Singleton design pattern vs Singleton beans in Spring container

As we all know we have beans as singleton by default in Spring container and if we have a web application based on Spring framework then in that case do we really need to implement Singleton design pattern to hold global data rather than just creating a bean through spring.

Please bear with me if I'm not able to explain what I actually meant to ask.

A singleton bean in Spring and the singleton pattern are quite different. Singleton pattern says that one and only one instance of a particular class will ever be created per classloader.

The scope of a Spring singleton is described as "per container per bean". It is the scope of bean definition to a single object instance per Spring IoC container. The default scope in Spring is Singleton.

Even though the default scope is singleton, you can change the scope of bean by specifying the scope attribute of <bean ../> element.

<bean id=".." class=".." scope="prototype" />

Singleton scope in spring means single instance in a Spring context ..
Spring container merely returns the same instance again and again for subsequent calls to get the bean.


And spring doesn't bother if the class of the bean is coded as singleton or not , in fact if the class is coded as singleton whose constructor as private, Spring use BeanUtils.instantiateClass (javadoc here) to set the constructor to accessible and invoke it.

Alternatively, we can use a factory-method attribute in bean definition like this

    <bean id="exampleBean" class="example.Singleton"  factory-method="getInstance"/>

I find "per container per bean" difficult to apprehend. I would say "one bean per bean id in a container".Lets have an example to understand it. We have a bean class Sample. I have defined two beans from this class in bean definition, like:

<bean id="id1" class="com.example.Sample" scope="singleton">
        <property name="name" value="James Bond 001"/>    
</bean>    
<bean id="id7" class="com.example.Sample" scope="singleton">
        <property name="name" value="James Bond 007"/>    
</bean>

So when ever I try to get the bean with id "id1",the spring container will create one bean, cache it and return same bean where ever refered with id1. If I try to get it with id7, another bean will be created from Sample class, same will be cached and returned each time you referred that with id7.

This is unlikely with Singleton pattern. In Singlton pattern one object per class loader is created always. However in Spring, making the scope as Singleton does not restrict the container from creating many instances from that class. It just restricts new object creation for the same ID again, returning previously created object when an object is requested for the same id. Reference