The scope 'request' defines a single bean definition which lives within a single HTTP request. That means for each HTTP request a new bean instance is created. This scope is only valid in the context of a web-aware ApplicationContext.
This scope might be very useful in using helper objects across multiple beans through out a single request. This is particularly useful as compared to passing various parameters through a long chain of methods calls which sometimes becomes unmaintainable and it's difficult to add new parameters.
Example
Since we are going to inject a 'request' scoped bean into a default 'singleton' scoped bean, we have to avoid narrower scope bean DI problem. For that we will use JSR 330 Provider approach. Here's a list of other solution.
Creating request scoped bean
@Component
@Scope(WebApplicationContext.SCOPE_REQUEST)
public class EmployeeDetails implements Serializable {
private Employee employee;
private int lastYearSalary;
public void setEmployee(Employee employee) {
this.employee = employee;
}
public Employee getEmployee() {
return employee;
}
public int getLastYearSalary() {
return lastYearSalary;
}
public void setLastYearSalary(int lastYearSalary) {
this.lastYearSalary = lastYearSalary;
}
}
public class Employee {
private String id;
private String name;
private String dept;
public Employee(String id, String name, String dept) {
this.id = id;
this.name = name;
this.dept = dept;
}
public String getId() {
return id;
}
public String getName() {
return name;
}
public String getDept() {
return dept;
}
}
Injecting request bean to Controller
@Controller
@RequestMapping("/employees")
public class EmployeeController {
@Autowired
private Provider<EmployeeDetails> employeeDetailsProvider;
@Autowired
AppService appService;
@RequestMapping("/{id}")
public String handler(@PathVariable("id") String employeeId) {
employeeDetailsProvider.get().setEmployee(getEmployeeById(employeeId));
appService.findEmployeeSalary();
return "employee-page";
}
private Employee getEmployeeById(String employeeId) {
//todo: call to backend instead
Employee employee = new Employee(employeeId, RandomUtil.getFullName(),
RandomUtil.getAnyOf("Admin", "IT", "Sales"));
return employee;
}
}
Injecting request bean to other beans
@Service
public class AppService {
@Autowired
private Provider<EmployeeDetails> employeeDetailsProvider;
public void findEmployeeSalary() {
EmployeeDetails employeeDetails = employeeDetailsProvider.get();
Employee employee = employeeDetails.getEmployee();
employeeDetails.setLastYearSalary(getEmployeeSalary(employee));
}
private int getEmployeeSalary(Employee employee) {
//todo: call backend instead
int salary = 100 * RandomUtil.getInt(30, 100);
return salary;
}
}
Output
To try examples, run embedded Jetty (configured in pom.xml of example project below):
mvn jetty:run $ curl -s http://localhost:8080/employees/1
<html>
<body>
<h3>Employee details </h3>
<p>Name: Slone Conover</p>
<p>Dept: Sales</p>
<p>Last year salary: 9600</p>
</body>
</html>
As seen above, all information of EmployeeDetails is there even though they were populated in different places by autowiring. That shows a single instance of EmployeeDetails was used through out the request.
Integration Tests
package com.logicbig.example;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.BeforeEach;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.springframework.test.context.junit.jupiter.web.SpringJUnitWebConfig;
import org.springframework.test.web.servlet.assertj.MockMvcTester;
import org.springframework.test.web.servlet.assertj.MvcTestResult;
import org.springframework.web.context.WebApplicationContext;
import static org.assertj.core.api.Assertions.assertThat;
@SpringJUnitWebConfig(MyWebConfig.class)
class EmployeeControllerIntegrationTest {
private MockMvcTester mockMvc;
@BeforeEach
void setup(WebApplicationContext wac) {
// Initialize MockMvcTester using the WebApplicationContext
this.mockMvc = MockMvcTester.from(wac);
}
@Test
void givenValidEmployeeId_whenGetEmployee_thenEmployeeDetailsPopulated() {
// Use the fluent 'get' API and AssertJ assertions
MvcTestResult result =
mockMvc.get().uri("/employees/1").exchange();
assertThat(result).hasStatusOk();
// Extracting request attributes for scoped-bean verification
EmployeeDetails details = (EmployeeDetails) result.getRequest()
.getAttribute(
"employeeDetails");
assertThat(details).isNotNull();
assertThat(details.getEmployee().getId()).isEqualTo("1");
}
@Test
void twoConsecutiveRequests_shouldReceiveSeparateEmployeeDetailsInstances() {
MvcTestResult first = mockMvc.get().uri("/employees/1").exchange();
MvcTestResult second = mockMvc.get().uri("/employees/2").exchange();
// Verify requests are distinct
assertThat(first.getRequest()).isNotSameAs(second.getRequest());
String idFromFirst = extractEmployeeId(first);
String idFromSecond = extractEmployeeId(second);
assertThat(idFromFirst).isEqualTo("1");
assertThat(idFromSecond).isEqualTo("2");
assertThat(idFromFirst).isNotEqualTo(idFromSecond);
}
// Internal helper using AssertJ-style extraction
private String extractEmployeeId(MvcTestResult result) {
assertThat(result)
.request()
.attributes()
.extractingByKey("employeeDetails")
.isInstanceOf(EmployeeDetails.class);
// 2. Extract (The "Logic")
EmployeeDetails details = (EmployeeDetails) result.getRequest().getAttribute("employeeDetails");
return details.getEmployee().getId();
}
}
mvn clean test -Dtest="EmployeeControllerIntegrationTest" Output$ mvn clean test -Dtest="EmployeeControllerIntegrationTest"
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[WARNING]
[WARNING] Some problems were encountered while building the effective model for com.logicbig.example:request-scope-example:war:1.0-SNAPSHOT
[WARNING] 'build.plugins.plugin.version' for org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-war-plugin is missing. @ line 42, column 21
[WARNING]
[WARNING] It is highly recommended to fix these problems because they threaten the stability of your build.
[WARNING]
[WARNING] For this reason, future Maven versions might no longer support building such malformed projects.
[WARNING]
[INFO]
[INFO] -------------< com.logicbig.example:request-scope-example >-------------
[INFO] Building request-scope-example 1.0-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] from pom.xml
[INFO] --------------------------------[ war ]---------------------------------
[INFO]
[INFO] --- clean:3.2.0:clean (default-clean) @ request-scope-example ---
[INFO] Deleting D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\scopes\request-scope-example\target
[INFO]
[INFO] --- resources:3.3.1:resources (default-resources) @ request-scope-example ---
[WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\scopes\request-scope-example\src\main\resources
[INFO]
[INFO] --- compiler:3.7.0:compile (default-compile) @ request-scope-example ---
[INFO] Changes detected - recompiling the module!
[INFO] Compiling 7 source files to D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\scopes\request-scope-example\target\classes
[INFO]
[INFO] --- resources:3.3.1:testResources (default-testResources) @ request-scope-example ---
[WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\scopes\request-scope-example\src\test\resources
[INFO]
[INFO] --- compiler:3.7.0:testCompile (default-testCompile) @ request-scope-example ---
[INFO] Changes detected - recompiling the module!
[INFO] Compiling 1 source file to D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\scopes\request-scope-example\target\test-classes
[INFO]
[INFO] --- surefire:3.2.5:test (default-test) @ request-scope-example ---
[INFO] Using auto detected provider org.apache.maven.surefire.junit4.JUnit4Provider
[WARNING] file.encoding cannot be set as system property, use <argLine>-Dfile.encoding=...</argLine> instead
[INFO]
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] T E S T S
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Running com.logicbig.example.EmployeeControllerIntegrationTest
[INFO] Tests run: 2, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.483 s -- in com.logicbig.example.EmployeeControllerIntegrationTest
[INFO]
[INFO] Results:
[INFO]
[INFO] Tests run: 2, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0
[INFO]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 2.636 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2026-03-28T09:20:59+08:00
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
INFO: JSR-330 'javax.inject.Inject' annotation found and supported for autowiring
Example ProjectDependencies and Technologies Used: - spring-webmvc 7.0.6 (Spring Web MVC)
Version Compatibility: 3.2.9.RELEASE - 7.0.6 Version compatibilities of spring-webmvc with this example: Versions in green have been tested.
- spring-test 7.0.6 (Spring TestContext Framework)
- junit-jupiter-engine 6.0.3 (Module "junit-jupiter-engine" of JUnit)
- jakarta.servlet-api 6.1.0 (Jakarta Servlet API documentation)
- jakarta.inject-api 2.0.1 (Jakarta Dependency Injection)
- hamcrest 3.0 (Core API and libraries of hamcrest matcher framework)
- assertj-core 3.26.3 (Rich and fluent assertions for testing in Java)
- JDK 25
- Maven 3.9.11
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