So far, we've covered creating web applications, with the primary focus on standard Java EE. NetBeans, however, also provides support for creating Spring applications. The NetBeans support for Spring applications, however, is not completely up to date with the latest version of Spring, so as well as highlighting the features available to a Spring developer, we'll also discuss a more up-to-date way of creating Spring applications in this section.

An empty Spring application in NetBeans can be created using the standard New Project wizard we've discussed earlier in this chapter. On the Frameworks page of the New Web Application wizard, NetBeans allows Spring to be configured.

Upon selecting the Spring Web MVC framework, NetBeans allows the version of the Spring Library to be configured. NetBeans provides options for using Spring 4.0.1 and Spring 3.2.7, depending upon the version of the Spring Framework that you are targeting. These versions will get updated with...