuilder argument in Spring MVC methods. It includes Unified support for common media using MediaTypeFactory delegate & Java Activation Framework.
The Spring Web model-view-controller framework is designed to dispatch requests to handlers by configuring handler mappings, view resolution, time zone and theme resolution. It also supports for uploading files & a wide range of flexible handling methods based on controller & request mapping.
Features of Spring Framework Web MVC
- Spring Web Flow is the best support & solution for the web application management where page flow integrates with existing frameworks like MVC and JSF, which includes Servlet and Portlet too.
- It allows capturing logical page flows as well as self-contained modules which are reusable to build web application modules that help to guide the user during controlled navigations for driving business processes.
- Spring web flow offers best web support features such as clear separation, Each role controller, role validator, command form object, model object, Servlet & mapping etc.
- It enables powerful configuration of both framework and application classes in a form of JavaBeans. This configuration includes easy reference across contexts as web controllers, business objects, and validators.
- The best spring web MVC feature is the Customizable binding and validation. It includes Type mismatch in app level validation that keep the localized date and number binding, String form objects with manual parsing and conversion to business objects.
2. Reactive Programming Model
- A new feature introduces in Spring 5 release is the new reactive stack web framework. A fully reactive and non-blocking stack is useful for event loop style processing that can scale by a small number of threads.
- The Reactive API is officially part of Java 9 whereas Java 8 includes a dependency for the Reactive API specification.The reactive stack is an API which is developed by the developer from Netflix, Pivotal, Typesafe, Red Hat, Oracle, and Twitter.
- It provides a common API for reactive programming and its implementations such as JPA for Hibernate where JPA is an API and Hibernate is an implementation.
- Spring Framework 5.0 has streaming support built on Project Reactor which is a fourth-generation Reactive library for building non-blocking applications on the JVM based on the reactive stream specification.
3. Spring WebFlux
- Spring Framework 5.0 comes with a new spring web flux module that supports reactive HTTP and WebSocket clients.
- Best Spring Framework 5.0 also support reactive web applications on servers such as REST, HTML, and WebSocket etc.
Two Programming Model Spring Framework Webflux Server-side:
- Annotation-based with @Controller style, annotation-based on programming model, to Spring MVC, in WebFlux, that runs on a reactive stack.
- Functional style routing and handling with Java 8 lambda with fully asynchronous and non-blocking. It supports an event-loop execution model as well as traditional large thread pool with thread-per-request execution model.
4. JDK 8+ and Java EE 7+ Baseline
- The complete Spring Framework 5.0 code runs on Java 8. Hence, Java 8 is Spring Framework 5.0 minimum work requirement. The new feature is the part of the modern web framework in Java 8 releases.
- Spring Framework 5.0 expected to release with Java 9. Whereas, Java 9 release expected in September so spring developer team decided to decouple the Spring Framework 5.0 release from Java 9.
- This powerful framework has improved readability through generics, lambdas and also provide conditional support for java8 features. It offers compatibility with JDK 9 on runtime, classpath & automatic modules.
Read Complete Spring Framework 5.0 & Its New Core Reactive Features