Spring Interview Questions With Answers (2025)

Spring Programming Interview Questions (Beginner) 

1. What is the Spring Framework, and what are its main benefits? 

The Spring Framework is a powerful Java framework for building enterprise applications more quickly. It includes key features like DI, AOP, and transaction management, so that developers can easily build flexible, modular, and maintainable applications.

Main Benefits : 

- Dependency Injection-Reduces tight coupling; creates objects through injection.
- AOP Support -Manages cross-cutting concerns like logging or security.
- Transaction Management-More straightforward database transactions through annotations.
- Integration- Supports JDBC, JPA, JMS, REST, etc.
- Testability- Mocking and unit testing are more manageable.

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2. What are Dependency Injection (DI) and Inversion of Control (IoC)? How are they implemented in Spring?

- Dependency Injection (DI) and Inversion of Control (IoC) are two of the main principles of the Spring Framework that give modern applications the ability to be flexible and maintainable. 

- Inversion of Control (IoC) simply means that, rather than the developer having to hard-code invocations to construct and manage your objects, that will be done for you from a central Spring IoC container.

- Dependency Injection (DI) is the mechanism through which Spring provides IoC. DI means that Spring will provide the appropriate dependencies as needed instead of the object creating its own dependencies. If you have an Employee object that requires an Address object, then DI indicates that Spring will create the Address object and provide it to the Employee.

Spring can inject dependencies in three ways:

- Constructor Injection: Provide the dependencies in the class constructor.
- Setter Injection: Set the instance variable via setter methods.
- Field Injection: Use annotations directly on the instance variables (this option is less practical).

3. What are Spring Beans? What is their scope and default scope?

Spring Beans are objects managed by the Spring Framework’s Inversion of Control (IoC) container. Let me explain this with an example, Spring bean is a building block in any Spring application. The Spring bean functions in the role of a special helper object that Spring automatically creates and manages for you. You don't need to create instances manually as you tell the container what you need, and Spring will deliver it for you.

Beans handle everything from business logic to connecting with a database. Their lifecycle and visibility are controlled by their "scope." Here’s an easy-to-follow table explaining the main bean scopes and the default scope in Spring:

Every Spring Bean has singleton scope by default (meaning there is a single shared instance everywhere in the application). Singleton is efficient and works fine for most tasks. You can customize the scope to control how often new instances are created and to help manage memory and behaviors in different situations.

15 Spring Boot Interview Questions and Answers (2024 Update) | What is Spring Framework?

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4. Difference between BeanFactory and ApplicationContext in Spring. 

Comparison between "BeanFactory" and "ApplicationContext" in Spring

1. Definition :

BeanFactory→ This is Spring's basic container. It provides the simplest mechanism for managing beans (objects) and their life cycle. You can consider it to be the core bean manager.

ApplicationContext:

This is a more advanced container built on top of BeanFactory. It manages beans but also adds multiple enterprise-level features such as event handling, internationalization, and automatic bean wiring.

2. Initialization :

BeanFactory → Beans are instantiated in a lazy way (when you call getBean()).
ApplicationContext → Beans are instantiated as eagerly (at startup), unless marked as lazy-init.

3. Features :

BeanFactory:

Simple bean instantiation and wiring.
Light-weight, useful for smaller applications or memory-constrained devices.

ApplicationContext:

Everything that BeanFactory does, plus:
Event publication (ApplicationEventPublisher)
Internationalization (messages in different languages)
Annotation-based configurations
Automatic integration of BeanPostProcessor and BeanFactoryPostProcessor
Better integration with Spring's AOP, transaction management, and more.

4. Usage

BeanFactory → Generally no longer used directly. Useful only in memory-constrained situations and needs to be extremely lightweight.
ApplicationContext → Generally preferred in any modern Spring application (Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Spring Data, etc.).

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5. What is the bean lifecycle in Spring? When are init/destroy callbacks used? 

In Spring, beans are the entities controlled by the Spring framework, and they move through a defined lifecycle. The lifecycle process starts when the Spring container creates the bean instance -the  instantiation phase.

The next lifecycle phase is dependency injection. Spring then wires in dependencies of the bean. The Spring container might also deploy other processing logic with BeanPostProcessors before the initialization phase

The next phase of the bean lifecycle is the initialization phase. During the initialization phase, Spring calls init callbacks (@PostConstruct, afterPropertiesSet, or XML init-method). 

Init methods are generally used for startup tasks for things like setting up connections to databases, loading configuration properties, obtaining data files, or initializing other resources. Once an initialization method has executed, the bean enters the active phase and is available for the application to use.

At the point the application context is shutting down, the destruction phase begins. The destruction phase includes executing destroy callbacks to process other cleanup work to be done when the bean is taken out of service, such as closing connections to databases, shutting down threads, or clearing memory for other resources and/or releasing back to the JVM.

To summarize, the init callback methods prepare the bean and prepare any necessary business logic, and the destroy methods ensure safe cleanup after the bean is no longer being used.

6. How can beans be injected?

There are possibly three ways in which beans can be injected :

1. Constructor Injection
2. Setter Injection
3. Field Injection 

- Constructor Injection:
Dependencies are provided through a class constructor. This ensures the bean is fully initialized at creation. Example:

- Setter Injection:
Once the bean has been created, the dependencies are provided by setter methods. 

- Field Injection:
By using annotations such as @Autowired, dependencies are immediately injected into class fields. It's more difficult to test, but it's simple.

In modern Spring applications, constructor injection is preferred for cleaner, testable, and immutable designs.

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7. How to retrieve ServletContext or ServletConfig in a Spring Bean? 

In a Spring application, you can access ServletContext or ServletConfig inside a bean using Spring’s aware interfaces. If your bean needs the ServletContext, simply implement the ServletContextAware interface. Spring will automatically inject the ServletContext object when initializing the bean. Similarly, for ServletConfig, implement the ServletConfigAware interface. Example:

8. How to retrieve ServletContext or ServletConfig in a Spring Bean?

To access ServletContext or ServletConfig in a bean of a Spring application using Spring's aware interfaces, simply implement the ServletContextAware interface.

As a result which Spring allows access to the bean's ServletContext after the bean is created by Spring. If you want access to the ServletConfig, use the ServletConfigAware interface.

This approach allows you to retrieve context information like initialization parameters or application attributes. In modern applications, using these interfaces is the standard way to integrate traditional servlet-based resources with Spring beans.

9. What is view resolution, and how does Spring resolve views?

View resolution is essentially the final stage in Spring MVC, where the framework decides what the user will see on the screen. Upon completion of processing, a controller will usually return a logical view name, such as "profile" or "dashboard". By itself, this name does not indicate the location of any particular file. A ViewResolver is useful in this situation.

A tool that translates the logical name to an actual view resource is a ViewResolver. For example, if there was an InternalResourceViewResolver with a prefix of /WEB-INF/views/ and a suffix of .jsp, the logical name "dashboard" would resolve to the view resource /WEB-INF/views/dashboard.jsp.

10. What is Spring’s JdbcTemplate? What are its advantages?

Spring’s JdbcTemplate is a helper class that simplifies database operations in Java. To start using plain JDBC requires a lot of repetitive code. Processes like opening/closing connections, creating statements, and handling exceptions are done by JdbcTemplate, which handles all this for you. Meanwhile, you can focus on writing SQL and mapping results. 

For example, to fetch all student names:

List names = jdbcTemplate.query(

    "SELECT name FROM students", 

    (rs, rowNum) -> rs.getString("name")

);

Advantages:

- Reduces boilerplate code.
- Handles exceptions automatically.
- Supports safe parameterized queries.
- Maps results easily to Java objects.
- Supports batch operations.
- Integrates seamlessly with Spring transactions.

Spring Programming Interview Questions (Intermediate)  

1. What is Spring’s JdbcTemplate? What are its advantages? 

JdbcTemplate is a Spring Framework helper that makes working with databases in Java much easier. Using plain JDBC is repetitive and error-prone—you have to :

1. Open connections
2. Create statements
3. Execute SQL
4. Handle exceptions
5. Close resources.

Imagine you have a student's table:

Spring Programming Interview Questions (Advanced)

Advanced Spring Programming Interview Questions You Should Know

1. What is Spring Boot? What are its main features? 

Spring Boot is a convention-based framework that is built on the Spring framework, and it is designed to generate production-ready Java applications. It eliminates boilerplate configurations, includes embedded servers, auto-configures application components, and allows programs to launch with the minimum configurations for independent programs to launch, without construction.

Main Features : 

2. Difference between Spring and Spring Boot.

Spring Boot Actuator is a module used to add production-ready features to the application. Actuator provides monitoring, metrics, health checks, and management endpoints, so that developers can monitor and manage their applications.

Useful Endpoints: 

- /actuator/health: Shows app health (DB, disk, custom checks).
- /actuator/metrics: Displays JVM, memory, and request metrics.
- /actuator/info: Provides custom application info (version, build).
- /actuator/env:  Shows environment properties and configs.

Example: Access http://localhost:8080/actuator/health to check DB and app status instantly.

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4. What embedded server(s) does Spring Boot support? How to change the default port or server?

Spring Boot supports embedded web servers, so one should not use an external server. Tomcat (the default server), Jetty, and Undertow are the most widely supported.

Changing Default Server or Port : 

Task

Change Port:
Add server.port=9090 in application.properties or .yml.
Change Server:
Include starter dependency: spring-boot-starter-jetty instead of spring-boot-starter-tomcat.

Example:

- App now runs on port 9090.
- Embedded server choice is automatic via dependencies.

5. What is Reactive Programming? What is Spring WebFlux? 

Reactive programming is an asynchronous and non-blocking programming style that aims to effectively serve high-load, data-stream applications. Instead of waiting for activities to be performed, the logic is reactive to data as it arrives. This allows for better scalability.

Spring WebFlux

Spring WebFlux is Spring’s reactive web framework, built on Project Reactor, for creating non-blocking REST APIs. It handles requests asynchronously and supports Reactive Streams.

Example:

Responds with numbers 1–5 without blocking threads.

Conclusion 

By mastering the Spring Framework, new tech roles become available to you. Gaining experience with Spring Programming interview questions builds confidence and working skills.

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