when is a spring beans destroy-method called?

Question

I have put a sysout statement in the "destroy-method" for a bean. When i run a sample code, the sysout is not getting output. Does that mean the destroy-method is not getting called ?

The Test Class:

  package spring.test;    import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;   import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;    public class InitTest {     public static void main(String[] args) {         ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("InitTestContext.xml");         InitTestBean bean = (InitTestBean)ctx.getBean("InitTestBean");         bean.display();     }   } 

The Bean

  package spring.test;    public class InitTestBean {     private String prop1;     private String prop2;      public InitTestBean(String prop1, String prop2) {         System.out.println("Instantiating InitTestBean");         this.prop1 = prop1;         this.prop2 = prop2;     }      public void setProp1(String prop1) {         System.out.println("In setProp1");         this.prop1 = prop1;     }      public void setProp2(String prop2) {         System.out.println("In setProp2");         this.prop2 = prop2;     }      public String getProp1() {         return prop1;     }      public String getProp2() {         return prop2;     }      public void display() {         System.out.println("Prop1 is " + prop1);         System.out.println("Prop2 is " + prop2);     }      public void initialize(){         System.out.println("In initialize");         this.prop1 = "init-prop1";         this.prop2 = "init-prop2";     }      public void teardown() {         System.out.println("In teardown");         this.prop1 = null;         this.prop2 = null;     }   } 

The Config file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"     xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"     xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"     xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd">      <bean id="InitTestBean" class="spring.test.InitTestBean" init-method="initialize" destroy-method="teardown">         <constructor-arg value="Prop1" />         <constructor-arg value="Prop2" />         <property name="prop1" value="setProp1"/>         <property name="prop2" value="setProp2"/>     </bean>  </beans> 

Answer 1

Your example doesn't work because you're not shutting down the appcontext, you're just letting the program terminate.

Call close() on the context, and you'll see the bean destroy-methods being called.

Answer 2

It may be too late for the OP, but if someone is still looking for it...

The close method is in AbstractApplicationContext and not ApplicationContext, also another way is to use ctx.registerShutdownHook() instead of ctx.close() for obvious reasons that while running Junits you might want to close the context but not while in production environment so let Spring decide on when to close it.