Can you explain what the scope definition for beans in Spring means?

In Spring, the scope of a bean defines how long an instance of that bean exists and how many such instances are created in the application.

Main scopes:

• singleton (default): one instance of the bean is created for the entire Spring container. All requests for this bean receive the same object.
• prototype: a new instance is created each time the bean is requested.
• request: the bean lives for a single HTTP request (used in web applications).
• session: the bean lives for the duration of an HTTP session.
• application: the bean lives within the scope of the entire web application.

Example of defining a bean with prototype scope:

@Component
@Scope("prototype")
public class MyBean {
    // ...
}

Defining scope is important for managing the lifecycle of objects, resource optimization, and ensuring correct application behavior.