樂在其中

Spring can autowire dependencies through introspection of the bean classes so that you do not have to explicitly specify the bean properties or constructor arguments. Bean properties can be autowired either by property names or matching types. Constructor arguments can be autowired by matching types. You can even specify the autodetect autowiring mode, which lets Spring choose an appropriate mechanism. As an example, consider the following:

    <bean id="orderService"
        class="com.lizjason.spring.OrderService"
        autowire="byName"/>

The property names of the OrderService class are used to match a bean instance in the container. Autowiring can potentially save some typing and reduce clutter. However, you should not use it in real-world projects because it sacrifices the explicitness and maintainability of the configurations. Many tutorials and presentations tout autowiring as a cool feature in Spring without mentioning this implication. In my opinion, like object-pooling in Spring, it is more a marketing feature. It seems like a good idea to make the XML configuration file smaller, but this will actually increase the complexity down the road, especially when you are working on a large project where many beans are defined. Spring allows you mix autowiring and explicit wiring, but the inconsistency will make the XML configurations even more confusing.

2. Use naming conventions

This is the same philosophy as for Java code. Using clear, descriptive, and consistent name conventions across the project is very helpful for developers to understand the XML configurations. For bean ID, for example, you can follow the Java class field name convention. The bean ID for an instance of OrderServiceDAO would be orderServiceDAO.For large projects, you can add the package name as the prefix of the bean ID.

3. Use shortcut forms

The shortcut form is less verbose, since it moves property values and references from child elements into attributes. For example, the following:

    <bean id="orderService"
        class="com.lizjason.spring.OrderService">
        <property name="companyName">
            <value>lizjason</value>
        </property>
        <constructor-arg>
            <ref bean="orderDAO">
        </constructor-arg>
    </bean>

can be rewritten in the shortcut form as:

    <bean id="orderService"
        class="com.lizjason.spring.OrderService">
        <property name="companyName"
            value="lizjason"/>
        <constructor-arg ref="orderDAO"/>
    </bean>

The shortcut form has been available since version 1.2. Note that there is no shortcut form for <ref local="...">.

The shortcut form not only saves you some typing, but also makes the XML configuration files less cluttered. It can noticeably improve readability when many beans are defined in a configuration file.

However, instead of pre-assembling them in the XML configurations using imports, it is more flexible to configure them through the ApplicationContext. Using ApplicationContext also makes the XML configurations easy to manage. You can pass an array of bean definitions to the ApplicationContext constructor as follows:

    String[] serviceResources =
        {"orderServices.xml",
        "billingServices.xml",
        "shippingServices.xml"};
    ApplicationContext orderServiceContext = new
        ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(serviceResources);

You can set the dependency-check attribute on a bean definition to a value other than the default none, such as simple, objects, or all, so that the container can do the dependency validation for you. It is useful when all of the properties (or certain categories of properties) of a bean must be set explicitly, or via autowiring.

    <bean id="orderService"
        class="com.lizjason.spring.OrderService"
        dependency-check="objects">
        <property name="companyName"
            value="lizjason"/>
        <constructor-arg ref="orderDAO"/>
    </bean>

In this example, the container will ensure that properties that are not primitives or collections are set for the orderService bean. It is possible to enable the default dependency check for all of the beans, but this feature is rarely used because there can be beans with properties that don't need to be set.

9. Add a header comment to each configuration file

It is preferred to use descriptive ids and names instead of inline comments in the XML configuration files. In addition, it is helpful to add a configuration file header, which summarizes the beans defined in the file. Alternatively, you can add descriptions to the description element. For example:

    <beans>
        <description>
            This file defines billing service
            related beans and it depends on
            baseServices.xml,which provides
            service bean templates...
        </description>
        ...
    </beans>

One advantage of using the description element is that it is easy to for tools to pick up the description from this element.

10. Communicate with team members for changes

When you are refactoring Java source code, you need to make sure to update the configuration files accordingly and notify team members. The XML configurations are still code, and they are critical parts of the application, but they are hard to read and maintain. Most of the time, you need to read both the XML configurations and Java source code to figure out what is going on.

11. Prefer setter injection over constructor injection

Spring provides three types of dependency injection: constructor injection, setter injection, and method injection. Typically we only use the first two types.

    <bean id="orderService"
        class="com.lizjason.spring.OrderService">
        <constructor-arg ref="orderDAO"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="billingService"
        class="com.lizjason.spring.BillingService">
        <property name="billingDAO"
            ref="billingDAO">
    </bean>

In this example, the orderService bean uses constructor injection, while the BillingService bean uses setter injection. Constructor injection can ensure that a bean cannot be constructed in an invalid state, but setter injection is more flexible and manageable, especially when the class has multiple properties and some of them are optional.

12. Do not abuse dependency injection

XML is the prevailing format for Spring configurations. XML-based configuration can become verbose and unwieldy when many beans are defined. Spring provides a rich set of configuration options. Appropriately using some of the options can make the XML configurations less cluttered, but other options, like autowiring, may reduce readability and maintainability. Following good practices discussed in the article may help you to create clean and readable XML configuration files!