Tutorial

Spring Boot Tutorial

Published on August 3, 2022
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By Rambabu Posa

Spring Boot Tutorial

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Welcome to Spring Boot Tutorial. Spring Boot is a completely new project from Pivotal Team(The Spring Team). It is a Framework developed on top of existing Spring Framework.

Spring Boot Tutorial

Spring Boot uses completely new development model to make Java Development very easy by avoiding some tedious development steps and boilerplate code and configuration.

What is Spring Boot?

Spring Boot is a Framework from “The Spring Team” to ease the bootstrapping and development of new Spring Applications. It provides defaults for code and annotation configuration to quick start new Spring projects within no time. It follows “Opinionated Defaults Configuration” Approach to avoid lot of boilerplate code and configuration to improve Development, Unit Test and Integration Test Process.

What is NOT Spring Boot?

Spring Boot Framework is not implemented from the scratch by The Spring Team, rather than implemented on top of existing Spring Framework (Spring IO Platform). It is not used for solving any new problems. It is used to solve same problems like Spring Framework.

Why Spring Boot?

  • To ease the Java-based applications Development, Unit Test and Integration Test Process.
  • To reduce Development, Unit Test and Integration Test time by providing some defaults.
  • To increase Productivity.

Don’t worry about what is “Opinionated Defaults Configuration” Approach at this stage. We will explain this in detail with some examples in coming posts.

Advantages of Spring Boot:

  • It is very easy to develop Spring Based applications with Java or Groovy.
  • It reduces lots of development time and increases productivity.
  • It avoids writing lots of boilerplate Code, Annotations and XML Configuration.
  • It is very easy to integrate Spring Boot Application with its Spring Ecosystem like Spring JDBC, Spring ORM, Spring Data, Spring Security etc.
  • It follows “Opinionated Defaults Configuration” Approach to reduce Developer effort
  • It provides Embedded HTTP servers like Tomcat, Jetty etc. to develop and test our web applications very easily.
  • It provides CLI (Command Line Interface) tool to develop and test Spring Boot(Java or Groovy) Applications from command prompt very easily and quickly.
  • It provides lots of plugins to develop and test Spring Boot Applications very easily using Build Tools like Maven and Gradle
  • It provides lots of plugins to work with embedded and in-memory Databases very easily.

In Simple Terminology, What Spring Boot means What Is Spring Boot, Spring Boot Tutorial That means Spring Boot is nothing but existing Spring Framework + Some Embedded HTTP Servers (Tomcat/Jetty etc.) - XML or Annotations Configurations. Here minus means we don’t need to write any XML Configuration and few Annotations only.

Main Goal of Spring Boot:

The main goal of Spring Boot Framework is to reduce Development, Unit Test and Integration Test time and to ease the development of Production ready web applications very easily compared to existing Spring Framework, which really takes more time.

  • To avoid XML Configuration completely
  • To avoid defining more Annotation Configuration(It combined some existing Spring Framework Annotations to a simple and single Annotation)
  • To avoid writing lots of import statements
  • To provide some defaults to quick start new projects within no time.
  • To provide Opinionated Development approach.

By providing or avoiding these things, Spring Boot Framework reduces Development time, Developer Effort and increases productivity.

Limitation/Drawback of Spring Boot:

Spring Boot Framework has one limitation. It is some what bit time consuming process to convert existing or legacy Spring Framework projects into Spring Boot Applications but we can convert all kinds of projects into Spring Boot Applications. It is very easy to create brand new/Greenfield Projects using Spring Boot. To Start Opinionated Approach to create Spring Boot Applications, The Spring Team (The Pivotal Team) has provided the following three approaches.

  • Using Spring Boot CLI Tool
  • Using Spring STS IDE
  • Using Spring Initializr Website

We will discuss one by one in detail with some good examples in coming posts. We can find Spring Initializr Website at: https://start.spring.io/ We can develop two flavors of Spring-Based Applications using Spring Boot

  • Java-Based Applications
  • Groovy Applications

We can use Spring Boot CLI or Spring STS IDE or Spring Initializr Website to develop Spring Boot Groovy Applications. However, we can use Spring STS IDE or Spring Initializr Website to develop Spring Boot Java Applications. Anyhow, Groovy is also JVM language almost similar to Java Language. We can combine both Groovy and Java into one Project. Because like Java files, Groovy files are finally compiled into *.class files only. Both *.groovy and *.java files are converted to *.class file (Same byte code format). java groovy compiler, spring boot Spring Boot Framework Programming model is inspired by Groovy Programming model. Spring Boot internally uses some Groovy based techniques and tools to provide default imports and configuration. Spring Boot Framework also combined existing Spring Framework annotations into some simple or single annotations. We will explore those annotations one by one in coming posts with some real-time examples. Spring Boot Framework drastically changes Spring-Java Based Applications Programming model into new Programming model. As of now, Spring Boot is at initial stage only but future is all about Spring Boot only. Happy Spring Boot Framework Learning!

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Rambabu Posa

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JournalDev
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February 12, 2020

Spring is widely used for creating scalable applications. For web applications, Spring provides Spring MVC which is a widely used module of spring which is used to create scalable web applications. It is an amazing tool that helps you to get enterprise-grade applications up and running quickly without having to worry about configuring your application correctly and safely.

- Shivam Verma

    JournalDev
    DigitalOcean Employee
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    November 25, 2019

    Nice explanation! Disadvantages of micro services is not mentioned elaborately. Can you post the disadvantages of micro services.

    - SHARATH KUMAR

      JournalDev
      DigitalOcean Employee
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      May 8, 2019

      very good tutorial for spring boot beginners but you should add more detailed information about spring boot.

      - ashish gupta

        JournalDev
        DigitalOcean Employee
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        January 6, 2019

        Hi Ram, Can you please share the MICRO SERVICES TUTORIAL.

        - Ravi

          JournalDev
          DigitalOcean Employee
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          December 19, 2018

          Great article for the beginners, if any one wants a complete and professional Spring boot Application based on Spring Boot 2, Spring MVC5, Gradle 5, JUnit 5, Mockito, Exception Handling all in one, and many more, get it on github(https://github.com/MFaisalHyder/spring-boot-app). Kindly fork it, star it and do make pull requests to make it even better :) World needs more people like you to help open source community ! :)

          - Faisal

            JournalDev
            DigitalOcean Employee
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            September 29, 2018

            Spring boot is not a framework. It is built on top of Spring framework to avoid manually writing the configurations and boilerplate code. This is my understanding. Please feel free to correct me.

            - Anji

              JournalDev
              DigitalOcean Employee
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              September 10, 2018

              Thanks for nice post. But one thing Spring Boot really a Frame work on top of Spring Frame work. Or it’s a way to create spring application in java and Groovy languages same as spring with zero or minimal configurations.

              - Tamsheel Khan

                JournalDev
                DigitalOcean Employee
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                September 3, 2018

                Thanks a lot mister!

                - Madicoye DJIBA

                  JournalDev
                  DigitalOcean Employee
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                  June 12, 2018

                  Hi there! I wanna thank you a lot for this tutorial. It was so great. It helped me so much. But I have one question. Which version of spring boot did you talk about? Is the version matter? or all are the same at this point? Thanks Have nice

                  - Nahid

                    JournalDev
                    DigitalOcean Employee
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                    March 1, 2018

                    Very good reading to begin with Spring Boot. Thanks

                    - Hasanga

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