Quickly Set Up a Spring Boot Project in IntelliJ IDEA

Environment requirements: JDK 1.8 and Maven 3.6.2.

Creating the Project

In IntelliJ IDEA choose File → New → Project and select Spring Initializr . The built‑in plugin requires an internet connection; if the UI cannot load, download a starter zip from https://start.spring.io/ and import it manually.

After confirming the project metadata (group, artifact, packaging, Java version), click Next and finish the wizard. IDEA generates the standard Spring Boot directory layout, which can be inspected in the Project view.

Inspecting pom.xml

The generated pom.xml already contains the Spring Boot parent, core starter dependencies, and the Maven plugin configuration needed to package an executable jar. Comments in the file explain each section.

Adding a Simple Controller

Create a new Java class HelloController.java under the package com.example.springbootproject.controller with the following content:

package com.example.springbootproject.controller;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseBody;

@Controller
public class HelloController {
    @RequestMapping("/hello")
    @ResponseBody
    public String hello(){
        return "hello";
    }
}

Building and Running the Application

From the IDE or the command line, build the project with Maven: mvn clean package Run the generated jar (or use the IDE’s Run configuration):

java -jar target/<em>your-artifact-id</em>-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

Open a browser and navigate to http://localhost:8080/hello. The response should be the plain text string hello , confirming that the Spring Boot application is correctly set up.

These steps produce a minimal, runnable Spring Boot project that can be extended with additional controllers, services, and configuration as needed.