It's Spring time

We are pleased to announce that Spring 1.2 RC1 has just been released. This release introduces a number of major new features:

• finer-grained distribution jar files, alongside the full spring.jar
  
• AOP Alliance interfaces are now contained in spring-aop.jar and spring.jar
  

XML bean definition improvements ("ref" and "value" shortcut attributes
etc)

improved AOP TargetSourceCreator mechanism (supporting
LazyInitTargetSource too)

transaction annotation support for JDK 1.5+ (annotation called
"Transactional")

improved WebLogicJtaTransactionManager (transaction names, isolation
levels)

SqlRowSet support for JDBC (in conjunction with JdbcTemplate's
"queryForRowSet")

Hibernate3 support (in orm.hibernate3; Hibernate 2.1 support is still
available)

JMX support for export of Spring beans as managed resources and for MBean
access

Commons Attributes and JDK 1.5+ annotations for JMX MBean export

This release also contains many minor enhancements, for example:

factored out BindingErrorProcessor strategy for ServletRequestDataBinder

improved ParameterMethodNameResolver for Web MVC MultiActionController

For a detailed list of enhancements and bug fixes, see the changelog.

This release candidate is already considered stable and recommended for development use. We expect Spring 1.2 final to be released in late April.

Watch out for the Spring Web Flow preview release to follow later this week (for use with Spring 1.2)! Web Flow will also become part of the nightly build at that time.

We are pleased to announce that Spring Framework 1.1.5 has just been released.

This is the last bug fix and minor enhancement release in the 1.1.x series, featuring many minor improvements such as:

• added overloaded "reject" and rejectValue" methods without default message to Errors interface and BindException
  
• added "lookup(name, requiredType)" convenience method to JndiTemplate, matching the JNDI object against the given type
  
• added "homeInterface" property to AbstractRemoteSlsbInvokerInterceptor, for specifying the home interface to narrow to
  
• introduced MailMessage interface as common interface for SimpleMailMessage and JavaMail MIME messages
  
• Log4jConfigurer accepts a "classpath:" URL or a "file:" URL as location too, not just a plain file path
  
• Log4jConfigurer accepts config files that do not reside in the file system, as long as there is no refresh interval
  
  
• added "int[] batchUpdate(String[] sql)" method to JdbcTemplate, for executing a group of SQL statements as a batch
  
• added C3P0NativeJdbcExtractor for C3P0 0.8.5 or later (for earlier C3P0 versions, use SimpleNativeJdbcExtractor)
  
• added "maxRows" bean property to JdbcTemplate, allowing to specify the maximum number of rows to be fetched
  
• added "fetchSize" and "maxRows" bean properties to RdbmsOperation, passing the values to the internal JdbcTemplate
  
• added ClobStringTypeHandler, BlobByteArrayTypeHandler and BlobSerializableTypeHandler for iBATIS SQL Maps 2.0.9
  
• ResourceHolderSupport throws TransactionTimedOutException if no time-to-live left (before attempting an operation)
  
• TransactionSynchronization objects can influence their execution order through implementing the Ordered interface
  
• JtaTransactionManager is able to work with a JTA TransactionManager only (i.e. without a UserTransaction handle)
  
  
• upgraded MockHttpServletRequest to Servlet API 2.4 (added getRemotePort, getLocalName, getLocalAddr, getLocalPort)
  
• upgraded MockPageContext to JSP API 2.0 (added getExpressionEvaluator, getVariableResolver, overloaded include)
  
• added "contextOverride" option to ServletContextPropertyPlaceholderConfigurer, letting web.xml override local settings
  
• added "searchContextAttributes" option to ServletContextPropertyPlaceholderConfigurer, resolving context attributes
  
• added "clear" and "isEmpty" methods to ModelAndView, allowing to clear the view of a given ModelAndView object
  
• added JasperReportsMultiFormatView, allowing to specify the output format dynamically via a discriminator in the model
  
• JSP EL expressions in Spring's JSP tags will be parsed with JSP 2.0 ExpressionEvaluator on JSP 2.0 (Jakarta JSTL else)
  
• changed "spring:transform" tag's "value" attribute from String to Object, to allow for expressions resolved by JSP 2.0
  

Please see the changelog for details.

Our next milestone is 1.2 RC1, which we intend to release as soon as possible: with Hibernate3 support, JMX support and further major new features. Nightly 1.2-dev snapshots with Hibernate3 support and JMX support will be available within a few days, so feel free to give 1.2 an early try

We are pleased to announce that Spring Framework 1.1.4 has just been released. This is a bugfix and minor enhancement release in the 1.1 series.

        </span>Among the new

features are:

• added LazyInitTargetSource, lazily accessing a singleton from a BeanFactory (lazily initializing on first call)
• added ServiceLocatorFactoryBean, allowing to map custom service locator interface methods to BeanFactory.getBean calls
• reworked ResourcePatternResolver to extend ResourceLoader, for ResourcePatternResolver checks in ResourceLoaderAware
• made BindException serializable, provided that the contained target object is serializable

• added LazyConnectionDataSourceProxy, for lazily fetching JDBC Connections with native JDBC or Hibernate transactions
• added "Sybase-jConnect" to default sql-error-codes.xml file, for database product name "Adaptive Server Enterprise"
• added overloaded "queryForList"/"queryForObject"/"queryForLong"/"queryForInt" methods with arg types to JdbcTemplate
• added "alwaysUseNewSession" flag to HibernateTemplate, enforcing a new Session even in case of a pre-bound Session
• HibernateTemplate proxies exposed Sessions by default, applying query cache settings and transaction timeouts
• added "isConnectFailure(RemoteException)" hook to AbstractRemoteSlsbInvokerInterceptor, for customized failure checks

• added "isConnectFailure(RemoteException)" hook to (Jndi)RmiClientInterceptor, for customized connect failure checks
• added JaxRpcServicePostProcessor interface, intended for reusable custom type mappings etc for a JAX-RPC service
• added "servicePostProcessors" property to LocalJaxRpcServiceFactory and subclasses (incl. JaxRpcPortProxyFactoryBean)

• added "messageIdEnabled" and "messageTimestampEnabled" properties to JmsTemplate, to disable id/timestamp on producer
• added "pubSubNoLocal" property to JmsTemplate, leading to the NoLocal flag being specified on MessageConsumer creation
• added "receiveSelected" and "receivedSelectedAndConvert" methods to JmsTemplate, accepting JMS message selectors
• added "schedulerListeners", "(global)JobListeners", "(global)TriggerListeners" bean properties to SchedulerFactoryBean
• added "jobListenerNames"/"triggerListenerNames" property to JobDetailBean, CronTriggerBean, SimpleTriggerBean (resp.)

• added ServletContextAttributeFactoryBean, exposing an existing ServletContext attribute for bean references
• added ServletContextAttributeExporter, taking Spring-defined objects and exposing them as ServletContext attributes
• added ServletContextPropertyPlaceholderConfigurer, a subclass that falls back to web.xml context-param entries
• added "publishEvents" init-param to FrameworkServlet, allowing to turn off the publishing of RequestHandledEvents
• Spring JSP tags work outside DispatcherServlet too, falling back to root WebApplicationContext and JSTL/request locale

Please see the changelog for details.
Downloads are available through the SourceForge project page

We are pleased to announce that Spring Framework 1.1.3 has just been released. This is a bugfix and minor enhancement release in the 1.1 series; most importantly, JDK 1.3 compatibility is fully restored.

Among the new features in this release are:

        <ul>
          <li>added

"setResourceLoader" method to GenericApplicationContext, for overriding the default resource loading strategy

added FileSystemResourceLoader, resolving paths as file system resources rather than as class path resources

BeanWrapperImpl automatically registers a default ResourceArrayPropertyEditor

added CustomCollectionEditor, by default registered to convert between Set, SortedSet and List (when necessary)

added "fileEncoding" and "propertiesPersister" properties to PropertyResourceConfigurer

…

We are pleased to announce that Spring Framework 1.1.2 has just been released. This is a bugfix and minor enhancement release.
 

Among the new features in this release are

        <ul>
          <li>added

support for multi-dimensional collections to BeanWrapperImpl (e.g. "map[myKey][0]" or "map[myKey][0].name")

added "getType(name)" method to BeanFactory interface, checking the type of object that "getBean" would return

added "getBeansOfType(type)" convenience method to ListableBeanFactory interface, without explicit filters

added PropertyPathFactoryBean, allowing to evaluate the property path of a target bean and expose the result

allow "bean*" rather than "bean+" in XML bean definitions, i.e. no bean definitions in a file (just imports)

• …

We are pleased to announce that Spring Framework 1.1.1 has just been released. This is a bugfix and minor enhancement release.
 

Among the new features in this release are:

        <ul>
          <li>&quot;import&quot;

element for XML bean definitions

support for non-public classes and non-public init and destroy methods

bean factory regards bean references for correct destruction order (not requiring "depends-on")

bean factory detects JDK 1.4 and Commons Collections for linked/identity map creation

factored out the "publishEvent" method into the ApplicationEventPublisher interface

included new "test" package in mock JAR, offering superclasses for tests requiring Spring contexts

added "applyQueryTimeout" method to the JdoDialect interface

added "addAttribute" and "getAttribute" methods to RemoteInvocation

…

We are pleased to announce that Spring Framework 1.1 (final) has just been released. Since 1.1 RC2, some API clarifications have happened and a number of bugs have been fixed.

There is also a variety of minor new features:

• reworked BeanWrapperImpl's property-specific custom editor handling to allow registration for uninitialized subpaths
• added "applyBeanPropertyValues" method to AutowireCapableBeanFactory, for populating an existing bean instance


• added "(abstract)" marker for properties bean definitions respectively "abstract" attribute for XML bean definitions
  


• added support for SqlReturnType interface which allows to return custom types from stored procedures
• added auto-conversion of java.util.Date…

We are pleased to announce that Spring Framework 1.1 Release Candidate 2 is available. This will be the last release candidate for 1.1; release 1.1 final can be expected very soon.

Among the new features in this release are:

• the new HTTP invoker remoting strategy, which uses Java serialization over HTTP (combining the strengths of RMI and Hessian)
• RemoteInvocationFactory and RemoteInvocationExecutor strategies for HTTP/RMI invoker, for additional invocation context
• basic JSF support in the form of a JSF VariableResolver implementation that is aware of Spring-managed middle tier beans
• form simplification macros for Velocity and FreeMarker, providing HTML input macros etc for easy form building
• …

The Spring team are happy to announce the first release candidate of Spring 1.1.

New features and enhancements in Spring 1.1 RC1 include:

• IoC container supports Method Injection: the overriding of concrete or abstract methods, typically to look up a dependency managed by the container. This means even less need to implement Spring-specific interfaces such as BeanFactoryAware.
• The IoC container can now obtain objects from static factory methods as well as constructors. This enhancement allows excellent AspectJ integration: it is now possible to configure AspectJ aspects using Spring Dependency Injection, like any object. We plan to provide examples of AspectJ integration before 1.1 final.
• Support for sending and receiving JMS messages
• Support for Apache OJB as an ORM alternative, within Spring's consistent data access abstraction
• Significantly improved JDO support
• Greater flexibility in translating SQLExceptions, and other JDBC enhancements
• Support for nested transactions and savepoints when working with JDBC. Declarative transaction management can support nested transactions.
• AOP proxies are now serializable if all Advisors and target are serializable
• Improved Velocity and FreeMarker support
• Reworked parent/child bean definition concept: a child can now override any inherited settings. This can be used to simplify configuration.

Spring 1.1 final is scheduled for release in mid August, and will be 100% backward compatible with Spring 1.0.2. As Spring aims to minimize dependency of application code on the framework, and because changes are backward compatible, we do not expect that existing applications will require any code changes to migrate to Spring 1.1.

The main focus between now and the 1.1 final release will be on documentation and examples.

See the changelog for details.

The release can be downloaded here