August 15, 2026 • Java

05 - Spring Bean Lifecycle

Customizing the Bean Lifecycle

Spring allows you to execute custom logic during the Bean lifecycle, such as:

Execute code after the Bean has been initialized
Execute code before the Bean is destroyed

Spring Bean Lifecycle

Initialization Callbacks

@PostConstruct annotation

The method is executed after all dependencies have been injected.

new DatabaseService()
↓
Dependency Injection
↓
@PostConstruct

@Component
public class DatabaseService {

  @PostConstruct
  public void init() {
    System.out.println("Connecting database...");
  }
}

InitializingBean

InitializingBean is a Spring lifecycle interface. The afterPropertiesSet() method is called after all Bean properties have been set.

@Component
public class CacheService implements InitializingBean {

  @Override
  public void afterPropertiesSet(){
    System.out.println("Cache initialized");
  }

}

@PreDestroy annotation

When the ApplicationContext is closed, Spring invokes methods annotated with @PreDestroy before destroying the Bean.

Typical use cases include:

Closing database connections
Releasing resources
Stopping background threads

@Component
public class ConnectionPool {

  @PreDestroy
  public void shutdown() {
    System.out.println("Closing connections");
  }
}

DisposableBean

DisposableBean is a Spring lifecycle interface. The destroy() method is invoked before the Bean is removed from the container.

@Component
public class Worker implements DisposableBean {

  @Override
  public void destroy(){
    System.out.println("Stop worker threads.");
  }

}

Best Practice

In most Spring Boot applications, prefer using @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy over implementing InitializingBean and DisposableBean, as annotations keep your classes less coupled to the Spring Framework.