Develop Reference

Spring Boot | Using a separate file for logic

I am writing a small CRUD in Spring and Java. And I want to use a separate file for writing logic, this is very convenient for me, I did this when developing with NestJS. I have a few questions, is it correct to do this in Spring, or should I do everything inside a function in the controller. And if I write logic in a separate file, I should mark the logic class as #Component and the functions inside it as #Bean, right? I am new to Spring and as I understand it, I have to do this in order for the application to work correctly and my functions to be in the application context.
AuthLogic.java
#Component
public class AuthLogic {
#Bean
public void register() {
// code ...
}
}
AuthController.java
#RestController
public class AuthController {
#RequestMapping(value = "/register", method = RequestMethod.POST)
#ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.CREATED)
public void register(#Valid #RequestBody UserDTO newUser) {
// here I call the register function from AuthLogic
}
}

you can mark your logic class with #Service and use that for example you can make a AuthService and use it like
#Service
public class AuthService{
public returnType login(){
//Logic
}
}
and use this like
#RestController
public class AuthController {
AuthService authService;
#RequestMapping(value = "/register", method = RequestMethod.POST)
#ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.CREATED)
public void register(#Valid #RequestBody UserDTO newUser) {
authService.login();
}
}

You can write your business logic in a new separate file at service layer.
Suppose you name it as AuthService and you mark it with annotation #Service.
#Service
public class AuthService{
}
You can then Autowire it in your controller class.
#RestController
public class AuthController {
#Autowired
AuthService authService;
#RequestMapping(value = "/register", method = RequestMethod.POST)
#ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.CREATED)
public void register(#Valid #RequestBody UserDTO newUser) {
// here I call the register function from AuthLogic
}
}

Using separate files, or classes more importantly, is very recommended in Spring, and I assume most other languages.
The #Bean annotation on AuthLogic.java is unneeded and I think may cause startup or compilation errors.
I would change the name of AuthLogic to AuthLogicImpl, create an interface named AuthLogic with the method signature void register(), and have AuthLogicImpl implement AuthLogic. Then you can create a constructor for AuthController which accepts and AuthLogic parameter and sets it to a private field (note using the interface not the implementation in the constructor).
At the core of Spring is the IoC container. This container holds "beans" that can be injected or autowired into other beans. These beans are an instance of their class and can be used by other beans. Remember Spring uses the singleton pattern, so your beans should be stateless. This allows Spring to handle the application startup for you, so you don't need to write a ton of code creating all the different services/classes and wiring them together, it's all automagically done for you.
There are two key annoitations that you appear to be confused about:
#Component Putting this above a class will create an instance of that class (a bean) and put it into the IoC container. Other beans can access this by accepting the original beans interface in its constructor. So if I put #Component above my class FooImpl which implements Foo, then I can create a class, BarImpl with the constructor public BarImpl(Foo foo) {this.foo = foo} and BarImpl can use any public method of Foo (which will use FooImpl's implementation).
#Bean this is to be put on a method of a class that is annotated with #Configuration. This tells Spring that this method should be run at startup, and this method will return a bean that Spring should add to the IoC container. This is a popular way of configuring a bean that requires some parameters, such as the bean that manages the connection to a third party service or datastore, especially when that there is a little bit of logic that needs to go into creating the bean.
Note that the above is very broad, and there are some specifics if you need to dig deep into the spring framework, so there will be more clarification in the Spring documentation or you dig into some established Spring project. However it should suffice to answer the broad question of what is going on with #Component and #Bean.

There is no specific layout or code structure for Spring Boot Projects. However, there are some best practices followed by developers that will help us too. You can divide your project into layers like service layer, entity layer, and repository layer.
We use the entity layer to write all model and POJO classes. We annotate them with #Entity.
We use #Repository to indicate that this is a repository interface that is used to do some basic CRUD operations.
Sidenote:- You don't have to write #Repository for classes that implement or interfaces that extends Repository interfaces provided by Spring Boot framework.
We use #Service to say that this is the service class where your all business logic will be present.
We use the controller layer to receive HTTP requests and send back HTTP Responses or views.
You can learn and understand more from here
You can refer to this Image to understand the structure
project structure

How to autowire a bean into a 2 different controllers (Spring)

I am learning spring and i have a problem that i do not know how to solve.
#Service
#Transactional
public class SchoolService {
#Autowired
private CourseDao courseDao;
#Autowired
private EducationDao educationDao;
#Autowired
private StudentDao studentDao;
#Autowired
private TeacherDao teacherDao;
#Autowired
private StatisticsDao statisticsDao;
............
}
This code is injecting my DAOS into this service class but then i need to inject the class above into two controllers.
One way i have tried was with this code but that did not work.
#Autowired
SchoolService sm;
How would i inject it into my controller class. I have tried making the controller class a #Component but nothing seems to work.
ClassPathXmlApplicationContext container = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("application.xml");
SchoolService sm = container.getBean(SchoolService.class);
This way works but i do not want to create a new applicationcontext for each time i want to get that bean.
Yes i am using xml at the moment, please don't shoot me :D
Thanks.

Try creating the controller bean in the application.xml file instead of annotating the controller.

Since its obviously an educational question, I'll try to provide a very detailed answer as much as I can:
Once basic thing about spring that all the auto-wiring magic happens only with beans that are managed by spring.
So:
Your controllers must be managed by spring
Your service must be managed by spring
Your DAOs must be managed by spring
Otherwise, autowiring won't work, I can't stress it more.
Now, Think about the Application Context as about the one global registry of all the beans. By default the beans are singletons (singleton scope in terms of spring) which means that there is only one object (instance) of that bean "retained" in the Application Context.
The act of autowiring means basically that the bean (managed by spring) - controller in your case has dependencies that spring can inject by looking in that global registry, getting the matching bean and setting to the data field on which the #Autowired annotation is called.
So, if you have two controllers (again, both managed by spring), you can:
#Controller
public class ControllerA {
#Autowired
private SchoolService sm;
}
#Controller
public class ControllerB {
#Autowired
private SchoolService sm;
}
In this case, the same instance of school service will be injected into two different controllers, so you should good to go.

#Inject not injecting and causing NullPointerException using component scanning

My application context XML is simple:
<context:component-scan base-package="com.depressio.spring" />
In that package, I have my configuration:
package com.depressio.spring
#Configuration
#ComponentScan(basePackages = "com.depressio")
public class DepressioConfiguration
{
#Inject private ApplicationContext context;
}
Within com.depressio, there's a repository (DAO):
package com.depressio.dao;
#Repository
public class ParameterDAO
{
public Parameter getParameter(long ID) { ... }
}
... and a service where injection is working just fine (no NPE when parameterDAO is used):
package com.depressio.resource;
#Service
#Path("/depressio/parameters")
public class ParameterResource
{
#Inject private ParameterDAO parameterDAO;
#Path("{id}")
public Response getParameter(long parameterID)
{
return Response.ok(parameterDAO.getParameter(parameterID).legacyFormat()).build();
}
}
However, the legacyFormat() method call there constructs another object. Within that object, I have to inject a different DAO (also annotated with #Repository, though). That injection isn't working.
So, we have the original Parameter object:
package com.depressio.domain;
public class Parameter
{
...
public LegacyParameter legacyFormat()
{
return new LegacyParameter(this);
}
}
... and the LegacyParameter where the injection isn't working:
package com.depressio.domain.legacy;
public class LegacyParameter
{
#Inject private LegacyDAO legacyDAO;
....
public LegacyParameter(Parameter newParameter)
{
// NullPointerException when using the injected legacyDAO.
}
}
I've tried a few things, including:
Using an no-args constructor for LegacyParameter, then calling a populate method so I'm not using the injected DAO until after the object is constructed. This didn't work.
Injecting the LegacyDAO into the ParameterResource and passing it in. This worked, but isn't ideal since I have to pass it around a whole lot (which injection should help avoid, no?). It did prove that LegacyDAO is injectible... just not into LegacyParameter apparently.
Adding a #Service, #Component, or #Named annotation on LegacyParameter. All end up with the NullPointerException on the line I try to reference the injected legacyDAO.
What am I missing?

As Sotirios has pointed out, it can't work since you create a regular Java object and do not give Spring a chance to enhance it.
Either let Spring create objects for which you want to enjoy the Spring 'magic' (like setting #Inject dependencies etc).
Or create your own objects and set the dependencies yourself (yourObject.setDao(dao)).
That said, there are exceptional cases in which you still want to create your objects 'on the fly' by yourself but rely on Spring to inject dependencies to these objects. In this case you should call Spring explicitly:
LegacyParameter p = new LegacyParameter(...);
applicationContext.getAutowireCapableBeanFactory().autowireBean(p);
I don't think you really need it in your case.
(see this link inject bean reference into a Quartz job in Spring? for an example when this is really required).
In addition, I would advice to simplify your configuration.
Why do you use both xml-based and java-based configuration that do actually the same? In your example you could keep only one of them and have the same effect.

Instantiating bean using factory pattern in Spring MVC 3

I got Object coming in a REST web service controller's web method which is locally initialized.
#RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST,value = "/test",headers="Accept=*/*")
public #ResponseBody ModelAndView computeDetails(#RequestBody RequestObj reqObj, ModelMap model) {
System.out.println(reqObj.getcode());
return new ModelAndView("responsedetails", "object", reqObj);
}
This RequestObj object holds the key code to instantiate dependency using factory.
Different codes classes have been defined which implement BaseCode Interface.
How can I use factory method to instantiate particular code class based on code value coming in as BaseCode type in my service bean?
Any idea? Thanks in advance.

What I usually do in such cases is:
inject the factory into the controller using Spring's bean
create a method getBaseCode(String code) in the factory (please note: String here stands for code type, so use the actual code type if not String
make getBaseCode returning the BaseCode interface while constructing the real implementation
supposing you have an execute method in BaseCode, use the getBaseCode method into the controller to get the real collaborator and then call the execute method to perform the actual action
Ignoring the first point (which I think you can easily looking at any Spring tutorial) the factory will be something like
public class BaseCodeFactory {
public BaseCode getBaseCode(String code) {
if(code.equals("something")) return new ThisBaseCodeImpl();
else //and so on
}
}
while computeDetails becomes similar to:
#RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST,value = "/test",headers="Accept=*/*")
public #ResponseBody ModelAndView computeDetails(#RequestBody RequestObj reqObj, ModelMap model) {
//...
factory.getBaseCode(reqObj.getcode()).execute();
//...
}
As a side note, I will not go for names like the one I choose here, I suggest you to look for something more significative in your domain (BaseCode has no meaning for example), take this snippets just as a directive.
Base on OP comment. If you have ThisBaseCodeImpl which makes use of other Spring bean you can
annotate it with #Configurable so, when you use new ThisBaseCodeImpl(/*args if you like*/) its bean are instantiated by Spring. I don't personally like this solution since, in my opinion, it pollutes the code with hidden Spring's bean. On the other hand is quite flexible, since it allows you to manage both runtime constructor arguments and Spring beans
add ThisBaseCodeImpl to the Spring context and change the factory, so that a collaborator for ThisBaseCodeImpl is injected into it.
1st point example:
#Configurable
public class ThisBaseCodeImpl {
#Resource
private Bean bean;
}
2nd point example:
public class BaseCodeFactory {
#Resource
ThisBaseCodeImpl thisBaseCodeImpl;
public BaseCode getBaseCode(String code) {
if(code.equals("something")) return thisBaseCodeImpl;
else //and so on
}
}

I'm not sure if I understood your problem well, but in general spring dependencies have nothing to do here. Just write custom Factory class and return BaseCode implemetation depending on the reqObj.getcode().

I did it this way -
Make your factory as ServletContextAware in a way to get the currentContext. And define getInstance method as
WebApplicationContext ctx = WebApplicationContextUtils.getRequiredWebApplicationContext(servletContext);
ctx.getBean(classNameToBeInstantiated);
Define your bean's inheritance in spring context so that Spring injects its dependencies.

#Resource annotation producing NPE

I "inherited" a large Spring application with a spring-ws service in it.
The service is the typical Spring-WS code:
package service;
#Endpoint
public class ServiceEndpoint {
#Resource EntityDao entityDao;
#PayloadRoot(localPart=...)
#ResponsePayload
public ResponseWrapperClass getServiceMethod(#RequestPayload RequestWrapperClass request) {
return new ResponseProcessorClass(request).generateResponse();
}
}
The service is massive, and the entityDao injected with the #Resource annotation is used widely in the class.
Because the specific method I'm working on is a bit complex, I have encapsulated it in a separate class in a subpackage.
The ResponseProcessorClass looks like this:
package service.business;
#Component
public class ResponseProcessorClass {
#Resource EntityDao entityDao;
public ResponseWrapperClass generateResponse() {
entityDao.getSomeData(); //encapsulates hibernate logic -> Null Pointer Exception
}
}
As you can see by my comments above, I get a Null Pointer Exception when using the #Resource annotation in my new class.
I haven't used this annotation before, but for what I understood from the documentation the type should be inferred and injected. I could not find any configuration in any XML file for it either.
Could anyone tell me why am I getting the NPE?

Spring can only inject Spring managed beans into Spring managed beans. Therefore, if you create the object yourself, Spring can't do anything about it. This
return new ResponseProcessorClass(request).generateResponse();
is the problem. You are expecting Spring to inject a field of the ResponseProcessorClass object you created.
Try injecting a prototype bean instead of creating it yourself. This depends on your ResponseProcessorClass class.