THE SPRING.NET FRAMEWORK

http://www.springframework.net/

INTRODUCTION

Spring.NET contains:

• A full featured Inversion of Control container
• An Aspect Oriented Programming framework
• Expression Language for lightweight scripting
• UI-agnostic validation framework
• ASP.NET Framework
  • Dependency Injection for pages and user controls, bi-directional data binding, and more.
• ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET WebAPI Framework
  • Dependency Injection for MVC (includin WebAPI).
• Declarative transaction management abstraction
  • Declarative transaction management via use of common XML configuration and attributes across different transaction APIs
• ADO.NET framework
  • Simplifies use of ADO.NET. DAO support classes and integration with Spring's declarative transaction management functionality
• NHibernate Integation
  • NHibernate 5 integration to simplify use of NHibernate and participate in Spring's declarative transaction management functionality.
• NUnit and MSTest integration
  • Provides Dependency Injection of test cases and Spring container loading and caching. . Data access and transaction management features aid with integration testing.
• Quartz integration
  • Configure Quartz jobs using dependency injection and Spring's transactional support to persist job details
• MSMQ integration
  • Simplifies the use MSMQ by providing helper classes for message sending and receiving. Integrates with Spring's transaction management features.
• NMS integration
  • Simplifies the use of NMS by providing helper classes for message sending and receiving.

Spring.NET is a port of the Java based Spring Framework. In turn, the Java/J2EE Spring Framework is based on code published in "Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development" by Rod Johnson (Wrox, 2002).

SUPPORTED .NET FRAMEWORK VERSIONS

Spring.NET 4.0.0 supports .NET Framework 4.7.2 and .NET Standard 2.0 and later.

KNOWN ISSUES

RELEASE INFO

Release contents:

• src contains the C# source files for the framework
• test contains the C# source files for Spring.NET's test suite
• doc contains the reference documentation sources and the Spring.NET xsd.
• examples contains sample applications.
• build-support contains the Fallout build (build-support/build) and the SQL scripts for the integration-test databases.
• website contains the sources of the project website.

Build with ./build.cmd (Windows) or ./build.sh (Linux/macOS); see the targets in build-support/build.

Latest info is available at the public website: http://www.springframework.net/

The Spring Framework is released under the terms of the Apache Software License (see license.txt).

DISTRIBUTION DLLs

The "bin" directory contains the following distinct dll files for use in applications. Dependencies are those other than on the .NET BCL.

• Spring.Core (~765 KB)

  • Contents: Inversion of control container. Collection classes.
  • Dependencies: Common.Logging

• Spring.Aop (~150 KB)

  • Contents: Abstract Oriented Programming Framework.
  • Dependencies: Spring.Core, Common.Logging

• Spring.Data (~320 KB)

  • Contents: Transaction and ADO.NET Framework.
  • Dependencies: Spring.Core, Spring.Aop

• Spring.Data.NHibernate5 (~90 KB)

  • Contents: NHibernate 5.x integration
  • Dependencies: Spring.Core, Spring.Aop, Spring.Data, NHibernate

• Spring.Web (~165 KB)

  • Contents: ASP.NET based Web Application Framework.
  • Dependencies: Spring.Core, Spring.Aop

• Spring.Web.Mvc5 (~8 KB)

  • Contents: ASP.NET MVC5 and WebAPI Integartion
  • Dependencies: Spring.Core, Spring.Web

• Spring.Testing.NUnit (~24 KB)

  • Contents: NUnit Integration
  • Dependencies: Spring.Core, Spring.Data, NUnit

• Spring.Testing.Microsoft (~24 KB)

  • Contents: MSTest Integration
  • Dependencies: Spring.Core, Spring.Data, MSTest

• Spring.Messaging (~65 KB)

  • Contents: MSMQ Integration
  • Dependencies: Spring.Core, Spring.Data, System.Messaging

• Spring.Messaging.Nms (~100 KB)

  • Contents: NMS Integration
  • Dependencies: Spring.Core, Spring.Data, Apache NMS

• Spring.Scheduling.Quartz3 (~44 KB)

  • Contents: Quartz32.x Integration
  • Dependencies: Spring.Core, Spring.Data, Quartz

WHERE TO START?

Documentation can be found in the "docs" directory:

• The Spring reference documentation

Documented sample applications can be found in "examples":

• IoCQuickStart.MovieFinder - A simple example demonstrating basic IoC container behavior.
• IoCQuickStart.AppContext - Show use of various IApplicationContext features.
• IoCQuickStart.EventRegistry - Show use of loosely coupled eventing features.
• AopQuickStart - Show use of AOP features.
• CachingQuickStart - Show use of Caching abstraction.
• SpringAir - Show use of Spring.Web features.
• WebQuickStart - Show step by step usage of Spring.Web features.
• DataQuickStart - Show use of Spring.Data data access features.
• TxQuickStart - Show use of Spring's transaction features.
• Data.NHibernate.Northwind - Show use of Spring's NHibernate features.
• NMSQuickStart - Sample application using NMS
• MSMQ QuickStart - Sample application using MSMQ
• Quartz Example - Scheduling using Quartz
• Mvc5QuickStart - Show the configuration of the ASP.NET MVC 5 support

How to build

VS.NET

Visual Studio 2022 is required to open and build the solution. The free community version of Visual Studio should suffice.

Running tests

• ./build.cmd Test (./build.sh Test) runs the unit tests. They need nothing but the .NET SDK.

• The SQL Server backed integration tests (Spring.Data.Integration.Tests, Spring.Data.NHibernate5.Integration.Tests, Spring.Data.NHibernate5.NestedTxSuspension.Integration.Tests and Spring.Scheduling.Quartz3.Integration.Tests) provision their own database with Testcontainers for .NET. All you need is a running Docker daemon (Linux containers):

  ./build.cmd IntegrationTest
  

  Each test assembly starts a pinned SQL Server 2022 container, creates the springqa login and the databases from build-support/create-integration-test-databases-and-users.sql and the project's own *_database.sql script (the quartz database gets the Quartz.NET tables), runs, and removes the container. There is no database to install, no hosts entry and no script to run by hand. CI runs the same target on Linux (the integration-linux job).

• To run against a SQL Server you already have, for example on a Windows machine without a Linux container engine, set SPRING_TEST_SQLSERVER to an administrator's connection string. No container is started and the same scripts run against that server (they drop and recreate the test databases and the springqa login, so do not point it at a server you care about). The server must allow SQL Server (mixed-mode) authentication, because the tests log in as springqa. In PowerShell:

  $env:SPRING_TEST_SQLSERVER = "Server=localhost;Integrated Security=true;TrustServerCertificate=true"
  ./build.cmd IntegrationTest
  

  ./build.cmd IntegrationTest runs the net10.0 and net472 builds of a project one after the other when the variable is set. When you call dotnet test yourself, pass --max-parallel-test-modules 1, because Microsoft.Testing.Platform otherwise runs both builds at once and they would drop and recreate the same databases under each other:

  dotnet test --project test/Spring/Spring.Data.Integration.Tests/Spring.Data.Integration.Tests.csproj --max-parallel-test-modules 1
  

• The tests learn where the server is from these environment variables, which the test assembly sets once the scripts have run (the XML contexts use them as ${...} placeholders):

  Variable	Value
  SPRING_TEST_SQLSERVER_HOST	host,port of the server
  SPRING_TEST_SQLSERVER_USER, SPRING_TEST_SQLSERVER_PASSWORD	the springqa login (springqa / springqa)
  SPRING_TEST_SQLSERVER_CS_<DATABASE>	a complete connection string, as springqa, for each database the scripts created, with the name upper-cased: ..._CS_SPRING, ..._CS_CREDITS, ..._CS_DEBITS, ..._CS_CREDITSANDDEBITS, ..._CS_QUARTZ

• The NMS integration tests (Spring.Messaging.Nms.Integration.Tests) work the same way with an ActiveMQ Classic container (a pinned apache/activemq-classic image, on a random host port), and ./build.cmd IntegrationTest runs them too, on both net10.0 and net472. The test assembly publishes the broker's address as SPRING_TEST_ACTIVEMQ_BROKER_URI (tcp://host:port), which the XML contexts read as ${SPRING_TEST_ACTIVEMQ_BROKER_URI}. To use a broker you already run, set that variable before the run and no container is started (./build.cmd IntegrationTest then runs the net10.0 and net472 builds one after the other, because they share the broker's queues).

• Tests that need a distributed transaction (MSDTC) are [Explicit]: a SQL Server container cannot take part in one. Run them by name against a Windows server with MSDTC enabled if you work on that code.

• ./build.cmd Test --test-integration-data also runs the four SQL Server projects as part of the Test target, --test-integration-nms the NMS project, and --test-full runs every integration project, including the ones that need MSMQ or a SQLite file.

Acknowledgements

InnovaSys Document X!

InnovSys has kindly provided a license to generate the SDK documentation and supporting utilities for integration with Visual Studio.