Why is Spring One of the Most Popular Frameworks among Java Developers?

Java is one of the general purpose programming languages that are used widely for development of desktop, web, and mobile applications. But developers often look for robust frameworks to enhance the application’s functionality, performance, and user experience without putting extra time and effort. Also, the choice of Java frameworks differs from one developer to another. The usage statistics posted on various websites depict that Spring is currently more popular than other application development frameworks for Java programming language.

Despite being a lightweight framework, Spring enables programmers to write a variety of applications in Java by providing robust classes, features and tools. The developers can further run the Spring-based applications on any device and platform that supports Java Virtual Machine (JVM). The feature further makes the applications portable, and enables developers to choose from several deployment options – app server, cloud, and standalone application. There are also a number of reasons why a large percentage of programmers prefer Spring to other Java frameworks.

Why Most Programmers Prefer Spring to Other Java Frameworks?

Modular Design

Spring allows developers to use POJOs without using any EJB container product. The POJO implementation makes the framework lightweight. Spring allows programmers to choose from many classes and packages according to their specific needs. As it is organized modularly, it becomes easier for developers to choose only the necessary classes and packages. The users can further identify the classes or packages required by each project, and ignore the ones that are irrelevant for the project.

Inversion of Control (IoC) Containers

Spring simplifies management of Java object lifecycle through IoC containers. The programmers can use the IoC containers to create, initialize and configure Java objects without writing extra code. Also, they can configure the container simply by loading an XML file. Likewise, they can access the objects through either dependency injection or dependency lookup. The Spring containers make it easier for programmers to customize the application and integrate it seamlessly with varying Java environments.

MVC Web Framework

Many developers also prefer using Spring as a model-view-controller (MVC) framework for Java. The MVC design pattern enables developers to simplify development and maintenance of applications by keeping their user interface and business logic layers separate. The feature further helps developers to build a large web application into small components, and work on individual components simultaneously. Hence, many web developers prefer Spring to other Java web application development frameworks.

Aspect Oriented Programming

Spring comes with a built-in aspect oriented programming (AOP) framework. The AOP framework makes it easier for programmers to decouple the code for different functionalities of the application by defining method-interceptors and pointcuts. It further helps developers to work with cross-cutting concerns – functions spanning multiple points in the application – more efficiently. The developers can use Spring AOC to keep the cross-cutting concerns separated from the business logic layer of the Java application.

Data Access

In addition to supporting several data access frameworks in Java, Spring also provides template class for each supported database framework. The template enables developers to work with the databases more efficiently. They can further use the data access framework provided by Spring to accomplish tasks like resource management, resource wrapping, exception handling, and transaction participation. The framework further allows developers to take advantage of the APIs provided by each database framework.

Object Relational Mapper (ORM)

Spring provides an array of APIs for working with popular ORM frameworks like Hibernate, Oracle Toplink, Java Data Objects (JDO), and Java Persistence API (JPA). The Java programmers can also avail the APIs provided by Spring to simplify exception handling with various ORM frameworks. They can even take advantage of the ORM frameworks to perform database operations without writing extra code.

Transaction Management Interface

The transaction management interface provided by Spring is consistent, and works in all environments in the Java platform. The programmers can use the transaction management interface to work efficiently with local, global, and nested transactions, along with save points. They can further use the interface to scale the local transactions up and scale the global transactions down.

Remote Access

Spring provides an array of APIs to simplify development of remote-enabled services. The developers can also use the Spring Remote Access framework to work with a variety of RPC-based technologies available on the Java platform. The framework further supports several widely used remoting techniques like remote Method Invocation (RMI), Hessian, Burlap, HTTP invoker, JMS, JAX-WS and JAX-RPC. It allows developer to focus extensively on the application’s business logic without worrying about configuration issues and server operations.

Many Projects

Spring is designed as a modular application development framework. But it enables developers choose from a wide range of Spring Projects according to their infrastructure needs of application. For instance, the developers can use Spring Security to keep the application secure by implementing various authorizations and authentications. Likewise, Spring Mobile makes it easier for programmers to create mobile web applications by detecting the device and providing multiple rendition options. The tools provided by Spring Cloud simplify development and deployment of distributed applications and micro services.

Multiple Deployment Options

The Spring-based applications run smoothly on any platform that supports JVM. The framework allows developers to deploy their Java applications in a number of ways. The programmers can deploy the Spring-based application as standalone software or deploy it in an application server. Also, they have option to deploy the application directly in the cloud. Also, they can easily keep the application portable, and run it on many platforms.

Testable and Maintainable Code

Spring allows programmers to write clean and testable code based on the specific infrastructure components required by the project. The environment-dependent code makes it easier for developers to test various aspects of the Spring-based applications. The testers can further inject test data by taking advantage of the dependency injection. They even do not require a server to test the Spring-based applications effectively.

In addition to providing a number of modules and frameworks, Spring also supports several widely used frameworks including EJB, JSF, Struts, Tapestry, and Hibernate. But many developers consider Spring to be more complex than other Java frameworks. The beginners have to put extra time and effort to learn Spring framework and write code in XML. However, the developers can take advantage of the classes, modules and tools provided by Spring to develop and deploy a variety of Java applications efficiently and rapidly.