Building Application with Spring Boot

Spring Boot makes very easy to build standalone as well as production grade Spring based application. I found features like "Embedded Tomcat and Jetty. no need to deploy war. also XML based configuration eliminated" - interesting !

Spring Boot Features :

• Create Stand Alone Spring based Application
• No need for XML Configuration
• Embedded Tomcat and Jetty (no need to deploy war)
• Configure Spring Automatically whenever possible
• Maven Configuration simplified
• Provide production ready features like health check and externalized Configuration.

If you are using Maven then add following into pom.xml

    org.springframework.boot
    spring-boot-starter-parent
    1.0.1.RELEASE


    
        org.springframework.boot
        spring-boot-starter-web
    

If You are using Gradle then Add following dependencies into build.gradle

dependencies {
    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web:1.0.1.RELEASE")
}

Build Sample Spring Application using Spring Boot :

Home Controller

package com.anuj.controllers;

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;

/**
 * 
 * @author Anuj
 * @source goldenpackagebyanuj.blogspot.com
 */
@RestController
public class HomeController {
    
    @RequestMapping("/home")
    public String handleHome() {
        return "Welcome to Spring Boot!";
    }
    
}

Here, @RestController is newly introduced in Spring 4 while previously using @Controller in spring 3.2. @RestController combines @Controller and @ResponseBody hence due to same, then we hit request from browser, it returns data rather than View.

Application

package com.anuj;
import java.util.Arrays;

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.EnableAutoConfiguration;
import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.ComponentScan;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;

/**
 * 
 * @author Anuj
 * @source goldenpackagebyanuj.blogspot.com
 */
@Configuration
@EnableAutoConfiguration
@ComponentScan
public class Application {
    
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        ApplicationContext ctx = SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
        
        System.out.println("Beans provided by Spring Boot:");
        
        String[] beanNames = ctx.getBeanDefinitionNames();
        Arrays.sort(beanNames);
        for (String beanName : beanNames) {
            System.out.println(beanName);
        }
    }
}

Here, @EnableAutoConfiguration tells Spring to start adding beans based on classpath settings,other beans etc.
@ComponentScan tells Spring to look/scan components/services/config into package "com.anuj"
@Configuration marks class as Config class, Source of bean definations

build.gradle

buildscript {
    repositories {
        maven { url "http://repo.spring.io/libs-snapshot" }
        mavenLocal()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:1.0.1.RELEASE")
    }
}

apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'eclipse'
apply plugin: 'idea'
apply plugin: 'spring-boot'

jar {
    baseName = 'SpringBoot'
    version =  '1.0'
}

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
    maven { url "http://repo.spring.io/libs-snapshot" }
}

dependencies {
    // tag::jetty[]
    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web") {
        exclude module: "spring-boot-starter-tomcat"
    }
    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-jetty")
    // end::jetty[]
    // tag::actuator[]
    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-actuator")
    // end::actuator[]
    testCompile("junit:junit")
}

task wrapper(type: Wrapper) {
 gradleVersion = '1.9'
}

Run Application from eclipse and hit http://localhost:8080/home into Browser

Output :