Using the ApplicationContext

In all of the previous posts we have been working with the BeanFactory. However in order to use all of Spring's functionalities we need to use a more powerful version of the Spring Container.
The ApplicationContext is a type of the BeanFactory but a much more powerful version. Along with the basic bean factory behaviour it also provides :

1. Ability to load file resources in a generic fashion.
2. Ability to publish events to registered listeners.
3. Ability to resolve properties.
4. Support for internationalization.

I decided to create a simple bean and have it loaded from the application context.

public class HelloWorldMessanger {

    public String getMessage() {
        return "Hello World";
    }
}

The code to test the same is:

public class Client {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws FileNotFoundException {
        final ApplicationContext applicationContext = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(
                "beans.xml");
        HelloWorldMessanger messager = (HelloWorldMessanger) applicationContext
                .getBean("messager");
        System.out.println(messager.getMessage());
    }
}

Unlike the bean factory, the code requires several more jars.

On executing the above test code:

Feb 23, 2012 8:46:26 PM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext prepareRefresh
INFO: Refreshing org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext@be2358: startup date 
[Thu Feb 23 20:46:26 IST 2012]; root of context hierarchy
Feb 23, 2012 8:46:26 PM org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader loadBeanDefinitions
INFO: Loading XML bean definitions from class path resource [beans.xml]
Feb 23, 2012 8:46:27 PM org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory preInstantiateSingletons
INFO: Pre-instantiating singletons in org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory@af8358:
 defining beans [messager]; root of factory hierarchy
Hello World