Spring Framework Cheat Sheet 2026

The 30 highest-yield Spring Framework facts, distilled from real exam questions. Print it, save it as a PDF, or study it here — free, no sign-up.

1. What are the different types of advice? → Before, after, after-returning, after-throwing, around
2. What is the purpose of the @Profile annotation in Spring? → Activates beans only when a specified environment profile is active
3. What is the primary competency framework for Spring Framework professionals? → Structured competency standards defined by the certifying body
4. What is the purpose of the spring.test.mockmvc.print property or .andDo(print()) in MockMvc tests? → Prints the full HTTP request and response details to the console for debugging
5. What does the @SpringBootTest annotation do? → Loads the full application context for integration testing
6. A Spring team is adopting a new observability stack. How should they communicate required developer workflow changes? → Hold a demo session, update onboarding docs, and add it to the team wiki
7. Which interface should a Spring developer implement when custom initialization logic is needed after all dependencies are injected? → InitializingBean (afterPropertiesSet)
8. Which Spring framework feature supports FedRAMP's requirement for continuous monitoring by exporting application metrics to an external monitoring system? → Micrometer with a Prometheus or Datadog registry configured in Spring Boot Actuator
9. What does setting spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=validate do in a Spring Boot application? → Validates that the database schema matches the entities but makes no changes
10. In Spring, what is a BeanPostProcessor used for? → Intercepting bean creation to modify instances before and after initialization
11. What is the default scope of a Spring bean? → singleton
12. A Spring team is distributed across three time zones. Which strategy best maintains effective daily communication? → Use async-first tools like recorded demos, written updates, and overlap-window syncs
13. In Spring Security, what is the role of the SecurityFilterChain bean? → Configures HTTP security rules, authentication, and filter ordering
14. What is the purpose of WireMock when used in Spring Boot integration tests? → Stubs and verifies HTTP interactions with external services
15. What is the primary value of case study analysis in Spring Framework training? → Developing critical thinking by applying theory to realistic professional scenarios
16. During a Spring release retrospective, a team member raises a concern that deployment communication to QA was inadequate. What is the best action? → Document the gap, agree on a deployment notification checklist, and assign ownership
17. How should an Spring Framework professional respond to a compliance violation? → Report it promptly, investigate the root cause, and implement corrective actions
18. Which Spring annotation is used to inject values from a properties file into a field? → @Value
19. In Spring Batch, what is a key risk of not configuring a job restart policy for long-running jobs? → A failed job may reprocess already-completed items, causing duplicate data or transactions
20. How do Spring Framework professionals evaluate research quality? → By assessing methodology, sample size, peer review status, and relevance to practice
21. A Spring Boot service is deployed to multiple environments. What professional pattern ensures environment-specific beans are loaded correctly? → Using @Profile to activate beans based on the active Spring profile
22. Which Spring annotation is used to read values from property files into fields? → @Value
23. What is the effect of @DirtiesContext on the Spring test ApplicationContext? → Clears the context cache so a fresh context is created for subsequent tests
24. Which JPA annotation establishes a one-to-many relationship on the owning entity side? → @OneToMany
25. Which Spring Test annotation loads only a subset of the application context for testing the web layer without starting a full server? → @WebMvcTest
26. Which annotation in Spring Boot enables auto-configuration, component scanning, and configuration in a single annotation? → @SpringBootApplication
27. When profiling a Spring Boot application in production, which embedded actuator endpoint set should a professional expose with caution? → /actuator/env and /actuator/heapdump
28. In Spring's reactive stack, what does the Mono type represent? → A single asynchronous value or empty result (0 or 1 items)
29. What are the different types of autowire? → byName , byType, constructor and autodetect
30. What Spring Data JPA feature automatically generates a query based on a repository method's name, such as findByLastNameAndAge? → Derived query methods