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Document relationships between expressions, evaluation contexts, and accessors in SpEL #36968
Description
Overview
As explained in #36823 (comment), we should document the relationships between SpEL expressions, evaluation contexts, constructor/method executors, and property/index accessors in order to better inform users about the expected lifecycle of such components as well as best practices.
In addition to improving the documentation in the reference manual, we should also update the Javadoc for the following APIs and implementations.
Expression/SpelExpressionConstructorExecutorMethodExecutorPropertyAccessorIndexAccessorEvaluationContext/SimpleEvaluationContext/StandardEvaluationContext
NOTE: This issue is assigned and therefore not suitable for community contributions.
Activity
hiSandog commentedon Jun 30, 2026
A SpEL documentation page that separates expression parsing, evaluation context, property accessors, method resolvers, and type conversion would be very useful. Many bugs come from treating the expression string as the whole story when the context controls what can actually be resolved. A diagram or table showing which component is responsible for each lookup step would make custom accessor/resolver examples easier to follow.
Document lifecycle and reuse contract for SpEL expressions and contexts
github-actions commentedon Jul 29, 2026
Fixed via a894818