Introduction to Spring Boot

Spring Boot is a powerful framework for building Java applications. It provides auto-configuration, embedded servers, and production-ready features that make development faster and easier.

Key Features

• Auto-configuration: Automatically configures your application based on the dependencies you include
• Embedded servers: No need to deploy WAR files to external servers
• Production-ready features: Health checks, metrics, and externalized configuration
• Opinionated defaults: Reduces boilerplate code and configuration

Creating Your First Spring Boot Application

To create a new Spring Boot application, you can use the Spring Initializr at start.spring.io or use your IDE's built-in support.

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

This simple class is all you need to get started with Spring Boot. The @SpringBootApplication annotation combines three important annotations:

• @Configuration - Marks the class as a source of bean definitions
• @EnableAutoConfiguration - Enables Spring Boot's auto-configuration
• @ComponentScan - Enables component scanning in the package

Conclusion

Spring Boot makes it easy to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring-based applications. With its convention-over-configuration approach, you can focus on writing business logic rather than configuration.