Spring - Bean Scopes

When defining a <bean> you have the option of declaring a scope for that bean. For example, to force Spring to produce a new bean instance each time one is needed, you should declare the bean's scope attribute to be prototype.

The Spring Framework supports the following five scopes, three of which are available only if you use a web-aware ApplicationContext.

Sr.No.	Scope & Description
1	singleton This scopes the bean definition to a single instance per Spring IoC container (default).
2	prototype This scopes a single bean definition to have any number of object instances.
3	request This scopes a bean definition to an HTTP request. Only valid in the context of a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.
4	session This scopes a bean definition to an HTTP session. Only valid in the context of a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.
5	global-session This scopes a bean definition to a global HTTP session. Only valid in the context of a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.

The singleton scope

If a scope is set to singleton, the Spring IoC container creates exactly one instance of the object defined by that bean definition. The default scope is always singleton. However, when you need one and only one instance of a bean, you can set the scope property to singleton in the bean configuration file, as shown in the following code snippet −

<!-- A bean definition with singleton scope -->
<bean id = "..." class = "..." scope = "singleton">
   <!-- collaborators and configuration for this bean go here -->
</bean>

Example

Here is the content of ExampleDemo.java file −

package com.miit.spring;

public class ExampleDemo {
   private String message;

   public void setMessage(String message){
      this.message  = message;
   }
   public void getMessage(){
      System.out.println("Your Message : " + message);
   }
}

Following is the content of the MainApp.java file −

package com.miit.spring;

import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;

public class MainApp {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("Beans.xml");
      ExampleDemo objA = (ExampleDemo) context.getBean("exampleDemo");

      objA.setMessage("I'm object A");
      objA.getMessage();

      ExampleDemo objB = (ExampleDemo) context.getBean("exampleDemo");
      objB.getMessage();
   }
}

Following is the configuration file Beans.xml required for singleton scope −

<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
   xmlns:xsi = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xsi:schemaLocation = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd">

   <bean id = "exampleDemo" class = "com.miit.spring.ExampleDemo" scope = "singleton">
   </bean>

</beans>

Once you are done creating the source and bean configuration files, let us run the application. If everything is fine with your application, it will print the following message −

Your Message : I'm object A
Your Message : I'm object A

The prototype scope

If the scope is set to prototype, the Spring IoC container creates a new bean instance of the object every time a request for that specific bean is made. As a rule, use the prototype scope for all state-full beans and the singleton scope for stateless beans.

To define a prototype scope, you can set the scope property to prototype in the bean configuration file, as shown in the following code snippet −

<!-- A bean definition with prototype scope -->
<bean id = "..." class = "..." scope = "prototype">
   <!-- collaborators and configuration for this bean go here -->
</bean>

Example

Here is the content of ExampleDemo.java file

package com.miit.spring;

public class ExampleDemo {
   private String message;

   public void setMessage(String message){
      this.message  = message;
   }
   public void getMessage(){
      System.out.println("Your Message : " + message);
   }
}

Following is the content of the MainApp.java file −

package com.miit.spring;

import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;

public class MainApp {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("Beans.xml");
      ExampleDemo objA = (ExampleDemo) context.getBean("exampleDemo");

      objA.setMessage("I'm object A");
      objA.getMessage();

      ExampleDemo objB = (ExampleDemo) context.getBean("exampleDemo");
      objB.getMessage();
   }
}

Following is the configuration file Beans.xml required for prototype scope −

<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
   xmlns:xsi = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xsi:schemaLocation = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd">

   <bean id = "exampleDemo" class = "com.miit.spring.ExampleDemo" scope = "prototype">
   </bean>

</beans>

Once you are done creating the source and bean configuration files, let us run the application. If everything is fine with your application, it will print the following message −

Your Message : I'm object A
Your Message : null