Customer Reviews

Spring in Action

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Information on the web about Spring can be found if you searched enough. The problem is that there was never any kind of clear guide and process by which you could either learn or make good use of the features in Spring.

I spent the better part of 2 hours last weekend at the bookstore reading through some chapters of Spring in Action and Spring PRO. I had already looked at Spring Live and was just too fond of it. Spring PRO turned out to be as dry a reading as the paper it's printed on. Sure it's got a lot of information, but geez, who needs that much, and who can read all of it when it's so hard to stay awake during the reading?

Spring Live offered something the other books didn't:
1- It's easy to read. The Authors, Craig Walls and Ryan Breidenbach, have a pretty good sense of humor, and has obviously put great effort in using good examples which everyone can understand. If you don't know how a student class registration works, you probably didn't go to school. I could have done without the Knight and singing what ever examples, but hey, they didn't hurt anything and got the message through.

2- The book flows in the natural way one would expect to work with Spring. I like the sequence of chapters, as Craig and Ryan layed them out. They start with a quick yet fairly thorough Spring startup, and run from there into wiring, AOP, dao and on down to complete the project. it just works and makes sense, and I don't feel like I'm left wondering about something. They always seem to get to what you need to know as you think about it.

While SiA didn't have the depth of Spring Pro, it still covered everything and then some, with accuracy with what you need to know. It's written from the standpoint, at least in my opinion, that you're a smart engineer, this is not your first time looking at Java or a framework, so they tell you what's going on, and let you figure out things further if you want to and when you need to. You're not plastered with a bazillion pages of details, leaving you skimming page after page for what you want to know. Spring Live just lacks in details, and seems more driven towards those who want to integrate Spring with other frameworks like Struts, and just seems a little too happy on self promoting the author's own tools.

I don't know what these stupid low rated reviews are talking about, it seems they were posted before the book was even published. Sad.

If you want to get going with Spring the right way, get this book and don't waste your money and time on anything else.

Hope this helps.
R

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.

This is a tough review to write because I felt the authors made a good effort in the writing of the book and explanations of the Spring Framework. Writing a book is no small feat, and technical books are a special beast.

With that last statement in mind, this is were the book sadly falls short. For one, the source code available online is a significant rewrite of the books' code. The authors explain ( on the publisher site ) that this is because they learned better ways and techniques to implement the samlpe application after the book went to print.

While improvement is always good, this presents two problems. 1. The sample application is now out of sync with the material. Not a good thing for those trying to learn, as you require more effort to study in tandem with the book. Also, and this is not to disparage the authors skill, but I buy books because I am expecting experienced, if not expert advice. If a small, sample application needs rewriting, perhaps they should write about something else?

Further down this road, the sample application has errors that prevent it from compiling. I suspect that the final build file was not tested, or it was a case of "well, it compiles on my machine". There were several dependencies that required changes to the build file so it could be compiled. Thankfully, I use Eclipse and imported the project. Eclipse immediately informed me of missing dependencies, which I resolved by getting those jars on the build path and in the build file so they would be deployed in the war archive. Examples are:

jakarta-commons/collections, and several core Spring jars relating to DAO and database access.

For an experienced developer, familiar with ant and a good IDE, it was not a lot of trouble to get it running, it just did not give me a good impression.

Bonus info for anyone switching the database out to postgresql: First, no matter what DB you swap in, you'll need to change a few hard coded references in the build file. I made property variables which I placed in build.properties. Then you will need to change the class User to something else ( and of course anything in the app that references it. ). Another great reason to use Eclipse.

Why you must change it, is User is a reserved keyword in postgresql and you will get databases errors because you can't name a table User.

From the Manning In Action series, Spring in Action provides readers with a good "hands-on" introduction to the Spring framework. In fact we used this book internally to promote a series of Spring Framework awareness sessions with some 35+ colleagues. We found the build up of the examples good and the authors provide plenty of humor throughout, occasionally making us laugh out loud. We liked the use of various diagrams in the book that provided another perspective to the text.

Although this book is 400+ pages, its focus is on providing an overview of how you might use the Spring Framework. If you want to go into details or look at other frameworks like Hibernate or Tapestry then you will need to use other books. The first three chapters are heavy reading. In fact I found myself constantly going back and reading again. For a second edition these chapters need breaking up and re-structuring to make it easier to absorb the content. The later chapters are much easier to read but address the content at a higher level of detail.

The examples used throughout the book had a number of mistakes which need to be addressed in a 2nd edition or errata page. The examples can be downloaded from Manning. Whilst producing demos for the awareness sessions we realized that the examples were not well written and missed a good code and design review. In fact we followed the themes the authors provided but re-wrote most of the examples to provide more constructive examples.

This book should be categorized for medium to advanced Java practitioners. This has nothing to do with the book as such, but more to do with the Spring Framework itself. If you already have a number of years working practice, then you will see the benefits quickly and pick up the framework in no-time.

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.

I was a bit disappointed by this book compared to the others from the "In Action" serie (I've read nearly all the books from that serie). It's not a bad book at all: it explains very well the basic concepts and goes enough into the details in this matter (the IoC design pattern and AOP concepts are not easy to understand if you're not already familiar with them. The author did a great job on this), and I was also quite happy with the code samples. But now that I have some experience with Spring, I find it doesn't go far enough into the more advanced topics. It's a very good introduction to the subject but either you'll need another book or -probably better- you'll need to read the reference documentation available from springframework.org

This book did exactly what I wanted it to do: gave me a good understanding of the nuts and bolts of development using the Spring Framework. It gave me an appreciation for the capabilities of the framework, and enough knowledge that I can comfortably create a Spring-based application.

As many other reviewers have mentioned, this book is riddled with errors. I am comfortable enough with my Java knowledge that I was able to read over a mistake and think "hey, that's not right." If I were less experienced, I imagine the errors would really make things confusing, and I would probably be less forgiving.

If you consider yourself to have a solid understanding of Java, and are willing to accept the imperfections of the proofreaders and editors, then go ahead and read this book; it will still give you a good understanding of the Spring Framework.

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.

I like this book a lot. It covers a lot of material quickly and is easy to read. I compared it to the Pro Spring and this book seemed to cover same ground with fewer pages. Highly recomended.

I've heard people mention the <a href="http://www.springframework.org/">Spring Framework</a> for months before I finally read "Expert One-on-One J2EE Development without EJB" by Rod Johnson and Juergen Hoeller. It came right after I had struggled through yet another J2EE application that was crippled by its adherance to the J2EE programming model, so I was in a very receptive state to anything which offered a way out. Since then, I've had a chance to use Spring in a real application and have been very impressed.

Spring in Action breaks down into three parts: Spring essentials, Spring in the business layer, and Spring in the web layer. The first chapter, "A Spring jump start" introduces us to the Spring Inversion of Control (IoC) container and discusses the different ways that Spring can (and should) provide better decoupling in your application. Chapter two, "Wiring beans" walks through the Spring configuration file and shows us how to define an application in Spring. Next, in "Creating aspects", we see some of the AOP support that Spring provides using dynamic proxies. The first chapter of part 2, "Hitting the database" walks through the support Spring offers to Hibernate, iBATIS and JDBC for database access. This transitions well into chapter five, "Managing transactions" where we see how the database transactions can be managed using declarative, programatic and annotation-driven tools. Chapter six, "Remoting" steps back further and covers support for web services and accessing remote services, showing how we can simply get language interopperability, or high performance (but rarely both). In the last chapter of part two, we wrap up by covering some remaining enterprise services: JNDI, e-mail, scheduling, and EJB access. Part three spends three chapters walking through Spring's MVC framework, integrating Struts with Spring (giving two techniques for us to choose from), WebWork 1 and 2, and a selection of different view technologies such as Adobe Acrobat, Tapestry, and Microsoft Excel. The final chapter, "Securing Spring applications" introduces us to the Acegi Security System which provides a rich, declarative system for authentication and authorization.

At first, when I started reading "Spring in Action", I was unimpressed. The first few chapters seemed long for the material they covered, spending tens of pages to explain something which was obvious after one. The filler wasn't spent with technical detail, but with toy examples and jokes which even geeks wouldn't laugh at. A couple of times I put the book down, despairing of getting anything new out of it.

I perservered and there was a reward at the end. The chapter on accessing Enterprise Services, working with different web frameworks, and especially the final chapter on securing Spring applications were interesting and more dense (no jokes, real examples).

"Spring in Action" does a useful task of making many complex features of Spring accessible. I'm a big fan of Spring, so I want to recommend this book, but I was turned off by the inconsistent writing. For the moment, I would much rather people read "J2EE Development without EJBs" which takes people through the philosophical and design aspects of Spring in much greater detail, and then hold out for "Pro Spring" by Rob Harrop and Jan Machacek.