Spring in Action, Fourth Edition: Covers Spring 4

by Craig Walls and Ryan Breidenbach

Book Overview

Summary

Spring in Action, Fourth Edition is a hands-on guide to the Spring Framework, updated for version 4. It covers the latest features, tools, and practices including Spring MVC, REST, Security, Web Flow, and more. You'll move between short snippets and an ongoing example as you learn to build simple and efficient J2EE applications. Author Craig Walls has a special knack for crisp and entertaining examples that zoom in on...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 161729120X
• ISBN13: 9781617291203
• Release Date: November 2014
• Publisher: Manning Publications
• Length: 624 Pages
• Weight: 2.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

Simply awesome

I can't say enough good things about this book. I can see why the authors of this book are regarded as some of the best in the Manning publishing group and I will definitely look for more of their books. Everything is explained very clearly, it flows well from chapter to chapter, the examples are great, there is a perfect amount of humour. I can't compare to other Spring books yet but I'm very happy with this one. Wish all other technical authors would follow this high standard.

Nice book

I bought this primarily to know about Dependency Injection and the book explains it clearly and in a easy to understand way with test cases and code snippets.

The BEST Spring tutorial out there

To me, the ultimate compliment I can offer a book or an author is that I wish I had written this book. Spring in Action is just an incredibly well written book that does a great job of giving its reader a great introduction to Spring and all the facets that make it such a great framework and container. I wish I had written this book or I wish I could write this well. The authors have really done a great job in explaining every little detail about Spring where you really get the feeling that you really know Spring after reading this book. Unlike code-specific books, this book doesn't overwhelm you with code. Don't get me wrong - there is more that enough code in the book and a snippet of code typically follows after detailed explanation of a particular concept. Spring Live on the other hand takes a code driven approach where you learn Spring by actually writing code. I also happen to love Spring Live but I prefer Spring in Action as I want to really understand what is going on under the covers and all the concepts rather than just learning how to write Spring code. I'm vastly oversimplifying Spring Live as it is also a pretty nice book, but I hope you get the analogy I am trying to make here. Spring in Action starts off with an introduction to Spring, beans and the bean factory. Having used Spring for more than a year, I assumed I really knew all the ins and outs of wiring beans and I learned quite a lot in the first 3 chapters. I really love the writing style and the humor sprinkled in throughout the book makes this a really easy read. I've already re-read this book several times and I just re-read it again while flying from Miami to Chicago, thanks to the 2 hour early arrival. The writing just flows and the clear explanation as it moves from AOP to Data Access, Transactions. I also wanted to make an explicit comment about the chapter on Spring's AOP framework. This chapter does a great job in explaining Spring's AOP framework and where appropriate, points out differences with AspectJ and other AOP frameworks. Having used AspectJ and AspectWerz before, I found it very easy to pick up the AOP framework in Spring. Besides, when you can use The Simpsons in a programming exercise, it can't be that bad, right? If you are looking for a great Spring book, do yourself a favor and pick up Spring in Action. You will not be disappointed. There are quite a few Spring titles out there and there are good and bad among them. There is a typical rush to the market from the book publishers and there are a lot of average-to-poor books out there. If you really want to learn and use Spring, pick up this book now.

An excellent asset to create quality applications

I really enjoyed reading this book. It has a really nice blend of readability, inform-ability and applicability. The book is well structured such that the reader is positioned to understand the Spring Framework from a conceptual level, then delve into the details. I find this is key to any successful technology book. To properly understand Spring the reader must "buy into" inversion of control. The rest of the book uses Spring to support that underlying principle. That doesn't mean the book is theoretical. On the contrary, its for "doers". It reaches into all the nooks and crannies of the Spring framework to show the reader how to apply Spring in real-life. Take a look at the table of contents. Not a stone is left unturned. Like most things, Spring offers multiple ways of achieving the same thing. The authors explore the alternatives and highlight the pros and cons of each of them. This equips the reader with the rationale to make the appropriate choice for their specific circumstances. That's the hidden gem in this book. The authors are presenting Spring as a means to write a robust, scalable, flexible, maintainable and secure application. If you want to use Spring to help you achieve those goals, then Spring In Action should be in you library.

Excellent coverage and an easy read

There's been a bit of a rush of books about the Spring Framework recently with a number of publishers releasing their own titles one after another. Without having read those other books, I feel confident in saying "Spring in Action" won't let you down. It's a wonderful introduction to the framework and a handy reference for those desperate moments with the Spring configuration files. What I especially like about "Spring in Action" is the style of writing. The book is largely about how to configure this and that and still I read most of the book in one sitting. The text flows well and the humor sprinkled throughout adds a nice touch. The other good things about this book include a good coverage of the Spring Framework itself. Only some parts of the Acegi security framework have been left out, as far as I can tell, and those features (ACL's and run-as) are not what I'd call essential so it didn't bother me much. In addition, the authors give a good comparison (brief, but a good overview) of Spring and other technologies and frameworks such as EJB, Struts, WebWork, Tapestry, PicoContainer, HiveMind, etc. Furthermore, the authors show you how to integrate with these other frameworks (except for the other IoC containers) and view technologies like JSP, JSF, Velocity and FreeMarker. Add to that, the index looks very comprehensive which is an important detail for a book that one might use as a reference afterwards. So, what separates this book from perfection? For one it had a lot of little typos, the text did exhibit a bit of repeat (didn't I just read this sentence on the previous page?) here and there, and I feel like mixing multiple ViewResolvers was covered too lightly. I don't consider these to be big issues, though, and I won't hesitate for a second in recommending "Spring in Action" for someone looking to get started with the framework.