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Getting started

Introducing Spring Boot

Spring Boot makes it easy to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring based Applications that you can “just run”. We take an opinionated view of the Spring platform and third-party libraries so you can get started with minimum fuss. Most Spring Boot applications need very little Spring configuration.

You can use Spring Boot to create Java applications that can be started using java -jar or more traditional war deployments. We also provide a command line tool that runs “spring scripts”.

Our primary goals are:

  • Provide a radically faster and widely accessible getting started experience for all Spring development.

  • Be opinionated out of the box, but get out of the way quickly as requirements start to diverge from the defaults.

  • Provide a range of non-functional features that are common to large classes of projects (e.g. embedded servers, security, metrics, health checks, externalized configuration).

  • Absolutely no code generation and no requirement for XML configuration.

System Requirements

By default, Spring Boot {spring-boot-version} requires Java 7 and Spring Framework 4.1.5 or above. You can use Spring Boot with Java 6 with some additional configuration. See howto.adoc for more details. Explicit build support is provided for Maven (3.2+) and Gradle (1.12+).

Tip
 Although you can use Spring Boot with Java 6 or 7, we generally recommend Java 8 if at all possible.

Servlet containers

The following embedded servlet containers are supported out of the box:

Name Servlet Version Java Version

Tomcat 8

3.1

Java 7+

Tomcat 7

3.0

Java 6+

Jetty 9

3.1

Java 7+

Jetty 8

3.0

Java 6+

Undertow 1.1

3.1

Java 7+

You can also deploy Spring Boot applications to any Servlet 3.0+ compatible container.

Installing Spring Boot

Spring Boot can be used with “classic” Java development tools or installed as a command line tool. Regardless, you will need Java SDK v1.6 or higher. You should check your current Java installation before you begin:

$ java -version

If you are new to Java development, or if you just want to experiment with Spring Boot you might want to try the Spring Boot CLI first, otherwise, read on for “classic” installation instructions.

Tip
 Although Spring Boot is compatible with Java 1.6, if possible, you should consider using the latest version of Java.

Installation instructions for the Java developer

You can use Spring Boot in the same way as any standard Java library. Simply include the appropriate spring-boot-*.jar files on your classpath. Spring Boot does not require any special tools integration, so you can use any IDE or text editor; and there is nothing special about a Spring Boot application, so you can run and debug as you would any other Java program.

Although you could just copy Spring Boot jars, we generally recommend that you use a build tool that supports dependency management (such as Maven or Gradle).

Maven installation

Spring Boot is compatible with Apache Maven 3.2 or above. If you don’t already have Maven installed you can follow the instructions at http://maven.apache.org.

Tip
 On many operating systems Maven can be installed via a package manager. If you’re an OSX Homebrew user try brew install maven. Ubuntu users can run sudo apt-get install maven.

Spring Boot dependencies use the org.springframework.boot groupId. Typically your Maven POM file will inherit from the spring-boot-starter-parent project and declare dependencies to one or more “Starter POMs”. Spring Boot also provides an optional Maven plugin to create executable jars.

Here is a typical pom.xml file:

<?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 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
	<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

	<groupId>com.example</groupId>
	<artifactId>myproject</artifactId>
	<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>

	<!-- Inherit defaults from Spring Boot -->
	<parent>
		<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
		<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
		<version>{spring-boot-version}</version>
	</parent>

	<!-- Add typical dependencies for a web application -->
	<dependencies>
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
			<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
		</dependency>
	</dependencies>

	<!-- Package as an executable jar -->
	<build>
		<plugins>
			<plugin>
				<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
				<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
			</plugin>
		</plugins>
	</build>

	<!-- Add Spring repositories -->
	<!-- (you don't need this if you are using a .RELEASE version) -->
	<repositories>
		<repository>
			<id>spring-snapshots</id>
			<url>http://repo.spring.io/snapshot</url>
			<snapshots><enabled>true</enabled></snapshots>
		</repository>
		<repository>
			<id>spring-milestones</id>
			<url>http://repo.spring.io/milestone</url>
		</repository>
	</repositories>
	<pluginRepositories>
		<pluginRepository>
			<id>spring-snapshots</id>
			<url>http://repo.spring.io/snapshot</url>
		</pluginRepository>
		<pluginRepository>
			<id>spring-milestones</id>
			<url>http://repo.spring.io/milestone</url>
		</pluginRepository>
	</pluginRepositories>
</project>
Tip
 The spring-boot-starter-parent is a great way to use Spring Boot, but it might not be suitable all of the time. Sometimes you may need to inherit from a different parent POM, or you might just not like our default settings. See [using-boot-maven-without-a-parent] for an alternative solution that uses an import scope.

Gradle installation

Spring Boot is compatible with Gradle 1.12 or above. If you don’t already have Gradle installed you can follow the instructions at http://www.gradle.org/.

Spring Boot dependencies can be declared using the org.springframework.boot group. Typically your project will declare dependencies to one or more “Starter POMs”. Spring Boot provides a useful Gradle plugin that can be used to simplify dependency declarations and to create executable jars.

Gradle Wrapper

The Gradle Wrapper provides a nice way of “obtaining” Gradle when you need to build a project. It’s a small script and library that you commit alongside your code to bootstrap the build process. See http://www.gradle.org/docs/current/userguide/gradle_wrapper.html for details.

Here is a typical build.gradle file:

buildscript {
	repositories {
		jcenter()
		maven { url "http://repo.spring.io/snapshot" }
		maven { url "http://repo.spring.io/milestone" }
	}
	dependencies {
		classpath("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:{spring-boot-version}")
	}
}

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

jar {
	baseName = 'myproject'
	version =  '0.0.1-SNAPSHOT'
}

repositories {
	jcenter()
	maven { url "http://repo.spring.io/snapshot" }
	maven { url "http://repo.spring.io/milestone" }
}

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

Installing the Spring Boot CLI

The Spring Boot CLI is a command line tool that can be used if you want to quickly prototype with Spring. It allows you to run Groovy scripts, which means that you have a familiar Java-like syntax, without so much boilerplate code.

You don’t need to use the CLI to work with Spring Boot but it’s definitely the quickest way to get a Spring application off the ground.

Manual installation

You can download the Spring CLI distribution from the Spring software repository:

Cutting edge snapshot distributions are also available.

Once downloaded, follow the {github-raw}/spring-boot-cli/src/main/content/INSTALL.txt[INSTALL.txt] instructions from the unpacked archive. In summary: there is a spring script (spring.bat for Windows) in a bin/ directory in the .zip file, or alternatively you can use java -jar with the .jar file (the script helps you to be sure that the classpath is set correctly).

Installation with SDKMAN!

SDKMAN! (The Software Development Kit Manager) can be used for managing multiple versions of various binary SDKs, including Groovy and the Spring Boot CLI. Get SDKMAN! from http://sdkman.io and install Spring Boot with

$ sdk install springboot
$ spring --version
Spring Boot v{spring-boot-version}

If you are developing features for the CLI and want easy access to the version you just built, follow these extra instructions.

$ sdk install springboot dev /path/to/spring-boot/spring-boot-cli/target/spring-boot-cli-{spring-boot-version}-bin/spring-{spring-boot-version}/
$ sdk default springboot dev
$ spring --version
Spring CLI v{spring-boot-version}

This will install a local instance of spring called the dev instance. It points at your target build location, so every time you rebuild Spring Boot, spring will be up-to-date.

You can see it by doing this:

$ sdk ls springboot

================================================================================
Available Springboot Versions
================================================================================
> + dev
* {spring-boot-version}

================================================================================
+ - local version
* - installed
> - currently in use
================================================================================

OSX Homebrew installation

If you are on a Mac and using Homebrew, all you need to do to install the Spring Boot CLI is:

$ brew tap pivotal/tap
$ brew install springboot

Homebrew will install spring to /usr/local/bin.

Note
 If you don’t see the formula, your installation of brew might be out-of-date. Just execute brew update and try again.

MacPorts installation

If you are on a Mac and using MacPorts, all you need to do to install the Spring Boot CLI is:

$ sudo port install spring-boot-cli

Command-line completion

Spring Boot CLI ships with scripts that provide command completion for BASH and zsh shells. You can source the script (also named spring) in any shell, or put it in your personal or system-wide bash completion initialization. On a Debian system the system-wide scripts are in /shell-completion/bash and all scripts in that directory are executed when a new shell starts. To run the script manually, e.g. if you have installed using SDKMAN!

$ . ~/.sdkman/springboot/current/shell-completion/bash/spring
$ spring <HIT TAB HERE>
  grab  help  jar  run  test  version
Note
 If you install Spring Boot CLI using Homebrew or MacPorts, the command-line completion scripts are automatically registered with your shell.

Quick start Spring CLI example

Here’s a really simple web application that you can use to test your installation. Create a file called app.groovy:

@RestController
class ThisWillActuallyRun {

	@RequestMapping("/")
	String home() {
		"Hello World!"
	}

}

Then simply run it from a shell:

$ spring run app.groovy
Note
 It will take some time when you first run the application as dependencies are downloaded. Subsequent runs will be much quicker.

Open http://localhost:8080 in your favorite web browser and you should see the following output:

Hello World!

Upgrading from an earlier version of Spring Boot

If you are upgrading from an earlier release of Spring Boot check the “release notes” hosted on the {github-wiki}[project wiki]. You’ll find upgrade instructions along with a list of “new and noteworthy” features for each release.

To upgrade an existing CLI installation use the appropriate package manager command (for example brew upgrade) or, if you manually installed the CLI, follow the standard instructions remembering to update your PATH environment variable to remove any older references.

Developing your first Spring Boot application

Let’s develop a simple “Hello World!” web application in Java that highlights some of Spring Boot’s key features. We’ll use Maven to build this project since most IDEs support it.

Tip

The spring.io web site contains many “Getting Started” guides that use Spring Boot. If you’re looking to solve a specific problem; check there first.

You can shortcut the steps below by going to https://start.spring.io and choosing the web starter from the dependencies searcher. This will automatically generate a new project structure so that you can start coding right the way. Check the documentation for more details.

Before we begin, open a terminal to check that you have valid versions of Java and Maven installed.

$ java -version
java version "1.7.0_51"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_51-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.51-b03, mixed mode)
$ mvn -v
Apache Maven 3.2.3 (33f8c3e1027c3ddde99d3cdebad2656a31e8fdf4; 2014-08-11T13:58:10-07:00)
Maven home: /Users/user/tools/apache-maven-3.1.1
Java version: 1.7.0_51, vendor: Oracle Corporation
Note
 This sample needs to be created in its own folder. Subsequent instructions assume that you have created a suitable folder and that it is your “current directory”.

Creating the POM

We need to start by creating a Maven pom.xml file. The pom.xml is the recipe that will be used to build your project. Open your favorite text editor and add the following:

<?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 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
	<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

	<groupId>com.example</groupId>
	<artifactId>myproject</artifactId>
	<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>

	<parent>
		<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
		<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
		<version>{spring-boot-version}</version>
	</parent>

	<!-- Additional lines to be added here... -->

	<!-- (you don't need this if you are using a .RELEASE version) -->
	<repositories>
		<repository>
			<id>spring-snapshots</id>
			<url>http://repo.spring.io/snapshot</url>
			<snapshots><enabled>true</enabled></snapshots>
		</repository>
		<repository>
			<id>spring-milestones</id>
			<url>http://repo.spring.io/milestone</url>
		</repository>
	</repositories>
	<pluginRepositories>
		<pluginRepository>
			<id>spring-snapshots</id>
			<url>http://repo.spring.io/snapshot</url>
		</pluginRepository>
		<pluginRepository>
			<id>spring-milestones</id>
			<url>http://repo.spring.io/milestone</url>
		</pluginRepository>
	</pluginRepositories>
</project>

This should give you a working build, you can test it out by running mvn package (you can ignore the “jar will be empty - no content was marked for inclusion!” warning for now).

Note
 At this point you could import the project into an IDE (most modern Java IDE’s include built-in support for Maven). For simplicity, we will continue to use a plain text editor for this example.

Adding classpath dependencies

Spring Boot provides a number of “Starter POMs” that make easy to add jars to your classpath. Our sample application has already used spring-boot-starter-parent in the parent section of the POM. The spring-boot-starter-parent is a special starter that provides useful Maven defaults. It also provides a dependency-management section so that you can omit version tags for “blessed” dependencies.

Other “Starter POMs” simply provide dependencies that you are likely to need when developing a specific type of application. Since we are developing a web application, we will add a spring-boot-starter-web dependency — but before that, let’s look at what we currently have.

$ mvn dependency:tree

[INFO] com.example:myproject:jar:0.0.1-SNAPSHOT

The mvn dependency:tree command prints a tree representation of your project dependencies. You can see that spring-boot-starter-parent provides no dependencies by itself. Let’s edit our pom.xml and add the spring-boot-starter-web dependency just below the parent section:

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

If you run mvn dependency:tree again, you will see that there are now a number of additional dependencies, including the Tomcat web server and Spring Boot itself.

Writing the code

To finish our application we need to create a single Java file. Maven will compile sources from src/main/java by default so you need to create that folder structure, then add a file named src/main/java/Example.java:

import org.springframework.boot.*;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.*;
import org.springframework.stereotype.*;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.*;

@RestController
@EnableAutoConfiguration
public class Example {

	@RequestMapping("/")
	String home() {
		return "Hello World!";
	}

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

}

Although there isn’t much code here, quite a lot is going on. Let’s step through the important parts.

The @RestController and @RequestMapping annotations

The first annotation on our Example class is @RestController. This is known as a stereotype annotation. It provides hints for people reading the code, and for Spring, that the class plays a specific role. In this case, our class is a web @Controller so Spring will consider it when handling incoming web requests.

The @RequestMapping annotation provides “routing” information. It is telling Spring that any HTTP request with the path “/” should be mapped to the home method. The @RestController annotation tells Spring to render the resulting string directly back to the caller.

Tip
 The @RestController and @RequestMapping annotations are Spring MVC annotations (they are not specific to Spring Boot). See the {spring-reference}#mvc[MVC section] in the Spring Reference Documentation for more details.

The @EnableAutoConfiguration annotation

The second class-level annotation is @EnableAutoConfiguration. This annotation tells Spring Boot to “guess” how you will want to configure Spring, based on the jar dependencies that you have added. Since spring-boot-starter-web added Tomcat and Spring MVC, the auto-configuration will assume that you are developing a web application and setup Spring accordingly.

Starter POMs and Auto-Configuration

Auto-configuration is designed to work well with “Starter POMs”, but the two concepts are not directly tied. You are free to pick-and-choose jar dependencies outside of the starter POMs and Spring Boot will still do its best to auto-configure your application.

The “main” method

The final part of our application is the main method. This is just a standard method that follows the Java convention for an application entry point. Our main method delegates to Spring Boot’s SpringApplication class by calling run. SpringApplication will bootstrap our application, starting Spring which will in turn start the auto-configured Tomcat web server. We need to pass Example.class as an argument to the run method to tell SpringApplication which is the primary Spring component. The args array is also passed through to expose any command-line arguments.

Running the example

At this point our application should work. Since we have used the spring-boot-starter-parent POM we have a useful run goal that we can use to start the application. Type mvn spring-boot:run from the root project directory to start the application:

$ mvn spring-boot:run

  .   ____          _            __ _ _
 /\\ / ___'_ __ _ _(_)_ __  __ _ \ \ \ \
( ( )\___ | '_ | '_| | '_ \/ _` | \ \ \ \
 \\/  ___)| |_)| | | | | || (_| |  ) ) ) )
  '  |____| .__|_| |_|_| |_\__, | / / / /
 =========|_|==============|___/=/_/_/_/
 :: Spring Boot ::  (v{spring-boot-version})
....... . . .
....... . . . (log output here)
....... . . .
........ Started Example in 2.222 seconds (JVM running for 6.514)

If you open a web browser to http://localhost:8080 you should see the following output:

Hello World!

To gracefully exit the application hit ctrl-c.

Creating an executable jar

Let’s finish our example by creating a completely self-contained executable jar file that we could run in production. Executable jars (sometimes called “fat jars”) are archives containing your compiled classes along with all of the jar dependencies that your code needs to run.

Executable jars and Java

Java does not provide any standard way to load nested jar files (i.e. jar files that are themselves contained within a jar). This can be problematic if you are looking to distribute a self-contained application.

To solve this problem, many developers use “uber” jars. An uber jar simply packages all classes, from all jars, into a single archive. The problem with this approach is that it becomes hard to see which libraries you are actually using in your application. It can also be problematic if the same filename is used (but with different content) in multiple jars.

Spring Boot takes a different approach and allows you to actually nest jars directly.

To create an executable jar we need to add the spring-boot-maven-plugin to our pom.xml. Insert the following lines just below the dependencies section:

<build>
	<plugins>
		<plugin>
			<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
			<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
		</plugin>
	</plugins>
</build>
Note
 The spring-boot-starter-parent POM includes <executions> configuration to bind the repackage goal. If you are not using the parent POM you will need to declare this configuration yourself. See the {spring-boot-maven-plugin-site}/usage.html[plugin documentation] for details.

Save your pom.xml and run mvn package from the command line:

$ mvn package

[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building myproject 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] .... ..
[INFO] --- maven-jar-plugin:2.4:jar (default-jar) @ myproject ---
[INFO] Building jar: /Users/developer/example/spring-boot-example/target/myproject-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar
[INFO]
[INFO] --- spring-boot-maven-plugin:{spring-boot-version}:repackage (default) @ myproject ---
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you look in the target directory you should see myproject-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar. The file should be around 10 Mb in size. If you want to peek inside, you can use jar tvf:

$ jar tvf target/myproject-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

You should also see a much smaller file named myproject-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar.original in the target directory. This is the original jar file that Maven created before it was repackaged by Spring Boot.

To run that application, use the java -jar command:

$ java -jar target/myproject-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

  .   ____          _            __ _ _
 /\\ / ___'_ __ _ _(_)_ __  __ _ \ \ \ \
( ( )\___ | '_ | '_| | '_ \/ _` | \ \ \ \
 \\/  ___)| |_)| | | | | || (_| |  ) ) ) )
  '  |____| .__|_| |_|_| |_\__, | / / / /
 =========|_|==============|___/=/_/_/_/
 :: Spring Boot ::  (v{spring-boot-version})
....... . . .
....... . . . (log output here)
....... . . .
........ Started Example in 2.536 seconds (JVM running for 2.864)

As before, to gracefully exit the application hit ctrl-c.

What to read next

Hopefully this section has provided you with some of the Spring Boot basics, and got you on your way to writing your own applications. If you’re a task-oriented type of developer you might want to jump over to http://spring.io and check out some of the getting started guides that solve specific “How do I do that with Spring” problems; we also have Spring Boot-specific How-to reference documentation.

The Spring Boot repository has also a {github-code}/spring-boot-samples[bunch of samples] you can run. The samples are independent of the rest of the code (that is you don’t need to build the rest to run or use the samples).

Otherwise, the next logical step is to read using-spring-boot.adoc. If you’re really impatient, you could also jump ahead and read about Spring Boot features.