What Is Spring Boot and Why You Should Learn It

What Is Spring Boot

Since 2002 Spring has become the de‑facto standard for Java EE development, but its heavy XML‑based configuration made projects cumbersome. In October 2012 a feature request was filed to support a container‑less web architecture, proposing a main() method to bootstrap Spring and embed common web services.

I think the Spring web architecture could be greatly simplified if it provided tools and reference architectures that leveraged Spring components and configuration models from top to bottom, using a simple main() method to bootstrap the container.

This request led to the creation of the Spring Boot project in early 2013. Today Spring Boot (v2.0.3 RELEASE) is not a replacement for Spring but a tightly‑integrated tool that enhances developer experience by offering auto‑configuration and a large collection of starter dependencies that work out‑of‑the‑box with minimal Java‑based configuration.

Why Learn Spring Boot

From the Official Spring Perspective

On the official Spring website Spring Boot is positioned as "Build Anything" – it aims to start and run applications as quickly as possible with the least amount of prior Spring configuration. The site also highlights Spring Cloud as "Coordinate Anything" and Spring Cloud Data Flow as "Connect Everything".

These taglines show that Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, and Spring Cloud Data Flow are core focuses for the Spring ecosystem and are worth learning.

Advantages of Spring Boot

Spring Boot inherits the strong DNA of the Spring framework while simplifying coding, configuration, deployment, and monitoring.

Good Genes

Born alongside Spring 4.0, Spring Boot (Boot meaning "bootstrap") helps developers quickly set up a Spring application and inherits Spring’s proven strengths.

Simplified Coding

Creating a web project traditionally requires many dependencies in the pom.xml. With Spring Boot you only need a single starter, for example:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
  </dependency>

The starter already pulls in a large set of transitive dependencies, such as spring-web and spring-webmvc:

<!-- ... other dependencies omitted ... -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
    <version>5.0.7.RELEASE</version>
    <scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
    <version>5.0.7.RELEASE</version>
    <scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>

Thus a single starter dramatically reduces the amount of boilerplate code you need to write.

Simplified Configuration

Spring Boot replaces the “configuration hell” of XML and scattered property files with Java‑based configuration. For example, a plain class can be turned into a Spring bean without using @Service:

public class TestService {
    public String sayHello() {
        return "Hello Spring Boot!";
    }
}

import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;

@Configuration
public class JavaConfig {
    @Bean
    public TestService getTestService() {
        return new TestService();
    }
}

Using @Configuration and @Bean registers TestService as a Spring‑managed bean, which can then be injected with @Resource:

@Resource
private TestService testService;

Deployment is also simplified: instead of deploying a WAR to an external Tomcat, Spring Boot embeds Tomcat and runs the application as a self‑contained JAR with java -jar xxx.jar. Only a JDK is required on the host.

Simplified Monitoring

By adding the spring-boot-starter-actuator dependency you can expose REST endpoints that provide runtime metrics, making monitoring straightforward. For full micro‑service capabilities such as service discovery, you would combine Spring Boot with Spring Cloud.

Future Development Trends

Microservices are the prevailing architectural direction, and Spring Boot, with its seamless Spring integration and support for REST APIs, is strongly recommended by the Spring team for building such systems.

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Original source: blog.csdn.net/eson_15/article/details/81043834

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