What is Spring Boot, and what are its main features with examples?

Category : Interview Questions | Sub Category : Spring Boot Interview Questions | By Prasad Bonam Last updated: 2023-08-04 00:14:09 Viewed : 355

What is Spring Boot, and what are its main features with examples?

Spring Boot is an open-source framework developed by Pivotal (now VMware) that is designed to simplify the development of production-ready Spring applications. It provides a set of opinionated conventions and defaults, reducing the need for manual configuration and boilerplate code. Spring Boot is built on top of the Spring Framework and offers several features to streamline the development process.

Main features of Spring Boot with examples:

1. Auto-configuration: Spring Boot automatically configures beans and components based on classpath settings and dependencies. For example, if you include the spring-boot-starter-web dependency, Spring Boot will automatically set up configurations for web-related components like Tomcat, Spring MVC, and Jackson.

2. Stand-alone Applications: Spring Boot allows you to create stand-alone executable JAR files that contain all the required dependencies and an embedded web server. For example, if you build a Spring Boot application and package it as a JAR, you can run it using the following command:

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java -jar your-application.jar

3. Starter Dependencies: Spring Boot provides a set of "starter" dependencies that encapsulate common configurations for various use cases. For instance, the spring-boot-starter-web starter includes everything needed to build a web application, including an embedded web server, Spring MVC, and more.

4. Spring Boot Actuator: Spring Boot Actuator provides several production-ready features to monitor and manage the application. For example, you can check the health of your application by accessing the /actuator/health endpoint:

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curl http://localhost:8080/actuator/health

5. Production-Ready Defaults:Production-Ready Defaults: Spring Boot sets up sensible production-ready defaults for various features, such as security, logging, and data access. For example, when you include the spring-boot-starter-security dependency, Spring Boot automatically enables basic security for your application.

6. Externalized Configuration: Spring Boot allows you to configure your application using external properties files (e.g., application.properties or application.yml). For example, you can specify the server port and database connection details in the application.properties file:

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# application.properties
server.port=8080
spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mydb
spring.datasource.username=myuser
spring.datasource.password=mypassword

7. Spring Boot CLI: Spring Boot provides a Command-Line Interface (CLI) that allows you to quickly create and run Spring Boot applications. For example, you can create a new Spring Boot application using the CLI:

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spring init my-app

8. Devtools: Spring Boot Devtools provide a set of developer tools that improve the development experience. For instance, it enables hot swapping of code changes during development, making the development process faster.

9. Testing Support: Spring Boot offers robust testing support, making it easier to write integration tests and unit tests for your application. For example, you can use the @SpringBootTest annotation to create an integration test that loads the full application context.

10. Actuator Security: Spring Boot Actuator comes with built-in security features to protect sensitive endpoints. You can control which endpoints are accessible and require authentication for sensitive endpoints. For example, you can configure access to the /actuator endpoints using Spring Security.

These features, along with many others, make Spring Boot a popular choice for developing Java applications as it reduces development time, improves productivity, and ensures that applications are production-ready with minimal effort.