This is most common interview question asked on spring framework.
Differences between BeanFactory and ApplicationContext in Spring:
- BeanFactory is a light-weight container that is used to instantiate, configure, and manage the beans.
- It is the most basic container provided by Spring and is suitable for simple applications
- It only provides the basic functionality of creating and managing beans.
- Bean factory does not support annotation based configuration
- ApplicationContext built on top of BeanFactory and provides additional functionalities to support
- internationalization (I18N) messages
- Application lifecycle events, and validation
- Supports file-based configuration, for example reading in a XML file to configure the beans
- It is more suitable for enterprise applications and provides more advanced features.
- ApplicationContext also supports the use of annotation-based configuration.
Finally, the summary is : BeanFactory is a light-weight container that provides basic functionality for managing beans, whereas ApplicationContext is a more advanced container that provides additional functionality for enterprise applications and supports more advanced features such as annotation-based configuration.
Thanks for Reading.
