What is the role and features of different areas of Spring components' life cycle?

In the Spring Framework, the lifecycle of components (beans) is managed by the IoC container and includes several scopes that determine the lifespan and visibility of a bean:

• Singleton (default): one instance of the bean is created for the entire Spring container. Used for services, repositories, and other components that require a shared object.

• Prototype: each request for a bean creates a new instance. Useful when a unique object is needed for each use.

• Request: the bean lives for a single HTTP request (relevant for web applications).

• Session: the bean exists within the user's HTTP session.

• Application: the bean lives within the ServletContext, i.e., for the entire web application.

• WebSocket: the bean lives within a WebSocket session.

Features:

• Singleton beans are created once at container startup (unless lazy).
• Prototype beans are created on demand; the container does not manage their lifecycle after creation.
• Request, session, and application scopes are only applicable in a web context.

Choosing the correct scope helps manage resources, thread safety, and component behavior effectively in an application.