What's New in the Spring Framework

This page provides information pertaining to new features and changes in various versions of the Spring Framework.

For assistance with migrating to a newer version of the Spring Framework, consult the Migrating from earlier versions of the Spring Framework wiki page.

Table of Contents

What's New in Spring Framework 5.x

Entire framework codebase based on Java 8 source code level now.
- Improved readability through inferred generics etc.
- Conditional support for Java 8 features now in straight code.
Java EE 7 API level required in Spring's corresponding modules now.
- Servlet 3.1, JMS 2.0, JPA 2.1, Bean Validation 1.1
- Recent servers: e.g. Tomcat 8.5+, Jetty 9.3+, WildFly 10+
Full compatibility with JDK 9 as of July 2016.
- Project spring-framework can be built on JDK 9; test suite passes.

Package mock.staticmock removed from spring-aspects module.
- No support for AnnotationDrivenStaticEntityMockingControl anymore.
Packages web.view.tiles2 and orm.hibernate3/hibernate4 dropped.
- Minimum requirement: Tiles 3 and Hibernate 5 now.
Dropped support: Portlet, Velocity, JasperReports, XMLBeans, JDO, Guava.
- Recommendation: Stay on Spring Framework 4.3.x for those if needed.
Many deprecated classes and methods removed across the codebase.
- A few compromises made for commonly used methods in the ecosystem.

JDK 8+ enhancements
- Efficient method parameter access based on Java 8 reflection enhancements.
- Selective declarations of Java 8 default methods in core Spring interfaces.
- Consistent use of JDK 7 Charset and StandardCharsets enhancements.
JDK 9 preparations
- Consistent instantiation via constructors (with revised exception handling)
XML configuration namespaces streamlined towards unversioned schemas.
- Always resolved against latest xsd files; no support for deprecated features.
- Version-specific declarations still supported but validated against latest schema.
Resource abstraction provides isFile indicator for defensive getFile access.

spring-core DataBuffer and Encoder/Decoder abstractions with non-blocking semantics.
spring-web HTTP message codec implementations with JSON (Jackson) and XML (JAXB) support.
New spring-web-reactive module with reactive support for the @Controller programming model adapting Reactive Streams to Servlet 3.1 containers as well as non-Servlet runtimes such as Netty and Undertow.
New WebClient with reactive support on the client side.
For more details refer to the chapter "Web Reactive Framework" in the reference docs.

Complete support for JUnit 5's Jupiter programming and extension models in the Spring TestContext Framework.
- SpringExtension: an implementation of multiple extension APIs from JUnit Jupiter that provides full support for the existing feature set of the Spring TestContext Framework. This support is enabled via @ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class).
- @SpringJUnitConfig: a composed annotation that combines @ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class) from JUnit Jupiter with @ContextConfiguration from the Spring TestContext Framework.
- @SpringJUnitWebConfig: a composed annotation that combines @ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class) from JUnit Jupiter with @ContextConfiguration and @WebAppConfiguration from the Spring TestContext Framework.
Support for parallel test execution in the Spring TestContext Framework. See the Parallel test execution section of the Testing chapter for details.
New before and after test execution callbacks in the Spring TestContext Framework with support for TestNG, JUnit 5, and JUnit 4 via the SpringRunner (but not via JUnit 4 rules).
- New beforeTestExecution() and afterTestExecution() callbacks in the TestExecutionListener API and TestContextManager.
XMLUnit support upgraded to 2.2