Posted in: Spring Framework
The org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanFactory is the actual representation of the Spring IoC container that is responsible for containing and otherwise managing the aforementioned beans.
The BeanFactory interface is the central IoC container interface in Spring. Its responsibilities include instantiating or sourcing application objects, configuring such objects, and assembling the dependencies between these objects.
There are a number of implementations of the BeanFactory interface that come supplied straight out-of-the-box with Spring. The most commonly used BeanFactory implementation is the XmlBeanFactory class. This implementation allows you to express the objects that compose your application, and the doubtless rich interdependencies between such objects, in terms of XML. The XmlBeanFactory takes this XML configuration metadata and uses it to create a fully configured system or application.
Configuration metadata :
As can be seen in the above image, the Spring IoC container consumes some form of configuration metadata; this configuration metadata is nothing more than how you (as an application developer) inform the Spring container as to how to “instantiate, configure, and assemble [the objects in your application]”.
This configuration metadata is typically supplied in a simple and intuitive XML format. When using XML-based configuration metadata, you write bean definitions for those beans that you want the Spring IoC container to manage, and then let the container do it's stuff.