Deploy a Spring Boot App on Alibaba Cloud Function Compute in Minutes

What is Function Compute?

Alibaba Cloud Function Compute (FC) is an event‑driven, fully managed serverless platform that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. You only upload code, and FC automatically allocates resources, provides logging, monitoring, and pay‑per‑use billing.

Getting Started

Prerequisite: an Alibaba Cloud account with real‑name verification. Open the FC console at https://fcnext.console.aliyun.com and click “Enable” after accepting the service agreement.

Create a Service

In the console, go to “Service & Function”, click “Create Service”, fill the service name and configuration, optionally enable log and tracing, then confirm.

Create a Function

Select the newly created service, click “Create Function”, choose “Custom Runtime”, pick the Java 17 template, and configure the function. After filling the details, click “Create” to deploy a Spring Boot project.

Custom Domain Configuration

By default HTTP triggers return the response as an attachment. To serve normal web pages, add a custom domain in the domain management page, map the route to the service and function, and then access the domain to see the “Hello World!” output.

Exporting and Editing Code

You can develop directly in the online IDE or export the function code for local editing. The exported project contains a Maven pom.xml and a Spring Boot application class.

Project Structure

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>2.6.6</version>
        <relativePath/>
    </parent>
    <groupId>com.example</groupId>
    <artifactId>demo</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1‑SNAPSHOT</version>
    <properties>
        <java.version>17</java.version>
    </properties>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

package com.example.demo;

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestParam;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

@SpringBootApplication
@RestController
public class DemoApplication {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(DemoApplication.class, args);
    }

    @GetMapping("/")
    public String hello(@RequestParam(value = "name", defaultValue = "World") String name) {
        return String.format("Hello %s!", name);
    }
}

Configure Listening Port

Add the same port number to application.properties that you set for the function’s HTTP trigger, ensuring the function and the Spring Boot server listen on the same port.

Conclusion

The guide demonstrates that deploying a Spring Boot application with Function Compute is straightforward: a few clicks in the console generate and launch the service, making serverless Java development accessible to beginners without manual environment setup.