Migrating from earlier versions of the Spring Framework
This page provides information when upgrading to newer versions of the Spring Framework. If you find items not covered yet, please raise a ticket in JIRA or submit a pull-request against this page.
For a general overview of new features, refer to New Features and Enhancements in Spring Framework 4.0 in the reference documentation.
Spring Framework 4.0 requires Java SE 6 or above: specifically, a minimum API level equivalent to JDK 6 update 18, a.k.a. 1.6.0_18, as released in January 2010. You have to update to a recent version of JDK 6 at least: From a known bug-fix level, we require a minimum of JDK 6 update 21, and we suggest JDK 6 update 25 or higher from a support perspective. Java 7 and 8 are recommended for use with Spring Framework 4.0, with Java 8 support in stable developer preview state until OpenJDK 8 becomes generally available in March 2014.
Spring generally supports equivalent generations of the IBM JDK and JRE, in particular as shipped with the WebSphere application server. Since not only WebSphere 7 but also WebSphere 8 and 8.5 have been shipping with IBM JDK 6 as the default JDK up until 2013, we intend to retain our JDK 6 support for the entire Spring Framework 4.x line, as long as those generations of WebSphere are supported by IBM themselves. At the same time, if available to you, we recommend IBM JDK 7 with WebSphere 8.5.
If you deploy your Spring applications to Java EE servers, we recommend server generations certified for Java EE 6. Of particular importance are the JPA 2.0 and Servlet 3.0 specifications. That said, it is still possible to deploy Spring 4 applications to servers with a Servlet 2.5 container (e.g. Google App Engine, WebSphere 7, WebLogic 10.3); however, some Servlet 3.0 based Spring features won't be available then. For Tomcat, the same rules apply: We recommend Tomcat 7 or 8 but still support Tomcat 6 as well.
The Spring Framework generally doesn't require a specific level of Java EE overall but rather specific minimum levels of individual specifications, such as JPA 2.0. This approach allows for running on "intermediate" server generations which selectively introduce new specifications while being based on an older EE platform level: e.g. WebSphere 7.0.0.9 with its JPA 2.0 feature pack, WebLogic 10.3.4 with its JPA 2.0 patch, or now the upcoming WebLogic 12.1.3 with its JPA 2.1 support on an EE 6 baseline.
As of Spring Framework 4.0.1, we declare the following minimum (optional) dependencies as officially supported. Those versions and later are what the Spring team recommends, in particular with respect to providing support for Spring applications that interact with those servers and libaries. Note that earlier versions may still work with Spring to some degree, as long as the fundamental system requirements are met; however, when using older versions, you are on your own from a support perspective.
- Servlet 3.0 (2.5 supported for deployment)
- JPA 2.0
- Bean Validation 1.0
- JSF 2.0
- JCache 1.0 RC1
- JDO 3.0
- Tomcat 6.0.33 / 7.0.20
- Jetty 7.5
- JBoss AS 6.1
- GlassFish 3.1 (note: deployment workaround necessary for non-serializable session attributes)
- Oracle WebLogic 10.3.4 (with JPA 2.0 patch applied)
- IBM WebSphere 7.0.0.9 (with JPA 2.0 feature pack installed)
- Groovy 1.8
- Joda-Time 2.0
- Hibernate Validator 4.3
- Hibernate ORM 3.6.6 (note: to be deprecated as of Spring Framework 4.1, with Hibernate 4.2/4.3 recommended)
- EhCache 2.3.2 (note: 2.5 as of Spring Framework 4.1)
- Quartz 1.8.5 (note: 2.1 as of Spring Framework 4.1)
- Jackson 1.8 (note: 2.0 as of Spring Framework 4.1)
- Hessian 4.0.7 (note: 4.0.33+ recommended)
- Apache Tiles 2.2.2 (note: to be deprecated as of Spring Framework 4.1, with Tiles 3.0.3 recommended)
- Apache HttpComponents 4.3 (for Spring's http.client package; as of Spring Framework 4.1, it'll be required for all of Spring)
- Apache Velocity 1.7
- Apache POI 3.7
- Apache Derby 10.8
- XStream 1.4
The following classes and methods have been deprecated in Spring Framework 4.0 or will be deprecated as of Spring Framework 4.1. They will be removed at a future date, so please check the javadoc and migrate to the suggested alternatives...
The org.springframework.orm.hibernate3 package will be deprecated as of Spring Framework 4.1. We keep fully supporting it for the time being against Spring Framework 4.0. However, we recommend a timely upgrade to Hibernate 4.2/4.3.
As of Spring Framework 4.0.1, we provide a HibernateTemplate variant in org.springframework.orm.hibernate4 to ease migration for common Hibernate 3.x data access code, in particular if your motivation for an upgrade is the lack of bug fixes in the Hibernate 3.x line. Note that newly written code is recommended to use Hibernate's native SessionFactory.getCurrentSession() style.
On a related note, HibernateInterceptor is deprecated in org.springframework.orm.hibernate3 and doesn't exist anymore in org.springframework.orm.hibernate4. As a replacement for basic Session binding needs outside of transactions, consider the use of the new OpenSessionInterceptor variant, available for both Hibernate 3 and 4 as of Spring Framework 4.0.2.
Note: The Spring Framework 4.0.0 release accidentally restricted HibernateTemplate's List element types to Object only. This has been fixed as of 4.0.2 (https://jira.springsource.org/browse/SPR-11402), allowing for immediate casts to specifically typed Lists again. If you run into any issues migrating existing Hibernate access code, please upgrade to Spring Framework 4.0.2 first.
While Spring Framework 4.0 still fully supports Tiles 2.2.2, the corresponding org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2 package will be deprecated as of Spring Framework 4.1. We recommend a timely upgrade to Tiles 3.0.3, supported in org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles3.
Quartz 1.8 support in the org.springframework.scheduling.support package is deprecated and will be removed in Spring Framework 4.1, with that package only working with Quartz 2.1+ from then onwards.
All Jackson v1 support is deprecated in favor of Jackson v2, and will be removed in Spring Framework 4.1:
JacksonObjectMapperFactoryBeanMappingJacksonHttpMessageConverterMappingJacksonJsonView-
MappingJacksonMessageConverterfor JMS
Burlap is no longer under active development and support will be dropped entirely in the future:
BurlapClientInterceptorBurlapExporterBurlapProxyFactoryBeanBurlapServiceExporterSimpleBurlapServiceExporter
The following classes are deprecated since they no longer work with current JBoss releases:
JBossWorkManagerTaskExecutorJBossWorkManagerUtils
AbstractJaxWsServiceExporter.setWebServiceFeatures(Object[] webServiceFeatures)JaxWsPortClientInterceptor.setWebServiceFeatures(Object[] webServiceFeatures)
Several methods from the GenericTypeResolver have been deprecated. For new code the ResolvableType class provides a good alternative to GenericTypeResolver & GenericCollectionTypeResolver:
GenericTypeResolver.getTargetType(MethodParameter methodParam)GenericTypeResolver.resolveType(Type genericType, Map<TypeVariable, Type> map)GenericTypeResolver.getTypeVariableMap(Class<?> clazz)
The default KeyGenerator used by Spring's cache abstraction has changed from DefaultKeyGenerator to SimpleKeyGenerator. The new generator does not suffer from key collisions and less likely to cause a cached method to return incorrect results. You will need to configure the deprecated DefaultKeyGenerator if you prefer the previous key strategy, or create a custom KeyGenerator implementation yourself.
The Spring MVC namespace XSD had been updated to correct the casing used for a couple of attributes. When upgrading to spring-mvc-4.0.xsd, you should replace enableMatrixVariables and ignoreDefaultModelOnRedirect with enable-matrix-variables and ignore-default-model-on-redirect respectively.
An issue with compiling Spring MVC Test framework tests with JDK 1.6 has been identified and fixed for version 4.0.1.
The migration guide for upgrading to Spring 3.2 is available as Appendix D in the Spring 3.2 reference documentation.
The migration guide for upgrading to Spring 3.1 is available as Appendix C in the Spring 3.2 reference documentation.