Application Context closing

[magyar-spring]

Hello,

I'm curious about the exact "contract" that ApplicationContext's have in terms of when they are closed. I understand for a WebApplicationContext that it will close upon receiving event notification from the app-server, but I couldn't see any finalize method implementation (which I know isn't 100% reliable, but when running tests with a Spring app context it would be nice).

And shouldn't close() be defined as part of the ApplicationContext interface?


--a Spring proselytizer

[Costin Leau]

What do you mean by contract? There is a contract already by default - interface DisposableBean - which has a destroy method that will be closed when the appContext gets closed. Also the destroy attribute which allows you to specify a different method.

[magyar-spring]

The question is about closing the ApplicationContext--not "destroying" its constituent beans (although AbstractApplicationContext does implement DisposableBean, it doesn't normally apply (see the API))

If I'm running an unit-test, is there anyway to explicitly close the ApplicationContext (say in the tearDown method), without doing a cast to AbstractApplicationContext, and is it necessary to explicitly invoke close() on it?