Spring 4.0 has been released and is now available on GitHub.
Version 4.0 is the latest major release of the Spring Framework and the first to fully support Java 8 features. You can still use Spring with older versions of Java, however, the minimum requirement has now been raised to Java SE 6. [1]
The following list summarizes the new features and enhancements of the newest major release of the Spring Framework:
- Java 8 support: You can make use of lambda expressions and method references with Spring’s callback interfaces.
- Java EE version 6 or above is now considered the baseline for Spring Framework 4, with the JPA 2.0 and Servlet 3.0 specifications being of particular relevance.
- Groovy Bean Definition DSL
- WebSocket, SockJS, and STOMP Messaging
- Improved Getting Started Experience on the new spring.io website
- Removed all deprecated packages, and many deprecated classes and methods
Here is a simple example of using Java 8 lambda expressions as callbacks with the Spring JdbcTemplate:
JdbcTemplate jt = new JdbcTemplate(dataSource); jt.query("SELECT name, age FROM person WHERE dep = ?", ps -> { ps.setString(1, "Sales"); }, (rs, rowNum) -> new Person(rs.getString(1), rs.getInt(2)) );
[1] http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/4.0.x/spring-framework-reference/html/new-in-4.0.html