Spring Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Books for Professionals by Professionals) [Paperback]

Gary Mak (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1590599799 | ISBN-13: 978-1590599792 | Publication Date: June 23, 2008 | Edition: 1st ed. 2008. Corr. 2nd printing

The Spring Framework is the de-facto leading open source agile enterprise Java meta-framework and serves as an alternative to using J2EE/Java EE. With the release of Spring Framework 2 .5  by enterprise Java luminary Rod Johnson and the SpringFramework.org project (with support from Interface21), Spring continues its phenomenal growth in adoption.

And Spring is now easier than ever to learn. It’s even lighter and more agile. It promises fewer issues with XML and much more. Includes greater adoption and incorporation of Rails Web applications as well for those that need to integrate Rails applications as part of broader Java/Spring stack. And much more…

Spring Framework 2.5 Recipes by Gary Mak is the newest, latest Spring book from Apress and its Spring from the Source series. This book lets readers get down and dirty with Spring code for immediate copy/paste into the reader’s specific application development project.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Gary Mak has been a software architect and developer on Java and J2EE platform for five years. He specializes in building enterprise applications on open source frameworks such as Spring, Hibernate, Struts and Tapestry. He is also an instructor to teach the courses on enterprise Java and agile development. He has written a series of Spring and Hibernate tutorials as course materials.

Product Details

• Paperback: 752 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1st ed. 2008. Corr. 2nd printing edition (June 23, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590599799
• ISBN-13: 978-1590599792
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #419,237 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A JSF web developer's perspective, September 16, 2008

By 

Damodar Chetty (Minnesota, US [www.swengsol.com]) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spring Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Books for Professionals by Professionals) (Paperback)

I used this book as a quick reference to Spring 2.5 for use on a recent JSF project, and was thrilled at how easy it was to find exactly the information that I was looking for.

With JSF and the application context being my focus, I only read about a third of the book (chapters 1 through 4, 10 and 11).

These chapters detailed exactly what I needed to do to get Spring 2.x up and running with JSF, including how to use it instead of the JSF managed bean creation facility, and how to unlock the request/session scopes.

The chapter on the advanced features of the Spring container is particularly interesting as it clearly portrays the number of ways Spring can instantiate a bean (viz., using a constructor, a static factory method, an instance factory method, from a static field, from an object property, or a factory bean.) Also noteworthy are the Java equivalents that are provided for each of these instantiation methods, making understanding the differences a no-brainer.

There's also a wealth of information on multiple approaches to achieving the same goal (e.g., injecting references using the ref element, using ref attribute of a property element, or using the p schema), with clear indications as to why one might be preferable over the others.

Really stretching for a con here - the recipe approach felt a bit contrived and unnecessary. However, the quality of the writing is beyond reproach, and more than made up for any discomfort I had with the topic structure.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simple THE BEST, October 16, 2008

By 

Abu al-Sous "Abu al-Sous" (Arlington Heights, IL United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Spring Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Books for Professionals by Professionals) (Paperback)

Rarely I write review, however, in this case I will make an exception.

By far this is the best book about Spring you will every read.

VERY easy to read. It is well structured as questions and answers, I am really amazed how detailed it is.

Of course the author(s) did not cover 100% of the Sprint Framework, but by far they have covered it better than anybody else.

For example, AOP, JDBC Templates, Hibernate Templates, JMS Templates, Quartz, Spring WebFlow, Testing, configuring web applications with JPA and Hibernate, Transactions, ...etc have been covered way beyond the basics. So this book along with its code which you can download should get you up and running very quickly.

One thing I wish if it was covered: RUN AS Manager in Spring's Security, and by far that presentation about Security is much more complete than any I have read before.


I give it 5 starts, good job. In the future, I wish the next version will elaborate furthur on Spring Security, and more complex examples on one to many relationships with JBA and Hibernate.

Abu al-Sous

Chicago, IL

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great comlimentary book for learning, November 5, 2009

By 

Steven Cook - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Spring Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Books for Professionals by Professionals) (Paperback)

I was tasked with having to learn the Spring framework and bought the book "Spring in Action" which.. though it was a very good book.. was sometimes a bit too disconnected at times from the example source code the book would refer to in very short and small snippets. As a result, though I felt I was learning the theoretical academics of Spring, I was hard pressed to feel like I could relate to it on a concrete coding level. As a result, I did my research on other Spring books and found this one. Armed with my cursory theoretical knowledge of Spring, this book was EXACTLY what I needed to connect the theory to actual coding practices and really brought it home in very practical terms. I should point out that a person could very easily learn Spring from just reading this book alone but I think that some up front base knowledge of how Spring works really makes this book shine. My recommendation is to simply read through Spring's tutorials first (online) and then read through this book. When you are done, you will be a Spring expert in no time flat!