Question

Below are the definitions of prototype and request scope in Spring.

prototype
Scopes a single bean definition to any number of object instances.

request
Scopes a single bean definition to the lifecycle of a single HTTP request; that is each and every HTTP request will have its own
instance of a bean created off the back of a single bean definition. Only valid in the context of a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.

As per my understanding In case of prototype scope , some pool will be maintained by core container. It will serve the bean instance from that pool.
In case of request scope, new bean will be served for each http request. Please correct me if there is some dicrepency in understanding?

If above statements are true, then if bean is holding some state then the scope should not be defined as prototype rather it should be defined
as request. Correct?

Answer 1

You are off. Prototype is described in the docs here as

“The non-singleton, prototype scope of
bean deployment results in the
creation of a new bean instance every
time a request for that specific bean
is made.”

Your description of request scoped beans is accurate.

Probably just got the wires crossed vis-a-vis prototype vs singleton.