MicroSpring

By Jonathan Gibbons
February 2004

All credit to The Spring Framework at http://www.springframework.org/.

Everything about MicroSpring is a derivation, reverse engineering, and plagiarism of the great work done by the Spring Framework team. If you use IOC and start by playing with MicroSpring you could do worse then end up with the Spring Framework.

What is MicroSpring?

It is a JDK 1.5 IOC implementation in a 30k jar file!

It is compatible with the Spring 1.1.3 XML format, but only the IOC elements, and best practice is followed according to the Spring documentation.

It's not open source, in terms of a cvs repository, all under sourceforge, all comers welcome. It is freeware and the src is bundled and you are free to do anything you like with it. Although I'd rather you didn't stick it up on the web unchanged and claim it as your own.

WHY? Am I insane?

I finally had a reason to get into Spring, as a client was wanting an IOC container, and I have some projects of my own that need component configuration. Spring has been in the news for about a year, and is surviving, so I found it, downloaded it, installed it and saw the nightmare to the right.

I have no fascination with open source, and have many reasons to distrust it as a source of large software components. Anyway, given that IOC is simple, and a framework does not need to be good at everything, I find myself with a challenge.

The Challenge

Rewrite it with no 3rd party dependencies, and just those parts implemented that I need. Write it in a weekend - because with a job, several hobbies and, oh yes, the family, I am time constrained.

The Solution Part 1: Documentation

I want a guide to using IOC in Spring (and MicroSpring) in under a page. Spring themselves have a large document, and there are now books appearing. But for IOC I figure a single sheet of paper should be enough. I think I succeeded.

The Solution Part 2: A working IOC Spring compatible Framework

As I mentioned, I wrote this in a weekend, a pretty busy weekend, but a weekend non-the-less (including web site). So the code is a bit hacky, and needs more love than I can give it. It's part of the download bundle, so if you fancy improving it and upping the version then stick it on your own site and I'll link to you.

Remember MicroSpring is IOC, Spring compatible in as few lines as possible with zero library dependencies.

The future of MicroSpring

MicroSpring will remain in development by me, as I need new features. But only then. Please take it, improve it, edit it. The entire point is that an IOC framework, compatible with Spring or not, is a simple, small piece of work. You do not need to pull in vast swathes of unknown code from the web to achieve this end. JDK1.5 is powerful, cohesive, comprehensive, supported, free, and you don't risk pulling in terror-ware from the net.

Why not Open Source it under Jakarta?

I have no motivation to do so. I don't deserve any reward or respect or community for ripping off Spring, or any other IOC container. I also don't have the time, and frankly, the entire point of MicroSpring is that you don't need any more features than it has for IOC.