Over the years spring has become more and more complex as new functionalities have been added. Just visit the page-https://spring.io/projects and we will see all the spring projects we can use in our application for different functionalities. If one has to start a new spring project we have to add build path or add maven dependencies, configure application server, add spring configuration . So a lot of effort is required to start a new spring project as we have to currently do everything from scratch. Spring Boot is the solution to this problem. Spring boot has been built on top of existing spring framework including Spring MVC. Using spring boot we avoid all the boilerplate code and configurations that we had to do previously. Spring boot thus helps us use the existing Spring functionalities more robustly and with minimum efforts.
Features of Spring boot:
- Auto-Configuration - No need to manually configure dispatcher servlet, static resource mappings, property source loader, message converters etc.
- Dependency Management - The different versions of commonly used libraries are pre-selected and grouped in different starter POMs that we can include in your project. By selecting one Spring Boot version we are implicitly selecting dozens of dependencies that we would have to otherwise select and harmonize ourself. Example-
- Advanced Externalized Configuration - There is a large list of bean properties that can be configured through application.properties file without touching java or xml config.
- Production support- We get health checking, application and jvm metrics, jmx via http and a few more things for free.
- Runnable Jars - We can package your application as a runnable jar with embedded tomcat included so it presents a self-contained deployment unit
First you need to install spring-boot-cli. You can use SDKMAN to install latest spring-boot-cli and also get updates in the future. I’ve covered that here.
Spring Boot also has Groovy support, allowing us to build Spring MVC web apps with as little as a single file. Create a new file called app.groovy and put the following code in it:
@RestController
class ThisWillActuallyRun {
@RequestMapping("/")
String home() {
return "Hello World from Spring Boot!"
}
}
Run it as follows:
$ spring run app.groovy
You will see its log on your terminal
. ____ _ __ _ _
/\\ / ___'_ __ _ _(_)_ __ __ _ \ \ \ \
( ( )\___ | '_ | '_| | '_ \/ _` | \ \ \ \
\\/ ___)| |_)| | | | | || (_| | ) ) ) )
' |____| .__|_| |_|_| |_\__, | / / / /
=========|_|==============|___/=/_/_/_/
:: Spring Boot :: (v1.5.2.RELEASE)
2017-04-09 19:36:30.777 INFO 25470 --- [ runner-0] o.s.boot.SpringApplication : Starting application on kimiamania with PID 25470 (started by rezha in /home/rezha)
2017-04-09 19:36:30.779 INFO 25470 --- [ runner-0] o.s.boot.SpringApplication : No active profile set, falling back to default profiles: default
2017-04-09 19:36:31.012 INFO 25470 --- [ runner-0] ationConfigEmbeddedWebApplicationContext : Refreshing org.springframework.boot.context.embedded.AnnotationConfigEmbeddedWebApplicationContext@33b6649c: startup date [Sun Apr 09 19:36:31 WIB 2017]; root of context hierarchy
2017-04-09 19:36:32.069 INFO 25470 --- [ runner-0] s.b.c.e.t.TomcatEmbeddedServletContainer : Tomcat initialized with port(s): 8080 (http)
2017-04-09 19:36:32.079 INFO 25470 --- [ runner-0] o.apache.catalina.core.StandardService : Starting service Tomcat
2017-04-09 19:36:32.080 INFO 25470 --- [ runner-0] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine : Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/8.5.11
2017-04-09 19:36:32.119 INFO 25470 --- [ost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappLoader : Unknown loader org.springframework.boot.cli.compiler.ExtendedGroovyClassLoader$DefaultScopeParentClassLoader@517242a2 class org.springframework.boot.cli.compiler.ExtendedGroovyClassLoader$DefaultScopeParentClassLoader
2017-04-09 19:36:32.130 INFO 25470 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.a.c.c.C.[Tomcat].[localhost].[/] : Initializing Spring embedded WebApplicationContext
2017-04-09 19:36:32.130 INFO 25470 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.s.web.context.ContextLoader : Root WebApplicationContext: initialization completed in 1118 ms
2017-04-09 19:36:32.207 INFO 25470 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.s.b.w.servlet.ServletRegistrationBean : Mapping servlet: 'dispatcherServlet' to [/]
2017-04-09 19:36:32.210 INFO 25470 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.s.b.w.servlet.FilterRegistrationBean : Mapping filter: 'characterEncodingFilter' to: [/*]
2017-04-09 19:36:32.211 INFO 25470 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.s.b.w.servlet.FilterRegistrationBean : Mapping filter: 'hiddenHttpMethodFilter' to: [/*]
2017-04-09 19:36:32.211 INFO 25470 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.s.b.w.servlet.FilterRegistrationBean : Mapping filter: 'httpPutFormContentFilter' to: [/*]
2017-04-09 19:36:32.211 INFO 25470 --- [ost-startStop-1] o.s.b.w.servlet.FilterRegistrationBean : Mapping filter: 'requestContextFilter' to: [/*]
2017-04-09 19:36:32.377 INFO 25470 --- [ runner-0] s.w.s.m.m.a.RequestMappingHandlerAdapter : Looking for @ControllerAdvice: org.springframework.boot.context.embedded.AnnotationConfigEmbeddedWebApplicationContext@33b6649c: startup date [Sun Apr 09 19:36:31 WIB 2017]; root of context hierarchy
2017-04-09 19:36:32.418 INFO 25470 --- [ runner-0] s.w.s.m.m.a.RequestMappingHandlerMapping : Mapped "{[/]}" onto public java.lang.String ThisWillActuallyRun.home()
2017-04-09 19:36:32.420 INFO 25470 --- [ runner-0] s.w.s.m.m.a.RequestMappingHandlerMapping : Mapped "{[/error],produces=[text/html]}" onto public org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.BasicErrorController.errorHtml(javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest,javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse)
2017-04-09 19:36:32.420 INFO 25470 --- [ runner-0] s.w.s.m.m.a.RequestMappingHandlerMapping : Mapped "{[/error]}" onto public org.springframework.http.ResponseEntity<java.util.Map<java.lang.String, java.lang.Object>> org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.BasicErrorController.error(javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest)
2017-04-09 19:36:32.441 INFO 25470 --- [ runner-0] o.s.w.s.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping : Mapped URL path [/webjars/**] onto handler of type [class org.springframework.web.servlet.resource.ResourceHttpRequestHandler]
2017-04-09 19:36:32.441 INFO 25470 --- [ runner-0] o.s.w.s.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping : Mapped URL path [/**] onto handler of type [class org.springframework.web.servlet.resource.ResourceHttpRequestHandler]
2017-04-09 19:36:32.468 INFO 25470 --- [ runner-0] o.s.w.s.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping : Mapped URL path [/**/favicon.ico] onto handler of type [class org.springframework.web.servlet.resource.ResourceHttpRequestHandler]
2017-04-09 19:36:32.760 INFO 25470 --- [ runner-0] o.s.j.e.a.AnnotationMBeanExporter : Registering beans for JMX exposure on startup
2017-04-09 19:36:32.801 INFO 25470 --- [ runner-0] s.b.c.e.t.TomcatEmbeddedServletContainer : Tomcat started on port(s): 8080 (http)
2017-04-09 19:36:32.805 INFO 25470 --- [ runner-0] o.s.boot.SpringApplication : Started application in 2.342 seconds (JVM running for 4.544)
2017-04-09 19:36:52.243 INFO 25470 --- [nio-8080-exec-1] o.a.c.c.C.[Tomcat].[localhost].[/] : Initializing Spring FrameworkServlet 'dispatcherServlet'
2017-04-09 19:36:52.243 INFO 25470 --- [nio-8080-exec-1] o.s.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet : FrameworkServlet 'dispatcherServlet': initialization started
2017-04-09 19:36:52.254 INFO 25470 --- [nio-8080-exec-1] o.s.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet : FrameworkServlet 'dispatcherServlet': initialization completed in 11 ms
Next, you can open your browser or curl to localhost:8080. Spring Boot does this by dynamically adding key annotations to your code and using Groovy Grape to pull down libraries needed to make the app run.