ApplicationContext: 它加载spring配置文件中配置的spring bean，并在CONTAINER启动时管理spring bean的生命周期。它不会等到getBean("springbeanref")被调用。

BeanFactory 它加载spring配置文件中配置的springbean，在调用getBean("springbeanref")时管理springbean的生命周期。因此，当我们在springbean生命周期开始时调用getBean(“springbeanref”)时。

总而言之:

ApplicationContext包括BeanFactory的所有功能。 一般建议使用前者。

在一些有限的情况下，例如在移动应用程序中，内存消耗可能是关键的。

在这种情况下，使用更轻量级的BeanFactory是合理的。然而，在大多数企业应用程序中，ApplicationContext是您想要使用的。

要了解更多，请参阅我的博客文章:

Spring中的BeanFactory和ApplicationContext的区别——java Spring博客的基础

参考Spring Docs中的这个文档:

http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.2.x/spring-framework-reference/html/beans.html#context-introduction-ctx-vs-beanfactory

5.15.1 bean工厂还是应用上下文?

使用ApplicationContext，除非你有很好的理由不这样做。

Because the ApplicationContext includes all functionality of the BeanFactory, it is generally recommended over the BeanFactory, except for a few situations such as in an Applet where memory consumption might be critical and a few extra kilobytes might make a difference. However, for most typical enterprise applications and systems, the ApplicationContext is what you will want to use. Spring 2.0 and later makes heavy use of the BeanPostProcessor extension point (to effect proxying and so on). If you use only a plain BeanFactory, a fair amount of support such as transactions and AOP will not take effect, at least not without some extra steps on your part. This situation could be confusing because nothing is actually wrong with the configuration.

对我来说，选择BeanFactory而不是ApplicationContext的主要区别似乎是ApplicationContext将预先实例化所有的bean。来自Spring文档:

Spring sets properties and resolves dependencies as late as possible, when the bean is actually created. This means that a Spring container which has loaded correctly can later generate an exception when you request an object if there is a problem creating that object or one of its dependencies. For example, the bean throws an exception as a result of a missing or invalid property. This potentially delayed visibility of some configuration issues is why ApplicationContext implementations by default pre-instantiate singleton beans. At the cost of some upfront time and memory to create these beans before they are actually needed, you discover configuration issues when the ApplicationContext is created, not later. You can still override this default behavior so that singleton beans will lazy-initialize, rather than be pre-instantiated.

考虑到这一点，我最初选择BeanFactory用于集成/性能测试，因为我不想加载整个应用程序来测试孤立的bean。但是——如果我说错了，有人会纠正我——BeanFactory不支持类路径XML配置。因此，BeanFactory和ApplicationContext都提供了我想要的关键特性，但两者都没有。

据我所知，文档中关于覆盖默认实例化行为的说明发生在配置中，而且它是每个bean的，所以我不能在XML文件中设置“lazy-init”属性，否则我就不得不维护一个版本用于测试，另一个版本用于部署。

我最终所做的是扩展ClassPathXmlApplicationContext以惰性加载bean以在测试中使用，如下所示:

public class LazyLoadingXmlApplicationContext extends ClassPathXmlApplicationContext {

    public LazyLoadingXmlApplicationContext(String[] configLocations) {
        super(configLocations);
    }

    /**
     * Upon loading bean definitions, force beans to be lazy-initialized.
     * @see org.springframework.context.support.AbstractXmlApplicationContext#loadBeanDefinitions(org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader)
     */

    @Override
    protected void loadBeanDefinitions(XmlBeanDefinitionReader reader) throws IOException {
        super.loadBeanDefinitions(reader);
        for (String name: reader.getBeanFactory().getBeanDefinitionNames()) {
            AbstractBeanDefinition beanDefinition = (AbstractBeanDefinition) reader.getBeanFactory().getBeanDefinition(name);
            beanDefinition.setLazyInit(true);
        }
    }

}

Spring提供两种IOC容器，一种是XMLBeanFactory，另一种是ApplicationContext。

通过完整路径加载的FileSystemXmlApplicationContext bean。 通过CLASSPATH加载的bean XMLWebApplicationContext和AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext bean通过web应用程序上下文加载。 从基于Annotation的配置中加载Spring bean。

例子:

ApplicationContext applicationContext = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(BeansConfiguration.class);

ApplicationContext是由web.xml中定义的ContextLoaderListener或ContextLoaderServlet和struts-config.xml中定义的ContextLoaderPlugin初始化的容器。

注意:XmlBeanFactory从Spring 3.1开始已弃用，取而代之的是DefaultListableBeanFactory和XmlBeanDefinitionReader。

Bean工厂的特性矩阵vs来自spring文档的应用程序上下文

beanfactory和ApplicationContext功能的截图