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.

BeanFactory和ApplicationContext的区别如下:

BeanFactory uses lazy initialization but ApplicationContext uses eager initialization. In case of BeanFactory, bean is created when you call getBeans() method, but bean is created upfront in case of ApplicationContext when the ApplicationContext object is created. BeanFactory explicitly provide a resource object using syntax but ApplicationContext creates and manages resource objects on its own. BeanFactory doesnt support internatiolization but ApplicationContext supports internationalization. With BeanFactory annotation based dependency injection is not supported but annotation based dependency injection is supported in ApplicationContext.

使用BeanFactory:

BeanFactory beanfactory = new XMLBeanFactory(new FileSystemResource("spring.xml"));
 Triangle triangle =(Triangle)beanFactory.getBean("triangle");

使用ApplicationContext:

ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXMLApplicationContext("spring.xml")
Triangle triangle =(Triangle)context.getBean("triangle");

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);
        }
    }

}

BeanFactory和ApplicationContext都是从spring IOC容器中获取bean的方法，但仍有一些区别。

BeanFactory是实例化、配置和管理许多bean的实际容器。这些bean通常彼此协作，因此它们之间存在依赖关系。这些依赖关系反映在BeanFactory使用的配置数据中。

BeanFactory和ApplicationContext都是Java接口，而ApplicationContext扩展了BeanFactory。它们都是使用XML配置文件进行配置的。简而言之，BeanFactory提供了基本的控制反转(IoC)和依赖注入(DI)特性，而ApplicationContext提供了高级特性。

BeanFactory由接口“org.springframework.beans”表示。其中BeanFactory有多个实现。

ClassPathResource resource = new ClassPathResource("appConfig.xml");
XmlBeanFactory factory = new XmlBeanFactory(resource);

区别

BeanFactory instantiate bean when you call getBean() method while ApplicationContext instantiate Singleton bean when container is started, It doesn't wait for getBean() to be called. BeanFactory doesn't provide support for internationalization but ApplicationContext provides support for it. Another difference between BeanFactory vs ApplicationContext is ability to publish event to beans that are registered as listener. One of the popular implementation of BeanFactory interface is XMLBeanFactory while one of the popular implementation of ApplicationContext interface is ClassPathXmlApplicationContext. If you are using auto wiring and using BeanFactory than you need to register AutoWiredBeanPostProcessor using API which you can configure in XML if you are using ApplicationContext. In summary BeanFactory is OK for testing and non production use but ApplicationContext is more feature rich container implementation and should be favored over BeanFactory BeanFactory by default its support Lazy loading and ApplicationContext by default support Aggresive loading.

spring文档在这方面做得很好:3.8.1。BeanFactory还是ApplicationContext? 他们有一个比较表，我将发布一个片段:

Bean工厂

Bean实例化/布线

应用程序上下文

Bean实例化/布线 自动BeanPostProcessor注册 自动BeanFactoryPostProcessor注册 方便的MessageSource访问(用于i18n) ApplicationEvent出版

因此，如果您需要应用程序上下文端显示的任何点，您应该使用ApplicationContext。